Why I like Ed Wood

Why I like Ed Wood

1) It's real easy to tease Tim Burton these days. His reliance on specific cinematic signatures have been the subject of parody by funnier people than I. His work feels like one of the bands I've listened to thousands of times during my adolescence, where it's lost the sparkle after all those repeat viewings. Taking all those old movies for granted dismisses the fact that Tim Burton's best work is fucking awesome!

2) Out of all his work, I come back to Ed Wood most of all. As much as I love Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, they seem more like stylistic exercises and fairy tales. They establish his style. Ed Wood is a more adult story. 

3) I like Johnny Depp's portrayal of the character. Ed Wood reminds me of every good natured 1950s gee-whiz sitcom child. He doesn't get down or discouraged about his dreams. Every problem has a solution, every calamity can be worked around. His singleminded go-get'um attitude occasionally veers toward the selfish, and Martin Landau's Bela Lugosi is possibly worse off for having met him, but he's the kind of guy who gets things done. 

4) Sometimes enthusiasm makes up for a lack of talent. In the scenes where Ed Wood is actually filming, we quickly realize he has no idea what the fuck he is doing. He shoots in one-takes, he hires people with no real grasp of English, and he truly believes he can fool people into believing that a dentist with a cape over his mouth could pass for Bela Lugosi. The amateurishness would be contemptible, but it's paired with a genuine love of the medium. Ed Wood loves movies. He's the most enthusiastic amateur out there, and his rollicking seat-of-your-pants style makes his story compelling. Bad movies these days often fail due to a lack of inspiration. They feel made by committee, they play it safe, and they market-test all the flavor out of their stories. I have a copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space and I can't really bring myself to watch it again. But it's unique, goddamnit. 

5) One of the most admirable things about Ed Wood's personality is how accepting he is. He takes misfits under his wing, he works with religious fundamentalists for funding, he buddies up to a hammy old actor, and he manages to get them all to share his vision. Even better, he accepts himself. The man has an interest in gender-nonconforming behavior, which he reveals with very little shame. That leads to one painful rejection, but he eventually finds the right girl to share his life with. I like movies about people with winning personalities. They create the most interesting social networks. 

Conclusion: It's tough doing anything creative. You have to press back against tidal waves of inertia and apathy. There are a zillion stories of tormented creative types, but there are very few that capture the sheer iconoclastic joy of being a weirdo, celebrating your weirdness, and making something memorable with your friends. Ed Wood is one of my go-to feel good movies.        

Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

You ever met a person on a date and there was nothing really wrong with them but the conversation never really sparked? Like, the conversation was pleasant and they were attractive and they laughed at your jokes, but a day or so later you look at your cell phone, consider texting them, and go "meh"?

That was my relationship with Relic.



I don't get along well with science.

I really wish I did. I champion reason and logic over superstition and servitude, I love when Neil deGrasse Tyson shows up on The Daily Show, and I have worked in the tech industry for years. You'd think I'd be better at this stuff but when anyone tries to explain anything math or science-y my brain takes a little ADHD journey to the magical land of unicorns and rainbows, where my poet's soul traipses through fields of gilly flowers and there are no scaaaaaary numbers.

Oh hell, I might as well post the whole damned Patton Oswalt bit.



So I wasn't really ready for the whole techno-thriller explosion of the 90s. I did read and love Jurassic Park but that novel had dinosaurs. DINOSAURS! Otherwise, all the books pretty much read the same. There are pages and pages of some expert explaining shit to me, a bunch of non-characters reinforcing whatever the expert explained, some one-off chapters of a dumb ass security guard getting slaughtered, and a bunch of interesting but over-explained action scenes at the end of the novel.

People I know who love science stuff love this book. One of them recommended it to me when we were teenagers (hi, Erica) and I really liked it then, but I couldn't quite seem to get back into it. If it's the sort of book that's right for you, have at it. It's not really my scene.

I did like the bit in the Amazon with all the adventure-scientist cliches. And I loved how ridiculous Agent Pendergast was. He's goddamned clown shoes. I kept forgetting that he was from the Deep South and probably talks like Andy Bernard doing a Southern Accent, because with his highly mannered turn of phrase and unflappability it read like he was one of those stick-in-the-butt British detectives. "I daresay, a lizardman is eating my brain! What a sticky wicket!" Also, he's a goddamned ex-Green Beret! EVERY HERO IN BOOKS IS GODDAMNED SPECIAL FORCES! Is the only career options for former special forces soldiers to star in trashy novels? Romance novels get Navy SEALS and thrillers get Rambo. What ever happened to the poor, unloved infantry? Don't they get cool stories? Or in the wonderful world of fiction everyone who joins the military become forced to take a turn sniping Somali pirates from the back of a Navy ship?

I say this with love. Pendergast and his sidekick D'Agosta were the best parts of the book. They defied authority, strove to protect people, and were fun to watch bumble around failing to find anything.



For all the science in the book, the logic ultimately falls short.

There's a killer in your museum and you continue with the opening? No.

You hire a guy to write a book and you get anal about the very, very minor indiscretions he finds? No.

I'm getting better at spotting the mechanics behind constructing a story and I know when roadblocks are artificially laid down to add conflict to the story. The amount of hostility that the characters encountered from their superiors seemed inflated and artificial. I get that careers are in jeopardy, but there's something in the museum eating people's brains. Come on!



Good story, not my thing.

Also, kothoga is a better name for the monster and Mbwun is a better name for the tribe.

Super 8

I wasn't all that excited about Super 8.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Spielberg softie as much as the next guy. And I do like a heartfelt tale of scrappy kids and monsters. But I'm not a big J.J. Abrams fan and the ad campaign seemed like it was trying to recapture the mojo from Cloverfield. We know there's something terrible in the train, we know there are going to be a bunch of jump scares, but we're left in the dark beyond that. The marketing campaign worked for Cloverfield because it was new and novel and we knew it was a creature feature, but the same tricks didn't work for Super 8. Watching the trailer was more annoying than enticing.

I've seen Super 8 a couple of times now and it's pretty much what you'd expect it to be. There are some kids and a monster and it's trying real hard to be Spielberg. It's perfectly engaging and interesting and charming and all, but...I dunno. I simply don't care any more beyond that. The kid's tragedy was suitably tragic, the weird kids looked and acted perfectly weird, and the monster was monstrous. Don't get me wrong, the movie gets the job done and I didn't leave feeling ripped off. I left without feeling anything. It's weird to bitch about a movie that hits all the right notes, but I just didn't quite emotionally connect to it.

Star Wars: Death Troopers

Well, they finally did it. They've been slapping zombies into everything and it was only a matter of time before they finally made a Star Wars Zombie novel.



I've been grousing for months about the complete saturation of zombies in pop culture. While I like the stuff I watch/read and can take the work on their own merits, when I take a step back and look at the zombie landscape, it's hard not to feel a little overrun. I've discussed before at length the basic appeal of zombies but as time goes on I'm starting to see this over reliance on the living dead as a quick way to generate drama. It's fundamentally interesting to watch characters under siege, but they better be interesting because most zombie stories follow the same basic structure: we run to sanctuary and sometimes we die. This one sticks to form, but it does a pretty good job of it.

The story follows the unfortunate crew of the Imperial Penal Starship Purge as they're forced to dock with an abandoned Star Destroyer after their engines go off-line. The salvage operation quickly turns deadly when they realize the Star Destroyer was conducting sinister biological experiments and they're not alone.



I tend to be leery of franchise books, occasionally to my detriment, but this one was actually pretty good. Author Joe Schreiber knows how to build suspense and atmosphere. We don't actually see the first zombie attacks until after the hundredth page, by which point we're immersed in the vicious culture of the Purge and the creeping tension of those endless dark Star Destroyer corridors. I liked the haunting image of the droids continuing their pre-programmed routines in the bowels of the dead ship.

I also dug the fact that the zombies weren't simply mindless Romero knock-offs. There's something sentient in their behavior and the individual zombies seem more like molecules of the same horrible mass-organism. The creature's method of infection is much more imaginatively vile. The method the ship's hapless doctor uses to cure one of the infected patients was visceral and extremely nasty.

The one complaint I had with the book was the fact that a couple of major characters from the movies take a fairly major role in the book. I have read a few other books set in the Star Wars universe and they tend to run roughshod over my beloved character's lives. Schreiber treats the characters with a lot more respect, but their appearance really didn't add anything to the story beyond an almost Pavlovian dread at what could happen to them. Plus, y'know, if I escaped a Star Destroyer full of zombies, it would probably come up in casual conversation.



Beyond this minor, and admittedly completely geeky complaint, I had a lot of fun with Death Troopers. It's a creepy and surprisingly effective horror novel, and it's a good solid popcorn novel even without the Star Wars tie-in. If you like it, Schreiber wrote the incredibly atmospheric Eat the Dark, which was one of the best horror novels I read last year. Also, apparently, there's a Star Wars Galaxies tie-in.

Dead Space

I had a lot of fun playing Dead Space.

The horror genre works well in video games. You stop being a passive observer. Suddenly you're in the bad place, running low on health, with something terrible chasing you. Dead Space is like that. Only this time the bad place is a space ship. And you've got a chainsaw.

So it's not particularly subtle. American games rely on the illusion of competence, so you're not going to be some frightened little girl with a camera, like in the Fatal Frame series. No, you're gonna be some heavily armed tank, wading through the darkness with a selection of high-tech power tools at your side.



The game's combat-heavy emphasis is on "strategic dismemberment." As an engineer responding to a distress call from the mining ship USG Ishimura, you pick up quite an array of nasty power tools. You're gonna need 'em, too. The Necromorphs, horribly insectile distortions of human remains, can't be killed by the traditional FPS shots to the chest. No, you gotta blast their limbs off or they're gonna keep coming after you, screeching and spitting all the while.

Beyond that, you get to do fun futuristic engineering puzzles. There are several environments in the game that are zero gravity and a few breathtaking sequences out in space. Your power suit comes equipped with a stasis projector and a kinetic lift, allowing you to slow down and manipulate objects. I had a lot of fun messing around with the monsters and the environment. I'd like to sound cool and jump on the "the puzzles were too easy" bandwagon, but I appreciated that it didn't take a trip to the strategy guide to figure anything out.

Simply put, the game is fun to play. A really good story will sometimes carry me across the chasm of mediocre gameplay, but if I can interface with the game smoothly, if I can be sucked into the world, the game is a winner. Dead Space was really smooth. I didn't feel like I was getting dicked around by bad controls, I didn't feel like dangerous threats were being obscured by bad camera angles, and I had a lot of fun exploring the depths of the Ishimura.



As to the stuff I didn't like, your fellow crew mates, Token Gruff Black NCO and Token Crabby Scientist with the Big Rack, are genuinely unpleasant people. When they aren't shrilly arguing with each other, they're barking orders at you. There's not much going on with the game's story beyond "go there, repair this." About 90% of the game's levels start with a radio call from TCSwtBR telling you that something needs to be fixed, but you need to jump through a couple more hoops to do it. After awhile, you want your character to grab the mic and scream "Hey, why don't you come down and do some of these stupid fetch quests yourself!" Needless to say, one of them winds up betraying you.

The whole Unitology thing is kinda goofy. Sure, you get big creepy rooms where ritual suicides have taken place, but the whole thing kinda smacks of obvious allusions to Scientology. If it were actually bringing issues of faith and blind allegiance into question that would have been interesting, but it's just used as a window dressing for the game, something to supply whispered chants and spooky runes in the dark hallways of the Ishimura.

Dead Space also relies almost exclusively on my least favorite scare tactic: the soundtrack-spike jump scare. The survival horror games I grew up with relied on a certain enforced vulnerability. You were afraid because you weren't much of a match against the monsters you faced so your best bet was to hide from the small stuff, figure out the puzzles, and take down the big stuff quickly before it drained your painfully limited medical supplies. Dead Space is all about combat and dismemberment, which isn't exactly fertile ground for tension to grow. Instead, you get a bunch of screeching Necromorphs jumping at you from ceilings and air vents. It's not particularly subtle but it works well enough, and the sound design for the creatures are genuinely creepy. Also, for all my griping about cheap jump scares, the game's final cut scene ends with one of the scariest jump scenes I've encountered in awhile.

Finally, the "twist ending" didn't make a lot of sense. Spoiler city here, but if the hive mind is trying to manipulate you into returning the marker, why is it sending all its creatures out to kill you? Is the Marker a seperate, sentient entity, unattached to the hive mind? Is the hive mind easily confused and cranky? Walk me through this, please?

Don't take the negatives too seriously. I am a hater, after all. In the end, Dead Space was pretty darn cool. It plays like the video game equivalent of House on Haunted Hill: completely obvious and lunatic and a whole lot of popcorn-chompin' fun.



For those of you video game devotees, I was going to write a long essay on the decline of the survival horror genre, but someone else already beat me to it. They did it better, too. Check out Leigh Alexander's incredible kotaku article here.

Alien Trespass

Before I get started, I gotta say that I'm never going to another free screening in San Francisco. I get that this isn't exactly a big movie, but please don't give away free ticket passes at the local homeless shelter. Dudes were bringing in their bindles to the theater and I had the dubious pleasure of smelling a lot of pee and horrible body odor throughout the movie.

Anyway.



My first reaction after the lights went up was "How the hell am I gonna write about this." I like fifties stuff, I have a soft spot for retro kitsch, and I absolutely want more of these kinds of movies to be produced. It's probably why I'm so excited about Monsters Vs. Aliens. However, this movie is trying too hard to be a cult classic. As my faithful co-watcher hater#1 pointed out, you can't set out to make a cult movie. It has to be an organic process of something quirky finding a loyal audience. You try to make something deliberately quirky and it becomes self-aware and awkward.



Having said that, I really dug the relationships between the alien Marshall and the bored waitress with the big dreams. Eric McCormack did a heckuva job in his dual role as the doctor and the alien who inhabits his body and I liked his weird way of looking out at the world. Jenni Baird worked as the small town dreamer stuck in a dead end life. She brought the fifties nostalgia element without being corny, and when the chips were down she brought moxie to her salt-armed alien fighter. If the movie paid more attention to this type of character development and less time being deliberately hokey I think I would have enjoyed the movie more.



So, yeah, go see it. It's cute. It deserves a pat on the head. Points also go out to Robert Patrick, who plays a really sleazy, really fun crumb bum, and to the girl who played the biggest killjoy girlfriend I've ever seen in a movie. "No, I don't wanna make out. No, I don't wanna go up the big scary hill. No, I don't wanna have a soda. No, I don't wanna see a monster movie." Boo on her, yay on the actress.

Side note: I get that this movie is in a very small town and all, but everything I know from my fifties era rumble movies tells me that no greaser would ever hang out with a preppy. It's like Tom and Jerry buddying around, solving mysteries. It ain't gonna happen.

Event Horizon

Comfort food.

Event Horizon doesn't do anything particularly original. The story is an almost textbook haunted-ship yarn, the narrow ship interiors look like some Swedish metalhead set designer reinterpreted Alien, and the images of hellish torment have a strong Clive Barker tone. There's even a big blood flood like The Shining.

It's also kinda dopey. Characters defy common sense outer space search and rescue rules against touching mysterious floating black puddles of goo and chasing after family members they left back on earth. The special effects come from the early days of CGI and they don't hold up well. It commits the cardinal sin of horror cinema: it relies heavily on the amplified volume jump shock.

It also lacks a central protagonist. The movie starts by following Sam Neill's histrionic scientist-on-the-edge, but he quickly falls under the sway of the haunted ship. The focus then switches to Lawrence Fishburne's captain-on-the-edge, who has remained aloof most of the movie and only gets our sympathy after he reveals the Tormenting Incident From His Past.

Despite all this, I still had a lot of fun watching it.

The whole thing is vaguely Lovecraftian. The unfortunate crew of the Event Horizon aren't simply murdered by whatever they encounter during their FTL jump. They go insane, joyfully, maniacally insane. Reality warps around our poor survivors as the ship draws them deeper into its horrible web. We get the sense that the Event Horizon is just the tip of the much grander, much more terrible reality hidden beneath. I like stories that utilize cosmic horror on that scale, and I think sci-fi/horror stories cover that subject well. Most aren't as ambitious as Event Horizon and even when it falls short it should be praised for trying to do something cool.

I also liked the cast. They tend to fall into the classic gruff character types you find in blue collar sci-fi, but they're well acted and appealing, even if the psychological hooks the ship uses against them are completely unsubtle.

It's kind of like a collage of better movies. Still, its worth checking out every few years.