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News Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person Presents a Rather Different Kind of Teen Angst

If being a teenager sucks, being a vampire teen sucks worse

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Published on March 28, 2024

Sara Montpetit in Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Once upon a time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angelus the vampire was cursed with a soul. As a result, he ate more than a few rats, as he could no longer bear to kill humans. Most vampires don't seem to have any such qualms—but Sasha, the young vamp at the center of Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person, is an odd one. She doesn't want to kill anybody. But a girl's gotta eat.

Ariane Louis-Seize directs what looks like an odd couple vampire tragic rom-com ... maybe? Here's the synopsis:

Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she’s too sensitive to kill! When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha’s life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s last wishes before day breaks.

Her parents! Cut off her blood supply! These are some truly terrible vamparents.

Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person is written by Christine Doyon and director Louis-Seize; it stars Sara Montpetit as Sasha and Félix-Antoine Bénard as Paul. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Marya E. Gates said the film is, "What We Do In The Shadows for people who grew up loving the soft goth girl vibes of Emily The Strange and Lydia Deetz."

I'm sold. The film is still making the festival rounds and doesn't yet have a U.S. release date—but we will be keeping an eye out for that announcement! [end-mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rclsb3y0guc
News Rebecca Yarros

Rebecca Yarros’ Third Empyrean Novel Has a Title and Release Date

The dragons return in 2025

By

Published on March 28, 2024

The wait isn't over—not quite yet. But the many, many fans of Rebecca Yarros’ bestselling, beloved-by-TikTok Empyrean series can at least mark their calendars (or get their preorders on), because the third book in the series now has a title and a release date. Onyx Storm will be in readers' hands on January 21, 2025.

Yarros made the announcement in a video aired on Good Morning America, in which she said that while she can't tell fans much about the book yet, "There will be politics, new adventures, old enemies and of course, dragons."

The hugely popular series began last year with Fourth Wing, which follows the story of Violet Sorrengail as her life takes an unexpected path to the Basgiath War College, where she has to survive vicious competition—and romantic entanglements. Iron Flame came out only months later and immediately joined Fourth Wing on bestseller lists. The series is expected to ultimately include five volumes. Yarros is also returning to her romance (as opposed to romantasy)-novel roots; it was announced in the fall that she's writing two romance novels for Amazon's Montlake imprint.

Fourth Wing was picked up for series adaptation by Amazon MGM Studios last year; Yarros is an executive producer on the adaptation, which doesn't yet have a showrunner or cast. [end-mark]

Alan Ritchson, who you might have seen in the Prime Video series Reacher (pictured above) and who is co-starring with Henry Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, has signed up for undergoing more elaborate fight scenes on the big screen.

According to Deadline, the actor will star in the upcoming action sci-fi film, War Machine. The title suggests what kind of movie this might be, and the logline—the only other piece of information we have about the plot—supports this conclusion.

Here’s the logline, complete with its grammatical snafus: “In the final 24 Hours of the world’s toughest selection process, a team of Army Rangers encounter a threat beyond their imagination.”

This is a sci-fi movie, so I bet a dollar that this “threat beyond their imagination” is aliens and/or a rogue Artificial Intelligence bent on killing us all. Ritchson is undoubtedly one of those Army Rangers who encounters something beyond the scope of his comprehension and, most likely, does everything he can to murder it first. This is all speculation, of course. Time will tell if I'm right.

War Machine comes to us from Patrick Hughes, the director behind The Hitman’s Bodyguard, a 2017 action comedy film starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson where Reynold’s character, a disgraced CIA operative, has to protect Jackson’s character, a hitman about to testify in a trial, from other hitmen trying to kill him. That film earned a 44% Rotten Tomatoes score and Hughes’ 2021 sequel, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, chalked up a 26% critics rating, though the audience scored it better at 79%.

The comedic slant to these films makes me curious whether War Machine will also take that approach. I’m more interested in it if it does, as that tone would be more intriguing and less well-trodden than a grim tale about how some incomprehensible threat is set to destroy us all.

Hughes along with James Beaufort wrote the script for War Machine. The movie is produced by Lionsgate and will make its way to Netflix at some point in the future. [end-mark]

News Among Us

Among Us Cast Now Includes Alums from Legion, Yellowjackets, and Orange Is the New Black

Honestly, cast Dan Stevens in anything, we're down

By

Published on March 27, 2024

Dan Stevens in Legion sporting a mustache

The adaptation of the mobile game Among Us has added some additional voices to its roster. We found out earlier this month that Elijah Wood, Randall Park, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Ashley Johnson were voicing various guys on a starship where a shapeshifting alien has taken root. And today, we’ve got three more names to add to the list playing characters identified by a color of the rainbow who may or may not be an evil alien in disguise.

According to Deadline, Dan Stevens, Liv Hewson, and Kimiko Glenn are lending their voices to the animated production. Stevens’ previous credits are varied, and include the lead in FX’s Legion (pictured above), starring as a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing dude in Godzilla x Kong, and taking over the voice of Korvo on Solar Opposites. Hewson broke out in Yellowjackets, where they play the teenaged version of Van, and Glenn starred on Orange is the New Black as Brook Soso.

The goal of the Among Us game (and presumably, the show), is to uncover who on the spaceship has been replaced/taken over by a nefarious alien who, à la Mystique from the X-Men comics, can shift to look like whomever they want.

Here are the descriptions of each of the newly cast characters, per Deadline:

Stevens will voice ‘Blue’ — Doctor
Knowledgeable, charming, so hot
Task: physical and emotional care
Fun Fact: also has a doctorate in poetry

Hewson will voice ‘Black’ — Geologist
Stoic, coarse, rock-like
Task: supervising the ore shipments
Fun Fact: prefers rocks to people

Glenn will voice ‘Cyan’ – Gemologist
Healing through crystals
Task: supervising the vibes
Fun Fact: the vibes are bad

I’m into it! The show comes from Owen Dennis and is in production under CBS Studios’ Eye Animation Productions. No news yet on what streamer, however, the series will eventually end up. [end-mark]

Book Recommendations Mark as Read

On Letting Go of the Idea of “Keeping Up”

“So, what have you read lately?” It sounds like an innocent question, but it came with a pile of expectations.

By

Published on March 28, 2024

Photo by Jean Vella [via Unsplash]

Photograph of a bookshelf, looking up at an angle. A ladder leans against the shelf.

Photo by Jean Vella [via Unsplash]

The first time I felt the tiniest spark of competition where books and reading are concerned, I was probably eight years old, thrilled to bits by a librarian’s instruction to put a gold star inside a construction paper folder—one for every fairy tale I read. There were at least two long rows of stars by the time I was done. I was only competing with myself: I wanted as many stars as I could possibly get, and given my love for fairy tales, this wasn’t particularly difficult.

But lately—and by lately I mean the last decade, give or take a few years—I’ve noticed a different sense of competition about reading. And competition isn’t even exactly the right word; it’s not like people are jumping online to yell about being first to finish the next Brandon Sanderson tome. (If they are, don’t tell me.) But there’s no word that means exactly what I see and feel. It’s a combination of obligation, social performance, genuine curiosity, love of books, and a desire to be involved, plus a dollop of early-adopterism and cheerleading. 

All of these things are good, in balance. But they’re also easy to knock out of balance, shifting the vibe of talking about books online from “this thing I want to do” to “this thing we wind up feeling like we have to keep up with.”

Reading itself should be productive, in the sense that it produces ideas and feelings and thoughts and empathy and a lot of other things, too, across the whole range of human experience. The kind of productivity I mean is the quantifying kind, the kind that wants to get to a certain number of books read, or tick all the bingo boxes, or simply read more books than someone else did. Sometimes it arises in the form of a complaint: “Ugh, I’m so behind on my Goodreads challenge.”

For one thing, this is just a branded way of saying “I’m not reading as much lately as I’d like to be.” This is Goodreads inserting itself into your reading life and reshaping the way you talk about books. But it’s also more than that. It’s turning reading into a task, a tickybox, a number of pages or books. It’s setting a productivity framework around something that doesn’t need it. Yes, you set your own goals, but even if you’re entirely self-directed and pay no attention to the norms or the huge numbers of books other people read, some of us aren’t quite so independent. Those numbers influence people. They make reading very fast, tearing through book after book, seem like the norm. 

If you read slowly, that’s okay. If you read very few books, that’s okay too. The secret truth is that there is absolutely no reason to care how many books you read in a year, unless you like stats and numbers and tracking things and in that case, might I suggest a spreadsheet and doing your own tracking, far from the Goodreads crowd.

About a decade ago, I had only just discovered that a person could stumble into rooms where people hung out, discussing books. They were also discussing authors and gossip and how bad the box wine was and how long the subway ride home would be, but they were there because of books, because these rooms were bookstores during author events. I had moved back to New York, which had a lot more bookish events than the college town where I’d been living. I got myself a bookstore job and became part of the book ecosystem, delighting in access to galleys and trying to find just the right book for customers.

It was a world I had not expected to find myself in, and I loved it. I loved the conversations and the enthusiasm and the lit gossip and the people, and I loved feeling like part of it. But there was a weird side to it, sometimes. There could be a sense of just having to hold opinions about certain books or authors, or having to have already read new books. And then the weirdest thing happened: I found myself in a situation where I simply did not want to talk about books. At all. 

This was an extremely strange experience, anathema to everything I’d ever felt where books were concerned. But in the basement of a bookstore, a friend’s friend asked, an intense gleam in their eye, “So, Molly, what have you read lately?”

It sounds like an innocent question, but it came with a pile of expectations. This person kept up with everything. This person wanted to know what they could tick off the list with me. Had I read Big Book X? Had I gotten my hands on an advance copy of Massive Novel Y? Did I have opinions about the books a person in my job “ought” to have opinions on?

I did not, and what’s more, in that moment, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to talk about what I’d been reading in the way this person wanted me to respond. I suddenly wanted to hold my cards, and my books, extremely close to the chest. Reading felt gamified, like a thing where you went down a list of titles and got points for which ones you’d read. This was no longer gold stars inside a folder. This was something else entirely.

This vibe has crept into so much online book discourse. People stress about not having time to read—a fair complaint, but one that has a different tone when the subtext (or text!) is “I’m getting behind.” Behind on what, and to whom? Who is served by all this stress, by reading challenges and goals and lists and shelfies and book hauls? What is it for? What are we getting out of it? What difference does it make if you read a book that came out last week or one that came out last century?

If these things bring you joy, by all means: continue. If you just don’t even notice them: Bless you, I envy that ease! But if, like me, you find both that you can’t ignore the social-media side of reading and find it sometimes overwhelming, and depressing, and makes you feel like there’s a right and a wrong way to read a book, please: Give yourself space. Step away from the internet. Ignore the websites that want you to rate and review art like it’s a toothbrush or a new pair of sneakers. Don’t even keep a list of books read, if you don’t want to. What we get from reading is not quantifiable, not a statistic to earn or an item to collect. It’s an experience, a process, an education, a gift. You will get something out of it whether you read 10 books a year or 100. And no one has to know, either way.[end-mark]

Lambda Literary has announced the finalists for the 2024 Lambda Literary Awards—also known as the Lammys—which recognize work published in 2023. The Lammys celebrate queer writing in 26 categories and seven special prizes, which include two new prizes in editorial excellence and critical arts writing.

Here are the finalists in the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category:

  • Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood (Solaris)
  • I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by M. Crane (Catapult)
  • The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter (Saga Press)

Delightfully, Tuck Woodstock and Niko Stratis's 2 Trans 2 Furious: An Extremely Serious Journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies is a finalist in the LGBTQ+ Anthology category, along with Fairy Tale Review: The Rainbow Issue. You can see the full list of finalists in every category here.

As a press release notes, "The announcement of these 130 finalists marks the beginning of a season of uplifting and spotlighting these authors and their work throughout the awards season, with interviews, events, and other special opportunities to get to know the finalists and their vital stories." That season concludes with a celebration to announce the winners on June 11th at Sony Hall in New York City. [end-mark]

Column Close Reads

The Artistic Bravery of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin

What are things we don’t want to look at, but should?

By

Published on March 28, 2024

Scarlett Johansson as an alien in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin

Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, we take a trip to a rocky beach to talk about a haunting scene from Jonathan Glazer's film adaptation of Under the Skin.


I’m not a brave person, but I am trying to get better at being brave on the page. What are things I don’t want to look at, but should? How can I get at truth in my fiction? How can I write criticism that people find useful?

When I was trying to think of artistic bravery, my mind washed up on the shores of Jonathan Glazer. Specifically, what I think of as “the beach scene” in Under the Skin.

Under the Skin is the rare example of me liking a movie better than the book—mostly because I think the movie is its own entity. The book (by Michel Faber) is quite good, a dark sociological look at humans and the environment (it actually reminds me, weirdly, of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow) that spends most of its time in the mind of an alien hunting human prey.

But Glazer’s adaptation of the book is a miracle. The way he takes the book’s themes and runs into a direction that uses the strengths of film, color design, sound design, showing us a story rather than telling us a damn thing. When I watched it I felt like I was seeing something new.

And the beach scene to me is the best example of what it does well.

The scene opens with something innocuous, even nice. A dog is swimming in an inlet off Scottish coast. The unnamed alien, whom we’ve already seen prey on several men, watches a man swim a little further down the beach. In a cut back to the other end of the beach, we see a woman standing right at the shore, waving to a man and a baby, her back to the dog. Then the camera’s back with the alien, hanging a few feet behind her as the swimming man comes in and walks up the shore.

Scarlett Johansson's alien observes a swimming man in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin
Image: StudioCanal/A24

She begins what we know is her usual routine: asking him questions that will, potentially, get him to explain something to her—the aliens have figured out that it’s an easy way to get a man to open up—interspersed with questions that seem innocent and pleasant but are actually her way of learning if anyone will miss him if he disappears. He’s wary, but does tell her he’s travelling, alone, from the Czech Republic. As she’s about to press further, he looks past the alien and abruptly sprints off down the beach. The alien looks after him, her face reverting to the blankness she holds when she isn’t flirting for work.

The woman we saw before is swimming out past the breakers to save the dog, who’s been caught in a tide. She’s fully clothed, even leaving her heavy jacket on. The man (presumably her partner) leaves the baby to chase after her, and the Czech man dives in after both of them. The camera stays at its remove. We watch the dog go under, then the woman, as the man desperately takes on wave after wave. The Czech man gets to him after he goes under once and hauls him back to shore, but he’s no sooner let go than the man plunges in again. He goes under as the Czech man sprawls on the beach, too exhausted even to crawl out of reach of the waves.

The couple’s child sits alone on the rocks and screams.

The alien walks down the beach, inexorable. She lets waves break over her legs and boots and shows no sign of cold. She stands over the Czech man. Then she sorts through the stones for a moment until she finds one that fits easily in her fist, and bashes the Czech man in the back of his skull. Just once, just enough to knock him out. She drags him back toward her waiting van.

Scarlett Johansson's alien drags a victim down a rocky beach, past a crying baby, in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin
Image: StudioCanal/A24

She never looks at the baby.

Just this could have been enough. Instead Glazer shows us the alien driving the man back to her house, the man still slumped over and unconscious in the passenger seat. He shows us the silent man, who appears to be the alien’s handler also in human disguise, back at the beach in the dark, gathering up the Czech man’s belongings so as to leave no trace of him. Again, this could have been enough. Instead, the camera follows the man down the beach as he retrieves the Czech’s towel.

The baby is still there. Still screaming. The man takes no notice of it and leaves the way he came. But the camera doesn’t follow him, instead it gives us one of the only closeups of the sequence, sitting squat in front of the baby, watching it sob, try to stand, fall back down. The camera is impassive. We know that no one knows it’s here. No one will hear it over the waves.

A few scenes later, we watch the alien as she hears a different child crying, in a car next to hers in traffic. In another scene, later still, she listens to a news bulletin that says the man’s body has been found on the shore, but that his wife and their child are still missing.

Did someone else take the child? Was it taken by the sea when the tide came further in? Is it still crawling down the beach alone? We don’t know. We never know.

Why did this come to me when I was rifling through moments of artistic bravery like stones on a beach? In some ways it’s the best moment in a very good movie, but it’s also doing something I hate. I hate child endangerment in fiction, and I hate animal deaths. They’re both cheap plays for emotion, easy screws to turn if you want your reader or audience to feel something.

So why does this work so well?

Part of it’s the camera placement. The camera neutrally records everything from a slight distance. It’s not a totally zoomed out God’s Eye shot that would elbow us in the ribs with the idea that some Unseen Other is watching tragedy unfold. It’s not fully the alien's POV, because her actions are also recorded. It’s not zooming in on people faces. We’re never in the water with the dog or the people as they drown.

A swimmer runs down a rocky beach in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin
Image: StudioCanal/A24

The humans act in recognizable, though slightly heroic ways, the woman going to rescue her dog with no thought for her own safety until it’s far too late, the husband diving in after her even though he can see how bad the tide is now. The Czech man going after both of them, despite already being worn out from a swim in these cold choppy waters. There too—the Czech charges after the family. He’s focused entirely on what he can do, which is get the husband, the closest one, the one who hasn’t been caught between tides or swept into a rock. The husband blindly going back in without even a backwards glance at the man who saved him, or the baby.

The camera doesn’t take on the alien’s point of view as she walks up the beach to the Czech man. It stays back and lets us see that she’s simply pursuing prey. She’s not angry—this is just part of the hunt. And then my favorite moment of all: the rock selection. As the baby sits a few feet away, crying, the alien matter-of-factly chooses a rock to hit the Czech man. She’s completely focused on finding a good rock. She’s not in a hurry, she’s not worried about being caught, or the man escaping.

Scarlett Johansson's alien chooses a stone to incapacitate a victim in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin
Image: StudioCanal/A24

So many other ways it could go: the Czech man could yell to the alien for help. The wife could scream at the husband to go back to their child. The husband could look back at the kid instead of diving for his wife. He could take a swing at the Czech man rather than saving all of his panic and energy for the second attempt in the water. The husband could make the second attempt while the wife was still above water. The alien could use a rock to silence the child, annoyed by its screaming. She could hit the Czech inexpertly the first time, and have to hit him repeatedly to incapacitate him. She could reveal extreme strength (as happens in the novel) and be able to lift the man and carry him easily. The baby could try to walk to her, could hold its arms up to be lifted.

But none of that happens. Nothing is told, nothing is indicated, nothing is underlined or highlighted or italicized. No tip into melodrama or pathos or torture porn. There is only what we see: the tide flowing in and out. The man who abandons the child to go after the woman—twice. The other man who goes in after them, despite knowing what he’s getting into. Who saves the person closest to him, and then is too exhausted to see that his rescue has been undone. The baby screaming with no awareness of what’s happening, only that it’s alone suddenly. The alien watching all of them, waiting to see what happens, finishing her assignment with no fuss or extraneous violence.

A different movie might show us the alien going back for the baby, or calling the police about it. A different movie might show us an alien who listens thoughtfully to the broadcast. Instead there isn’t even the barest hint of emotion. Even when she hears the other baby crying in a later scene, her expression only hints at curiosity—not empathy or pity. The beach scene is only the first tiny step toward empathy with humanity as she watches a succession of people try to help each other and fail. There’s still another half hour to go before she frees one of her captives, and another ten minutes after that before she attempts human food. It isn’t that she hates us or fears us or that we disgust her—we are precisely as interesting as the ant she observes in the opening scene, the fly she watches later, the dog swimming out into the waves.

The water flows, the waves crash, the cliffs loom over the tragedy. Nature doesn’t care that these people and their dog are dying. It doesn’t care about the terrified baby. It doesn’t care that an alien has come to Earth and is standing by and watching it all. Nature is implacable, unreasonable, unswayable. The sun goes on shining, the water goes on flowing.

Glazer keeps his camera back and observes. He neither holds our hands (the camera is going to sit right there and watch the baby cry, and there’s nothing we can do about that except close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears), nor pats our heads (the radio bulletin doesn’t give us the happy news that the baby was saved, at least). By staying impassive and allowing cause and effect to play out, he creates a gap between us and the movie. We can fill that gap with emotions, empathy, sorrow, anger, a sense of futility—or we can balk and reject the film. It’s an act of artistic bravery to trust the audience to pay attention and come all the way to him, rather than meeting us halfway.[end-mark]

News Star Trek 4

There’s a New Screenwriter for the Star Trek Movie That May or May Not Happen Someday

Please, just let us boldly go already

By

Published on March 27, 2024

Chris Pine in Star Trek Beyond on bridge of the Enterprise

While Star Trek is doing great on the small screen, its theatrical existence has been paltry of late. And by "of late" I mean that it's been eight years since Star Trek Beyond, and Paramount has yet to create the long-promised fourth film starring that film's cast. In 2019, Noah Hawley was going to direct it, but then that version of the film was put on hold.

For a while, WandaVision’s Matt Shakman was set to direct Star Trek 4, but then he jumped ship for Marvel's Fantastic Four. In 2022, producer J.J. Abrams announced that the fourth film would for sure star the whole main cast from the previous three films, but reportedly the cast had not yet even begun talks with the studio about said film.

(And none of this is even taking into account the time that Quentin Tarantino said he wanted to make a Star Trek, or the scrapped concept for a film in which Chris Pine's Kirk would somehow re-encounter his dead father, or the other Star Trek film which actually is in the works, which will somehow be an origin story for the whole franchise, maybe.)

But hark, a new screenwriter approacheth! Variety has a big story about the entire Trek universe, and hidden in that story is a new detail about what is apparently being called "the final chapter" for Pine's crew. Steve Yockey, co-creator of The Flight Attendant and a writer on Supernatural, is now tackling the screenplay.

There are zero plot details, of course. But it might be promising that a new screenwriter is at least on board the Enterprise.

(For The Next Generation fans, Variety has an intriguing detail about Section 31: In the Michelle-Yeoh starring spinoff movie, Kacey Rohl is playing "a young Rachel Garrett." Make of that what you will!) [end-mark]

News Kinds of Kindness

Here’s a Mysterious Trailer for the Next Yorgos Lanthimos Movie

Yorgos Lanthimos-Emma Stone wonder twin powers, activate!

By

Published on March 27, 2024

Hong Chau in Kinds of Kindness

If Yorgos Lanthimos becomes a household name, the world will be a better place for it. The director of a whole lot of fascinating films—Dogtooth, Poor Things, The Favourite—has reteamed with star Emma Stone (fresh from her Oscar win for Poor Things) for Kinds of Kindness, a movie that may or may not have any fantastical elements, but is almost definitely bound to be fantastic.

The synopsis is not hugely forthcoming:

Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.

The trailer is full of extremely brief and intriguing scenes that tell us basically nothing—the same goes for Stone's brief bit of dialogue. But they add up to an unnerving feeling (and the song choice is great).

Stone stars in the film alongside her Poor Things colleagues Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley; The Favourite's Joe Alwyn; and Lanthimos newcomers Hong Chau (The Menu), Mamoudou Athie (Archive 81), Jesse Plemons (Black Mirror), and Hunter Schafer (Euphoria).

What is especially intriguing, at least if you are a fan of Lanthimos's delightfully weird earlier film Dogtooth, is that the script is a collaboration with Efthimis Filippou, Lanthimos's writing partner for Dogtooth, Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Lobster.

Kinds of Kindness is in select theaters June 21st. [end-mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fYtuE_ZJ4E
Book Recommendations Reading the Weird

To Catch a Monster: Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Eye and Tooth”

Humans are often more monstrous than the monsters...

By ,

Published on March 27, 2024

Cover of Out There Screaming, an anthology of Black Horror from Jordan Peele

Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches.

This week, we cover Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Eye and Tooth,” first published in 2023 in Jordan Peele’s Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Spoilers ahead!

Summary

“First class ain’t what it used to be, so it’s not like you’re missing out.”

Zelda and Atticus Credit are flying coach to Dallas, Texas. Their clients used to fly them first class, eager to get rid of “whatever awful horror they’d conjured up.” Take the golf pro who shot his ex-wife to Swiss cheese, but she kept getting back up. He flew them first class, but then tried out an internet remedy of salting her undying corpse. That got his face eaten off before they even arrived. True hunters know it takes grave dirt to keep ghouls down.

Lately the internet provides more reliable information, so people are DIY-dispelling their monsters, however crudely. So, though the Credits can handle visitations from haints and river spirits to poltergeists, business isn’t great. And it’s a family business: every generation in the Credit family has been blessed with gifts that enable them to fight the world’s evils. Atticus has what Mama calls the Eye, the ability to live in two worlds, “Ours and Theirs.” Zelda’s is the Tooth to his Eye, the dark to his light.

From the airport, Zelda drives their rented truck through a thunderous deluge into increasingly flat and empty cow country. A dirt road leads them to an American-Gothic three-story backed by derelict farm equipment and a yellowed cornfield. “Some real Children of the Corn shit,” Zelda mutters. Atticus rouses himself, coming into “focus.” Zelda asks if he feels anything. Could be, Atticus replies, but it could also be Zelda’s “energy” interfering.

Their client, an older woman named Dolores Washington, greets them curtly and leads them to dinner. Lanky Atticus helps himself. Zelda passes. Even if she did eat things like the offered red beans and cornbread, something feels is off-putting. Also, the dining room’s packed with displays of dolls: porcelain, paper, vinyl, even corncob dolls in gingham dresses. Haughtily, Washington claims not to be a “collector” but a “creator.” Either way, Zelda doesn’t like the dolls. She likes less how Washington treats a six or seven year-old girl in a metal leg brace who comes into the room, to be dismissed with a sharp reprimand.

Washington says she’s heard the Credits are “real deal Black folks. Root workers and hoodoo queens.” Her grandmother worked with herbs, but what the Credits have is “power in [the] blood.” She challenges Atticus, their “Eye,” to divine her trouble. He tries but shakes his head, and grudgingly Washington describes a presence in the cornfield that’s been killing animals and screaming at night. She’s sure it’s no fox or cougar, though she won’t admit to actually seeing it. Zelda decides that, in spite of the continuing storm, she’ll investigate at once. Washington invites Atticus to bed down in her guestroom. Though Zelda hoped he could deploy his Eye during her absence, she sees he looks tired, even wan, and makes no protest. From the guestroom window, Zelda spots something moving in the cornfield as if on all fours.

Outside she meets the little girl from the dining room, rain-drenched and mute. She gestures for Zelda to follow her into the corn. Feeling “this kid ain’t just a kid,” Zelda complies. Soon they find a freshly killed and mangled animal. At last the girl speaks, one word: “Hungry.” Something sure was. Afraid it might still be nearby, Zelda brings the girl back inside.

Next morning, Zelda leaves Atticus still asleep and goes to the town hardware store for trapping supplies. Hoping for background information, she chats with the clerk. He’s glad to gossip. Rumor was that Dolores’s grandmother did away with Dolores’s abusive father. Dolores herself has become famous for her corncob dolls: among pictures of town celebrities is one showing Dolores with a child-sized doll adorned with a blue ribbon. But then Dolores’s granddaughter got her foot snapped off in an old animal trap and bled to death in the cornfield. With her daughter estranged, Dolores has been all alone out there.

Puzzle pieces begin snapping together in Zelda’s mind. The little girl. Washington’s talk about power in the blood. Atticus’s post-dinner somnolence. She races back to the farmhouse. A dead granddaughter couldn’t survive on random animal kills. She’d need what all revenants need: a human, especially a powerful one.

Washington’s not around, but the girl is upstairs on the bed beside Atticus, her mouth encrusted with his blood. Her leg brace is off, exposing a limb missing below the knee and corn husks protruding from her pants cuff. “Hungry,” the girl whispers. Before Zelda can act, a wooden knitting needle skewers her in the back. Washington cries that she won’t lose her grandchild!

Zelda spits back that Washington can’t have Atticus, and didn’t Washington’s granny tell her that magic always comes in twos, Light and Dark? She calls up her power, the same as runs in Atticus but “bent different.” Her fangs descend, her nails sharpen, and she roars as she rips out the knitting needle and feels her pain turn to clarifying exhilaration. Washington screams, but her raised hands can’t ward off “what’s next,” for now Zelda’s hungry, too.

The rain has stopped when Atticus, bandaged and still chalky from blood loss and Washington’s poisoned beans, makes it out to the truck. He looks at the little girl who sits beside Zelda, playing with a paper doll. Zelda says she can’t leave the girl alone. But there are rules: she’s told the kid no eating until they get home and Zelda can teach her how to hunt “proper.”

Atticus grunts, but Zelda knows he won’t fuss. Like Zelda, he knows that “sometimes the best monster hunters are monsters themselves.”

The Degenerate Dutch: “Granny told me about your family. Real deal Black folks.” And, therefore, expendable.

Weirdbuilding: Folk magic runs all through this story, from Zelda’s family to Washington’s Granny—both the supernatural kind of magic, and the practical kind that whips up tonics to “cure” abusive husbands.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

There was a period when my gamemaster refused to set role-playing scenarios past about 1999. Cell phones, he felt, were the bane of plot—if you can call for help at any time, or find out how the other half of your split party is doing, where’s the pressure to solve the problem yourself? Eventually he got over it—by the time smartphones came along, with the internet in your pocket, we all knew the shivers brought on by low battery and lack of signal. Then there’s the modern gothic surrealism of disinformation bubbles, of the internet as portal to the uncanny—or Zelda’s (no relation) complaint that YouTube videos take work away from traditional practitioners, with only a small chance of getting your face eaten. Maybe that irritation with modern technology is why she doesn’t carry a cellphone—leaving room for anxious races to climactic confrontations.

Zelda, it’s clear right away, only cares about clients getting eaten in-so-far as it interferes with being paid. In general, she has little interest in her clients as people worthy of sympathy. They’re monsters, hiring monster hunters to hunt monsters that they’ve created or summoned themselves. And the story’s final line comes as little surprise. From the moment we learn that Zelda can’t eat airplane food—not for the same reasons the rest of us avoid it—it seems pretty clear that her appetites are not those of an ordinary human. Her dream of waking up next to a bloody carcass seems more temptation than nightmare. So I spent most of the time going “Vampire, ghoul, werewolf, zombie…?” like some off-kilter kid’s game of pulling petals.

She’s a monster with an appreciation for culture, though—not only horror flicks like Children of the Corn with its monstrous rural kids, but classic paintings like Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. That’s “that one with the girl in the field reaching for something she ain’t never gonna get.” Of the model, MOMA says: “As a young girl, [Anna Christina] Olson developed a degenerative muscle condition—possibly polio—that left her unable to walk. She refused to use a wheelchair, preferring to crawl, as depicted here, using her arms to drag her lower body along.” Perhaps Zelda has a touch of the Eye herself, given that she’s about to encounter (and adopt) a monstrous rural kid with mobility challenges.

The most monstrous monster here—as appears to be usual for Zelda—is the client. I once IDed a bad guy way before the Shocking Reveal because he threw a fit about kids enjoying Batman comics, and I pegged Washington the first time she complained about muddy floors. The woman is living out in deep farmland, but has delusions of Armitage-ness. Wanting to keep her granddaughter undead at the cost of strangers’ lives: sympathetic. Whining at those strangers about her pristine floors: nope. (Sorry, yes, I know that’s a different Jordan Peele movie.)

Making creepy corn dolls: also nope. Really, I feel bad for all the innocent doll collectors out there with houses full of staring glass eyes—horror has given them a bad rap. Though the fear apparently comes naturally: my son, who has never seen Chucky or been offered my Tara Campbell collection, consistently makes me hide away decorative dolls in AirBnBs. Ellen Datlow too has a doll-focused horror anthology—and yet. There are people whose uncanny valley is very narrow, and most of them never even once create a half-doll revenant to try and stave off the death of a loved one. Yet another point against Washington.

Final point against: she could have just asked. Zelda turns out to have exactly the expertise needed, and all the sympathy in the world for a supernaturally-hungry kid. If Washington had considered her “real deal” hunters as something other than prey, there’d have been much less need for poisons and knives. But then, if people like her could consider people like Zelda and Atticus for something beyond their immediate utility, they might’ve made a better case for Zelda’s sympathy a long time ago.

Anne’s Commentary

What with the thunderstorm that was raging when the Credits arrived at Dolores Washington’s house, I doubt Zelda thought to check the front porch ceiling. A safe bet is that it wasn’t painted the color called haint blue. The Gullah people of coastal Georgia and South Carolina traditionally painted porches, window frames, and shutters with an indigo-based blue-green. They believed doing so would prevent haints (ghosts and malicious spirits) from entering a house; either the haint would mistake this soft pale blue for the sky and pass on, or would shy away as from water, which haints can’t cross. Eventually other Southerners adopted the custom. Who wants haints in the house? Or wasps in their porchside supper—like haints, bugs are supposed to confuse a blue ceiling for the sky and to preferentially fly towards it.

I guess haint blue can discourage ghosts—my porch ceiling sports the color, and I haven’t had any ghosts yet. Wasps, sadly, aren’t fooled. They pervade the porch whenever food is available. So, yeah, blue paint for revenants, screens for bugs. In case you want to beef up your own supernatural wards, Southern Living has an article listing the exact paint brands and colors to do the job.

But if, like Dolores, you have a haint for a (more or less welcome) family member, keep away from the blue spectrum altogether. Stick to whites, or if you’re trendier, sunflower yellow. Spirits, and wasps, love that color.

What are the odds that the main character in this week’s story would have the same name as the main character in last week’s story? Not high, I’d say, particularly if the name is an uncommon one. In 2023, Zelda ranked 556th in popularity among female baby names. However, according to its Teutonic origins, Zelda signifies a woman warrior. Where monster hunting is concerned, Roanhorse’s and Gladwell’s Zeldas are that in spades. Perhaps the name was chosen for this meaning?

I’m not sure whether Last Exit Zelda’s superpower, or knack, is inborn or acquired, though it’s suggestive that cousins Sal and June develop—or express— the same knack after being exposed to the Beyond. “Eye & Tooth’s” Zelda definitely has a genetically-granted superpower—as Dolores puts it, it’s in her blood. The Credits’ powers define them: Atticus is an Eye, the organ associated both with actual light and with the moral concept of Lightness, the Seen, the Understood. Whereas Zelda is a Tooth, the organ associated with biting, killing, devouring and the moral concept of Darkness, the Taken, the Mystery.

I’ve always been deeply creeped out by these lines from Stephen King’s The Stand: “There were worse things than crucifixion [villain Flagg’s preferred method of execution.] There were teeth [another method of which Flagg was only too capable of employing.]” Tooth-Zelda convinces me further of the terror inherent in dentition.

The Eye and the Tooth share the work of defense, the first via perception, the second via action. Atticus’s ability to see into realms beyond the mundane is a major asset to the hunting pair. It’s also a weakness, for which Zelda compensates with her practical skills and a predator’s heightened awareness of her umwelt. If the Credit siblings could always work side by side, or back to back, they’d be unbeatable.

The catch for storytellers: Unbeatable protagonists make for boring narratives. Roanhorse has a surefire way around this catch: Atticus and Zelda are both monster-hunters, but Zelda is herself a monster. When she’s close to her brother, her monster-vibes can interfere with his efforts to detect other monsters, their targets. So separate they sometimes must. Another plot-nurturing workaround is that Zelda can’t always act on her monsterly intuitions and impulses. Letting her fangs and claws out around clients would be bad for business; in spite of getting all kinds of bad feelings about Dolores, she has to be polite. Dolores is rude and condescending. Dolores raises Zelda’s hackles by mistreating her granddaughter. But Zelda must remember that Dolores has a fat wad of cash in her cleavage. When you’re a monster dealing with humans, you sometimes have to let “professionalism” trump instincts. Right?

Not this time, because it almost results in Atticus becoming revenant-fodder.

Oh well, every system has its flaws. Magic, Zelda tells Dolores, “always comes in twos. Light and Dark. Eye and Tooth.” On the positive side, the Credits know that “sometimes the best monster hunters are monsters themselves.” Who can know a monster better than another monster? A legitimate corollary: Who can empathize with a monster better than another monster? This isn’t to say that humans can’t at least sympathize with monsters. Atticus isn’t happy about Zelda adopting Dolores’s revenant grandkid, but he won’t try to stop her.

Besides, humans are often more monstrous than the monsters. Take Dolores, for instance.

Please, take Dolores, including any scraps Zelda may have left.


Next week, it’s Cowboys Versus Tentacles in chapters 33-34 of Max Gladstone’s Last Exit.[end-mark]

News The Spiderwick Chronicles

Unicorns, Fairies, and Ogres, Oh My! The Spiderwick Chronicles Trailer Gives Us Magical Beings & A Mission to Save Humanity

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Published on March 26, 2024

Boy holding The Spiderwick Chronicles book

We have another trailer for the adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles, and this one features the home that the Grace family moves into (there’s a tree in the middle) and the quest that the Grace children must take on—find all the pages in their dad’s field guide on magical creatures (unicorns and fairies are real!) before the shapeshifting ogre Mulgarath gets them and destroys humanity, as ogres are apparently wont to do.

Here’s the official synopsis for the series:

The Grace family moves from Brooklyn, New York, to their ancestral home in Henson, Michigan, the Spiderwick Estate. Helen makes the move with her 15-year-old fraternal twin boys, Jared and Simon, and her older daughter, Mallory. Shortly after moving to the Spiderwick Estate Jared discovers a boggart and realizes that magical creatures are real! The only one to believe him is his great-aunt Lucinda who implores Jared to find the pages of her father’s field guide to magical creatures and protect them from the murderous Ogre, Mulgarath.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is based on the popular middle grade books by authors Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi and was originally supposed to air on Disney+. Disney passed on the series, however, saying that it was too dark for their brand (and also based on IP they don’t own). Roku, however, picked the show up for our viewing pleasure.

In addition to Slater, the series stars Joy Bryant, Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, Mychala Lee, Jack Dylan Grazer, Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Charlayne Woodard. It’s co-showrun by Lock & Key and Star Trek: Discovery alum Aron Eli Coleit and She Hulk director Kat Coiro.

The eight-episode first season is set to premiere on the streaming platform on April 19, 2024.

Check out the latest trailer below. [end-mark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_m8xejF5aU
News Earth Abides

George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides Will Be a Limited Series for MGM+

A lone man will once again face a changed world

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Published on March 26, 2024

Alexander Ludwig in Vikings

The adaptation wheel goes round and round, and once again it's landed on a science fiction classic about a man existing in distressing conditions. George R. Stewart's 1949 novel Earth Abides is the latest book to move from "in development" to "actual series happening," with MGM+ planning a six-episode limited series based on the post-apocalyptic novel. Vikings’ Alexander Ludwig (pictured above) is set to star.

We do love the post-apocalypse (The Last of Us, Fallout, The 100) and we sure do love terrible viruses (The Last of Us, Station Eleven). The official description of the show's take on these perennial favorite horrors, per The Hollywood Reporter, goes like this:

“Leading character Ish (Ludwig) is a brilliant but solitary young geologist living a semi-isolated life who awakens from a coma only to find that there is no one left alive but him. A plague of unprecedented virulence has swept the globe, and yes, there are a few scattered survivors, but there are no rules. His journey is to learn the difference between sanctuary and survival and to open his heart to love if he is to find meaning in his life after the great machine of civilization has broken down."

The best part of this description is definitely "brilliant but solitary young geologist." I hope he really loves a good rock.

The show has as its showrunner Todd Komarnicki, the writer of the movie Sully. He and his team are clearly moving fast on this one; production begins next month, and the show may premiere later this year. [end-mark]

Movies & TV Babylon 5

Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Gathering”

Keith R.A. DeCandido revisits the start of the Babylon 5 franchise

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Published on March 26, 2024

Michael O'Hare in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

“The Gathering”
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Richard Compton
Season 1, Episode 0
Production episode 0
Original air date: February 22, 1993

It was the dawn of the third age… We open with Ambassador Londo Mollari’s voiceover setting the stage: the dawn of the third age of mankind, whatever that means, and how the last of the Babylon stations, Babylon 5, was the last best hope for peace. A station in neutral space constructed by the Earth Alliance and administered by their military, EarthForce, it is home to dozens of species, with the five major powers in this area of the galaxy represented: Earth Alliance, the Minbari Federation, the Centauri Republic, the Narn Regime, and the Vorlons. Tensions are high, as the Earth-Minbari War wasn’t that long ago, and the Narn used to be a subject species of the Centauri, but now are the ascendant power while the Centauri are a shadow of their former selves.

Lt. Commander Laurel Takashima, the first officer, is in Command & Control, overseeing a ship docking at the station. The security chief, Michael Garibaldi, calls C&C saying that the station commander is needed to greet a new arrival. Takashima says that he’s already on his way.

Sure enough, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair greets Lyta Alexander, a telepath from Psi Corps who will be working on the station, available to be hired. Sinclair tells her a bit about the station, taking her through the alien sector, where those species who require something other than Earth-normal atmosphere and/or gravity hang out.

Another person who arrived on the transport is a human named Del Varner. In fact, we saw him initially during Mollari’s voiceover, so we know he’ll be important….

Four of the five representatives are on the station: Delenn representing Minbar, Mollari representing the Centauri, G’Kar representing the Narn, and Sinclair reprsenting Earth. The fifth is en route: Kosh from the mysterious Vorlons, about whom very little is known. At one point, Sinclair joins Delenn in the Chinese garden, and she, to his surprise, provides all the intelligence the Minbari have on the Vorlons. It’s not much, but it’s more than Earth has…

Mira Furlan and Michael O'Hare in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

G’Kar complains to Takashima about a Narn supply ship that is being denied docking. Takashima explains that the shipmaster has refused to consent to a weapons scan, and they can’t let the ship dock without that. G’Kar leaves in a huff. In fact, he leaves in a minute-and-a-huff.

Kosh’s ship arrives two days early. Also en route is the ship belonging to Sinclair’s girlfriend, a trader named Carolyn Sykes. Garibaldi asks G’Kar and Delenn to be at the docking bay to meet Kosh, but he’s having trouble tracking down Mollari—eventually finding him in the casino, losing a lot. Mollari asks Garibaldi for a loan (obviously not the first time he’s made that request), which Garibaldi refuses (obviously not the first time he’s said no). However, Varner offers to stake him.

G’Kar changes his mind, and tells Takashima to go ahead and do the weapons scan on the supply ship.

En route to meet Kosh, Sinclair’s elevator stalls out. By the time he makes it to the docking bay and meets Garibaldi, they find Kosh unconscious on the deck. Vorlons have to wear full-body encounter suits in order to interact with other species for reasons that nobody’s too clear on (which is par for the course with the Vorlons). Takashima reports that the Vorlons have stated in no uncertain terms that Kosh’s encounter suit is not to be removed. Dr. Benjamin Kyle is not happy, as he can’t treat his patient without removing the suit.

Sinclair instructs Kyle to open the suit, but to do it alone, with all monitors turned off. Kyle is bound by doctor-patient confidentiality not to reveal what he sees. Kyle’s subsequent examination reveals that Kosh was poisoned. But Kyle can’t determine where the poison was applied, nor what the poison is.

Sinclair locks down the station, and Garibaldi conducts an investigation. One of his prime suspects is Mollari, who wasn’t at the reception with Delenn and G’Kar.

Tamlyn Tomita, Jerry Doyle, and Michael O'Hare in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

G’Kar approaches Alexander after she finishes a job. The Narn have no telepaths, and they wish to produce some. G’Kar makes her an offer to help them do so, either by G’Kar and Alexander mating, or by cloning, which would be a much more complicated process. G’Kar will pay her more if they just mate.

Sinclair finally gets to have some mad, passionate nookie-nookie with Sykes. He also tells Sykes a bit of his personal history that he’d been avoiding telling her before: that he was part of the Battle of the Line, the final battle in the Earth-Minbari War, of which he was one of the few survivors. He was doing a kamikaze run at one Minbari ship, then he blacked out, and the next thing he knew, it was twenty-four hours later and the Minbari had inexplicably surrendered, ending the war.

Takashima and Kyle convince Alexander to perform a mind-scan on Kosh. She reluctantly does so, only to discover that Sinclair is the one who poisoned the ambassador by putting a skin tag on Kosh’s hand.

Garibaldi’s investigation leads to Varner, but checking his quarters reveals Varner’s dead body. Confusing the issue is that he’s been dead for days, even though he’s been sighted more recently.

Sinclair is temporarily removed from B5’s council, replaced by Takashima. After the council questions several witnesses, including Kyle, G’Kar moves that they turn Sinclair over to the Vorlons. Takashima votes no, Delenn abstains, while Mollari and G’Kar vote yes. But that tie is broken by the proxy vote the Vorlons provided to G’Kar, making it a majority yes vote.

The Vorlons will arrive in twelve hours. Mollari apologetically explains to Garibaldi that G’Kar blackmailed him into the yes vote. He had information about one of Mollari’s ancestors that would prove politically embarrassing to him.

Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

G’Kar approaches Delenn about the possibility of a Minbari-Narn alliance. But when he mentions a rumored shadowy organization in the Minbari Federation called the Grey Council, Delenn immediately attacks G’Kar, nearly killing him, and making it clear that she’ll do worse if he ever even mentions the Grey Council again.

Another body is found, that of a technician who has been seen since his time of death. Kyle is working in the medical bay, having found an antidote to the poison, when he sees Alexander enter, and she starts sabotaging the medical equipment—and tossing Kyle across the medical bay when he tries to stop her. But then the real Alexander walks in, and the duplicate runs away.

It’s now clear what’s going on: Garibaldi has learned that Varner was a smuggler dealing in black-market tech. His most recent trip had him acquiring a changeling net, which would enable its wearer to look like anyone. The net would give off a lot of energy, so Sinclair has Takashima do a scan of major energy sources, and then blank out anything they know about—life support, lights, and so on—and the only one that isn’t accounted for is small and moving through a remote part of the station. Sinclair and Garibaldi suit up and go after it. At Takashima’s suggestion, they take a recorder that will document everything, so they have proof for the Vorlons.

Garibaldi is injured, but Sinclair manages to stop the assassin, after he has cycled through several different disguises (including Sinclair himself). Eventually, he’s revealed to be a Minbari, a member of their Warrior Caste. Before blowing himself up, he says that Sinclair has a hole in his mind. Later, Sinclair queries Delenn about that, but Delenn blows it off as a standard Minbari insult. The nervous look Delenn gets before saying that makes it obvious to the viewer (but, for some reason, not to Sinclair) that she’s lying.

Sinclair shares a drink with G’Kar, revealing that he knows that the changeling net was brought on the delayed Narn supply ship, which was why Varner had to come to the station to pick it up, and then provide it to the assassin. G’Kar says Sinclair has no proof; Sinclair counters that he put a nanotech tracker in the drink they just shared, so now Sinclair will always be able to follow G’Kar. Outraged, G’Kar once again leaves in a huff. Sinclair then reveals to Garibaldi that he was lying, but that’ll it’ll be fun watching G’Kar try to find the tracker that isn’t there in his intestinal tract.

The big hole made by the assassin is being fixed, Ambassador Kosh is up and about, Sinclair has been cleared, and the station is, as Takashima says, open for business.

Michael O'Hare in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

Nothing’s the same anymore. Sinclair gets to hit several rough-and-tumble leader clichés, including the close friend whom he hires even though nobody else wants him, being accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and insisting on stopping the bad guy himself despite having an entire frickin staff under his command.

The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is established as difficult, having bounced from assignment to assignment. He also doesn’t exactly light the world on fire with his investigation, as most of the work is done by Kyle and by the assassin being seen disguised as Alexander when Alexander walked into the room.

If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is surprisingly friendly to Sinclair, which he doesn’t expect, given the history between Earth and Minbar.

In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari is pretty broken, reduced to gambling and drinking and lamenting the days when the Centauri Republic was a super-power instead of a has-been power.

Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar is a manipulative bad guy in this one, showing an impressive ruthlessness and a tiresome nastiness.

The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. We learn that humans have developed telepathy, and there’s a Psi-Corps that supervises and adminstrates telepathic activity. The rules regarding telepaths are very strict, including no unauthorized mind-scans.

The Shadowy Vorlons. Vorlons wear encounter suits at all times and “for security reasons” don’t allow them to be removed. Very little is known about them by anyone else on the station.

Looking ahead. The hole in Sinclair’s mind will become extremely important down the line.

Blaire Baron and Michael O'Hare in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Sinclair and Sykes are in a nice relationship; at one point Sykes tries to convince him to resign his commission and go off adventuring with her. He says he’ll think about it.

Also G’Kar tries to mate with Alexander in a scene that is eye-rolling and creepy all at the same time.

Welcome aboard. In this pilot movie, the only stars are Michael O’Hare (Sinclair), Tamlyn Tomita (Takashima), Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi), and Mira Furlan (Delenn). Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas are listed as guest stars, as are Blaire Baron (Sykes), Johnny Sekka (Kyle), and Patricia Tallman (Alexander), even though all were intended to be regular characters. In addition, John Fleck plays Varner and Paul Hampton plays the senator.

Hampton will return next time in “Midnight on the Firing Line.” Tallman will return in “Divided Loyalties” in season two.

Also Ed Wasser plays one of the C&C officers; he’ll return in the recurring role of Mr. Morden starting in “Signs and Portents” later in the first season.

Trivial matters. Two different versions of this exist in the world: the original as aired in 1993 and a re-edit that was released when the show moved to TNT in 1998. Some of those changes were to fix things that later became continuity errors, including G’Kar’s reference to his wife and Mollari’s referring to Sinclair as the last commander of the station in his opening voiceover. Others were simply tightening some scenes and including some scenes that were cut, including a confrontation Sinclair has with a smuggler and Sykes meeting with Delenn. Sinclair and Alexander’s trip through the alien sector was cut down, as there were (legitimate) complaints that it looked too much like a zoo. The music by Stewart Copeland was redone by Christopher Franke, who was the composer for the series. In the original, Tamlyn Tomita’s dialogue was redone and looped in when Warner Bros. complained that she sounded too harsh; the new version restores Tomita’s original performance. Finally, the biggest change was Kosh referring to the assassin disguised as Sinclair as “Entil’Zha Valen,” a reference that will pay off in the “War Without End” two-parter in season three.

Patricia Tallman in Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

Tomita, Blaire Baron, Johnny Sekka, and Patricia Tallman were all intended to be regulars, but they did not continue on the series for various reasons. Tomita was replaced by Claudia Christian’s Susan Ivanova, Baron by Julia Nickson-Soul’s Catherine Sakai, Sekka by Richard Biggs’ Dr. Franklin, and Tallman by Andrea Thompson’s Talia Winters. Tallman’s Alexander would, however, return to the show as a guest in seasons two and three and become a regular for seasons four and five. Plotlines originally intended for Takashima were transferred either to Ivanova or to Winters.

Delenn was originally intended to start out as a man, but would emerge from the chrysalis at the top of season two as a woman. But they couldn’t make Mira Furlan masculine enough, apparently, so they abandoned it and just had her be female all along.

Furlan’s and Andreas Katsulas’ makeup were both changed when the show went to series, as were the EarthForce uniforms.

“The Gathering” was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. The award went to Jurassic Park.

The echoes of all of our conversations.

“There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories—living off memories and stories, and selling trinkets. My God, man—we’ve become a tourist attraction. ‘See the great Centauri Republic, open 9 to 5, Earth time.’”

—Mollari, lamenting to Garibaldi
Still of the spacestation Babylon 5 in Bablyon 5: The Gathering (1993)

The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Babylon 5 is open for business.” There are three things a pilot needs to introduce: the characters, the types of stories that will be told, and the setting. The latter is more challenging in the science fiction/fantasy genre because it’s the only genre in which the setting isn’t real. So in addition to everything else, you’ve got to build a world and make it convincing.

Whatever the flaws of “The Gathering”—and they are legion—it did that part of it beautifully. Creator/writer/co-executive producer J. Michael Straczynski gives us a fully realized future history. We get an Earth that’s a power, but not the biggest power. We get the ugly history between the Centauri and the Narn, with the latter having burst onto the scene after being subjugated by the former, while the Centauri themselves are much less than once they were. And there’s the history of the Earth-Minbari War, which left scars on both sides—as well as the complete confusion as to why the Minbari surrendered.

Surrounding this world-building is a story that’s a pretty straightforward whodunnit with tech and a script that can generously be called awkward. The moment where Alexander asked Sinclair why the station was called Babylon 5, I groaned. Thirty-one years later, that conversation remains the tin standard for awkward exposition, not aided by the fact that I kept thinking of the Swamp Castle litany in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (To this day, I always refer to Babylon 4 as having fallen into the swamp.)

That clunkiness of dialogue runs throughout, alas, not aided by performances that range from mediocre to uneven. Jerry Doyle’s Garibaldi is a walking, talking cliché of the maverick cop, Andreas Katsulas’ G’Kar is a mustache-twirling villain of the most ludicrous type (the scene where he proposes mating with Alexander is embarrassing), and Patricia Tallman’s Alexander ranges from stilted (her accusation of Sinclair comes across as a teenager throwing a tantrum) to excellent (her body language when she’s the disguised assassin is completely different, making it clear from jump that this isn’t really Alexander). All three characters will, of course, get better, but that just makes watching the early versions of them even more painful to watch. G’Kar especially—Katsulas was one of the finest actors of his time, always able to bring menace and nuance to his roles (which were almost always villainous to some degree or other), and G’Kar would certainly become a complex and tragic character as the show went on. But the G’Kar of “The Gathering” has muted menace and absolutely no nuance, and feels like an utter waste of Katsulas’ talent.

The leader of an ensemble needs to have a certain charisma in order for the ensemble to work, and sadly Michael O’Hare doesn’t quite have it. O’Hare is the type of actor who’s better off playing the sidekick or the helpmeet or the bad guy. (He played Colonel Jessup in the theatrical version of A Few Good Men on Broadway, and he was amazing. It was a hundred and eighty degrees from Jack Nicholson’s performance of the same role in the movie version, instead bringing a quiet, solid intensity.) He would’ve been perfect to play Garibaldi, truly.

Besides the world-building, the other way in which the pilot absolutely shines is in the character of Londo Mollari, brilliantly played by the great Peter Jurasik. In 1993, he was best known for his role of the squirrelly and slimy Sid the Snitch on Hill Street Blues and its short-lived spinoff Beverly Hills Buntz, which in no way prepared anyone for this. He magnificently brings the broken-down Centauri ambassador to life. The bit I quoted in “The echoes of all our conversations” above is a masterpiece, showing us how far the Centauri Republic in general and Mollari in particular have fallen.

Finally, there’s the CGI visual effects, which were groundbreaking at the time, and which I was dreading on this rewatch, as I feared they wouldn’t have aged well. And, well, they haven’t, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Mostly the biggest problem with the VFX is the same problem CGI continued to have up until 2010 or so: too bright and shiny and completely unable to convey mass. But it’s not fatal, and the CGI is well integrated.

Next week: “Midnight on the Firing Line.”[end-mark]

Rereads and Rewatches The Wheel of Time

Reading The Wheel of Time: Tuon Arrives and Mat Tries to Escape in Winter’s Heart (Part 12)

This week's Wheel of Time reading features the Daughter of the Nine Moons, Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag herself…

By

Published on March 26, 2024

Reading The Wheel of Time on Tor.com: Winter's Heart

This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, the Return begins, and the name of a person we know but have never met joins our tale. Also, Mat plots his escape from Ebou Dar and ponders the invention of a new weapon. It’s Chapters 14 and 15 of Winter’s Heart.

Hundreds of Seanchan ships sail over the sea. The Corenne, the Return, has begun. On the lead ship, a woman named Tuon sits having her head shaved by her dresser, Selucia. When Tuon was a baby, Selucia’s mother gave her to Tuon as a gift, to be her nursemaid and her shadow, a secret bodyguard. When Tuon turned sixteen, she gave the traditional gifts to Selucia to thank her for the work, which included Selucia choosing her next appointment. But she chose to be Tuon’s dresser, and to remain her secret shadow.

Tuon is troubled because the night before she gave an order in anger. To balance herself, she chooses to wear a veil rather than the gold lace cap which would expose her shaved head and “mark her with the Raven-and-Roses.” She is uncomfortable asking her Soe’feia, Anath, to administer a penance because she still doesn’t know the woman very well.

In the second cabin she greets six of her sul’dam with their damane. One damane, Lidya, was the cause of Tuon’s anger the night before—she commanded the damane to read her fortune, then had her beaten when she did not like what she heard. Now she praises Lidya as being a good damane, and orders her wounds tended. Tuon checks in with all the other damane as well and gives orders to the sul’dam—she believes that no one should own damane without taking an active role with them. She has even been able to train Mylen, a damane who was once Aes Sedai and who refused to eat or drink and nearly died, before Tuon purchased and trained her.

Some of the five hundred Death Watch guards are stationed in the outer cabin, each one of whom would die to protect her—and will die, if she dies. Seeing her veil, the captain orders only two to accompany her on deck...

... where two dozen Ogier Gardeners in the red-and-green made a line to either side of the doorway, great black-tasseled axes upright in front of them and grim eyes watching for any danger even here. They would not die if she did, but they also had asked to be in her guard, and she would rest her life in any of those huge hands without a qualm.

The nobles on deck greet her as an equal when they see her veil. Her secretary Yuril, who is secretly also her Hand and commander of her Seekers, kneels, and “the Macura woman,” prostrates herself. Tuon doesn’t know why this woman hates Aes Sedai so much, but she has given Tuon much valuable information, and seems eager to do more.

Anath is standing by the railing. When Tuon’s previous Soe’feia died unexpectedly, the Empress named Anath as replacement, and Tuon is a little afraid of her. Anath is dismissive of the veil, pointing out that everyone still knows who she is, even if the veil has them pretending otherwise, and that Tuon is a fool for thinking that she took on shame for such a little thing as having a damane beaten. She asks what the damane said to enrage Tuon so, but Tuon only answers that she will wear the veil until an omen tells her that it is time to stop.

Only luck had kept anyone from overhearing Lidya’s cryptic words. Everyone knew that damane could foretell the future, and if any of the Blood had heard, they would all have been chattering behind their hands about her fate.

Tuon listens as Anath continues telling her what a fool she is, loudly enough for those nearby to hear. The Captain is clearly horrified, but the traditions of Tuon’s family say that a Truthspeaker is always allowed to tell the truth. Still, Tuon isn’t comfortable with the idea of taking a penance from Anath—she believes that is taking the easy way out.

Tuon steers the conversation to Suroth, and then to the Dragon Reborn. The prophecies say that he must kneel to the Crystal Throne before Tar’mon Gaidon, or all is lost. Anath warns Tuon not to let the man know how dangerous she is to him until it is too late for him to escape. Tuon listens, and looks ahead to where she can see the harbor of Ebou Dar.

Behind her veil, she was merely the High Lady Tuon, of higher rank than many others of the Blood, but in her heart, always, she was Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag, Daughter of the Nine Moons, and she had come to reclaim what had been stolen from her ancestor.

Mat sits in a wagon with Aludra, who he discovered in Ebou Dar when Valan Luca’s traveling show came to the city. Mat is still recovering from the injuries he received when a wall fell on him during the Seanchan attack. Attempting to persuade Aludra to share the secret of fireworks with him, he tells her that there isn’t a Guild of Illuminators anymore. When the members at the Tanchico Chapter House refused to let Seanchan soldiers inside, there was a battle—and somehow half the compound exploded. Afterwards, everyone at the Chapter House who was left alive, or who even appeared to be an Illuminator, was gathered up and made da’covale.

Aludra grieves over other Illuminators’ stubbornness, and tells Mat that the Guild lives on in her. She asks Mat what he will do if she does give him the secret to fireworks. Mat suggests that the tubes used to throw nightflowers into the sky could be aimed horizontally against an enemy. Aludra admits that Mat’s idea is a decent one, but she has already been thinking about the subject and tells Mat that, if he can tell her what she wants a bellfounder for, she will tell him all her secrets, including the ones that will make him blush.

She sends him away to ponder the question for a few days. As Mat is leaving, she murmurs something about how she would think of kissing him, if he didn’t belong to another. Mat is irked, especially because Tylin had taken all his clothes while he was bedridden and recovering. As a result, he’s dressed in flashy, revealing clothes which include a lot of lace and breeches that he deems far too tight. 

All that remained of his own were his hat and the black silk scarf tied around his neck. And the silvery foxhead medallion, of course, hanging on a leather cord under his shirt. And his knives; he really would have felt lost without those.

He leaves the wagon, puzzling over Aludra’s question and wondering if Tylin has changed him into the sort of man women chase. Outside he considers the picket line, and wonders if he should have Vanin steal some of Luca’s horses, but Mat isn't recovered enough yet to ride very far.

When Mat thinks about Rand or Perrin, faint colors swirl in his head. He wishes it would stop. He wishes he could get away from Ebou Dar, and from Tylin, and take the secret of fireworks with him.

He goes to extract Olver from a group of women he is intently flirting with. He lectures the boy that women want quiet, well-mannered men, but Olver looks incredulous. Mat finds Thom and Beslan, and Thom reports that Luca has agreed to let them leave Ebou Dar with the traveling show, for a very high price. Unfortunately, however, he does not intend to leave until spring at the earliest. Beslan remarks that his mother will not be happy with him if she learns that he is helping “her pretty” to leave Ebou Dar. 

As they prepare to return to the Palace, Mat groans. The dice have just started tumbling in his head.


I almost forgot about Mat’s future wife—I haven’t thought about her since he stopped asking people if they’d ever heard of the Daughter of the Nine Moons. In his defense, and mine, he’s been a little bit busy with other things lately. I do have a vague memory of a Seanchan spy recognizing the title when Mat asked about it around some gaming table or other. I can’t remember when exactly that was, but of course the greater clue as to her identity was in The Fires of Heaven, when Elayne and Nynaeve were traveling with Valan Luca’s show and met Cerandin. It was then that they, and we the reader, learned that the Seanchan Empresses’ Court is called the Court of the Nine Moons—which pretty much told us exactly who the Daughter of the Nine Moons must be.

As far as ta’veren powers and the needs of the Pattern goes, it makes a lot of sense that Mat should end up married to the Empress's Daughter, a woman who one day will herself be the Empress of Seanchan. Though the Seanchan are enemies to all of the other lands, and especially to channelers, they are not a nation of Darkfriends, and they do intend to fight in the Last Battle. Their prophecies say that the Dragon will kneel to the Empress, of course, which I doubt will happen, but Rand is going to have to find a way to bring them under his control, or at least into some kind of alliance, if everyone on the side of the Light is going to go into the Last Battle united. He has already suffered incredible losses in battle with the Seanchan, and having to fight even more into submission would be a costly loss of time, lives, and resources, even if he could manage to win an outright war against them. On the other hand, tying their princess to one of his best friends would be a sound political move for Rand, and Mat is a significant ta’veren as well, which might also help steer things in the way Rand/the Pattern needs them to go.

While very little happens in chapter 14, we do learn more about the culture of the Seanchan, some of which is quite interesting. They do seem to be a fairly superstitious culture, and Tuon in particular is very focused on the idea that omens—sightings of animals or occurrences of nature—can be used to guide her course and her decisions. I wonder if this kind of belief will make her accept Mat fairly easily, once she meets him and figures out that he is the person Foretold to be her husband.

I mean, that almost has to be what Lidya’s “fortune telling” was, right? The chapter doesn’t give the contents of Lidya’s words, but Tuon thinks that the nobles would be gossiping about her fate if they had overheard. This suggests that the fortune Lydia told concerns something significant in Tuon’s future, but not related to the fate of the Seanchan or the Return. We also know that Tuon didn’t like what she was told, but that she seems fairly resigned the next morning, which means that the news probably wasn’t as devastating as, for example, learning of her impending death. Or that she will never be Empress. Given that we the readers already know a very important piece of Tuon’s future, and given Jordan’s love of dramatic irony and of creating parallels between characters, I feel confident that I’m right in my guess.

But what’s really fascinating, if my assumption is correct and Lidya did actually Foretell Tuon’s marriage to some country-boy turned general with magical snake-people memories (okay, she probably didn’t word it like that), this raises some very interesting questions about the abilities of the female channelers in Seanchan. Tuon mentions that Lidya's words were “cryptic,” which also lines up with how Foretellings go—they usually have to be deciphered and often only make sense in retrospect. But Tuon commanded Lidya to tell her fortune, which means that Lidya was able to summon this Foretelling at will. That is not how it works among the Aes Sedai, and as far as we know the ability to have a Foretelling has never been voluntary, even at the height of this Age’s Aes Sedai strength.

The Seanchan kill men born with the spark and imprison women who present with the ability to channel, so one would expect that they might also be suffering from a decline in the average power of their female channelers as they have been culling the ability out of their population just as the Aes Sedai have. It is possible, however, that sul’dam usually end up having families, which would mean that more people with the ability to channel are having children in Seanchan than in lands connected to Aes Sedai. We know that Alivia is stronger even than Nynaeve, despite having been born around four hundred years ago, which may suggests that there are a greater number of very powerful women among the damane than there are among the Aes Sedai. However, it’s also possible that Alivia’s strength might be exceptional among damane, and there may have been more Aes Sedai born four hundred years ago who could match her, all of whom would be dead now because the Oath Rod shortened their lifespan.

Additionally, the concept that the number of channelers is declining because of genetic lines being cut is only a theory among the Aes Sedai, and we don’t really know how, or even if, genetics are important to the birth of new channelers. So all this is really just speculation, though if genetics were significant in the birth of new channelers, that might pose an interesting problem for the Seanchan. If a lot of sul’dam were having children, their children might have a higher likelihood of being born with the spark. It’s an interesting thought, if purely theoretical.

Tuon also has the ability to be a sul’dam, which means she has the ability to learn to channel. How ironic for Mat, the man with the anti-saidar medallion, that he is going to end up married to a channeler of saidar. Or at least a potential channeler. The truth about sul’dam is bound to become common knowledge eventually, but Seanchan culture might be too inflexible to adapt to this information quickly, or well. It may take more than a generation for those with the ability to be sul’dam to accept the idea of becoming channelers in their own right, even after society has generally accepted that such a thing is possible.

The ownership of damane is, of course, abhorrent, but if we examine the culture from the inside, Tuon’s perspective on it is interesting. She is high-born and powerful, a person who has beaten out many siblings in order to be her mother’s heir; she clearly must be capable of great strength and ruthlessness when the situation calls for it. And yes, she believes in her right to own people, as most of the Seanchan do, but she also believes in the responsibility that comes with that ownership, that comes with the power she has over others.

This balancing point of rights and responsibility seems to be the linchpin of Seanchan society. They are very hierarchically ordered, and yet there is room for great mobility, both upwards and downwards. The highest-born may find themselves made da’covale if they make a mistake or are taken out by a political opponent and it seems no one (save perhaps the Empress herself?) is immune to such a fall. Someone low-born can be raised in status and even made one of the Blood, through impressive performance of their duties and service to their leaders. Or the occasional blackmail, as we saw with Alwhin. And excluding damane, who are not viewed as people, even slaves can be set free or raised to a high position, and some slaves may even be more powerful and respected than many free people.

You can understand how many Seanchan might believe that their society is both just and moral. It requires accepting certain truths, about channelers but also about concepts of failure, and what constitutes failure. If you believe these things, however, the clear rules and order of society might indeed feel very fair, as well as useful in guiding your own actions. I can even see how the rigid structure of their society might appeal to the Ogier, who often find humans much too flighty and changeable.

We learned earlier in the series that the Ogier Gardeners are owned by the Empress herself, and that this arrangement is different and separate from the way ownership works in Seanchan. I’ve been eagerly awaiting more information about this arrangement since it was first mentioned, but I was surprised to learn that the Ogier Gardeners seem to be serving primarily as soldiers, very similarly to the Death Watch guards.

The Ogier societies we have encountered so far are peace-loving and quiet, very reserved people who keep to themselves, though they still do stonemason work in the cities and have a relationship with the Aiel. We know they can be powerful warriors when roused to it, as we have seen with Loial, but there is something very different going on with the Seanchan Ogier. It’s one thing for a being who primarily loves nature and peace to take up arms to defend his friends and fight against the growing Shadow, and quite another to be a martial force in service to—and owned by—an Empress. To be so dedicated to her daughter that they would accompany her on a mission to reclaim—i.e. conquer—another land.

The narration even states that these Ogier asked, specifically, to be part of Tuon’s guard, and are so loyal to her that she trusts them with her life. That's no small amount of loyalty and dedication, making me very curious how this relationship came to be. It seems unlikely that any Ogier sailed with Luthair Paendrag, given the Longing would have made that a very dangerous trip. So there must have been Ogier and steddings in the lands Luthair and his followers settled on and conquered. These Ogier might have been very different than their counterparts on the other continent, just as the “Aes Sedai” in Seanchan were very different.

I’m not sure what I find more off-putting, Olver the baby horndog or the fact that Jordan has given us yet another powerful woman described as being petite, big-eyed, and with a childlike sort of beauty, who will end up romantically entangled with one of the main men. Sir, your kink is showing, and Tuon’s distress over not having a more commanding presence doesn’t really do anything to distract from the fact.

I am glad Mat is doing okay. I mean, he’s not doing great but the Seanchan arrival in Ebou Dar hasn’t actually made things worse for him. Tylin had already made him basically her sex prisoner, which is gross but at least it’s not a new grossness. And I really like Aludra and her friendship with him, so I’m excited to see her back—as long as that relationship doesn’t get weird and sexual, anyway. She’s a very interesting person, and I know she got kicked out of the Illuminator’s Guild because Rand blew up some of the fireworks, but it seems like there’s more in her background that might come up later.

Based on the comment about the bellfounder, I’d say she and Mat are on their way to inventing cannons. Mat is already thinking about how to shoot people with fireworks, and a person who casts bells in (I assume) iron or bronze would probably be able to make cannons. Such a weapon would be very useful against the Seanchan, and would deliver a destructive power that could, potentially, rival some of what the damane can do. 

It will be interesting to see if Mat and Tuon meet up soon, or if they are going to be ships in the night as she arrives in, and he escapes from, Ebou Dar. Ironically he’s just wondering if Tylin has turned him into the sort of man that women like to chase just as the woman he is destined to marry is sailing towards him.

It took me a moment to remember who the heck “the Macura woman” was, but I got there in the end. I guess Ronde hates Aes Sedai now because of what Nynaeve and Elayne did to her. Probably Elaida punished her as well, when she found out that Ronde had had the two in her grasp and lost them again. That’s very much her move, harshly punishing failure to the point where her attempt to enforce loyalty results instead in resentment, mistrust and even—as in this instance—betrayal. Ronde Macura on the side of the Seanchan is an alarming prospect. As a former member of the Yellow eyes-and-ears network she probably has useful information on the Aes Sedai, but more importantly, she can tell the Seanchan about forkroot. This knowledge could be very dangerous to any channelers that the Seanchan encounter, whether Aes Sedai, or Kin, or wilder, and could make them easier to catch and collar. It’s not a pleasant thought.

We’ll be sticking with Mat for the next two weeks as we continue on with Chapters 16 and 17. I haven’t read them yet, but I can guess that there will be hijinx and urban guerilla warfare against the Seanchan. And, possibly, a daring escape. I’m rooting for him, anyway, and the sooner he is out of Tylin’s sphere of influence, the better.

I am amused at the idea that there might be folks using Luca’s traveling show for cover again, though. And curious about why Luca doesn’t seem to like Mat at all.

A soaring albatross seemed to be following the Kidron, an omen of victory indeed, though the bird’s long wings were black instead of white. It must still mean the same thing. Omens did not change according to location.

Or… did they? [end-mark]

Lists movies

Five Films With Unexpected Genre Shifts

One minute you're watching a crime thriller or historical drama, and the next you're knee-deep in sci fi or horror...

By

Published on March 28, 2024

Collage featuring images from three films that contain genre twists

The vast majority of films remain the same genre (or the same mix of genres) throughout their entire runtime, but every so often a film that seems to be telling one kind of story switches to another part way through. There are, of course, a few films where this abrupt change is expected from the beginning: Anyone pressing play on James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), for instance, has it in the back of their mind that the romance between Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) is going to be rudely interrupted by an iceberg, turning the love story into a disaster/survival story.

Below I’ve compiled a list of five films which I think brilliantly execute unexpected genre shifts. Some may consider the following discussion of these films to be spoiler-y—I’ll try to avoid major plot points, but if you don’t want to know anything about the twists and turns of these films, consider yourself warned as I will mention (or at least hint at) the genre switch in each. (The same goes for the trailers below, most of which tease or reveal a bit more than you might expect…)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

I’m kicking this list off with one of the best-known genre shift films: Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn. The film starts off as a tense crime story, with brothers Seth (George Clooney) and Richie Gecko (Quentin Tarantino, who also wrote the screenplay) on the run for robbery and murder. Wanting to cross into Mexico, they kidnap a father (Harvey Keitel) who is vacationing with his two teenage children (Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu) and force the family to smuggle them across the border.

About halfway through the movie, the group make it to the Gecko brothers’ destination: the Titty Twister, an isolated strip club in the desert. There’s a palpable feeling that sh*t is going to hit the fan, but the form that sh*t takes completely changes the film’s genre. If you’ve managed to avoid the twist of this movie for all these years, then here’s your warning to stop reading…

It turns out that the Titty Twister is actually home to a group of bloodthirsty vampires who feast on their patrons, forcing our unlikely gang to work together to avoid becoming dinner. From this point on the film becomes an enjoyably violent B-movie; it’s pulpy, it’s bloody, and it’s full of fangs.

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

I’m a big fan of zombie movies, so I was down to watch One Cut of the Dead, which was written, directed, and edited by Shin’ichirô Ueda, just based on the zombie aspect; I had no idea going in that the film would be playing around with genre. Although some people think that the zombie genre is nothing but a mindless shambling corpse itself these days, I promise that One Cut of the Dead offers a fresh take.

The film starts with a single continuous shot that lasts 37 minutes. We follow a group of actors and crew as they attempt to make a low-budget zombie flick, which isn’t going so smoothly thanks to the demands of intense director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu). But his anger issues are soon eclipsed by the appearance of actual zombies. Desperate for the film to be a hit, Higurashi recklessly insists on keeping the camera rolling.

That’s all the plot I’m going to reveal, because this film really benefits from the element of surprise. Just trust me when I say that it becomes both innovative and funny, and while its first section may feel clunky, you’ll be rewarded if you stick with it—I even found myself wanting to restart it as soon as the credits rolled!

The Prestige (2006)

Personally I find Christopher Nolan’s films to be pretty hit or miss, but The Prestige is a definite hit in my eyes. Based on the novel by Christopher Priest and set during the Victorian era, this period drama film follows the bitter rivalry between two stage magicians, aristocratic Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and working-class Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). The animosity between the pair feels raw and real, and their various magic tricks are impressive and intriguing.

One trick in particular is more intriguing than all the others though, that being Borden’s “The Transported Man,” which sees him seemingly teleport across the stage. Angier is obsessed with finding out how this illusion is done and pulling that string eventually leads him to inventor Nikola Tesla (David Bowie—a truly brilliant casting choice). The film enters genre-switch territory at this point… and that genre can probably be guessed given the film’s inclusion of a fictionalized version of Tesla.

I can understand why the introduction of certain speculative elements might be off-putting to some who’d expected the film to continue as a psychological thriller (especially those unfamiliar with the original novel)—people who dislike The Prestige often cite it as one of their main criticisms, along with Angier and Borden’s destructive obsession making them unlikable characters (which I think is the point!). To each their own, but I leaned in to all the various twists and loved it.

Overlord (2018)

Overlord opens with an American paratrooper squad being shot down over France in a scene that is so chaotically brutal that it’s on par with battle scenes from Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Four surviving soldiers—played by Wyatt Russell, Jovan Adepo, John Magaro, and Iain De Caestecker—band together to complete their mission to destroy a Nazi-controlled radio tower near Normandy.

A good portion of this film plays like a typical World War II movie—there’s the evasion of Nazi forces, the infiltration of a base, and the befriending of a French villager—but the film eventually winds up in the realm of sci-fi and horror. Our soldiers discover that the Nazis are performing some disturbing scientific experiments—but what exactly those experiments are I’ll leave for you to discover.

All you need to know is that their scientific tinkering leads to some gory body horror, but it doesn’t feel that scary. Director Julius Averywent on to make The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) after all, so the scares tend to lean towards entertaining silliness rather than nightmare fuel.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk has a classic Western setup: it’s the late 1800s and the sheriff of a little town called Bright Hope must lead a rescue party into the wilderness after three people are captured by unknown (and allegedly cannibalistic) assailants.

For a while the film proceeds like a regular Western—there’s horses and campfires and shootouts, oh my! Our classically heroic Sheriff Hunt is played by Kurt Russell, who is always a joy to watch (particularly when he’s sporting fun facial hair!), but the posse soon develops an uneasy dynamic. There’s Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), who is well-meaning but perhaps a little too old for the mission, Arthur O’Dwyer (Patrick Wilson), who has a severely injured leg but insists on coming along because his wife is one of the abductees, and John Brooder (Matthew Fox), whose morals might not be quite in the line with the others.

Once the film hits its third act, things take a turn for the truly horrific. Now, it’s fair to say that classic Westerns tend to have a lot of killing in them, but it’s not usually can’t-look-at-the-screen grisly. Bone Tomahawk, on the hand, offers up such gruesomely stomach-churning visuals that it turns into a full-on horror movie. If that sounds like your can of campfire beans, enjoy!


Have you got any recommendations of films that succeed in pulling off an effective or surprising genre shift? Drop them in the comments below![end-mark]