Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Vertical Run, Joseph R. Garber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1995, 305 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10033-5

    Some books seem naturally destined to become movies. Then again, some books are directly ripped off from some movies.

    Both of these statements are true in the case of Vertical Run, a thriller taking place in a high-rise building, where a lone man is pursued by a team of special operative who will stop at nothing to kill him. DIE HARD, anyone? No matter, because Vertical Run takes us places John McClane hadn’t seen.

    It begins early in the morning, just as ultra-average senior executive Dave Elliot steps into his office to begins his workday. It’s not a Monday, but his day starts sucking right away anyway as his boss enters the room and points a gun at him. One fancy move later, the boss is knocked out cold (wish-fulfillment is an essential part of all good thrillers) and Dave has more questions than ever. Let’s hope he’s had his morning coffee, because soon afterward he’ll have to face a whole team of crack operatives all intent on his untimely death.

    Unfortunately for them, Dave Elliot’s an ex-Green Beret. That’s gonna hurt.

    And so begins Vertical Run. This is one of those books which perfectly define the expression “page-turner”. Garber knows his stuff, and the pacing of the book is relentless, driving you to read later and later in the night.

    Thrillers are built on premises, and Garber knows how to milk his carefully. Pretty much every detail sounds authentic and he effortlessly builds suspense and excitement out of a few simple actions by his protagonist. The book is filled with these “oh-so-cool” scenes that elevate the novel from a run-of-the-mill thriller to something that readers will remember with a certain affection long after they’ve read the final line.

    There are a few problems, such as the lessening of tension in the last third, the slightly underwhelming conclusion or the fact that the protagonist has so much trouble figuring out why everyone wants to terminate him with prejudice. (Most seasoned readers will immediately recognize the crucial hint as soon as it’s mentioned. Unfortunately, this information is withheld until well past the halfway point, and the protagonist doesn’t figure it out until more than fifty pages after.)

    There have been persistent rumors, ever since Vertical Run‘s original publication, that the novel is headed for the silver screen. It certainly has all the ingredients required for a big thriller: Sympathetic-but-competent protagonist, evil-but-clever antagonist, love interest, action set-pieces and clear narrative. While final release is probably a while away -Hollywood development processes being what they are-, you can do the next best thing right now and grab the book.

    Don’t skip out on the epilogue, which send a nice little curveball in what you’d expect.

  • Shanghai Noon (2000)

    Shanghai Noon (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) This proves again why you can’t go wrong with a Jackie Chan film. Successfully blending action, comedy, buddy-movie and western elements in a fashion that Wild Wild West only dreamed about, Shanghai Noon provides laughs and thrills like the best crowd-pleasers. Chan purists will argue, reasonably, that the film lacks the “big stunts” or the awe-inspiring fights of his previous few films, but that shouldn’t distract the rest of the audience. (After all, Chan is getting older) There are quite a few flaws in the script, from the waste of the “Indian Wife” to the incoherent ending. Still, if it’s fun at the movie you want, Shanghai Noon is there for you.

  • Money Talks (1997)

    Money Talks (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) Not everyone likes Chris Tucker and his groovy-young-black routine, but it would take a real curmudgeon not to like Money Talks, as director Brett Ratner so easily capitalizes on the natural loopiness of Tucker for added comic effect beyond the limits of the script. Among the pluses: A pretty good car chase, evil Frenchmen, “That’s Beautiful” “That’s Barry Manilow!”, good chemistry between Tucker and Charlie Sheen, a fun finale and a marriage at the end. It’s a comedy; not a great one, but a good one.

  • Mission: Impossible II (2000)

    Mission: Impossible II (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) Frustrating because it is, at the same time, so bad and so good. The script is one of the sorriest excuse for an “action” film I’ve seen in a blockbuster for a long, long time. Say what you want about Armageddon, at least it had pacing on its side. Not so with Mission: Impossible 2: If the first fifteen minutes are pretty enjoyable, the following hour drags on like molasses, with a complete lack of any action. That dreadful hour is further drawn-out by nauseatingly trite dialogue, obvious “surprises” and bland scripting. But, forty-five minutes before the end, Ethan Hunt finally gets to act like the James-Bond clone he has so obviously become, and only then does Mission: Impossible 2 become a thrill ride. That’s when characters stop speaking and start shooting, all sumptuously directed by John Woo. Slow-Motion bullet ballet, a wonderful motorcycle chase worth the price of admission in itself and a superb hand-combat sequence complete the film. A shame you have to slog through so much… emptiness in order to get to it. Tom Cruise is irreproachable -as is Anthony Hopkins’ cameo- but the rest of the actors get short thrift and Thandie Newton’s character is atrociously written. So much good stuff, so much bad stuff… and Hollywood suddenly asks itself why we think its summer blockbusters suck.

  • Jing wu ying xiong [Fist Of Legend] (1994)

    Jing wu ying xiong [Fist Of Legend] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) Given Jet Li’s newfound popularity in America (after Lethal Weapon 4 and Romeo Must Die), it was inevitable that some of his better efforts would find their way here. Fist Of Legend, released On VHS, is the second of them after the theatrically-released Black Mask. If marketers truly knew their stuff, they would have sent Fist Of Legend to the movie-houses and kept Black Mask for the Blockbusters. It’s that good. Martial-arts fans will have their money’s worth with Fist Of Legend, a historical film with plenty of balletic bone-crushing action. It takes a while to get going, the pacing is sufficient to keep us interested throughout, and builds to a pair of awesome fights (including one where both opponents are blindfolded) Fantastically directed, and wonderfully choreographed. A real treat for martial arts enthusiasts.

  • Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

    Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) Another of these dark films which throws disturbing images at you while promising a payoff at the end. (See Stir Of Echoes) Unfortunately, it barely delivers on these payoffs, even negating a part of what made it so creepy. Proof? Well, if the ending is to be believed, then at least one whole subplot/timeline (most of the film, actually) does not mean anything and shouldn’t even be there. That’s the point where Jacob’s Ladder stops making sense and becomes a series of images designed to creep you out. Too bad it couldn’t be more coherent, because a slight rewrite could have made it so much more efficient.

  • Poor Richard’s Web Site, Peter Kent

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Floor, 2000, 422 pages, C$47.95 tpb, ISBN 0-9661032-0-3

    You’re a small businessman. You own your own little-to-medium company, but lately you’ve become concerned that this Internet thingy might be hurting your sales. Or, at the very least, that you’re missing out on some great marketing opportunity. Whatever the reason, you want to get a piece of the e-action. But building a web site is complicated stuff, right? Expensive too, if you’re to believe the stories in the newspapers.

    Don’t.

    As Peter Kent points out, the dirty little secret of the Internet is that “it’s a giant jobs program for computer geeks.” A bit unfair as a statement, but not quite as ludicrous as you’d imagine. Kent’s point is that most of what you really need to know about a web site can be learned quickly, and practiced cheaply. So here’s a fifty-Canadian-bucks book to teach you how to be cheap. Poor Richard’s Web Site is a giant ad for Peter Kent’s business.

    All kidding aside, this book condenses in easy-to-read format a whole bunch of things most small business owners would be grateful to know about the Internet. Kent doesn’t do technical stuff (as he rightfully points out, there are plenty of other books that do that, and it’s not rocket science in any fashion.) but rather focuses on overarching business and design issues, plus spends a full third of the book on marketing.

    In its first two-third, Poor Richard’s Web Site strikes an admirable balance between down-to-earth business advice, and technically correct information. People baffled by the techno-jargon of other more in-depth work should feel at ease here, while more technically-oriented persons won’t be able to nit-pick the advice to death and even maybe learn a few new tricks or two.

    All throughout, Kent’s advice is sensible, often irreverent (if wholeheartedly supporting Microsoft can be considered slightly edgy) and often brought with a humorous slant.

    So far so good, but the book is contaminated with the stink of shameless self-promotion. As the book advances, it becomes obvious that Peter Kent is trying to sell you something: A contract with his own web hosting company. One or two mentions would have been fine, but when the URL of his own business is brought up every chapter or so, enough is enough.

    Things devolve in the last section, about marketing your web site. Though Kent at least has the decency to discourage spamming -noting that it may result in your web site being wiped out the face of the Earth-, his recommended “soft-sell” practices tend to run on the annoying side, especially when practiced on established communities that don’t really enjoy this type of thing. (eg; Usenet, where similar tactics are usually scoffed at.) At least Chapter 18 mentions real-world PR, which is where most of web promotion dollars should be going anyway.

    But I’m being once again too hard on the book. Naturally, it will appeal more to those with a business-and-marketing oriented mind. Naturally, techies are better off reading something more specialized. On the other hand, Poor Richard’s Web Site does manage to fulfill its goal of providing a one-stop business web primer.

    Just consider the opening five (!) full pages of blurbs as an advertisement of what you’ll learn inside…

  • Gladiator (2000)

    Gladiator (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) A nice surprise with a few problems. While the title, packaging and previews would seem to sell a straight historical action film with plenty of fancy fighting set-pieces, Gladiator is really more of an old-fashioned historical epic, with political machinations, romantic interludes and tragic sacrifices. Moreover, the action scenes fail to attain true greatness by an annoying over-reliance on gimmicky special effects. (CGI extensions, sure, but most egregiously the step-printing and the exasperating quick cuts) Director Ridley Scott never provides a shot-to-shot continuity of action, and the film suffers from, basically, a cruel lack of long-shot look at the action. (The opening Roma-versus-Germania battle, fortunately, does so and is much more impressive because of it. But look at the gladiator-versus-chariot fight to see how much more impressive it would have been with a few continuous long shots.) Still, the film thrives on Russell Crowe’s impressive charisma and on a strong heroic arc. A good movie, just short of being great.

  • Deep Rising (1998)

    Deep Rising (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) A film doesn’t have to be original if it does the familiar incredibly well. This is the case with Deep Rising, a wholly average monster-aboard-ship film that goes through exactly the expected motions while being just enough fun that we don’t care. The script is punchy in a trash way, the actors know they’re not doing Shakespeare and the pacing is snappy. Furthermore, the whole thing is so much fun that it’s hard to be disappointed. Not a great film, but one that can be readily re-watched.

  • The Big Tease (1999)

    The Big Tease (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) Mostly innocuous satire about a Scottish hairdresser who somehow tries to hit it big in Hollywood. The pseudo-documentary format doesn’t add a great deal and takes a lot away. Craig Ferguson is charming as the protagonist. There simply isn’t enough hair stuff for a comedy about hair. The finale is curiously underwhelming. There are a few cute bits when the film takes subtle jabs at the acting profession (so the protagonist must have a day’s work in order to join SAG… er… HAG?) Diverting, but not exceptional.

  • Big Momma’s House (2000)

    Big Momma’s House (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) I have seldom liked Martin Lawrence’s brand of “comedy” and he miserably fails once again in Big Momma’s House, a totally middle-of-the-road film that seems to exist simply because a vast industry has to turn out films, no matter what. The script is on autopilot, summoning a romance out of no further common affinities but “she’s hot” and “he’s nice”, comedy sequences made “funnier” by the sight of a fat protagonist and saccharine moments so blatantly manipulative that they end up alienating intelligent viewers rather than bringing them closer to the film. Nothing special here, folks. I didn’t pay for my ticket, and I really hope you won’t either.

  • The Hacker Crackdown, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1992, 316 pages, C$7.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56370-X

    (Available online at http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/)

    Bruce Sterling has acquired, in the science-fiction community, an enviable reputation as one of the smartest, most visionary representative of the genre. Indeed, in the turbulent nineties, Sterling has shown himself capable of adapting to the new wave of technology that almost made Science-Fiction obsolete. A string of excellent books (Heavy Weather, Globalhead, Holy Fire, Distraction, A Good Old-fashioned Future) have cemented his reputation as one of the current masters of the genre.

    Few SF observers would have been as bold as to claim such an honor for Sterling at the end of the eighties. Sure, Schismatrix was a boffo space-opera, and Islands on the Net showed promise, but apart from a few other short stories in Crystal Express, the rest of Sterling’s fiction output was disappointing, to say the least. Who remembers Involution Ocean? Or The Artificial Kid? If anything, Sterling was showing more promise as a competent critic (Cheap Truth) and anthologist (Mirrorshades) than a fiction author.

    In the early nineties, however, something happened. In 1990, a string of events rocked the computer underground. A friend of Sterling, Steve Jackson, saw federal agents confiscate a good part of his small gaming company’s assets under the pretext that he was writing a manual for computer pirates. Sterling didn’t simply get mad; he seeked the truth behind the event. The Hacker Crackdown is a journalistic account of the 1990 skirmishes between the telephone companies, the hackers, the police and the civil libertarians.

    The book is divided in four parts. In the first, Sterling begins by explaining the roots of cyberspace, going back as far as the first telephone networks. In one of the best passages of the book, he explains how the telephone system went from a simple cable strung between Alexander Graham Bell’s phone and Watson’s receiver to the current unimaginably complex packet-switching network. Then he traces the effects of a simple bug which shut-down AT&T’s telephone network in January 1990.

    He then takes us deeper underground, describing the subculture of the computer hackers that existed in 1990. He shows how paranoia, caused by the AT&T shutdown, percolated in a “need for action” that led police officers to raid private citizen’s house and to grab their computers—and in many cases, much more than their computers.

    In the book’s third quarter, he goes from one side to the other and ends up talking about the police forces and how they’re trying to update their mandate in the information age. He discusses how most computer security outfits were severely under-funded in the early nineties. Sterling takes us at a computer-security conference, and does some hacking of his own.

    Finally, he ends up explaining the most enduring legacy of the 1990 events; the electronic rights interest group that have been formed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is described, along with a variety of speculations on the future of “law and disorder on the electronic frontier”.

    How important were the 1990 events? Well, as Sterling puts it, any policeman can go to a group of scruffy-looking hoodlums hanging in front of a store and ask them to leave, or else. Few groups of hoodlums would have the presence of mind to go phone up a lawyer to protest police repression of their constitutional right of free assembly. That’s what happened in 1990; for ill-defined reasons, government kicked over the electronic anthill, and that precipitated the formation of electronic rights interest groups, whose influence continues to grow in today’s information age.

    And you couldn’t find a better writer for the job than Bruce Sterling. His writing is clear, incisive and often funny. Even though he is clearly outraged at the police abuse, he gives fair consideration to everyone’s viewpoint, and the result is a superb book that illuminates computer security like few other books before. Strongly recommended. It is still, and will remain relevant. Parallels with current cases involving entertainment cartels versus internet startups (Napster, MP3.com, 2600.com…) under the guise of “piracy” when really it’s all about “consumer control” are chilling, to say the best. Except that this time, civil-rights groups aren’t facing an opponent bound by the constitution… and they can’t compete with their dollar-fuelled lobbyists.

    But don’t take my word for it; go check out the electronic version at http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/

  • Battlefield Earth (2000)

    Battlefield Earth (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2000) Everything you have heard about this film is true. It is one of the worst films ever. It is a massive monument to the bloated self-esteem of John Travolta. It is unimaginably stupid. It is one of the cheapest-looking big-budget film in recent memory. It is not worth your money. It is not bad enough to be good, but it is bad enough to be unpleasant. It is incompetently directed. It deserved to flop even more badly than it actually did. It is also, hopefully, a well-deserved slap in the face to the “memory” of one of the most gifted con artist of the twentieth century, L. Ron Hubbard. Stay away. Stay far, far away.

  • The Avengers (1998)

    The Avengers (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) Take your usual James Bond template. Insert surrealism. Mix Well. Insert more surrealism. Mix even harder. Never mind if crucial pieces fly outside the bowl as you stir. That’s The Avengers for you; a film that will drive you crazy if you’re not ready for its weirdness and still expect something coherent. Essential parts of the plot were cut in the editing room, leading to big Huh?s such as “how now, brown cow” and a choppy narrative. But amusing images pop up here and there -the teddy bear meeting!-, raising the overall level of the film to something akin to guilty enjoyment. It doesn’t help, after the oddball nature of the rest of the film, if the conclusion is completely ordinary in spy-adventure terms. Still, The Avengers is worth a look, if not a thought.

  • The Second Arrival aka Arrival II (1998)

    The Second Arrival aka Arrival II (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, May 2000) A cheap sequel of the original David Twohy film, minus everyone in the original film. (Special effects artists reportedly had to work from videotapes of the first film.) It looks cheap and feels even cheaper, explicitly taking place in Canada and featuring very few visual goodies. Despite all of the above, the film does an adequate job at preserving the themes of the first volume. Still, I would have rather see them resolve the issue here rather than letting the door open wide for further sequels.