Author: Christian Sauvé

  • More Digressions, Peter David

    More Digressions, Peter David

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Mad Norwegian Press, 2009, 408 pages, $24.95 tp, ISBN 978-193523400-5

    I don’t know much about the mainstream superhero-oriented comic book industry, but I do know that Peter David is one of the most entertaining “Writer of Stuff” (his own tagline) out there.  Some writers’ bibliography read like a short list of novels published at yearly intervals.  Peter’s own bibliography reads like a multimedia tour through the last twenty years of American pop culture: Aside from his own original work, his tie-in work ranges from Star Trek novels, ten superhero movie novelizations, a Babylon5 TV scripts, scripting runs on superhero comics such as Spider-Man, The Hulk and Supergirl… and much, much more.

    Tying much of this work together are the regular “But I Digress” columns published in the Comics Buyer’s Guide.  Given full blessings to write about whatever he wants, Peter uses his column to discuss his life, his work, the state of the comics industry and the world at large.  I had exceptionally fond memories of the first But I Digress collection published in 1994, so it wasn’t much of a sell to make me pick up this follow-up once I was made aware that it existed.

    Collecting material published between 2001 and 2008 (leaving an uncollected gap between 1994 and 2001), More Digressions is exactly what it says on the cover: “a new collection of ‘But I Digress’ columns”.  Roughly arranged in thematic sections with titles such as “Life. Don’t Talk to Me about Life”, “The Business of Comics”, “BFFs” and “Fandomonium”, the essays cover much of David’s life and work during the past decade.  David being outspoken even on the calmest of days, it’s no surprise if the book also ends up being a collection of arguments, controversies, daring proposals and public score-settling.

    The first thing I realized reading More Digressions was that I had little business reading the book.  Let’s face it: the American superhero comics industry is so insular that keeping track of its mythology is a full-time hobby.  The columns collected here were published in a trade publication, aimed at readers who were fully aware of the slightest twitches and grunts of the various publishers and series.  For a very casual fan like me, parts of More Digression read like intense but meaningless squabbles about subjects that must be really important to the people involved in the discussions, but close to meaningless for anyone who’s not a comic-book store regular.  The learning curve here was steep, and I have to admit that Wikipedia helped a lot.  (Even more casual readers who feel that a book should not require Wikipedia as a reading companion may have a point, but then again every book has a specific target audience.)

    Still, knowledge is one thing, and attitude is another.  From afar, reading David talk about the comic book industry and its fandom can be cause for bafflement and concern.  The comics industry is currently in crisis: it’s suffering from the rise of the paperback collection as a preferred buying format, it’s under siege from those who want to “widen” the material to appeal to the audiences hooked by Hollywood superhero movies, and it’s reaping the results of decades’ worth of catering to an obsessive 18-to-34 geeky male audience.  For creators such as David, this situation has translated into two recurring motifs: the sometimes counterproductive marketing strategies of the industry, and the rabid self-entitlement of the fans.  Reading about the dysfunctional nature of the industry and stories of fannish abuse, I felt more compelled than ever to stay as far away from the craziness of superhero comics fandom.

    Of course, this is the comics universe as seen from Peter David, and that he’s perfectly entitled to be critical in his own column.  Plus, More Digression isn’t all about the business and fandom of comics: His essays about his own life and creative process are a good read, and in talking about his best friends, we get a look at such notables as Harlan Ellison (who contributes a typically self-absorbed introduction to the book), George Takei or Neil Gaiman –further proof of David’s interesting life.

    More Digressions is a collection of opinions and recollections, and it’s normal that not everything works at the same level, or reaches the same interest.  I found some columns weaker than others, including a naïve take on racism that had me wincing at the lessons from the painful RaceFail debate that shook the online SF community in early 2009.  But it is Peter David’s soapbox, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff here for whoever can follow along, forgive some self-justifying entries and ignore minor trade squabbles since then forgotten.  It’s a portrait of a unique columnist, and an unvarnished look at a sometimes-demented subculture.  It’s not for everyone, but it’s exactly what it tries to be.

  • Streets of Legend aka Quattro Noza (2003)

    Streets of Legend aka Quattro Noza (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) It would be easy to be overly critical of this film.  The home-video graininess of the picture is matched by the script’s lack of focus, inconclusive ending and quasi-pretentious cinematography.  A hybrid between documentary and micro-budget romantic drama set alongside the Los Angeles street-racing scene, Streets of Legend often feels like a vanity project by someone who really, really wants to be taken seriously as an artist.  The result will be laughable to anyone looking for a straight-up action film.  On the other hand, there are a few things worth taking seriously here.  First would be the nature of the street-racing scenes, reportedly shot documentary-style on the streets of LA.  They would work better without the ridiculous amount of post-processing taking away from the visceral nature of the footage (some of the shots feel genuinely dangerous, but are too blurred to make an impact), but the movie shows some invention in how to shoot a racing scene with what I’m presuming was a minuscule budget.  There’s also a lot to like about the film’s characters, where they come from and where they almost go: as Street of Legends shows a car full of teenage girls bantering mindlessly while on their way to a street racing event, it’s not hard to realize that there’s a reality-based layer to the film that we haven’t seen in glossier pictures such as the Fast and the Furious series.  From time to time, the loose unscripted nature of the film’s young protagonist is almost endearing –which makes it even more frustrating when the film ends on a lazy note, barely tying up its loose ends.  Still, the end result is halfway between a documentary, a drama and an action picture without much cohesive material in-between.  The scant DVD supplementary material hints at a very unusual making-of process, but we barely get any of that on the disc.  A further alert: The film’s picture seems to have been stretched from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 1.85:1… which really doesn’t help in making the picture look any prettier.  While there isn’t much to Streets of Legend to satisfy conventional expectations, there quite a bit of unrealized potential underneath the lousy images.  It’s a shame that it wasn’t better-executed.

  • Fast Track: No Limits (2008)

    Fast Track: No Limits (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) As a Fast and the Furious clone, this isn’t too bad: Despite what feels like a low budget, Fast Track: No Limits cleverly tricks out what it has under the hood and delivers the honoured mixture of street racing, attractive young people, low-grade crime drama and automotive pulchritude.  Ignore the opening credits, which take the TV pilot approach of showing highlights from the film and headshots of the actors alongside their names: Within minutes, it’s easy to appreciate the glossy cinematography, European setting, likable actors and fast cars.  Fast Track doesn’t have many stunts compared to its inspiration, but they’re used effectively and make an impact when they’re on-screen.  While the rhythm of the film goes a bit flat during its second half, the attention paid to the characters is a bit better than what we could expect from a street-racing action film, and the direction is a bit nervier that one would expect.  There are a few vexing plot holes and missed opportunities (one love scene seems notably gratuitous), but it all amount to a better-than-expected action film, especially considering the low budget and straight-to-DVD pedigree.  Don’t expect anything more than the film from the DVD, which is so lacking that it doesn’t even feature subtitles –something that would have been appreciated given the bewildering salad of accents sported by the film’s actors.

  • Citizen Black (2004)

    Citizen Black (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) I’m not much of a hater, but few figures lead me to gleeful schadenfreude as surely as Conrad Black, a Canadian media mogul with a reputation for savaging newsrooms, promoting an aggressive right-wing editorial agenda, renouncing his Canadian citizenship when it stood in the way of a British peerage, taking money for personal benefit from his corporations and asking for his Canadian citizenship back when it looked like the only way to get clemency from the US legal system.  His recent stint in prison during seemed unusually well-deserved (although the legal manoeuvring leading to his release were another black mark against him), and Citizen Black, despite predating his 2007 conviction, lays the case for and against Black.  Filmmaker Debbie Melnyk portrays a highly-driven man, as charming as he can be arrogant; testimonies about Black are just as eloquent in portraying the man’s complex personality.  Melnyk makes herself a part of the story in pursuing an interview with her subject and exchanging emails with him.  What’s less fortunate is the film’s made-for-TV pedigree, with low-grade sound, sometimes-awful picture quality and scatter-shot approach: It makes the film less pleasant to watch than it should have been.  At least the curt conclusion is to the point: Like Icarus, Black started with the best of intentions and became corrupted with time, flying too close to the sun before crashing down to Earth.  Citizen Black now feels exceptionally dated in the missing material (Since 2004, Black has been convicted, jailed and released; he has also released another massive presidential biography), but it still holds true as a portrait of Conrad Black.  One could even say that time has proven Melnyk right.  The cheap DVD edition lacks just about everything (there aren’t even any subtitles, which is a shame given the variable audio quality), although it does feature some documentary footage that was later subpoenaed during Black’s trial.

  • Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007)

    Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) I’m not that familiar with the Family Guy series, so take my doubts about their Star Wars homage with a grain of salt.  Blue Harvest is a 45-minutes-long recreation of the original Star Wars, mixing in cultural references, commentary on the source film’s plotting and more usual comedy gags.  There’s some remarkable work in integrating CGI models with the Family Guy style of animation, and some of the resulting scenes almost look pretty.  Still, Star Wars fans are the primary audience here, as I’m not sure if the film can be equally appreciated by those without an encyclopaedic knowledge of the source film.  Blue Harvest is amiable enough to earn grins throughout… but it’s also far too loose to earn a recommendation.  It often seems content to recreate original scenes without making them funny, several gags are stretched far beyond their comic value, and the musical numbers outstay their welcome.  Part of the issue, we can learn from the commentary and DVD extras, is that this was a half-hour episode stretched to an hour: Some slackness can only be expected.  Other DVD extras include an interview with George Lucas (who approved of the production), and a clear sense that this way in many ways a labour of love for the creators.  (Trivial note: I end up watching this film 12 years, to the day, after The Phantom Menace’s release.)

  • The Business of Science-Fiction, Mike Resnick & Barry N. Malzberg

    The Business of Science-Fiction, Mike Resnick & Barry N. Malzberg

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    McFarland, 2010, 269 pages, ~C$35.00 tp, ISBN 978-0-7864-4797-8

    Reading books about how to write are one of my not-so-secret vices.  Jaded by endless convention panels repeating the same advice, I don’t read them to learn how to write as much as to learn how other writers write.  A good how-to-write book is usually a window into an author’s career, or an inside look in the publishing business.  The best of such books will tell stories, teach real-world pitfalls and be entertaining as well.

    The Business of Science-Fiction is a collection of twenty-six columns published in the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s (SFWA) trade journal “The Bulletin”.  SFWA is where speculative fiction writers go to talk shop, and it’s hard to get closer to the SF&F genre than to read its internal house publication.  For more than a decade, Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg have been jointly writing a column on various aspects of SF writing and publishing.  Those columns take the form of exchanges between the two of them; Resnick usually plays the role of the optimist, with Malzberg’s gloomy outlook balancing the dialogue.

    To SF fans with short memories, Resnick and Malzberg may not be the obvious choices to write authoritative columns on the current state of SF writing.  While Resnick regularly gets nominated for the shorter Hugo Award categories, it’s usually for cloying stories that seem designed to appeal to SF fans’ sense of nostalgia rather than try anything new.  Meanwhile, Malzberg’s heyday as an author dates back to the seventies, without much of a public profile since then.

    But that’s being myopic.  Resnick has been tremendously influential in discovering and encouraging newer writers.  If his own fiction is a bit bland, it’s usually solidly bolted together and as we discover through the columns, he has proven uncommonly effective at reselling his stories to markets other than first-run English-language paper publication.  Few other writers in the genre are as knowledgeable about the business aspect of Science-Fiction.  Meanwhile, Malzberg has developed a reputation as a cranky historian of the field: His Breakfast in the Ruins non-fiction collection brought together a number of highly astute pieces about the state of Science-Fiction over the past decades.  Reading the columns, it’s difficult not to be impressed by the depth of his historical knowledge of the field.  More crucially, readers may not see his continuing work for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, which has let him keep an insider’s view of the business throughout the years.

    The columns collected in The Business of Science-Fiction, taken together, show a snapshot of the changing publishing industry in the first decade of the twenty-first century.  Resnick and Malzberg discuss the state of the business with the benefit of long memories, but they don’t forget to question themselves in trying to figure out what is changing along the way.  They can also, writing for a professional audience, allow themselves to discuss “the next question” and pick up arguments aimed at professional writers rather than beginners.  The references they make to SF publishing’s long history are filled with interesting details, and the advice they provide feels fresh and uncompromising.  (SF convention organizers won’t like reading what they say about whether authors should attend conventions.)  The dialogue format can be entertaining to read, especially when both of them are aware of the role they have picked for themselves.  (Both refer to Malzberg as “Eeyore” more than once.)

    Given that this is a re-packaging of existing content, it’s no surprise if some material and stories echo throughout the book, or that it’s not a good idea to read more than a few of the 4,000-word columns at a time.  Academic publisher McFarland has done a fine job putting the collection together, not the least feature being a complete index at the end of the book.  What’s missing, unfortunately, are dates of publication attached to each column: In discussing rapidly-changing topics such as e-books or the Google Settlement, for instance, it’s vital to know whether these are facts and opinions from 2003 or 2008.  I also can’t help but be amused at the cover design, which takes some Shutterstock stock art to suggest a dialogue between the two authors: Having seen both Resnick and Malzberg in real life more than once, it’s obvious to me that neither of the silhouetted figures are even close to them in physical appearance.

    But the book does live up to its subtitle as “Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publish”, and the quality of the advice here is good enough to justify its Hugo nomination in the non-fiction category.  Both are charming and witty to read in print, and the advice has some real-world relevance.  What more would you want from a how-to-write book?

  • Priest (2011)

    Priest (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2011) It’s not a good sign when you can feel the film’s final act locking itself into position, think “Already?”, look at your watch and find out that the film’s barely past the 65-minutes mark.  There may not be all that much to say about Priest, but at least it has the decency to wrap things up in less than 90 minutes.  Anything more would have been wasted, mind you: Even though the film seem very loosely adapted from a presumably richer Korean graphic novel series, there just isn’t a whole lot of plot here to gnaw upon: Setup, two dramatic confrontation and we’re already on to the third act.  At least there’s a bit of eye-candy to contemplate during that time: The techno-grunge atmosphere is a bit tired, but it’s reinvigorated with the somewhat less usual industrial-western feel of the film’s middle section.  Paul Bettany also gets a good role as priest with quasi-supernatural ass-kicking powers: After seeing him in so many dramatic roles (including Charles Darwin in Creation), it’s entertaining to see him re-team with Legion’s director Scott Stewart for action-movie credentials.  Otherwise, well, Maggie Q is fine as another renegade Priest, Karl Urban chews scenery like he enjoys it and Christopher Plummer earns a pay-check as the face of the shallow-but-oppressive Church.  But it’s all flash and pretty visuals here: no depth, little originality and even less substance.  That doesn’t make it a bad film as much as it makes it a very forgettable one. The future for Priest is clear: an unceremonious DVD release, and then onward to cultural oblivion.

  • Watch, Robert J. Sawyer

    Watch, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Viking Canada, 2010, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-670-06742-8

    Second volumes in trilogies are the hardest to review, in part because they offer no compelling questions to answer.  First volumes?  Easy: Reviewers can get by with a simple description of the premise, the tone, the style, the characters and end on a note that wonders about where the trilogy is going.  Final volumes?  Again, easy: The reviewer can simply say whether the final volume deviate from the style established in the series and whether it fulfills expectations.  But second volumes… In today’s highly-optimized, heavily-managed genre publishing environment, second volumes aren’t much more than bridges meant to take readers from first to final volume.  The trilogy usually being sold to the publisher and the reader as a unit, it’s in the author’s and editor’s best interest to make sure that the approach remains consistent with the first volume, and that any dramatic differences are toned down.  At best, second volumes offer a few answers, plot points and character development.  At worst, we simply turn in circles until more plot coupons are collected.

    Since “What Would Robert J. Sawyer Do?” has become one of the most reliable barometers of professionalism in the written SF field, you can bet that Watch (aka WWW: Watch in the US market) does not take any radical departures from the approach and theme set in Sawyer’s previous Wake.  The series is meant to be a procedural SF thriller describing the development of an artificial conscience from the World Wide Web, and this second volume simply pushes the plot a bit further along.  After revealing itself to blind teenage prodigy Caitlin Decter, emerging AI Webmind continues to learn about humans.  What’s new in the volume are the first hints of conflict, as an American government organization notices something strange on the Internet and starts wondering whether Webmind is a threat to national security.  Meanwhile, another plot threads converges to reinforce the trilogy’s theme of non-human consciousness.

    In terms of stylistic approach and tone, Watch seamlessly integrates with Wake, which is to say that everything good and bad about the first volume extends here: Further observations on Canadian/American differences, awkward pop-culture references, facts so obvious dumped as exposition as to qualify as hand-holding, the portrait of a bright blind teenager and the restraint with which Sawyer circles a familiar idea to Science Fiction readers.  You can re-read my review of the first volume and re-apply it in its entirety to this follow-up without being led too far astray.

    As a reviewer, this leaves me stuck with an unusual, almost daring tactic for reviewing Watch: Focus, for once, on Sawyer’s strengths as a writer.  What does work in Sawyer’s fiction… as exemplified by Watch?

    The first strength that does come to mind is clarity: Sawyer’s prose is unusually easy to read even in the most challenging public-transit environments.  His characters are sharply defined, the issues are clear, plotting ambiguity is kept to a minimum (he’s reliably more nuanced in matters of moral ambiguity) and his classical approach to plotting means that it’s not hard for readers to locate themselves within the structure of the novel.  The sometimes-infuriating hand-holding for readers less used to SF’s idioms and common references is a deliberate aspect of this stylistic choice, and it helps Sawyer reach audiences well beyond SF’s usual readership.

    This clarity of execution usually comes bundled with a somewhat more ambitious speculative intent meant to deliver satisfaction for SF genre readers.  If you read Watch’s Chapter 42 carefully, for instance, you’ll find an explanation for advanced consciousness (ie: “it overrides evolutionary pressures, preventing a race to the bottom”) that can be interpreted as a counterpoint to the somewhat more sombre conclusions reached by fellow Torontonian hard-SF authors Karl Schroeder (Permanence) and Peter Watts (Blindsight).  This specific example is also an illustration of Sawyer’s quasi-constant optimism: his novels seldom feature outright villains (the universe is antagonistic enough, especially when there are ideas to discuss along the way), his protagonists are rarely defeatists and his endings usually point the way to a better tomorrow.  Given the sad chorus of doomsayers that seem to dominate much of the contemporary SF scenes these days, it’s easy to see why Sawyer’s fiction can reach an audience looking for something that won’t encourage them to put together a survivalist stockpile.

    For worse or for better, Watch is a typical Sawyer novel that plays to his usual weaknesses and strengths.  As an exploration of non-human consciousness, it’s more detailed than the usual SF hand-waving.  Its protagonist Caitlin is still as sympathetic as she was in the previous volume, and it sets up the required pieces in time for the final volume of the trilogy.  It’s a second volume that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and readers who made it to this second tome are sure to pick up the third volume Wonder.  As for critics of Sawyer’s usual approach, let’s take a page from his prose and blow our fragile little minds with the little-known proverb “Dogs bark, but the caravan goes on”…

  • Thor (2011)

    Thor (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2011) I went into this film not understanding why it existed, and came out of it just as baffled.  Granted, I’m not a fan of the comic-book character: I don’t even recall reading an issue of the source material.  But unlike better comic-book movies, Thor has no point, no thematic depth and no reason for existing other than setting up the upcoming Avengers film.  (At best, those looking for a message will find out that it’s anti-adoption agitprop.)  As the film sets up its background in the fantasyland of Asgard, I found myself wishing that the film could go back to Earth, to Natalie Portman (as little as she has to do here) and to something I could care about.  Otherwise, it’s all pompous accents, aliens, palace intrigue and invented mythologies that (I’m guessing) teenagers will love a lot more than I do.  Am I losing the ability to care about fantasy movies?  Maybe, but it’s not as if Thor gives me any reason to care.  I’ll grant at least one thing, though: it’s got a certain visual style, and some of the Asgard sequences are pretty.  Chris Hemsworth is also very good in the title role: Few other actors could have pulled the arch dialogue and regal bearing without looking ridiculous.  Otherwise, it’s more interesting to see how the film exists in continuity with the other Marvel-universe movies, from the return appearance of a few SHIELD agents to Jeremy Renner’s cameo as Hawkeye to the now-requisite post-credit sequence.  While I wouldn’t go as far as calling Thor dull or uninvolving, it does feel like a low-expectation, low-results kind of film: the scaled-back main-street fight scene is a clear example of that.  Thor does brings back to mind the kind of underwhelming comic-book films that we used to get before filmmakers realized that they had to put some depth into it.  To say that Kevin Branagh is behind it all almost boggles the mind.

  • The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

    The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pyr, 2010, 358 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 978-1-61614-204-9

    I was about to begin this review by writing that I didn’t know when Ian McDonald went from “an uneven writer” to “buy-on-sight” in my reviewer’s mind, but that’s not true: I happened sometime in 2005 during my reading of River of Gods, a novel that has since gone on to become a minor SF classic of the last decade.  River of Gods took MacDonald’s interest for non-western cultures and combined it with a more disciplined reader-friendly approach than many of his more experimental novels.  Taking place in future India, the result was also billed as the first in a loose thematic “emerging superpowers” trilogy.  Brasyl followed in 2007 by doing justice to the South American country, and now The Dervish House takes on the growing importance of Turkey as a bridge between Europe and Asia.

    From the novel’s first moments, we’re thrown into near-future Istanbul, during a torrid week in which six characters will see their entire lives change.  Through McDonald’s sure-footed narration (which begins with a literal bird’s eye view of the city), we’re introduced to the six characters and subplots that will form the strands of the novel’s plot.  It’s obvious from the get-go that MacDonald has done his research, and that he’s able to weave it into a compelling number of narratives.  Before long, we’re asked to care about emerging nanotechnology, corporate malfeasance, century-old legends, terrorism and everything else in the characters’ lives.  MacDonald seems equally at ease telling honey-infused fables or describing how a corporation can be shut down by the state.  The Dervish House is a novel that’s wider than it is deep, and it’s this variety of mood, styles, stories and characters that make up most of the book’s interest.

    After the stylistic and subject matter pyrotechnics of Brasyl, The Dervish House feels quite a bit more grounded in reality.  Turkey, after all, is not Brazil, and MacDonald’s stylistic approach tries to be appropriate to the Turkish future he’s describing.  (The Dervish House isn’t about plot as much as it’s about setting.)  So it is that The Dervish House shows a country trying to embrace both a proud tradition and the possibilities offered by new technologies.  Istanbul not only bridges two continents, it acts as a passage from the past to the future.

    This being said, my praise comes with a few slight caveats.  For one thing, the unconnected six-strand narrative means that not all sequences are equally interesting –a number of readers will find themselves flipping impatiently through some passages while they await the next one to interest them.  (More than once, I found myself waiting to go back to the art-dealer’s quest to find the possibly-mythical Mellified Man.)  I also wonder if the broad nature of the novel makes it more difficult to follow than one that focuses on a strong plot line.  Not every reader is going to react as positively to a novel that features a city more prominently than human characters, and some SF fans will be disappointed at the novel’s low-octane technological speculations.  By taking on a near-future world dealing with the first practical applications of nanotechnology, MacDonald reins in his extrapolations and tries to ground them to a believable reality: it does feels like a mild let-down after the strong-AI speculations of River of Gods and the wild parallel universes of Brasyl.

    Yet the result in an impressive entry in a bibliography that only seems to become stronger with time.  MacDonald has, in-between River of Gods and this most recent novel, re-established himself as one of the most interesting SF writer currently working.  The Dervish House is a prototypical Big Science Fiction novel: Dense, well-researched, well-written and intellectually hefty.  It’s a good example of the kind of worldwide horizons the genre has taken on over the past decade, and not even its built-in flaws can distract pundits from affirming that it’s one of the best novels of the year.  It got a well-deserved Hugo Nomination and outclasses the other novels on the ballot.  Few “Best-SF books of 2010” lists won’t include this novel.

  • For Your Consideration (2006)

    For Your Consideration (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) As much as writer/director Christopher Guest’s ensemble improvisation mockumentaries have produced some gems in the past (Best in Show), the format can also be a recipe for an unfocused mess, and that’s pretty much what happens with For Your Consideration.  Another Hollywood home movie that probably feels funnier to the filmmakers than the filmgoers, For Your Consideration depicts the sudden accession to stardom that veteran actors can face.  As their film earns favourable buzz and increased media attention, the protagonists react in different ways that show variations on Hollywood’s fundamental insecurities.  So far so good; alas, I never completely bought into the film’s reality: Awards buzz starts once the film is completed and shown to audiences, not while it’s shooting; furthermore, actors who run good chances of being Oscar-nominated usually end up with a slew of other awards and nominations, making the film’s downfall moments ring a bit hollow.  It really doesn’t help that For Your Consideration seems to be running everywhere without focus, lame scenes flashing by without necessarily making a point.  (Tellingly, the DVD contains a number of deleted scenes that don’t appear any more or less funny than what’s in the film itself –the sole exception being more of Nina Conti’s delightful ventriloquism.) Even the film’s lack of time/space unity (jumping months forward in time after a lengthy first segment) seems just as sloppy as the rest of the picture.  The actors are fine (Fred Willard is hilarious as usual), some of the material is admirable and the glimpse behind the Hollywood mythmaking machine is amusing, but it just doesn’t cohere into anything as good as it should be.  At least the DVD audio commentary makes it clear that the largely-improvised filmmaking process is to blame.

  • Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

    Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) Will Ferrell’s usual kind of comedy leaves me cold, but various people kept telling me that Anchorman wasn’t just “any other Will Ferrell movie.”  They’re right, but not by much: While Anchorman does indeed feel like a more fully-featured comedy than “any other Will Ferrell movie”, in large part due to the comic intent to revisit the TV news universe of the seventies, it doesn’t stray too far away from the arrested adolescence, casual misogyny and profane nonsense that seems to characterise his career.  While Anchorman seemingly wants to be making some kind of statement about dumb patriarchy facing the rise of professional women, it does seem to enjoy making sexist jokes quite a bit and for the entire duration of the film.  What it does have running for it, however, is a large streak of absurdist comedy, a fair number of catchphrases (“Stay classy, San Diego”), the sense that there are a few attempts at characterization (Ferrell’s “Ron Burgundy” goes beyond being Ferrell to an actual comic character) and an all-out brawl that serves a better purpose as an on-screen reunion of several film comedians from Ben Stiller to Vince Vaughn to Tim Robbins.  Christina Applegate also holds her own against the boys of the picture, which isn’t a small achievement given how often she’s the butt of the jokes.  It’s not exactly a bad film, but it’s largely a useless one, and trying to listen to the DVD commentary only highlights that point.  The irony is that there’s a good film to be made about the golden time of “Action TV News” in the seventies… but Anchorman isn’t really interested in more than low comedy.

  • Due Date (2010)

    Due Date (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2011) The mismatched-traveling-companion thing has been a comedy staple for years, so it’s no real surprise if Due Date immediately feels familiar, and if its strengths lie elsewhere than originality.  Here, the premise seems custom-tailored for exploiting the comic personas of its two lead actors: Robert Downey Jr. as a high-strung professional prone to bursts of pure anger; and Zach Galifianakis as yet another supposedly-lovable loser.  The plot takes them on a transcontinental journey from Atlanta to Los Angeles, but that’s really an excuse to set up one comic situation after another as two men who can’t stand each other eventually learn to –well, no big surprise there.  Whether the film works hinges on how much you like those characters and the situation they get into: While Downey’s physical aggressiveness can be amusing, Galifianakis’s comic persona is more annoying than anything else, whereas the film’s constant drug-related jokes is enough to remind audiences that the current flavour for R-rated comedies seems to be frat-boy arrested development (Significantly, Due Date is billed as being from “the director of Old School and The Hangover”).  The film doesn’t have plot-holes as much as it has rigidly predetermined sequences in mind: There’s enough plot-fairy dust in there to choke anyone wondering why these two characters would keep staying together, or how long it takes to “detour” by the Mexican border.  There are, to be fair, a number of good sequences here and there: Jamie Foxx makes an entertaining cameo, and there is some impressive car stunt work for what is, after all, supposed to be just a regular comedy.  As a “regular comedy”, though, it falters in reaching for deeper emotional meaning: Attempts to raise tears don’t really work when the rest of Due Date feels so childish, and particularly fade when compared to Planes, Trains and Automobiles which is still the most relevant reference in the traveling-horrors comedy genre.

  • Feed, Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire

    Feed, Mira Grant aka Seanan McGuire

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Orbit, 2010, 574 pages, C$12.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-316-08105-4

    Hugo Nominee season can be tedious, frustrating or surprising, depending on one’s expectations about the actual nominees.  I was primed to dislike Mira Grant/Seana McGuire’s Feed almost from the time I held it in my hands.  Count the strikes: Not only is it another gosh-darn zombie novel, it’s also the avowed first in an trilogy and is printed in the more expensive tall-paperback format that I irrationally dislike so much.  Three strikes, right there.

    Hence my surprise, a few dozen pages in, to realize that I was actually enjoying the novel.  Never mind the tall-paperback format, which is an idiosyncratic antipathy of mine; I can even deal with the first-in-a-trilogy factor when a novel is reasonably complete by itself.  But even the zombie aspect eventually won me over.  While this isn’t a new World War Z, Feed manages to do a few interesting tricks with its concept.  For one thing, this is a science-fiction novel as much as it’s a horror one.  In practical terms, this means that Feed takes place twenty years after a world-wide zombie outbreak (caused by a mutant virus that still courses through everyone’s veins), and that it shows us a world that has reached an accommodation with the fact that just about anyone is liable to turn into a zombie at a moment’s notice.  Feed takes the time to describe how its teenage protagonists have gotten used to the constant threat, and the ways in which society has implemented the necessary safeguards.  There’s a fair amount of speculative content here that goes beyond what a routine horror novel would have been expected to deliver, and much of my appreciation of the novel is based on the resulting world-building.

    The other facet that works relatively well is the characterization of the story’s protagonist.  Our narrator is Georgia Mason, an articulate blogger who has managed to earn media credentials for the 2024 presidential election.  Along with her impulsive brother Shaun and a number of collaborators, they get to follow a candidate, suffer through random acts of violence and expose a massive conspiracy.  What fun!

    Still, Georgia is an engaging narrator, and Shaun proves to be a competent foil once we go beyond his daredevil façade.  The other characters are handled with a decent amount of skill, and the novel is almost utterly readable from beginning to end.  Strong sequences punctuate the novel at regular intervals, whereas the mechanics of a post-zombified blogging network prove more interesting than expected.  There are a few unusual plotting twists toward the end of the story that both kick it up a notch and raise structural questions about what should have been kept in stock for the second novel.  I closed Feed with the surprised satisfaction of a reader who got more than expected out of an unpromising title.

    Don’t think, however, that I’m completely happy with the novel.  The blogging triumphalism of the novel would have felt fresh and fascinating in, say, 2004.  In 2010, however, it feels dated, ignoring the way blogs have been re-integrated in mainstream media and how little original content is actually being produced by the blogosphere.  I understand that Feed exists at the borderline between a Young Adult novel and an adult one, and that the blogging conceit is a really smooth way to land teenage protagonists into a high-stakes political showdown.  Still, bit and pieces of the novel’s background don’t feel as credible as the rest, and small dings like those accumulate, especially in a novel that depends so much on the illusion of a credible world.  I was also less than convinced at the way some of the background came together, some unquestioned assumptions clashing with what we were told about the nature of the world.  (Think real hard about either restaurants or political rallies in a world where people are liable to spontaneously turn into zombies.)

    So it is that even though I like Feed quite a bit more than expected, I feel almost forced to qualify this recommendation with a dash of indulgence and warning.  A good read; sure.  A Hugo nominee?  Well, 2010 wasn’t such a good year… and Feed easily outclasses at least three of the five other current nominees.  It’s been a weak enough year that any half-satisfying book is good enough for me.  I will even read the sequel.

  • Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

    Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Blackout: Bantam Spectra, 2010, 491 pages, C$18.00 tp, ISBN 978-0-345-51983-2
    All Clear: Bantam Spectra, 2010, 640 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-553-80767-7

    I had little intention of reading Blackout/All Clear before it was nominated for this year’s Hugo Awards.  I quite like Connie Willis as a person (one of my proudest achievements as a panellist at SF conventions was making her laugh at the other end of the table), but I’ve had mixed reactions to her fiction and the sight of a story big enough to run over two thick separate volumes wasn’t reassuring to me after her overlong 2001 novel Passage.

    Then it got nominated for the Hugo Awards, as Connie Willis fiction usually is.

    But now that I’ve read the diptych, I trust my first instincts more than ever.  Another rethread in her “Fire Watch” universe in which innocent time-traveling historians get lost in history due to academic incompetence (and subsequently have terrible things happen to them), Blackout/All Clear showcases the British experience during World War 2.  It plays in a sombre key and, judging by its length and scope, is clearly meant to be a major entry in Willis’ bibliography.

    The set-up will be familiar to anyone who has read Willis’ 1992 Hugo-Winning Doomsday Book: By 2060, the Oxford History department may have a time machine, but they’re woefully disorganized, can’t seem to get the knack of twentieth-century wireless communication devices, and seem content to let academic incompetence run the show.  The rest of the story is just as obvious: When three historians are sent to World War 2 and seem to be prevented from making it back to their rendezvous point to return to 2060, something is afoot.  Is it simply coincidence or the fabric of time getting unravelled?  Are our protagonists stuck forever in the 1940s or will they find their way back home?

    Not to spoil anything, but there are three possible answers to what can happen to misplaced time travelers.  They can either come back home the easy way (via time machine), come back home the hard way (which involves a lot of waiting) or they can die.  There are three historians.  You can guess what’s likely to happen to each of them.

    What’s harder to figure out, however, is how or why an established institution like Oxford can’t arrange a time-travel post office somewhere in its vaults for stranded travelers to send messages forward in time.  But then again, idiot plotting has often been a staple of Willis’ fiction, and we get a lot of it stretched over the story’s 1,200+ pages.  People not communicating essential information to each other; so-called trained historians not knowing basic facts about their era of study; woefully misused technology; fake suspense due to authorial intervention… Blackout/All Clear often shows the not-so-hidden hand of the writer moving her pieces on the chessboard, not out of organic plot development, but out of arbitrary decree.  The lengthy result, properly edited, could have been much shorter.

    But Willis has clearly researched her subject in detail, and seems determined to make readers suffer for that accumulation of knowledge.  The day-to-day details of life in WW2 London are described at length, almost as if Willis couldn’t decide whether she wanted to write a Science Fiction novel or a historical one.  In light of this over-accumulation of detail, it’s ironic that a number of other online commentators have commented (also at length) about the various inaccuracies in the book.  As a Canadian who traveled to London exactly once, I couldn’t make the difference most of the time… but even the colonial bumpkin that I am raised an eyebrow at the mention of the “Jubilee line” [All Clear, p.315], which wasn’t finished until 1979 and named after an event that took place in 1977!

    The pacing of both books is glacial, and the suspense in following the characters as they seem to have been stranded in time through the whims of a capricious universe feel increasingly hollow as the plotting rests on a heap of contrivances.  One character seemingly dies so many times that by the time the Big Finish finally happens, we feel incredulous, cheated and unsatisfied.  The big cosmological question that obsesses our characters about their time-traveling slippage deflates to almost nothing by the end, while the romantic opportunities offered by time-travel and a mismatched couple seem to disappear underneath the rest of the novel’s endless course.  There is, to be fair, a good novel buried somewhere in Blackout/All Clear:  A short 400-pages novel, ruthlessly edited to actually focus on something.  Willis, alas, has now escaped most editing rigor.  While I can’t say that I disliked Blackout/All Clear that much, I did feel as if it was purposefully wasting my time.

    [August 2011: Well huh: Blackout/All Clear won this year’s Hugo Award for best Novel.]