WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 06/10/08

I was inspired to watch Dark City last night. When I was driving home I was listening to the Filmspotting podcast.One of the listeners responded to their top five list, box-office bombs that we liked, and said that they liked how Keifer Sutherland was doing his impersonation of Peter Lorey.

I thought that was a good description of his vocal patterns in that film, and it was fun seeing it again. I know some people didn’t like it, but I love the film noir theme and it’s a fun story. Sleep now!

Originally Written 06/06/08

I got together for dinner and a movie with my old co-worker Scott last night. He wanted to see Prince Caspian and I was up for seeing it again. We went to Chunky’s Cinema Pub, which is always a fun place, since you can get food right in the theater. It was good seeing the movie again. I still found that some of the parts of the story they embellished to make the movie more epic were a bit overdone.

The ending battle scene does go a bit long, and seems a little more supperfluous than the epic battle in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The last act is a little overburdened for me, but there’s still a lot to like about the film, especially the first two thirds of the movie. It’s definitely the lesser of the two films, but still enjoyable.

Scott liked it too, though he also commented on the battle’s embellishments. We also both chuckled over a couple of times when Prince Caspian was reminiscent of Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. I’d remembered a few lines that had reminded me of “you killed my father, prepare to die” when I’d first thought the film too.

Repicheep was wonderfully fun in this film; Eddie Izzard did a great job with him. Trufflehunter the badger was adorable as well. The characterization, visualization, voice-acting and writing for Aslan still makes me get a bit misty-eyed every time he’s on screen too.

Originally Written 05/12/08

The folks behind EscapePod and Pseudopod have finally opened their new fantasy-themed audio-fiction podcast, Podcastle. I’ve been listening to the first several episodes, and like their other podcasts, the stories and production values are both very good.

They started off with one of Peter S. Beagle’s (of “The Last Unicorn”) early works, Come Lady Death. Another story is a retelling of a classic Grimm’s fairytale, Goosegirl, which gets into the psychological schisms caused by a spell forcing a switched identities.

There were also two stories, back to back, which have heroines going up against social conventions and norms, Fear of Dragons and Run of the Fiery Horse. The stories get a little political, and the first one is a bit heavy handed, while the second is more balanced. Both of them had neat takes on Easter and Western tales of dragons (or serpents) and I loved the mythology of them, especially the Fiery Horse one.

Originally Written 05/02/08

I got together with Jen, Gan and Chris for a bad movie night last night. Gan’s brother had an old VHS tape of the 1992 movie Evil Toons, that had promise, but unfortunately it turned out to be like an R-rated version of Manos: the Hands of Fate. As I quipped, you’d think a bunch of slutty girls in a house with a lusty werewolf and David Carradine would be fun, but somehow they managed to prevent that.

Even bare breasts didn’t help the movie, well not much. And I don’t know how they blackmailed David Carradine to be in that turd; he didn’t even look like he was having fun slumming it. The best part of the movie was the necronomicon book they found, complete a talking face on the cover and with VCL art of lascivious demons and werewolves inside. One of them comes to life, and the animation was good. Unfortunately they blew their budget on that and could only afford about 40 seconds of it. Otherwise the film was painfully dull and plodding.

Afterwards we watched a  movie I’d rented which sounded interesting. Shinbone Alley had a neat early 70s animation style, which was reminiscent of School House rock segments in many places. I liked the slightly-gritty look of the backgrounds. It also got trippy and weird in a few segments. It’s a musical and based on a series of stories, so the plot is kind rambled, but it was interesting.

It started out kind of whimsical and fun but got more serious and darker as the movie went on. I kind of liked the movie, but it had some severe problems. In the end it was a drama about a dysfunctional friendship. It acknowledged that people rarely change and if you love/care for someone than you have to take them faults and all.

That’s all well and good, but the movie didn’t seem to know what its message really was. In the end it’s almost a celebration of this damaged character, without acknowledging how messed up she is. It was an interesting idea, but the story could’ve been a little tighter and the ending left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth.

Originally Written 04/24/08

I’ll admit it, I love a good zombie story. For one thing the themes of a small group of people fighting to survive the apocalypse make for some good drama and also can hold a mirror up to society. Plus, the walking dead make for some neat yarns. So I was happy to find Pseudopod had another zombie tale in a recent episode. The Sons of Carbon County is a historical-fiction period piece. It’s standard zombie fare, but well told and with some nice claustrophobic atmosphere, as well as a bit of political subtext. Good stuff.

Another recent story Heart Strung mixed a bit of visceral horror at the clever satire of the idea of literally wearing ones heart on your sleeve. It takes the absurd notion and works well giving way to mental horror, at the notion of losing emotions. The idea of the loss of childhood in a right of passage was interesting, but unfortunately the story got heavy-handed with its axe to grind about injustice towards women.

However, it was a good companion piece to an earlier piece of another barbaric coming-of-age ritual The Mill. That was more visceral, but managed to do it all without having to show or tell very much, and it was the suggestions which got me. It was also a compelling metaphor for cultural relativism, the perceived normality of something so wrong, and how society and family pressures can trap and bind people. It was very successful in psychological horror, which is another reason I like Pseudopod so much, it’s not just gross-out, there’s a lot of smart, well-written and thought-provoking work there.

And if horror isn’t your bag, check out EscapePod for a great mix of science fiction, and their newly-opened PodCastle for fantasy stories. Their feeds rock and I’ll continue to plug them.