Dreamsongs Volume 1 (2004) by George R. R. Martin:
This collection is generous and generously gifted with lengthy, illuminating essays by George R.R. Martin. Originally released in one volume in 2003, breaking it up into two volumes definitely helps with actually reading it without being crushed.
Volume 1 covers Martin's career from his days writing for the amateur press in the 1960's to the greatest days of his success as a writer of short stories and novellas in the mid-1980's. I think Martin was a better writer of predominantly science-fictional stories than he is a fantasy novelist, but your results may vary. In any event, this is a fine introduction to Martin's work for those who haven't read much beyond his A Song of Ice and Fire.
The stories:
"Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark (1967): Almost juvenilia. Superhero stuff for an amateur press.
"The Fortress" (1960s): A short story submitted as an essay in a history course. Interesting.
"And Death His Legacy" (1960s): Started life as the first in a projected series about a billionaire super-assassin before transforming into a cautionary tale about the limits of political violence.
"The Hero" (1971): Martin's first professional sale, a stinger about the future of warfare.
"The Exit to San Breta" (1972): Science fiction ghost story. Minor but enjoyable.
"The Second Kind of Loneliness" (1972): From Martin's short-lived "Star Ring" series, a meditation on isolation and madness.
"With Morning Comes Mistfall" (1973): An entry in Martin's loose-knit far-future history of humanity dubbed "A Thousand Worlds." Martin's first truly top-notch story.
"A Song for Lya" (1974): Martin's second top-notch sf story, also set in the Thousand Worlds universe, explores an alien religion and its strange attraction for some humans.
"This Tower of Ashes" (1976): More of a character piece set on yet another of the Thousand Worlds. Bad spiders!
"And Seven Times Never Kill Man" (1975): The title comes from Kipling; Martin's notes indicate that he parodies Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series in specific (and militaristic sf in general) here. Thousand Worlds.
"The Stone City" (1977): A more Lovecraftian or Clark Ashton Smith-style take on the Thousand Worlds. Really a subtle piece of cosmic, science-fictional horror.
"Bitterblooms" (1977): A more fabulistic piece set on one of the more isolated Thousand Worlds of humanity.
"The Way of Cross and Dragon" (1979): Excellent sf story exploring religion and its mutations in the far future of the Thousand Worlds.
"The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr" (1976): Universe-hopping fantasy story was meant to start a series. It didn't, though Martin would re-use elements in his 1990's pilot "Doorways" (see Dreamsongs Volume 2).
"The Ice Dragon" (1980): Martin is pretty sure he created the idea of a literal ice dragon here. Not part of the Game of Thrones universe, though there are some similarities.
"In the Lost Lands" (1982: Another first piece in a never-continued series, set in a world that combines traditional sword-and-sorcery elements with post-apocalyptic settings.
"Meathouse Man" (1976): The most mournful and disturbing of Martin's three 'Corpse-Handler' sf stories is sometimes viewed as a precursor to Splatterpunk.
"Remembering Melody" (1981): Precise 'traditional' horror story.
"Sandkings" (1979): My favourite of Martin's stories, a terrific novella of science-fictional horror that features a thoroughly rotten protagonist and a fascinating alien species, the eponymous Sandkings. Also meant to be part of a series!
"Nightflyers" (1976/1980): Fine science-fictional horror novella set in the far-future Thousand Worlds timeline was thoroughly misused in both a 1980's movie and the recent SyFy Channel series.
"The Monkey Treatment" (1983): Somewhat traditional 'Be careful what you wish for' horror.
"The Pear-Shaped Man" (1987): Nice horror piece does not go quite where the reader fears it will. It goes someplace way more disturbing!
Overall: Highly recommended.
Rashomon (1950): adapted from stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Toshiro Mifune (Tajomaru), Machiko Kyo (Masako Kanazawa), Masayuki Mori (Takehiro Kanazawa), Takashi Shimura (Woodcutter), Minoru Chiaki (Priest), and Kichijiro Ueda (Commoner):
The film that brought the attention of the world to writer-director Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (named for the city gate beneath which its frame story occurs) remains a terse gem, expansive in its vision of humanity's faults and strengths. The structure is maybe the least interesting thing about it, and the structure is brilliant -- the same rape-and-murder incident told in four wildly different ways by four different voices.
The incident takes place in the countryside of feudal Japan. The frame story, central to the full vision of Kurosawa's morality, takes place at a ruined temple where three travelers, including a Monk grown weary of humanity's moral failings, shelter from a torrential downpour.
Those four voices are that of the alleged rapist and murderer, the disgraced wife, the murdered husband (by way of a medium), and an eyewitness. I remember reading a review from the time in which the American reviewer tried to figure out which version was correct. That reviewer discarded the testimony of the husband because ghosts don't exist. This is what I call missing the point of a movie.
I can't think of anything bad to say about Rashomon. The performances are splendid, the shot composition deft and often haunting, and whatever the moral of the whole thing might be, it's far from simple. It's also Kurosawa's shortest great film, clocking in at about 90 minutes, less than half the length of Seven Samurai and more than an hour shorter than Kagemusha and Ran. So you've got time to watch it! Highly recommended.
Shazam! (2019): Shazam (aka Captain Marvel) created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck; written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke; directed by David F. Sandberg; starring Zachary Levi (Shazam), Mark Strong (Sivana), Asher Angel (Billy Batson), Jack Dylan Grazer (Freddy Freeman), and Djimon Honsou (Wizard):
Shockingly enjoyable movie about the original Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel (ie. THE Captain Marvel), moved to the present day and made somewhat goofier than the great 1940's version whose adventures were no worse than second-best in terms of superheroes in the 1940's (Jack Cole's Plastic Man was first; Will Eisner's Spirit didn't have super-powers).
Shazam is an acronym for Solomon (Wisdom), Hercules (Strength), Atlas (Stamina), Zeus (Power), Achilles (Invulnerability), and Mercury (Speed). Well, when it comes to Captain Marvel (now Shazam), anyway -- Mary Marvel and Black Adam, to name two, have the same acronym but different names from mythology.
The whole thing is a 'low-budget' by superhero standards ($90 million) movie aimed solidly at mid-teens. Billy Batson is invested by the wizard Shazam with the powers of, well, Shazam because DC gave up on using 'Captain Marvel' because they didn't trademark it back in the 1950's or 1960's. Shazam is now Earth's defense against magical menaces, sort of a jollier Dr. Strange.
Billy Batson, a sort-of orphan, has to learn to accept his supportive new foster family led by Freddy Freeman, once a disabled newsboy in the 1940's and now, not working, just as Billy no longer works as a radio host. Child labour laws, am I right, guys?
Zachary Levi is the result of Billy saying 'Shazam.' In the comics, he was generally written as a sort of adult version of Billy with super-powers -- they didn't share a consciousness. Taking a cue from Big, Shazam now possesses Billy's 13-year-old consciousness in a super-powered adult body. Hijinks ensue as Billy and Freddy test out the beer-buying powers of Shazam, among other things.
Much revisionism is heaped on the villain of this piece, Sivana, originally a diminutive mad scientist and now a large, imposing Mark Strong wielding magical powers derived from long-time Shazam foes The Seven Deadly Sins. And I don't mean the Traveling Wilburys song! But Strong always makes an, um, strong villain.
I'm not a huge fan of all the revisionism heaped on Captain Mar... er, Shazam... in the recent Shazam miniseries by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. And all of those revisions seem to get info-dumped into this movie, especially over the last 45 minutes. Oh, well. Things play a lot jollier here than in that miniseries, and Billy is much more likable.
The whole thing is nonetheless light and entertaining and often quite visually inventive. It's clearly marked throughout as part of the DC Movie Universe, and the end credits foreground this. Superman does cameo in the live-action stuff, but not Henry Cavill either because he refused or because DC is pivoting away from the dark days of David Goyer and Zack Snyder's DC movies to something more earnest and light.
Hopefully being freed of the demands of an origin story will allow a second Shazam movie to soar and not crash. There's also a brief (unnamed) reference to the 'first,' fallen Shazam champion, Egypt's Black Adam. Dwayne Johnson has been attached to a Black Adam movie for years; the box-office success of Shazam! seems to have jump-started that movie, or at least a Black Adam role in the next Shazam! film. Recommended.
Venom (2018): Venom created by David Michelinie and Todd MacFarlane; written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel; directed by Ruben Fleischer; starring Tom Hardy (Eddie Brock/Venom), Michelle Williams (Anne), and Riz Ahmed (Carlton Drake/Riot):
I guess it's good that the current superhero glut can result in even marginally offbeat projects based on Marvel and DC characters. Venom isn't a good movie, but it's intermittently fun, and the goopy creature effects are a far cry from most normal Marvel and DC movie fare.
In the comics, Venom was what happened when Spider-man's black-and-white alien symbiote costume he acquired in the Secret Wars event in the mid-1980's acquired a new host because it was driving Spidey crazy and he got rid of it. You may remember events like this from Spider-man 3. Yes, Venom has appeared in a movie before, its host Eddie Brock played then by Topher Grace.
Now Eddie Brock is a formerly heroic, now down-on-his-luck journalist in San Francisco who acquires the symbiote (or is acquired by the symbiote) while trying to resurrect his career by blowing the whistle on Riz Ahmed's mad billionaire scientist. Ahmed barely registers as an evil version of Elon Musk. Well, more evil. He torpedoed Brock's career because Brock discovered he was doing some crazy experiments on people who subsequently died.
The symbiote gives Eddie a wide, ill-defined range of superpowers along with a blobby covering that looks a lot like Spider-man because, well, Venom was a Spider-man suit in the comics. The suit likes eating human heads and Tater Tots. What larks, Pip!
Our lumpy, lumpen anti-hero eventually learns the value of human life and saves the world from some stuff. It seems like about 20 minutes of story has been cut that showed Venom's progress from head-eater to Earth-lover. Oh, well.
Tom Hardy is hilarious doing some insanely bad accent that's supposed to be... Brooklynese? I have no idea. Venom sounds like Tom Hardy doing a Keith David impersonation. Michelle Williams looks absolutely lost in a CGI-laden action movie. And Riz Ahmed, as noted, is barely there.
This is not a good movie, but it's oddly charming and enjoyable enough to waste time with. And as it's technically part of the Spider-verse Sony still has rights to despite their NuX2 Spider-man movies now being part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.... well, that astronaut is the son of J. Jonah Jameson, who in the comics became the werewolf Man-Wolf after visiting the Moon. I hope that happens in a subsequent Venom movie!!! Lightly recommended.
Avengers: Endgame (2019): written by everybody; directed by Anthony and Hoe Russo; starring everybody:
Basically the most expensive Season Finale in TV history, blown up by steroids, super-soldier serum, and Gamma Rays to the size of a Behemoth.
There's no point watching it unless you've seen (and enjoyed) at least 15 or 16 of the previous Marvel films. It pretty much sticks the landing without giving the audience much in the way of a sense of wonder or the Sublime. It's the $300 million blockbuster as basic comfort food, enjoyable and mostly bland. Recommended.
