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Alasdair Stuart

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The Losers’ Club, ’90s Edition: Looking Back at the First Adaptation of It

Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:00am 6 comments Favorite This

The new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It is already breaking records, with a massive opening weekend following a wave of positive early reviews. The story of seven childhood friends who are brought together by their shared fight against an ancient evil, and then reunite decades later to finish the job, it’s still justifiably regarded as one of King’s best. There are moments that don’t work, some that are frankly baffling (and if you’ve read the book, the moment you’re thinking of? Yeah, me too), but the core of the story remains rock solid. So much so that even first adaptation of the book—the 1990 TV mini-series starring Tim Curry—holds up pretty well, too.

I rewatched it a few days ago for the first time since 1990. It was one of those boundary shows for me, when it first aired; I was just old enough to get away with seeing some of it but not everything. That actually made it even better; getting fleeting glimpses of the Derry streets and a couple of moments with Pennywise. In fact I have a very distinct memory of the first Pennywise sighting but that’s about it. It was part of the shadowy coastline of grown-up entertainment and while I was heading there as fast as I could, in 1990 I still had a ways to go before I could properly approach It.

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It’s 20 Years Since the End of the World in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Tue Sep 5, 2017 10:00am 15 comments Favorite This

Happy belated anniversary of Judgment Day, everyone! August 29th, 1997 was the day that Skynet became self-aware and ended the world, according to 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Or at least, it was one of several Judgment Days, depending on which timeline you follow. If there’s one thing the Terminator franchise’s refusal to die has taught us, it’s that the End of the World is a movable feast.

Judgment Day remains a high-water mark for action movies even today and it’s easy to see why. The freeway chase and Cyberdyne sequences in particular are still among the best action scenes Western cinema has ever put on the screen, and you can’t deny either Cameron’s ambition or how well it’s executed in this film. But, the excellence of its many action scenes aside, T2 as a whole has aged in a wildly variable number of ways, and some aspects hold up far, far better than others.

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Naked Alien Vampires: Lifeforce, Tobe Hooper’s Overlooked Horror Classic

Thu Aug 31, 2017 10:00am 6 comments 1 Favorite [+]

Another horror veteran, Tobe Hooper, passed away over the weekend. Hooper is best known for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, and for good reason: in entirely different ways, those two movies have done as much to influence contemporary horror cinema as the equally great, equally missed, George A. Romero’s body of work. Texas Chainsaw Massacre pioneered the true age of gore (and implied gore) in horror and remains an acknowledged classic. Poltergeist set the template for suburban family in peril stories that would echo down the decades and become instrumental in the eventual success of the Blumhouse model (the company behind the Paranormal Activity and Purge movies, as well as Get Out).

My favourite example of Hooper’s work, however, is 1985’s Lifeforce—and I can think of no better way to celebrate his legacy than taking another look at the film.

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Charting Charlize Theron’s Quiet, Steady Rise to SFF Stardom

Tue Aug 8, 2017 10:00am 6 comments 2 Favorites [+]
Atomic Blonde (2017) Charlize Theron

Atomic Blonde, starring Charlize Theron, is an adaptation of the excellent graphic novel The Coldest City, by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. Along with its prequel, The Coldest Winter, it’s one of the best period espionage stories you’ll read. The movie, directed by David Leitch, is stylistically very different, but both versions of the story complement one another. Atomic Blonde also provides explosive, highly entertaining proof that action movies have finally begun to evolve again. After years of the hyper-caffeinated shakycam approach pioneered by Paul Greengrass in the Bourne movies, things have begun to change. That change pretty much boils down to three steps:

  • Get excellent fight choreographers and stunt drivers in.
  • Train your leads to do as much, safely, as they can themselves.
  • Sandbag the camera down and let them have some fun.

The fight choreography, in Leitch’s John Wick movies especially, warms the bruised knees of my black little Judoka heart and I’ve been so happy to see that style expand out to Atomic Blonde.

But of course, Atomic Blonde is only the latest outing in Theron’s quietly extensive genre career.

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Paying Tribute, Long Overdue, to Horror Icon George A. Romero (1940-2017)

Mon Jul 17, 2017 2:30pm 3 comments 1 Favorite [+]

George A. Romero, the father of the modern movie zombie, passed away last night. Modern horror, of every stripe, has lost a Titan. A Titan who ultimately fell victim to the ubiquity of his own biggest, most successful idea.

Romero got his start directing commercials and short segments for TV, one of the earliest being one for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. That adaptability and versatility stood him in good stead as he prepared to direct his first film. Released in 1968, Night of the Living Dead was Romero’s debut feature film and remains one of the all-time great horror classics.

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The Moment Has Been Prepared For: Jodie Whittaker and the Future of Doctor Who

Mon Jul 17, 2017 1:00pm 30 comments 8 Favorites [+]

As I write this, the announcement has just been made that Jodie Whittaker will be the Thirteenth Doctor. She’s the first woman in the show’s history to (officially) take on the role, and as I mentioned earlier in the year it’s a change which, now more than any other time in Doctor Who’s run, is desperately needed.

That’s the intellectual response.

The emotional response has involved jumping up and down, typing in ALL CAPS, and getting slightly weepy.

Because here’s the thing: change is hard. Always. And for a show that’s based around the twin concepts of change and mortality, Doctor Who has been very reluctant to embrace change in terms of its casting philosophy. While the idea of the Doctor being female has been in the show’s DNA from the start, it’s never been seen on screen.

Until now.

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Laura Lam on Flawed Utopias, Sun-Drenched Noir, and the Future of Publishing

Wed Jun 28, 2017 9:00am 1 comment Favorite This

Laura Lam’s newest novel, Shattered Minds, is a journey to the exact sort of utopia that I like—namely, a complex, untidy one. Her Pacifica novels explore a future that’s ideal but not idealized and what happens when people fall, or sometimes, jump, between the cracks.

I talked to her about Shattered Minds, Pacifica, the Micah Gray books, and more…

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Transformers: The Last Knight Isn’t Good, But There’s Still Some Hope for the Franchise

Tue Jun 27, 2017 1:00pm 7 comments 1 Favorite [+]

Let’s cut to the chase up front—Transformers: The Last Knight isn’t very good. At all.

It manages to sidestep the stultifying narrative incoherence of Age of Extinction and a good dose of the weird cruelty of Dark of the Moon, but runs headlong into the massive racial stereotypes of Revenge of the Fallen and the bloated running length of the entire franchise to date.

There’s a three headed robotic dragon in the movie. Somehow it’s still dull.

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Idris Elba Is So Damn Good in Genre Roles

Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:00am 11 comments 6 Favorites [+]

With The Dark Tower hitting cinemas this year, his directorial debut Yardie having just finished principle photography, and John Luther set to fight London’s most twisted crime in an upcoming fifth season, Idris Elba is in the middle of a very prolific year. Elba’s always great, but some of his very best work to date has been in genre films, where he never fails to bring authority, humor, and intelligence to the role. Here are some of my favorites.

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Heart and Humor Made the Brendan Fraser Mummy Movies Great — Can the Dark Universe Reboot Match Them?

Fri Jun 9, 2017 12:00pm 23 comments 4 Favorites [+]

The Mummy is one of those monsters you just can’t keep down. The original Universal Monsters series of films ran from 1932 to 1955 and less than a decade later the bandaged one rose again, this time on the other side of the Atlantic. The Hammer series initially riffed off of Universal’s The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb but soon became their own shambling, unkillable beast, and like all Hammer flicks the worst they ever get is still pretty fun. They’re no Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter but then again, what is? Clive Barker even took a run at bringing the Mummy back to life but it never quite came to fruition. There’s a whole book to be written about Barker’s near-misses with horror franchises but his take on The Mummy is the one I’d honestly most like to have seen. Being Barker, the approach to the material would have been violent and sexy and “would have been a great low-budget movie,” in his own words. There’s an excellent Cinescape article that covers the never-made Barker film in their May 1999 issue.

Instead of Barker’s version, though, we eventually got a loose remake of the 1932 original, written and directed by Stephen Sommers in 1999. The Mummy and its sequels, The Mummy Returns and (perhaps to a lesser extent) Tomb of the Dragon Emperor helped to set the early 21st century’s gold standard for action cinema.

[These movies are FUN.]

Children, Victims, Monsters: Two Tales of Youth and Brutal Violence on the Moors

Tue Jun 6, 2017 12:30pm Post a comment Favorite This

I recently read Chalk by Paul Cornell and Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski in quick succession and both left marks. Chalk centers on the reminiscences of Andrew Waggoner, looking back on the horrific bullying he suffered at school and the equally horrific, possibly supernatural, action he took in revenge. Six Stories is a podcast in book form, interviewing six people connected to the still unexplained death of a teenager found out on the moors in the early 1990s.

Both books are fiercely clever examinations of rural adolescence and the things it can do to you. I saw familiar beats in both, recognised characters between the narratives, but most of all, I was captivated by the fictional space they share. The setting of Six Stories is left a little geographically ambiguous but the moors that Waggoner rampages across are in Wiltshire. It’s hard not to feel their calm, vast spaces are the extrusion into the novel’s space of the metafictional common ground it shares with Six Stories. That common ground, and what really happens when you go wild in the country, is what we’ll be looking at here…

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Netflix Seems Set on Alienating Fans by Cancelling Sense8 and Renewing Iron Fist

Mon Jun 5, 2017 12:00pm 48 comments 11 Favorites [+]

Netflix has been batting a thousand recently. Since making their first steps into original programming, the streaming service has produced a seemingly constant river of shows that have never been less than interesting and frequently brilliant. They’ve even done this across multiple genres and formats; their documentary strands are flat out astounding, and Abstract and Mind of a Chef stand as two of the best documentaries being made in the West right now. Their comedies have taken in a range of styles and approaches with Grace and Frankie and Love standing out, in particular. Their TV remake/reboot of Dear White People is the single best written piece of TV you’ll see this year. Their dramas are, across the board, great: Bloodline, Marco Polo, 13 Reasons Why. All these shows have wildly different audiences, and all these shows take wildly different approaches. While some, 13 Reasons Why in particular, have caused controversy, there isn’t a single one that hasn’t had a rock solid artistic vision.

But now, Netflix have made the first legitimately massive mistake of their original streaming content era.

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Remember When the Pirates of the Caribbean Movies Were Fun?

Tue May 30, 2017 4:00pm 5 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (aka: Salazar’s Revenge) hit theaters over the weekend. It’s the fifth movie in a series that arguably should have finished after the third one, and it’s coming out at a time when its star is not so much in decline as plummeting back down to Earth in flames. Enthusiasm for the franchise as a whole, is…well…it’s actually still relatively massive given that the previous film, On Stranger Tides, took just over a billion dollars at the box office. But despite that, Dead Men Tell No Tales is a movie that no one seems quite sure they really wanted.

So I figured now would be a perfect time to take a look at what made the first movies work and if they still stand up…turns out, they do!

Mostly.

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Sarah Gailey on Heists, Hope, Feral Hippos, and Defiantly Joyful Characters

Tue May 30, 2017 2:00pm 4 comments Favorite This

Sarah Gailey’s debut novella, River of Teeth, is now out. This means that one of my favourite novellas this decade is now available to the public. You really, really should check it out. It’s a fiercely creative, very funny, very smart and gleefully subversive Western. Which is also an action movie. And a heist story. And features hippos. I talked to her about these things and much more.

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