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News The Monkey

Stephen King’s The Monkey Adaptation Wraps Production, Announces Full Cast, Including Elijah Wood and Tatiana Maslany

If you find a mysterious toy in an attic, leave it there

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Published on March 28, 2024

Orphan Black 4x01 "The Collapse of Nature" television review Beth Childs

It’s been almost a year since we found out that Stephen King’s short story, “The Monkey,” was getting a feature adaptation starring The White Lotus’ Theo James.

Today, Deadline broke the news that the project, directed by Osgood Perkins (Longlegs) and produced by Malignant, Aquaman, and The Conjuring filmmaker James Wan, wrapped up production. The outlet also reported on who else will be in the film besides James, and it’s an impressive line-up that includes Tatiana Maslany (pictured above in Orphan Black), Elijah Wood (Yellowjackets), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys), and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).

Here’s the official synopsis of The Monkey, which hews closely to King’s original tale:

Twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths starts occurring all around them. The brothers decide to throw the monkey away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years. But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them.

In the film, James plays the adult versions of the twins while Convery plays the younger versions. We don’t have news on who the other cast members are playing, though I’m eager to find out.

We also don’t know when the film will make its way to our eyeballs, but given production has ended, it’s looking like it might be later this year or early next. [end-mark]

News Red vs. Blue

Halo Parody Series Red vs. Blue to End after 21 Years with New Feature Release

Who will … win? Can anyone win this?

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Published on March 28, 2024

Soldier in Red vs. Blue: Restoration

After twenty-one years, the Rooster Teeth Halo parody Red vs. Blue is officially coming to an end. In a little over a month, the final installment, an eighty-seven-minute feature titled Red vs. Blue: Restoration, will become available for digital purchase and promises to give an ending to the series that started before YouTube was even a thing.

Red vs. Blue takes place in the Halo universe and centers on two teams of soldiers—a Red team and a Blue team—who are in perpetual battle with each other. Their skirmishes under the questionable leadership of Church and Sarge are tinted with comedic, often absurd, moments.

Here’s the nondescriptive synopsis for Restoration:

When the universe’s greatest villain returns in a terrifying new form, old adversaries, the Reds and Blues of Blood Gulch, will have to set aside their differences to save the galaxy one last time.

Warner Bros. Discovery officially shut Rooster Teeth down earlier this month, so this installment—four years since the last one in the series—will likely be the last project from the studio.

Rooster Teeth co-founder Burnie Burns came back to pen the script for Red vs. Blue: Restoration, with Matt Hullum directing the feature.

“I’m thrilled to return for Red vs. Blue: Restoration and to conclude this incredible twenty-one-year journey with our longtime fans,” Burns said in a statement to Variety.

Red vs. Blue has been a cornerstone of Rooster Teeth’s legacy,” added Hullum. “We’re immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished together.”

Red vs. Blue: Restoration is being distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment and will be available for purchase on digital, with a price tag of $14.99, starting on May 7, 2024. It will be available to rent on digital for $4.99 starting May 21.

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

Even alternate history can’t stop this man from creating something kinder than what we’ve got.

Summary

The raiders arrive before dawn, and Mau has the alarm rung and brings his plan to fruition. Cox is in charge of the Raiders now as they feared, but it seems they’ve seen the cannons, so they want to talk. Mau knows they won’t talk to him because he looks like a boy with no tattoos even though he’s chief. He plans to send Milo or Pilu to speak. Cox talks to Daphne, tells her that he’s the new chief, and he’s teaching the heathens to speak his language. Daphne thinks the Raiders look just like men who work directly beneath the king, the ones who know it’s better to be advising the top than be at the top. She talks to Mau and finds out that only one cannon works and they only have gunpowder enough for one shot, but they use that shot to scare the group into single combat, chief against chief. The Raiders are panicked, so Cox agrees to the fight, thinking he’ll get to shoot Milo. Milo steps forward and announce that Mau is their chief, risen from the country of Locaha itself. The Raider priest steps forward to ask questions, disbelieving, but Daphne has all the right answers about Locaha’s country. It makes the priest nervous.

Daphne tries to talk Mau out of the fight because Cox has a revolver and another gun, at least seven shots he can fire before reloading, while Mau only has a spear and knife. He won’t hear of any dissent, however. They are both required to lay their weapons down and the fight begins when one of them reaches for theirs. Because that is the only rule, Mau reaches first for sand and throws it into Cox’s eyes. He runs toward the lagoon, remembering that guns don’t like water. He dives in and Cox continues to fire at him, only managing to hit his ear. Mau ducks under a tree in the lagoon, and Cox reloads the pistol while Mau finds an old axe he buried in the tree during practice as a boy. Cox tells him that the sharks are coming and he wants to watch them feast, but he’s getting frustrated, spending all his bullets. Mau comes up with the axe, hits Cox straight in the chest, and the man falls into the water, just in time for the sharks. Mau goes to the Raiders and tells them to bring their captives to shore and leave. When he comes to later, he learns that Daphne has been performing surgery on the wounded captives using the manual she found on Sweet Judy. The Unknown Woman seems like a completely different person, with a name now—she found her husband with the captives.

Daphne asks Mau if he would go back to a world without the wave if he could, but Mau cannot answer. There are two versions of himself, but this is who he is now. Daphne enjoys her life here and doesn’t want to leave it, but a ship has arrived. Daphne’s father is here, and she tells him about all the things that have happened to her, then brings him to the cave to show him all that Mau’s people have accomplished. Her father isn’t convinced and demands that she use scientific theory to back up her claims; he knows that others will try and disprove this. Daphne makes him promise that they won’t take anything from this place, that if others want to see it, they’ll need to make the journey, not steal away the Nation’s ancestral heritage. Daphne gets to spend nearly two weeks showing her father the island and helping him to learn that language. They play cricket with the Nation’s people. And then the Cutty Wren finds them. They explain to Daphne’s father that he’s king now and they need to do a cursory coronation right here. They’ve brought Daphne’s grandmother. But once the coronation is done, Daphne’s father finds his courage and manages to tell his mother to be silent and not insult their island hosts.

Cookie did indeed survive in his coffin at sea, and is reunited with Daphne. Daphne’s father gives the Nation the option to join the British Empire willingly, but Mau’s doesn’t want that; he wants to join the Royal Society, and says they will welcome all men of science to their island. In return, he will give the king the gold door to their sacred place of record. They ask for a telescope and a large ship the size of Sweet Judy filled with books and salted beef and other things. Mau also asks the scientists who comes to the island share their knowledge, and they ask for someone to teach them more about medicine. A week later, the king is loaded onto his boat. Mau shows Daphne that he has received his tattoos, and they say goodbye, despite wanting nothing of the sort—they both must go where they are needed. And then we move forward to Today, where an old man is telling this story to two children on the island. They learn that Daphne became queen and married a man from Holland, and that they died within two months of each other—and Daphne demanded to be buried at sea where he was. The children ask if he believes in Imo, and the old man tells them that he “just believes.”

Commentary

It’s killing me, y’all. Because he did it again.

We’re not even reading the Discworld, but Pratchett can’t stop himself. He created an alternate history to the world he lives in, and he made it to give us a kinder world. A world in which an island nation is protected from the horrors of imperialism because the princess of England (who rightly never believed she had any chance of becoming royalty at all) lived among its people and was clever enough and humane enough to understand how they should be treated.

Daphne takes her father to the temple and he makes literally every argument that colonizers make about why this place should be stripped and transported elsewhere. He says “it belongs to the world,” and Daphne tells him that is thinking like a thief because she knows that ‘belonging to the world’ to her people means ‘stolen and displayed at home.’ He tells her that the island is far away from anywhere important, and she tells him that this place holds import. He tells her that some will argue that the spectacles she found there were left by previous European explorers, and she tells him that they couldn’t have come here before because all the gold is still there. She makes this argument before she knows that she and her father will have the power to make that choice on behalf of their people, which is relevant only because it lets the reader know where her morals reside. But it’s likely that without this twist of fate, there would have been nothing they could do to protect Mau and his people from the rest of the world or England itself.

But this book already started with the end of the world. It couldn’t end that way too. And it deserves marking because how often are alternate histories used to examine the worst options history had on offer? Nearly every time?

Not this time.

And it’s never done in a trite way that robs the story of meaning. The works is still hard, the thinking still needs to be done, and no one escapes without pain. There’s just that little golden lining at the end to reward people for trying their hardest and putting in the time.

It occurs to me that Mau is exactly like Nawi—over time, he learned to use his disability (in this case, his lack of soul) to his advantage. Because that manner of difference often gives a person a unique vantage point on the world and their place within it. And it’s poignant as always that the fight against Cox at the end takes up practically no time because that’s not where the meat of the story resides; Cox is simply the obstacle, and not a very absorbing one at that. He needs to be stopped, but his cruelty doesn’t merit our time or deep thoughts. There’s nothing interesting about evil, to paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin.

In the end we come to a meditation on belief with the old man, a great-great-great-great-grandson of Pilu, living in present day. The children keep asking if he believes in Imo, and he gives them a lot of answers that aren’t yes or no. Until finally, he says:

“I just believe. You know, in things generally. That works, too.”

I’m trying to put my finger on a thing, because this is pretty much exactly how I wish we handled religion of any sort, including the kind we make up for ourselves outside of institutions. It’s sort of the faith-based version of “Strong opinions, lightly held,” if that makes any sense? And I find it far more comforting than any answer-based faith can possibly be. Believe in things, generally. Which is to say, not specifically, and not virulently. Believe in some stuff, to exist. That works, too.

And I come back around to the question of whether or not this is Pratchett’s best book. He believed it was, which is all that matters as far as he is concerned—because belief is how we’re made up. Do I think it’s the best? Well, no, but part of the reason for that is I’ve never really liked “best” as a marker. It’s too broad. But this book is beautiful, and I’m glad to have read it. Which is really the best any author can ask for at the end of the day. To write something worth reading. In that, Pratchett never had to worry overmuch.

Asides and little thoughts

  • When I started the book, I didn’t think I’d care too much about whether or not the parrot made it, but by the end I was so glad? It needs to live to fight the grandfather birds another day.
  • A number of famous scientists get name-dropped for having visited the island in the modern-day section, including Einstein, Patrick Moore, and Carl Sagan. Darwin, too, of course. He liked the octopuses.

Pratchettisms

That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men.

All that mattered was this: If you don’t dare to think you might, you won’t.

They saw that the perfect world is a journey, not a place.

No one should call anyone delightful without written proof.

“No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.”

“No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.”

Next week we’re back to Discworld with Unseen Academicals! We’ll read up to:

He was amazed that he had even asked the question. Things were changing. [end-mark]

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

By

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]

News Rebecca Yarros

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

The dragons return in 2025

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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]

News War Machine

Reacher’s Alan Ritchson to Star in Action Sci-Fi Film War Machine

By

Published on March 27, 2024

Alan Ritchson in Reacher

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]

Lists rabbits

24 Bunnies (and Other Strange, Rabbit-Type Creatures) in SFF

We’re paying tribute to some of the more memorable bunnies and assorted rabbit-like creatures, from cuddly cartoons to pure nightmare fuel…

By

Published on March 29, 2024

Images of 5 rabbit-like creatures from genre fiction: Frank from Donnie Darko; the were-rabbit from Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; Elwood P Dowd and Harvey from Harvey; Bugs Bunny; and Anya dressed as a rabbit in Buffy The Vampire Slayer

In the folklore of various cultures and ancient civilizations, rabbits have long represented a kind of Trickster figure. In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology, rabbits live on the moon. The Aztecs worshipped a group of deities known as the Centzon Tōtōchtin, a group of 400 hard-partying rabbits who were the gods of drunkenness. And in a slightly more recent mythos, bunnies were the bête noir of a certain thousand-year-old former vengeance demon.

As we head into Easter weekend, I’d like to take a minute to revisit this venerable list—slightly updated, once again—paying tribute to some of the more memorable bunnies and assorted rabbit-like creatures who have hopped, time-traveled, and occasionally slaughtered their way through science fiction and fantasy, beginning (in no particular order), with everybody’s favorite hard-drinking, invisible lagomorph…

Harvey

Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, Harvey embodies everything strange and brilliant and wonderful about classic Hollywood. Jimmy Stewart stars as good-natured kook Elwood P. Dowd, who spends his days at his favorite bar in the company of his best friend, Harvey, an invisible, six foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall talking rabbit. Technically speaking, Harvey is a pooka (or púca), “a benign but mischievous creature” from Celtic mythology with a pronounced fondness for social misfits—but since he takes the form of a giant rabbit, he totally makes the list. Driven by Stewart’s delightful and deeply touching performance, Harvey is a lighthearted comedy with unexpected depths, an inspiring piece of fantasy that celebrates the triumph of a kind-hearted nonconformist over worldly cynicism and the pressures of respectability.

Bunnicula

Covers of three books from the Bunnicula series

In 1979’s Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, the Monroe family find a baby rabbit one dark and stormy night during a screening of Dracula, but the family’s other pets are suspicious of the furry foundling, with its strange markings and fang-like teeth. When vegetables start turning up mysteriously drained of their juice, the family cat springs into action with the zeal of a fanatical, feline Van Helsing. Chronicling the adventures of the Monroes through the eyes of Harold, the family dog, the Bunnicula series spun off into seven books, ending in 2006 with Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow (although my favorite title in the series has always been The Celery Stalks at Midnight). There’s even a cartoon series based on the books, which ran for three seasons between 2016 and 2018.

Frank (Donnie Darko)

Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko quickly gained a huge cult following after it was released in 2001 (and since then seems to have generated a certain amount of backlash), but whether you love it or think it’s completely overrated, I think we can all agree that Frank is probably the creepiest rabbit-type-thing on this list, appearing to the title character in a series of visions like in the form of some kind of menacing demon-alien terror bunny. According to many readings of the film, creepy rabbit Frank is actually the dead, time-travelling version of his sister’s boyfriend, Frank, who is manipulating Donnie into saving the universe. Okay, it’s complicated—if you want a rundown of the film’s timeline, go here—but all you really need to know is that if Frank shows up on your doorstep with a basket of Peeps and jellybeans, you should probably run for the hills and don’t look back. (The movie also gets a bonus point for employing Echo & the Bunnymen so effectively in its opening scene…)

Hazel, Fiver, et al. (Watership Down)

Richard Adams’ brilliant heroic fantasy features a group of anthropomorphic rabbits complete with their own folklore, mythology, language, and poetry. Jo Walton has discussed the book at length, although I was initially introduced to Fiver, Hazel, and company through the animated film version; as a seven-year-old, I found it equal parts disturbing and fascinating (and I’m apparently not the only one—in writing this post I ran across a Facebook group called “Watership Down (the film) traumatized me as a kid!”). Maybe it’s not surprising, then, that both the book and its film adaptation are discussed in Donnie Darko

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog probably needs no introduction—in the immortal words of Tim the Enchanter, it’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on. Apparently inspired by a medieval carving on the façade of France’s Amiens Cathedral (in which the vice of cowardice is represented by a knight fleeing from a rabbit), this scene is now a permanent contender for the title of greatest two minutes in bunny-related movie comedy history…

Roger Rabbit

Gary K. Wolf’s original novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is significantly different from the blockbuster Disney hit it was eventually turned into. For example, the novel was set in the present day (and not the 1940s), the cartoon characters interacting with humans are mostly drawn from comic strips (like Dick Tracy, Garfield, and Life in Hell), and not classic animated cartoons… and Roger Rabbit? He’s actually dead (see also: creepy Frank, above). Roger gets murdered early on in the book, leaving private eye Eddie Valiant to track down his killer. Apparently, Steven Spielberg and Disney weren’t so into the whole dead-cartoon-rabbit thing, and so the character was resurrected and a monster hit was born (along with at least one amazing dance move).

The White Rabbit and the March Hare (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

I’ve always thought of the White Rabbit as a bit of a pill; he’s neurotic and occasionally pompous and always in a hurry, but it’s hard to deny his pop cultural notoriety. “White Rabbit” has been a trippy byword for psychedelic drug use since the 1960s, as well as a recurring trope in both Lost and the Matrix movies (apparently, he moonlights as a harbinger of not-very-satisfying conclusions…). The March Hare, on the other hand, is simply certifiable (Lewis Carroll was playing on the English expression “mad as a March hare,” making him the perfect companion for a certain wacky, riddle-loving Hatter). In the book, it’s the Hare, not the Rabbit, that loves to party—and maybe they were only drinking tea when Alice first encounters the March Hare, but something tells me he would fit right in with a certain clique of ancient Aztec party bunnies…

Gargantuan Mutant Killer Rabbits (Night of the Lepus)

Based on the Australian science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, the movie version moved the setting to Arizona, leaving the book’s satirical elements behind while retaining the basic premise: giant, mutant carnivorous rabbits threatening humans. Released in 1972, Night of the Lepus was a monumental flop, completely panned by critics for its horrible plot, premise, direction, acting, and special effects, and for utterly failing to make giant bunnies seem scary (presumably forcing audiences to wait with bated breath another six years before they could be properly traumatized by the film version of Watership Down).

Dragonfly Bunny Spirits (The Legend of Korra)

Scene from The Legend of Kora featuring Jinora and several dragonfly bunny spirits
Image: Nickelodeon

Anyone familiar with Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra know that the world of the avatars is full of amazing, often adorable creatures (baby saber-tooth moose lions, anyone?). But even with all the competition, Furry-Foot and the other dragonfly bunny spirits rate pretty high on the all-time cuteness scale. Since they generally do not appear to people unless they sense a strong spiritual connection, the dragonfly bunny spirits were initially only visible to Jinora (the young daughter of Tenzin/granddaughter of Aang and Katara). Eventually, Jinora urged the spirits to reveal themselves to Tenzin, Korra, Bumi, and the rest of her family, and they helped the group gain access to the spirit world. When exposed to negative energy, dragonfly bunny spirits may turn into dark spirits, but otherwise make great pets and I totally want one.

Jaxxon (Star Wars)

Three Star Wars comic book covers featuring the character Jaxxon

For those of you who might not be familiar with the Lepi (Lepus carnivorus), they are the sassy sentient rabbits of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, native to the planet Coachelle Prime (although their rapid breeding rate quickly led them to colonize their entire star system, because…rabbits.) Jaxxon is probably the most famous member of the species—a smuggler, Jax joined Han Solo in defending a village under attack along with several other mercenaries, collectively known as the Star-Hoppers of Aduba-3. The Star-Hoppers fended off the superior forces of the Cloud-Riders and defeated the Behemoth from the World Below, saving the village, after which Jaxxon returned to smuggling and his ship, the Rabbit’s Foot. Having fallen into relative obscurity over the years, he was one of the first characters created outside of the films for the Marvel Star Wars comic series, as an homage to Bugs Bunny (who often addressed random strangers as “Jackson” in the old Warner Brothers cartoons… hence the name.)

The Were-Rabbit (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit)

As part of his humane pest control business, eccentric inventor Wallace attempts to brainwash a group of rabbits out of stealing vegetables, but during the process things go awry and Wallace ends up with one of the bunnies fused to his head. His highly intelligent dog, Gromit, saves the day (as usual), but afterwards both Wallace and the rescued rabbit (now called “Hutch”) exhibit strange behavior. It’s not long before the village is being terrorized by a giant, vegetable-crazed Were-Rabbit, and Wallace and Gromit must solve the mystery before the monster can ruin the annual Giant Vegetable Competition… and if you haven’t seen this movie, you probably should. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was only the second non-American movie to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and it was the very first stop-motion film to win, which is pretty impressive. Plus it’s chock-full of claymation bunnies, of course.

Willahara (Grimm)

Speaking of were-rabbits, the Willahara are a form of Wesen, magical beings whose true form can be seen by the supernaturally gifted humans known as Grimms. As featured in the episode “Bad Luck” (S4, Ep. 14) the Willahara woge into humanoid fur-covered rabbits, essentially, known for being gentle, passive, and very fertile. It’s this last characteristic that leads to Willaharas being hunted—in the show’s twist on the superstition about rabbit feet being lucky objects, Nick (the titular Grimm) and his crew must stop a murderer targeting Willaharas (and using their severed feet as a grisly fertility aid. So… yikes.)

Peppy Hare (Star Fox)

Okay, full disclosure: I’ve never actually played Star Fox, but when I mentioned this post to Chris and Sarah here in the offices, they immediately started yelling about Peppy Hare and wouldn’t stop playing clips of all his weird wingman advice and catchphrases until I added him to the list. So here we go: Peppy Hare is a member of the original Star Fox team who serves as a mentor to the game’s protagonist, Fox McCloud. According to Chris and Sarah, Peppy is way more awesome than the team’s other wingmen, Slippy Toad (who is “the worst”) and Falco Lombardi (who does nothing but criticize, even when you save his life. Jerk.) Peppy wants you to do a barrel roll. Always. You should probably listen to him.

Miyamoto Usagi (Usagi Yojimbo)

Three covers of Usagi Yojimbo comic collections

Created by Stan Sakai in the early 1980s, Usagi Yojimbo follows the adventures of Miyamoto Usagi, a rabbit ronin, as he wanders about on a warrior’s pilgrimage, occasionally serving as a bodyguard. Set in Japan during the early Edo period, the series was lauded for its attention to detail in terms of period architecture, weaponry, clothing, etc., and drew heavily on Japanese samurai films (particularly the work of Akira Kurosawa, given the title) as well as Japanese history and folklore. Based on the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, Usagi is a formidable warrior in adorable rabbit form, and is frequently ranked among the greatest comic book characters of all time (by Wizard magazine, Empire magazine, and IGN, among others).

Max (Sam & Max)

Described as a weird “hyperkinetic rabbity thing,” Max is the smaller, more aggressive member of the infamous crime-fighting duo known as Sam and Max: Freelance Police. Along with Sam, a wisecracking, fedora-wearing dog, Max works as a private investigator with a healthy disrespect for the law; where Sam is grounded and professional, Max is gleefully violent and maybe a tad psychotic (in a fun way!) He’s a lagomorph who gets things done, and you really don’t want to mess with him. Sam & Max have attracted a rabid cult following over the years, initially appearing in comics, then a series of video games and TV series in the late 90s—I first encountered them in the now-classic LucasArts adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road, which I can’t recommend highly enough—12-year-old me was a little obsessed with it, back in the day, and I’m pretty sure it holds up, even now….

Basil Stag Hare (Redwall)

Fans of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series will recognize this handsome gentleman as Basil Stag Hare of the Fur and Foot Fighting Patrol. A loyal ally and expert in camouflage, Basil assists Matthias and the other denizens of Redwall Abbey when trouble threatens, playing a key role in several rescue missions, and is known for both his appetite and his battle cry, “Give ‘em blood and vinegar!”

Bucky O’Hare

The eponymous hero of his own comic book series as well as an animated TV series and several video games, Bucky O’Hare is the captain of The Righteous Indignation, a spaceship in service of the United Animals Federation. The Federation is run by mammals and exists in a parallel universe from our own, where they are at war with the evil Toad Empire (ruled by a sinister computer system known as KOMPLEX, which has brainwashed all the toads. Natch.) In both the original comics and the spin-off media, Bucky fearlessly leads his crew—which includes a telepathic cat, a four-armed pirate duck, a Berserker Baboon, a one-eyed android named Blinky, and a presumably confused pre-teen who becomes stranded in “the Aniverse”—against the rising toad menace. Rumors that he may be closely related to Jaxxson remain unconfirmed…

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!

Three covers of Captain Carrot comic books

While this DC Comics series only lasted from 1982 to 1983, this wacky band of characters still make occasional cameos in the DC universe, appeared in an arc of Teen Titans, and a reprint of their entire 26 issue series was released in September 2014. Captain Carrot (aka Roger Rodney Rabbit of Gnu York—no relation to the other Roger, presumably) leads the intrepid Zoo Crew ask they face an array of sinister anthropomorphic villains and, apparently, a world filled with animal-related puns (there’s a character named after Burt Reynolds. His name is “Byrd Rentals.” He gains superpowers when a meteor fragment strikes his hot tub and becomes Rubberduck.) Captain Carrot, on the other hand, replenishes his powers by eating cosmic carrots, gaining super-strength, heightened senses, endurance, and of course, super-leaping abilities.

Mr. Herriman (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends)

The oldest imaginary friend at Foster’s, Mr. Herriman is a stickler for the rules, is well-meaning but often pompous, and can generally come off as a bit stiff (although he also has a wild-and-crazy hippy-esque alter ego named “Hairy,” so at least he gets to let loose sometimes). A six-foot-tall rabbit sporting formal wear, a monocle, and a top hat, the very proper, very English Mr. Herriman is obsessed with keeping order and protecting Madame Foster, who created him when she was a small child in the 1930s. He remains singularly devoted to his creator, even deigning to perform the “Funny Bunny” song and dance that delighted her as a girl (but only behind closed doors, where no one can see him cavorting about…)

Binky, Bongo, Sheba, et al. (Life in Hell)

Cover of The Big Book of Hell by Matt Groening
Image: Matt Groening

You can’t really separate the Simpsons from their origins in Life in Hell, the long-running comic strip dedicated to Matt Groening’s ruminations on life, love, work, death, and all the fear, humor, irritations, and anxiety that existence entails. Beginning in 1977, Groening’s comics centered on the rabbit Binky (generally neurotic and depressed) and his son Bongo (a young one-eared rabbit, full of mischief, curiosity, and inconvenient questions), as well as Binky’s girlfriend Sheba and identical humans Akbar & Jeff. Groening would also represent himself and his sons Will and Abe in rabbit form in the strip, which finally ended its run in 2012. Often darker, weirder, and more introspective than The Simpsons, I loved reading the Life in Hell books and comics in the free Philadelphia City Paper as a kid—Groening’s rabbits were both funny and oddly therapeutic, perfect for weird kids, smartass teens, and stressed-out adults alike.

Suzy, Jack, and Jane (David Lynch’s Trio of Humanoid Rabbits, Rabbits / Inland Empire)

In 2002, David Lynch released a series of avante-garde video films featuring a trio of humanoid rabbits, which the director refers to as a “nine-episode sitcom.” The horror-comedy vibe of these shorts is reflected in the series’ creepy tagline, “In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain…three rabbits live with a fearful mystery.” The nature of that mystery is never quite revealed, as the rabbits mainly wander around the sitcom-style set uttering curious non-sequiturs or reciting esoteric poetry; they are occasionally interrupted by a random, effusive laugh track. The rabbits are played by Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Scott Coffey (all of whom appeared in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive), and the set and some footage from the series were used in Inland Empire, lending fuel to the theory that all of Lynch’s films are somehow interrelated in some way…

Various Bunny-Based Pokémon

Azumarill, a blue rabbit-like Pokemon
Image: The Pokemon Company

I am very much not an expert on Pokémon, but I know cute when I see it, and frankly I am not made of stone. So, whether you prefer to go old-school with blue and bubbly Azumarill (the first ever rabbit-esque Pokémon), or if you’re more into the adorable Buneary or the floppy-eared Lopunny, or maybe the absolutely precious and mischievous Scorbunny, there are some truly excellent options, here—I’ll let you pick your own favorites (and argue about how loosely you want to define “rabbit-like”… personally, I think Wigglytuff totally counts. So freakin’ cute).

Bugs Bunny

Wily trickster, Warner Bros. royalty, and comedy icon. Bugs made his official debut in 1940’s A Wild Hare, a huge critical and commercial success (it even got an Oscar nomination), with the legendary Mel Blanc providing the bunny’s now-famous New Yawk accent and delivering his catchphrase, “What’s up, Doc?” Since then, the rascally rabbit has starred in countless cartoons, movies, video games, even commercials, satirizing and spoofing decades worth of popular culture and accumulating plenty of SF/F cred along the way. Bugs has been consistently foiling Marvin the Martian in his attempts to destroy the Earth since 1948, while still finding time to torment a certain vengeful Norse demigod in What’s Opera, Doc? All that, and he still looks great in a wig—Bugs is a true paragon of rabbitkind.

The Velveteen Rabbit

I’ve been updating this list for over a decade, and there’s one obvious candidate I’ve never included before—the bunny who broke my heart when I was four: The Velveteen Rabbit. Watching the animated version of Watership Down was a formative, if traumatic, experience in my childhood, but it had nothing on The Velveteen Rabbit, which reduced me to a sobbing, inconsolable wreck the first time my parents read it to me—so much so that I would beg them to never read it again, and would hide the book in various closets so that I could forget about its existence. Was it rational? Not remotely—even as a tiny child, I understood that there was a happy ending coming up, but something about the boy getting so sick and the stuffed bunny being sent off to be burned… I just couldn’t handle it. At all. So many tears.

But when I saw that there was a new Apple TV adaptation of the story that came out at the end of last year, I thought it might be time to bury the velveteen hatchet and make peace with what seems like a genuinely lovely children’s story. It doesn’t hurt that the voice cast includes Helena Bonham Carter, Patterson Joseph, and the absolutely delightful Irish actress Nicola Coughlan, so I’m finally welcoming the titular rabbit to the list for 2024.


I could go on, but I don’t have much to say about Radagast’s sleigh-pulling Rhosgobel Rabbits (big! fast! furry!), although they certainly deserve an honorable mention along with Mr. Bunny Rabbit (of Captain Kangaroo), the psychotic-but-adorable Bun-bun (Sluggy Freelance), Mr. Bun (aka Pauly Bruckner in The Unwritten), and Tim Conway’s performance as F. Lee Bunny on The Carol Burnett Show. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve learned: Don’t underestimate bunnies. They’re so much more than carrot-loving, Trix-shilling, twitchy little furballs: sometimes they’re mystical, sometimes they’re trying to stave off the apocalypse; sometimes they just want to chew your face off. Plus, they multiply almost as fast as Tribbles (but with less purring and many, many more teeth). If they ever do end up taking over the world, it’s not like we haven’t been warned…[end-mark]

An earlier version of this article was published way back in April 2011, and has been updated a number of times since.

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 Mac 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]

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

By

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]