Undead Son

I've been posting my illustrations for The Red Winter Queen here, and usually bitching about how this-and-such is not my favorite.  Well, this is my favorite.  I tried a bunch of stuff I wasn't sure would work, and it all came together.

Chapter seven of The Red Winter Queen is online now, and it features another illustration I'm really pleased with:

Chapter four of The Red Winter Queen is up here at Adventurotica, and this chapter features an illustration I am really, really happy with.

One week into the new serial over at Adventurotica and I've been hawking it all over the place because it is a work I'm really proud of.  Entirely written by and illustrated by me.  My own dark, dark retelling of Snow White.

Kathy's funeral was today, though it was a much less somber occasion than that word implies.  The last thing she would want would be a bunch of people blubbering and intoning solemnly.  So many people were there, some who I have not seen for many, many years.  Simon was there, and Warren - people whom I have not seen for a decade or more for various reasons, but who I still count as friends.  So many alumni of OSFW and Conestoga gathered to mark the passing of a person who was so important to us.

Because Kathy really was one of those people: a linchpin.  People gathered around her, drawn to her, wanting to be part of her circle.  She built communities almost by accident: young writers she mentored, older writers she befriended, fandom people she drew into her orbit.  She was a flame, and we were all moths around her.  I looked around at everyone gathered and I wondered if anything else could ever bring so many different people together again in one place.

Dana served as our minister, the Reverend Doctor Omed, even though several times he got so choked up he couldn't speak.  That happened to several people.  Simon got up and read a very well-done speech, then partway through he just stopped and I realized he was just barely holding it together.  Warren spoke, and Elspeth read messages sent by others who could not be here: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Bradley Denton, Esther, even Matt Reiten, who we all miss so much.  A representative came from the Writers of the Future contest, read several messages sent in by writers who had known Kathy, some only slightly, but who were deeply affected by her loss.  She said that literally thousands of messages had come in, and I found that profoundly moving.  I had expected maybe an email from Author Services, but for them to fly someone out here from LA - it was unexpected and classy.

A few others spoke, me included.  I wasn't even sure what I was going to say, and now I can't remember all of what I said.  It probably mumbled because it seemed improper to speak too loud, and I didn't want to cry up there because if I started I wasn't going to be able to stop.

Tonight there was a wake at Tulsa's only genuine English Pub, the White Lion.  There were drinks and food and a lot of laughter and memories.  Funeral gatherings are not for the dead, after all, they are for the living.  It's terrible that it took something like this to bring so many old friends out of the woodwork, but it was still good to see them.  The pain is still very hard and sharp.  It cuts.  But friendship dulls it, makes it an ache I can bear rather than a sting that I cannot.

Here's to you, Kathy.  You brought us all together one last time.

Just lost one of my oldest friends.  I hadn't seen her in a long time and I knew she wasn't well, but it happened so fast.  I want to do something but there is nothing to do.  I wish I could see her one more time.

Immortals is another Bronze Age cheese-fest in the vein of 300 or the (horrible) Clash of the Titans remake.  This one stars Henry Cavill as 'Theseus' and is directed by Tarsem Singh, who at least has some visual style and flair.  We watched it twice, once alone and once with friends.  Repeat viewings are not kind to it.  Yes, the visuals are colorful and the action is well-directed, but the script is a nonsensical mishmash with more holes than a movie really should be allowed to have.  The dialogue is stilted and uninteresting, and even the main characters are thinly drawn.  You get the feeling that the screenwriter had good ideas, but neither the wit nor space to pull them off.  Cavill spends a lot of time shirtless, which is good, and we get to see his costar Freida Pinto naked - which is very nice indeed.  The idea of casting young actors as the gods is an interesting one - implying they are eternally youthful and undying - but in practice it means they cast a bunch of sullen models as the Greek gods, and except for the awesome Luke Evans as Zeus, the rest of them are unconvincing and uninteresting.  A movie with intriguing ideas, but not enough intelligence to make them compelling.

The Darkest Hour this is a low-budget movie about a crew of tourists caught in Moscow when invisible aliens invade earth.  Despite the obvious low budget, this has some real flair.  The filmmakers get real mileage with the conceit that the unseen aliens light up electrical devices when they get near them, allowing for a lot of suspense as you watch the lights come on and go off as they move around.  It's a cheap trick, but one that works.  The cast is capable, if not spectacular, and the pacing is really good, keeping you interested and never dragging.  Tense and entertaining right up to the end.  Not a classic, but a worthwhile B-movie.

Colombiana got a critical 'meh' when it came out last year, and it didn't make any money, but I really enjoyed it.  The story of the little girl who escapes the death of her mobster parents and later becomes an assassin to avenge them is completely rote at this point, but then so are dozens of other action movie plots.  Zoe Saldana has a wonderful, liquid grace that makes her completely convincing during the well-executed stealth sequences.  The cinematography is stark and beautiful, and the editor knows how to use fast-cutting and smash-cuts to make an action sequence brutal while still making it clear what is happening, rather than turning it to mush.  You get some great supporting actors like Jordi Molla and Cliff Curtis to round out the cast, and Saldana really shows off her chops and proves she can carry a film by herself.

This is really a solid, riveting action movie, and the only reason I can think of that it limped by while similar but inferior films like Salt made major bucks is, sadly, racism all around.  Colombiana is almost startlingly nonwhite, with only a few major parts played by Caucasian actors.  The main character is Hispanic, all her friends and companions are Hispanic (except her clueless white boyfriend), the villains are Hispanic, and even the main FBI guy chasing her is black, relegating Micheal Vartan to his second.  White people ignored this movie because it has so few white people in it, black people ignored this movie because it was about Hispanics, and Hispanics ignored it because they apparently felt it was a slur on their culture.  All of them missed a killer action movie with some of the coolest infiltrate-and-assassinate sequences in modern cinema.  You should check it out.

This is the one that came out last year, directed by Paul WS Anderson (of the Resident Evil franchise) and the trailers made it look awesomely stupid, but like it had pretty much nothing to do with the actual Three Musketeers.  Turns out this is pretty much true.  Some elements are recognizable: the main characters, some motivations, some of the action, etc.  Otherwise it is a "loosley-based adaptation" as in a "down around the knees loose".

All this is completely forgivable, because it is a fucking nonstop hoot.  This is the kind of movie you cannot take your eyes off, because the minute you do, it does something else so WTF you will have to back up and watch it again.  Indiana Jones-style raid on Da Vinci's secret lair?  Check.  Slow-mo action shots of Milady backfliping pantsless through some kind of razor/laser/tripwire thing?  Check.  Multi-shot crossbows and a gatling cannon?  Check.  This movie isn't just a little ridiculous, it swims in it.

The casting is actually the best part, with Logan Lerman totally out of his depth here, but soldiering on under the worst wig you have ever seen.  The actual 3 musketeers are all various degrees of awesome, odds are you won't recognize them, but they are all cool.  (You'll know Ray Stevenson, and he's pretty much just playing the same part he played in Thor, but he one to watch is Matthew MacFayden as Athos, who is unrelentingly cool.)  Mila Jovovitch rocks the role of Milady DeWinter so hard it is nonstop fun whenever she is onscreen.  The dude playing the cardinal is no one you have ever heard of, but he has great energy.  Mads Mikkelsen as Rochefort looks awesome and is suitably menacing.  The costumes, I have to say, are fucking awesome, and everybody gets an assortment of collars, frills, capes, cloaks, and hats that will leave you speechless in a what-the-fuck-is-he-wearing kind of way.

The real gem here is Orlando Bloom (you heard me) as the villainous Duke of Buckingham, and he is having so much fun playing an oily, scheming bad guy that it sometimes seems like he has some kind of disorder he is mincing and prowling and moustache-twirling so hard.  He is a nonstop laugh riot.

And that's what I did not expect - that this movie would be so laugh-out-loud ridiculawesome.  By the time they get to the airships you are so tenderized you just kind of go with it.  The whole thing is silly and eaten through with anachronisms and a slurry of half-assed accents, it bears almost no resemblance to the source material and makes hash out of history with complete abandon, and I had a total blast watching it and want to own it, like, now.

We are going to have to do this one for movie night before I send it back.  This movie cries out for booze, plus I have to see it again so I can be sure I actually saw some of that shamelessly ludicrous bullshit.