The intriguing and compelling Borgman

Posted on June 13, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

With today’s limited release of Borgman, I thought I’d re-share my thoughts about the film from last year’s Fantastic Fest.

Borgman, the subversive film by Alex van Warmerdam (The Last Days of Emma Blank), opens oddly as a priest and two men armed with guns hunts for the dirty, unshaven, and frail Camiel Borgman who lives underground. He and two other similar men narrowly escape the attackers.

From there things get weirder and more inexplicable as he befriends Marina and Richard, eventually living in their house as the gardener. Borgman wields psychological and sexual power over Marina. Others of similar temperament join with him as the dead bodies start to pile up.

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The bloodless movie relies on subtlety and dark pervasive humor in a story riddled with fascinating ideas and concepts but little explanation. All characters save Borgman are very passive in their actions and reactions. Matter of fact, the moment characters begin to exhibit proactive traits, they are killed.

Though Borgman suffers from vagueness and lack of clear motivation, van Warmerdam crafted an intriguing and compelling movie, fueled largely by the mysterious lead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg65TbeHtCE&feature=kp

Lost Review: How To Train Your Dragon

Posted on June 6, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and articles.

With the impending release of its sequel, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the surprising How To Train Your Dragon.

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STAPLE 2014: Coffee, monsters, pulp, etc

Posted on March 3, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

This previous weekend was the 10th annual STAPLE, Austin’s independent media expo. As I have for the past seven years, I attended the festival. Sadly, I was only there on Saturday, though that didn’t stop me from getting some goodies, visiting some friends, and hopefully make some new ones.

One of the show’s pleasant surprises was the unexpected appearance of Shannon Wheeler. As long time readers know, Shannon and I go way back (chronicled here, here, and other places) so it was nice to catch up. We discussed the success of God Is Disappointed in You, the Too Much Coffee Man beer (yes, really!), his kids, and other stuff in our lives.

Then Shannon made me a very generous offer, he gave me the original of a Too Much Coffee Man strip!

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Nexus Graphica launches at SF Signal

Posted on February 26, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

After 6+ years and 138 bi-weekly Nexus Graphica columns, Mark London Williams and I started to find it difficult to continue producing at that rate. We both enjoy time-consuming freelance writing careers of varying success, yet we both still liked writing the missives about comics. Plus we felt that things had started to grow stale. Something had to change. Mark and I decided it was time to shake things up a bit by moving the column to a new site with a different format and a slightly different readership.

The first of the new monthly columns (Mark and I will alternate issues) premiered on February 20 at its new home, SF Signal. I recount the origins of the column (and the unusual name) plus review Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët, The Wake Part One by Scott Snyder & Sean Murphy, and Sheltered, Volume One by Ed Brisson & Johnnie Christmas.

Locus recommends THE APES OF WRATH

Posted on February 14, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

Cover by Alex Solis

In the same February issue of Locus where Gardner Dozois reviewed Rayguns Over Texas, he included T he Apes of Wrath among his recommended reprint anthology reads for 2013.

The best reprint anthology of the year was Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell & Patrick Nielsen Hayden. There were also two big reprint anthologies for fans of the time-travel story, The Time Traveller’s Almanac, edited by Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, and The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF, edited by Mike Ashley, and a book of ape stories, The Apes of Wrath, edited by Richard Klaw. There was also a collection of stories written at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30 th Anniversary Anthology, edited by Ellen Datlow.

I’m honored to be included among such esteemed company.

It could be just that he reviewed Apes not that long ago and it was still sitting next to his computer, but I prefer the idea that Apes was indeed among the best of the year.

Locus reviews RAYGUNS OVER TEXAS

Posted on February 10, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

Cover by Rocky Kelley

For the February Locus, Gardner Dozois reviewed Rayguns Over Texas.

In spite of the title, which implies freewheeling space opera, there’s only one raygun to be found in Rayguns Over Texas, an original anthology edited by Richard Klaw; most stories here don’t take us off Earth, and most don’t have anything to do with aliens (attacking or otherwise) or armadas of battling spaceships. That doesn’t mean that the anthology isn’t fun, though.

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Big Names of the loosely defined school of Texas SF – Bruce Sterling, Howard Waldrop, Steven Utley, Lisa Tuttle, Lewis Shiner – aren’t represented here with fiction (Sterling provides an introduction), but the writers who are here do a decent job of delivering that difficult-to-classify stuff typical of the Texas School of SF, somewhere between gonzo fantasy and horror in tone with occasional touches of cyberpunk, that was once called ‘‘outlaw fantasy,’’ or occasionally ‘‘cowpunk.’’

(Not including the “Big Names” was very a purposeful decision. One of the rules of the volume was that the writers needed to currently be living in Texas. Of all he mentioned, only Waldrop currently lives here.)

The most enjoyable story here is probably Mark Finn’s ‘‘Take a Left at the Cretaceous’’, in which Good Ole Boy long-distance truckers tangle with dinosaurs, but there’s other fun stuff as well.

Dozois’ other fun stuff included stories by Lawrence Person, Aaron Allston, Derek Austin Johnson, Chris N. Brown, and Jessica Reisman.

Lost Review: Despicable Me

Posted on January 7, 2014 by The Geek Curmudgeon

Another geeky review. This time of the surprisingly clever Despicable Me.

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Top Ten Time Once More, Part 1

Posted on December 3, 2013 by The Geek Curmudgeon

Over at SF Site as part of our bi-weekly Nexus Graphica column, Mark London Williams and I produced our annual foray into the best reads of the previous year.