The Blog – Page 110

OUR WORLD WAR (2014)

April 1, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

BBC3’s OUR WORLD WAR (2014), a three-part anthology miniseries about WW1, dramatizes the experiences of British soldiers based on war records and firsthand recollections. While a bit uneven, two of the episodes are amazing, very human portrayals of what warfare was like 100 years ago.

Again, this is an anthology series, telling three separate stories set during the Battle of Mons, Battle of the Somme, and the Battle of Amiens. As the stories are based on what actually happened, the events don’t follow a neat plot or character arc, defying expectations and achieving great authenticity. What they all have in common is that men bond during war, that a struggling nation will openly do anything to achieve victory, and that war is hell.

The first episode captures the British Fusiliers encountering a massive German attack at Mons. The episode is likeable but doesn’t seem to find its theme or footing. The director amply uses modern devices, such as a modern score, body cam to follow a runner relaying messages, and overlay maps depicting the enemy forces. These anachronisms generally work, though the body cam was unnecessary and jerked me out of the story. Still, I was intrigued to keep watching.

The second and third episodes are fantastic. The second episode deals with a soldier who signed up to fight and ends up assigned to kill somebody from his hometown in a firing squad. The story is split evenly between him debating his chaplain, who is far from a straw man and makes very reasonable points about what it takes to win, and fighting in a horrific battle. The third episode is by far my favorite, about the crew of one of the first tanks used in battle at Amiens. The tankers have to brave artillery shells, deadly fumes, a faulty engine, and the moral brick in the face that is the horrors they’re unleashing on the Germans with these new and advanced weapons.

If you like military action films, I encourage you to give this a go, but maybe start with episode 2, then 1, then 3 for a big finish.

BATTLE STATIONS Nominated for Literary Award

March 29, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

I’m very happy to report BATTLE STATIONS, the third episode in the CRASH DIVE series, has been nominated for a 2018 Audio Book Reviewer Listener’s Choice Award in the Literary Fiction category.

The final award is given by popular choice, so I hope you’ll take a moment of your time and vote for BATTLE STATIONS if you’re a fan of the series. The audiobook version is read by the great R.C. Bray, truly one of the great audiobook voice talents. He really brought this book to life.

Click here to vote (it takes only a few seconds). Thank you for voting!

PANDEMONIUM by Daryl Gregory

March 16, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Daryl Gregory’s PANDEMONIUM imagines an alternate America in which genuine demonic possession is an epidemic, resulting in a very different world. The story focuses on Del, who’d been possessed as a boy by the Hellion, a demon that enjoys making mischief. Del’s family and a psychiatrist helped him until the demon left, but years later, Del realizes the Hellion is still there, trapped inside him, and it wants out.

Del goes on a journey of self-discovery to exorcise the demon, from meeting Philip K. Dick, possessed by an entity called Valis, to finding Red Book, an organization that shows Del the truth about himself, and that the cure may be worse than the disease.

Gregory’s got an impressive body of work available, but what impressed me was this was his debut novel, published back in 2008. The characterization is great, it’s thoughtful and original, the world building and philosophical ideas about demonic possession are thought-provoking, and it has enough twists to keep one engaged and guessing.

So overall I found PANDEMONIUM to be an interesting read. I liked it.

I, TONYA (2017)

March 15, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

I, TONYA (2017) is a biographical film about the rise and fall of American figure skater Tonya Harding (brilliantly played by Margot Robbie), who was connected to the savage attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan before the 1994 Winter Olympics. With a script based on real events given depth and context by secure interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, the story is funny but painfully tragic, and made me rethink the “pure ice princess savaged by bitter low-class rival” media framing.

The film begins with Harding growing up in Portland in the 1970s, raised by a mother who pushes her into figure skating. As Harding gets older, her mother takes her out of school so she can train full time under a personal coach. Her mom (Allison Janney, who chews every scene in the role) pushes her hard and is rough on her, but it goes way beyond tough love into outright abuse.

Harding marries Jeff Gillooly to get away from her, but he too turns out abusive, frequently hitting her. Harding keeps at her skating, but the judges won’t give her decent scores in competitions because she projects a white trash image, with her home-made costumes and heavy metal music selections. This brings up one of the most interesting themes of the movie, which is that Harding, though a success self-made through a lifetime of dedication and hard work, nonetheless constantly faced an uphill battle in the figure skating world due to its ingrained snobbery. “It should be about the skating,” Harding complains at one point, and she’s totally right. Harding was no doubt one of the best skaters in the world, the first woman to do the very difficult triple-axle.

When Harding gets a crack at the 1994 Winter Olympics, Jeff and his loser friend Shawn hatch a plot to psychologically mess with Nancy Kerrigan. The plan goes awry, leading to a physical attack on Kerrigan with very tragic consequences.

The film comes across a little inconsistent, as it’s based on reminisces by two people with very different recollections of the events as they happened. Both of their stories are considered truthful and blended in the script. Overall, it’s a very engaging movie for its humor (the kind of ridiculous humor that can only be found in real life), great acting performances particularly by Robbie and Janney, riveting skating scenes, and hearing the “villain’s” side of the story. But it’s painful to watch as well, this being a tragedy of a woman’s difficult life ruined through bad associations, all leading up to an ending we already know well.

SCHOOL’S OUT by Scott Andrews

March 14, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In SCHOOL’S OUT by Scott Andrews, THE LORD OF THE FLIES meets the apocalypse. The result is a highly engaging book that dashes at a breakneck pace with plenty of action, a decent amount of realism, and great moral questions about survival.

Part of the Afterblight Chronicles, a series of books in a shared post-apocalyptic world where a deadly virus has wiped out most of the world, Andrews’s SCHOOL’S OUT tells the story of dazed boys returning to their boarding school. As lawlessness spreads across a collapsed UK, some of the boys overthrow the remaining teachers and establish a tribe of fighters. This pits 15-year-old Lee Keegan, a capable and thoughtful fighter, against the boys’ leader, a nearby community with its own warlord, and a roving tribe of cannibals.

The result is great fun with plenty of heart. While the prevalence of crazies as stock villains is fairly predictable, the action is more or less realistic, though the rapid succession of one horrible crisis after another in the second half gets a bit fatiguing. Keegan’s decision-making is authentic, aiming for morality but very practical, and laced with the question of how far does one must become a killer to make a world free of killing. He is extremely capable but no superhero, often making mistakes and getting battered by combat. I particularly enjoyed how the author periodically crushes the reader’s expectations by having reality make Keegan’s best-laid plans turn for the worse. Meanwhile, Mac, the boys’ leader, makes a great antagonist as he represents what Keegan could become without any restraining morals about killing and the exercise of power.

So overall, I liked it and will be reading his other two books about the “Cull,” sold packaged as the SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER omnibus.

MUTE (2018)

March 13, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

MUTE (2018), a sci-fi noir set in a future Berlin, tells the story of a mute man living in a future Berlin. When his girlfriend disappears, he goes on a mission through the city’s seedy underworld to find her. This movie seems to be widely hated but I found it surprisingly fun.

Leo, the mute (played by Alexander Skarsgård), can’t speak due to a childhood accident and despite living in a city where that problem could be corrected, he refuses to undergo surgery because he was raised in an Amish or similar community. When his girlfriend disappears, he sets out to find her, eventually putting him up against a pimp, the crime boss who runs the bar where he works, and two Army surgeons who’d served in New Kabul together, one of whom has gone AWOL to avoid going back to the front.

The surgeons, Cactus Bill and Duck, played by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux, steal the show. They appear to be modeled directly on Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John from MASH (the movie, not the TV show), if Trapper John was a violent psychopath and Hawkeye was a pedophile. Leo bashes his way across Berlin’s underworld, bringing him on a collision course with Cactus Bill.

Thematically, the story is about the humanizing influence of love in a city that has dehumanized its residents, while the plot is basically part mystery and part race for Leo to save his girlfriend and gain vengeance before his enemy disappears forever. The world building is terrific, worthy of BLADE RUNNER.

Overall, the movie is a bit convoluted and poorly stitched with plenty of errant scenes that either go over the top or nowhere, but overall I got a real kick out of it. It’s a solid sci-fi noir with great performances and plenty of futuristic eye candy.