Reading/Watching Log #58

October means Halloween, so there is an excess of spooky films under the cut – surprisingly enough, the horror genre is often quite kind to women. Yes, a lot of it is based on fear of a certain kind of womanhood, but that underlying tension opens up all kinds of possibilities for subversive storytelling.

For instance, these days it’s outright impossible to deal with the subject of witches without including a feminist subtext (whether you meant to or not) and even movies like The Craft and Ginger Snaps, which are in many ways cautionary tales aimed at women, end up being so compelling in their depiction of said women seizing power and owning their sexuality that the intended moral of the story is completely obliterated. Let's face it, nothing about Nancy's fate in The Craft deterred nineties teenagers from dabbling in witchcraft...

Aside from that I finally read The Hunger Games prequel centred on Coriolanus Snow that I’ve had on reserve at the library since July, gotten through not one but two sequel series to books I read years ago, and enjoyed a smattering of graphic novels. But I’m still working through a ton of horror-based material that I won’t be able to discuss until the end of November, which is what happens when a themed holiday takes place on the last day of the month.

Black Canary: Ignite by Meg Cabot and Cara McGee

I still make the effort to track down each new instalment of these YA graphic novels as they’re released, as I’m genuinely interested in the way new authors play around with the source material and origin stories of various DC heroines. Here Meg Cabot (best known as the author of The Princess Diaries) tackles Dinah Lance, also known as the Black Canary, who is beginning to realize that her raised voice has the ability to crack glass.

I’d call Black Canary a second-tier DC character; regularly appearing in various comic book-based media, but certainly not possessing any of the iconography that makes her instantly recognizable to non-fans in the way that Wonder Woman and Supergirl are. One of the problems with the format of this series is that each author only has a limited amount of pages to tell their stories, and for whatever reason Cabot doesn’t make the connection between Dinah’s literal sonic-scream and the figurative need for young women to find their voices.

It could have provided a neat shortcut between story and theme, but as it is Cabot attempts to cram a lot of material into a reasonably slim volume: Dinah’s family, her friends, her troubles at school, the vindictive principal, some unnecessary cameos…

It’s not the best this line of graphic novels has to offer, not least because the portrayal of Dinah’s power is downright bizarre. She’ll say a sentence which is depicted in a blue speech bubble to denote its power, and things will just collapse or explode. Not just crack or be pushed backwards, as you’d expect from a sonic wave – but actually explode. It looks as bad as it sounds.

Antihero by Kate Karyus Quinn, Demitria Lunetta and Maca Gil

Antihero is unique among this particular branch of DC graphic novels since its two young heroines are completely original characters. Piper Pájaro and Sloane MacBrute (also known as Hummingbird and the Owl) are in fact the creation of writers Kate Karyus Quinn and Demitria Lunetta, and this is their debut.

Both girls are thirteen years old, but otherwise very different people – Sloane is tall and skinny and a loner, Piper is Latino and curvaceous and upbeat. But more pertinently: Piper longs to be a superhero by utilizing her amazing superstrength, while Sloane has the hyper-intelligence of your standard supervillain.

The parallels and contrasts don’t end there though: Piper’s clumsiness means she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake, while the ill-health of Sloane’s mother means she’s often called upon to do dubious things so she can get her decent medical treatment.

It’s a fun setup of two individuals who very much embody the phrase “two sides of the same coin”, making it unsurprising when a confrontation over an experimental device ends with them switching bodies. Now the pair have to impersonate each other while tracking down the device so that they can switch back again – and participate in the science competition that both of them have their hearts set on winning (though again, for very different reasons).

It’s a great little book, and I’m glad the series moved away from established characters to give two newbies a chance to shine. Along with Zatanna and the House of Secrets, this has been one of the best offerings in the collection.

Yvain: The Night of the Lion by M.T. Anderson and Andrea Offerman

It’s a fun coincidence that I would recently finished Bulfinch’s Mythology, and then grab this graphic novel at the library on little more than a whim (the illustrations looked cool) only to find that it retells one of the stories that Bulfinch complied, albeit in much more detail.  

Yvain is a young knight at the court of King Arthur, who goes seeking honour and glory when a fellow knight tells him of a strange stone in the middle of a lake in the forest of Brocéliande. After pouring water on the strange stone, a terrible storms whips through the trees, and in its wake comes a helmeted knight who fights for the honour of his kingdom.

Defeating this knight is just the beginning of Yvain’s adventure, as he (among other things) falls in love, breaks a vow, goes mad, befriends a lion, champions a young woman, fights a giant and confronts a demon. It’s a strange, twisty story with a number of subplots and digressions, but remains faithful to the ideals of chivalry, courtly love and the pursuit of glory – even as it explores the irony in some of these concepts.

Based on the Arthurian tales penned by Chrétien de Troyes, the modern collaboration between author M.T. Anderson and illustrator Andrea Offerman delves into some of the gender politics of the original story, which in turn is based on their idea about how de Troyes’s life may have influenced the tale (specifically that he was in the employ of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter). As such, there are several panels in which the dialogue is at odds with the expressions and body language of the characters – which is especially prevalent when it comes to the women of the story.

Definitely worth seeking out.

The Roman Quests: Books 1 – 4 by Caroline Lawrence

Years ago, I read the seventeen-book series The Roman Mysteries and loved them for their lively characters and amazing fidelity to historical accuracy. They’re great books for kids, with genuinely intelligent mysteries and a real enthusiasm for fostering interest in ancient history among readers – I certainly knew more about this specific time period and its customs after I finished the series, and characters Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia and Lupus remain engrained in my memory.

This four-book follow-up skips forward several years and focuses on a different group of children entirely: siblings Juba, Fronto and Ursula are Roman nobles whose parents have been denounced by Emperor Domitian. Forced to flee their home in the middle of the night, the trio (along with baby sister Dora) are instructed to travel to Britannia, where their uncle will take them in.

Of course, our original cast of characters – now grown – eventually turn up in order to assist the new band of heroes, as well as a Britannic girl called Bouda, said to be the great-grand-daughter of Queen Boudicca herself, who has grown up in very different (that is, more difficult) circumstances than the trio of siblings she befriends. With four books in the series, each one focuses on a particular character of this quartet: Juba, Fronto, Ursula, and finally Bouda, as they flee from Rome, join the Roman legionnaires, defuse a Druidic uprising, and eventually return to Italy in order to defeat Domitian and rescue baby Dora.

But of most interest to those who have read The Roman Mysteries, Caroline Lawrence returns to one of the loose threads that were left dangling at the conclusion of that series: the kidnapping of Jonathan’s baby nephew (one of twin brothers), whom he’s been searching for across the twelve-year gap between book series. Apparently Lawrence’s original plan was to have these twins as the protagonists of a new trilogy, only to scrap that idea quite late in the game and instead have their story play out as a semi-subplot to the adventures of Juba, Fronto and Ursula.

It’s an odd choice considering most readers would have been eager to see the resolution to the cliff-hanger of The Roman Mysteries be front-and-centre of any follow-up series, and the result of its side-lining is that the now-adult versions of Flavia, Jonathan and Lupus (Nubia is barely mentioned) are also only tangentially involved in the story. Many of them haven’t seen each other for years, but their emotional reunions are somewhat muted by the fact they’re conveyed through the eyes of Juba or one of his siblings, who obviously aren’t aware of the massive history behind these characters.

Ah well. Lawrence’s research is as impeccable as ever, and her gift is at not applying modern sensibilities to the world she’s depicting. Ancient Rome is place in which child marriages, slavery and sudden death is a daily occurrence, and she’s restrained enough as a writer to simply let her characters exist in this world, making decisions that are informed by their culture and upbringing, without imposing her own judgment upon them. She has a profoundly neutral narrative voice, and were she a little more well-known as a writer, I’m not entirely sure fandom would let her get away with it… which is worrying.

Scarlet and Ivy: Books 1 – 3 by Sophie Cleverly

I liked the look of these books: they’re currently very popular at the library, and the general premise of “Gothic Romance for kids” sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, they’re not that well-written, and despite some of my favourite tropes all being present and accounted for, there’s at least one central conceit per book that is profoundly stupid.

Ivy Grey is one half of a pair of twins, still grieving the loss of her sister Scarlet who has recently died under mysterious circumstances while boarding at the elite Rookwood School for Girls. Ivy wasn’t admitted due to not passing the entrance exams, and so is baffled when she’s visited by the headmistress Miss Fox, who takes her from the custody of her dipsy Aunt Phoebe and instructs her to take Scarlet’s place among the students at the school. As in, literally take her place. Ivy is ordered to take on her sister’s identity, answer to her sister’s name, and never let anyone else know that she’s actually Scarlet’s twin.

A case of stolen identity, a sinister boarding school, clues hidden in a secret diary – yeah, it’s definitely a Gothic story for pre-teens, and each book deals with a different mystery that’s loaded with elements of the genre (concealed rooms, possible ghosts, hidden ancestry, etc). It’s also a period piece set in 1935, though you wouldn’t know it based on the abundant colloquialisms in the dialogue and complete lack of historical context.

So, what were those stupid ideas I warned you about? Well, the first book is based entirely around the evil plot concocted by Miss Fox: that Scarlet’s death can be covered up by bringing in her twin sister and forcing her to take on the missing girl’s persona. But… why? To what end? Another girl is already missing from the school, and I’m pretty sure Scarlet's father and aunt will eventually realize that they’re minus one daughter. It’s such a bizarre premise.

The second book has Ivy find a message that states: “we witnessed a catastrophe”, which she eventually comes to realize means a woman called Catastrophe Jones witnessed a murder, and the third has her learn that her mother took on a fake alias and went on the run because she suspected someone of accidentally killing a girl – though inexplicably enough she took on the identity of the victim. Oof. I’m not sure even the intended audience will fall for this level of contrivance.

Taylor and Rose: Secret Agents: Books 1 – 3 by Katherine Woodfine

As with The Roman Quests, these books are follow-up quartet to a previous book series (though the last has yet to be published). Set a couple of years after the events of Sinclair’s Mysteries, we’re reintroduced to Sophie Taylor and Lilian Rose as lead detectives of their own firm, operating out of Sinclair’s Department Store with an array of friends and family members in their employ.

But Woodfine broadens the scope of this new series: whereas the previous mysteries all took place in London and were centred around a singular villain, the Taylor and Rose stories involve the girls being deeply embroiled in espionage; working for the Secret Service Bureau and travelling to a new city per book – Paris, St Petersburg and Venice respectively. Sadly, this also means they’re separated for most of each story’s duration, though Woodfine milks their reunions for all they’re worth.

Honestly, they make for great comfort books, with everything I love in a light read: two winning heroines using their wits and charm to solve mysteries and fight crime at the dawn of the nineteenth century, with a found family of assorted misfits (and a dog) working out of a London department store. That’s the dream, folks.

The only downside is that these books introduce a romance between Lil and a male member of the team, even in the face of Lil and Sophie describing how right and true and natural it is to work with each other – but hey, you can’t have everything. We’re still treated to the glamourous world of international intrigue that the girls must navigate in order to achieve their goals, and Woodfine has a strong handle on continuity and interconnectedness between her stories.

Man, these stories would make for great television. Can somebody get on that?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

It was a little strange to return to the world of The Hunger Games. I was only a casual fan of the books and their subsequent film adaptations (which I’ve read/watched exactly once) but even among the wider fanbase there wasn’t a huge demand for more content once the movies wrapped up. And when Suzanne Collins announced a prequel novel which would explore the youth of Coriolanus Snow – the main villain of the original trilogy – there was a minor unexpected backlash.

Announced in June 2019, the general attitude toward the project seemed to be one of weary tedium, possibly the result of much larger issues in fandom as a whole, in which people simply felt oversaturated by a) prequels, sequels, reboots, remakes and the like, and b) sad backstories for unrepentant mass-murdering psychopaths. After a glut of anti-heroes across the past decade, culminating in Star Wars asking us to feel sorry for a tantrum-throwing manchild with more than a few real-world parallels to modern evil, fandom in general understandably had a negative reaction to the promise of President Snow’s sad childhood.

(Granted, the dwindling popularity of dystopian-based stories also probably had something to do with the tepid response – they’re not as fun to read about when you’re actually living in one).

Perhaps the backlash was a bit overstated, but the fact remains that the book didn’t make much of a splash on publication, and six months later no one is talking about it. Like Stephanie Meyer and the long-awaited Midnight Sun, the original fans have just moved on.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that all this interested me more than anything in the actual book, though it’s far from unreadable. It doesn’t come within a million miles of capturing the cold-sweat suspense of Katniss’s adventures in the arena, but Collins is a good writer and has some interesting, if not exactly revolutionary, ideas to share.

In a world where children are compelled to murder one another in state-sponsored gladiatorial games and everyone is named after a Roman senator and/or a noun, Coriolanus Snow is an impoverished member of the elite, desperately trying to claw his way back up the ladder while concealing the dire financial straits his family (grandmother and cousin) are actually in. Ruthless and devious, he ends up as part of a new initiative to promote viewership of the Hunger Games by acting – along with the rest of his classmates – as a mentor to one of the selected tributes, a girl named Lucy Grey Baird.

As much an origin story for the Hunger Games as it is for Coriolanus, we’re introduced to a “proto” version of the titular games, which instead of the sophisticated and technologically controlled spectacle of Katniss’s time, is here just a bunch of kids in a run-down stadium, occasionally picking each other off, but for the most part just gradually succumbing to illness or fatigue. It’s Coriolanus who comes up with many of the game elements that are standard by the time the original trilogy takes place, and Lucy who realizes that her chances for survival are increased if she can put on a show for the audience, thereby winning herself more patrons.

And yes, a love story between mentor and competitor does emerge. But Collins treads carefully in this respect. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I can at least say that she avoids the storyline we were all dreading: that Lucy’s death is the catalyst for Coriolanus’s Start of Darkness. Much like Qi’Ra in Solo, the story avoids the simplistic fridging solution that seemed largely inevitable given the main character’s later personality and the prequel format in which the narrative is told, which challenges the author to come up with something more interesting.  

And despite Collins’s lack of interest in easy answers or moral certitude, neither does she go out of her way to over-humanize or sympathize with the boy who will one day be a fascist dictator. You can tell from page one that this guy is bad news, even without the immediacy of a first-person narrative voice (as she used to such striking effect with Katniss).

It contains some ideas and developments I probably should have mulled over a little longer in my head before commenting, though a sobering realization did hit me this time around. Back when I first read The Hunger Games (that would be nearly ten years ago now) my biggest objection was an inability to truly believe that humanity would subject children to a punishment as depraved as an elaborately-staged gladiatorial combat to the death. Now? Whether it’s the rise of a reality TV host to the highest position of government or his political party’s complete indifference to the lives of the most vulnerable among them, the whole concept currently seems a lot more possible. 

The Mummy (1932)

It’s the month of October, so I delved back into the past for some seasonally-appropriate viewing choices, and the original Mummy movie starring Boris Karloff seemed a safe bet, especially after recently seeing the 1999 remake, which is still one of my favourites.

1932’s Mummy is fascinating in hindsight considering some of the later film’s shout-outs to its content, including the fact that the titular mummy was a high priest named Imhotep engaged in a forbidden romance with Anck-Su-Namun (here the Pharaoh’s daughter instead of his mistress), heroine Helen Grosvenor having an English father and an Egyptian mother (the same parentage given to Rachel Wiesz’s Evelyn), and that the resurrected mummy goes under the alias of Ardeth Bay, which is the name given to Oded Fehr’s Medjai warrior (even though he’s never actually called this on-screen).

Like most old films, The Mummy feels like it was filmed and performed as a stage-show, with (by our standards) stilted acting and slow pacing. Perhaps its most surprising aspect is that aside from his very first appearance, we never see the mummy wrapped in bandages with his arms outstretched; that iconic look of this particular monster. Most of the time Karloff appears as a slightly desiccated but otherwise normal-looking man, and we never get a clear idea of how exactly he’s managed to create a life for himself after being awoken by the incantation in the opening act. Somehow it includes a house, a cat and a fresh identity, but exposition back then was highly selective.

He discovers a young woman called Helen Grosvenor, and identifies her as the reincarnation of his lost-love Anck-Su-Namun, using hypnosis and spell-craft to awaken her latent memories of their history together. Naturally there’s a strapping young Englishman who wants to put a stop to all this, but the other most surprising thing about the film is that the damsel eventually rescues herself by calling upon a female deity to intervene on her behalf, who promptly smites the mummy into dust. Sometimes these old films can surprise you…

The Eye of the Cat (1969)

This was on YouTube, and I’m a sucker for cheesy horror films of the past, so what was stopping me? It’s a hilariously kitschy and overblown story that tries its absolute hardest to imbue fear and dread into scenes of cats that are just doing cat things: walking around, staring at things, occasionally eating – the horror! Think of the worst of Stephen King melded with the worst of V.C. Andrews; that very specific degree of sordid tackiness in which everyone is an absolute wretch of a human being, with hideously dated clothing/hairstyles and raging libidos. Except for Eleanor Parker. Eleanor Parker will always be the epitome of class, even when she’s lusting over her own nephew.

The dubiously-but-appropriately named Wylie is approached by the beautiful Kassia, a hairdresser who tells him that his wealthy aunt is reaching the end of her life, and that it would be expedient of him to restore their relationship if he wants to inherit her fortune. She’s willing to help him mend these burned bridges (though she never explains how exactly) in exchange for half the inheritance – and then they’ll murder her, because hey, why not.

One problem: Wylie has an extreme phobia of cats and Aunt Danny’s mansion is filled with them. How to get away with killing your besotted aunt when cats are watching your every move?

It unfolds in fits and starts, with plenty of scenes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual plot – like Wylie’s dumped girlfriend attacking Kassia in a nightclub, resulting in an extended cat fight (okay, maybe it’s thematically related) that involves hair-pulling and panty shots. 

It’s best enjoyed as a time capsule into the sixties. The hair! The clothes! The state of the art technology such as plastic face steamers and electric body massagers! The whole thing is ludicrous, and you enjoy it because it’s ludicrous. 

Dolls (1987)

This obscure movie was brought to my attention via an AV Club article that casually dropped its existence into my awareness and forced me to track it down immediately. It’s pure eighties, from the hair styles to the décor to the character archetypes, and involves an array of travellers taking shelter in a creepy old mansion one dark and stormy night, the home of a rather sinister toymaker and his wife.

That most of these people will be dead by morning goes without saying, but how it all goes down is certainly worth at least one watch – they’re systematically picked off by the living dolls that fill the household, rendered in one of the last examples of stop-motion animation in a live-action film (relatively speaking – this was the mid-eighties after all). It’s pretty bonkers, predating Child’s Play by a year, with characters that don’t remotely resemble anything that could realistically be called “human”.

For example, the father and stepmother of our protagonist, a seven-year old girl called Judy, are so horrifically awful that the strangest thing about them is that they weren’t murdered by non-supernatural means years ago. There’s evil, and then there’s ripping a tearful child’s teddy bear away from her and throwing it into the wilderness while verbally berating her for not walking fast enough. I mean, wow.

It’s definitely a curiosity piece, one so obscure that absolutely none of the cast are recognizable, and yet with a macabre charm all its own. By the third act it becomes apparent that the dolls are carefully selecting their victims, imbuing the whole thing with a fairy tale ambience that punishes the guilty and allows the young-at-heart to get away safely. It’s impossible to get a fix on why it exists or what drove the minds behind its creation, but exist it does. An eighties fantasy/horror about dolls that come to life and kill people who deserve it. Why not?

Halloweentown (1998)

So, I think it’s safe to say that if you don’t watch a cult classic at the original time of its release; if you’re not part of either its original hype or the growing sense of discovery that emerges from its initial airing… then its appeal will probably be lost on you. The Goonies is the prime example of this – anyone who watched it as a kid in the eighties or nineties will love it; anyone who watches it for the first time as an adult post-2000 will think it’s awful.

Now, I didn’t think Halloweentown was awful persay, but after hearing that it was one of Disney’s most popular television movies, one that spawned several equally successful sequels, I was definitely expecting more than what I got. Marnie, Dylan and Sophie have never been allowed to join in on any Halloween-related fun thanks to their mother Gwen, much to their annoyance and confusion over the years.

Then, after the arrival of their grandmother Aggie, Marnie realizes that she and her mother are secretly witches, with Aggie flying in from a place called Halloweentown each time she visits – and it turns out that Marnie also has the potential for magical abilities. Along with her younger siblings, they follow Aggie back to Halloweentown (via magical bus) and discover that a strange affliction is changing the personalities of the assorted witches, vampires, werewolves and other creepy creatures that live there. Think The Nightmare Before Christmas, only Disney-er.

I’m not sure what to say about it. There is some fun to be had in the cheesy special effects of the time, and the acting is surprisingly above-average, with the kids in particular walking that fine line between naturalism and cutesy precociousness. Debbie Reynolds was certainly having some fun as Aggie, and it contains an hilariously early example of a Disney Hidden Villain (these days you can barely make it through a Disney film without one of these) but its greater appeal is rather lost on me. I guess you had to be there.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Every October I watch Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, which captures a dark fairy tale aesthetic like nothing else I’ve ever seen. I love just looking at this movie: the delicate gowns of the women, the tendrils of mist over the fields, the twisted branches of the Tree of the Dead. Even the little details, like the notary’s blind eye or the stag heads mounted either side of Sleepy Hollow’s gates, come together to create such delectable creepiness.

That early shot, of Ichabod’s carriage silhouetted against the evening sky to the dread-filled strains of Danny Elfman’s score gets me every time. At least seventy percent of my love for this movie is the visuals, as the plot itself is simply a murder mystery – albeit one that involves a headless horseman.

But like all good mysteries, it’s careful in the way it lays down its rules and clues, usually in such a way that their true meaning is obscured until later in the story: the opening shots of the wax seal and the will signing, the two little girls in the Western Woods, the stone archer at the back of the fireplace, the family tree in the Bible, the shadows of the couple embracing outside the house… most of it isn’t explained in context till the end of the film, leaving lots of room for Rewatch Bonuses.

The film had mixed reviews on its release, but it contains some deeply interesting ideas about faith and science, Christianity and witchcraft, male and female – and ultimately positing that these seemingly opposing factions are able to co-exist with each other (and are in fact, stronger for doing so).

There’s some fascinating imagery surrounding Ichabod’s relationship with his parents and how it pertains to Katrina (the link between the two women is clear: both play the Picketty Witch, both draw symbols in the ashes of a fireplace, but Ichabod’s father also takes on the visage of the Headless Horseman thanks to his raised collar) and some clever visual clues throughout: when Ichabod announces that the Horseman is being controlled by someone, he does so right in front of a portrait of Lady van Tassel.

It’s packed full of British thespians, which means you’re treated to Professor Dumbledore and Emperor Palpatine as village elders, Martin Landau in an uncredited role, and the amusing sight of Christopher Lee getting top billing in the credits… after his one and only cameo appearance in the film’s prologue.

But to me the heart of the film is Christine Ricci and Miranda Richardson. I made Katrina van Tassel Woman of the Month, and as I said in that post, the character is more interesting as performed than as written – the same goes for Lady van Tassel, the mastermind of the entire murderous plot that drives the movie. The women are foils to each other: both are witches, both put up an innocent front to hide their cunning and/or wisdom, and both hold the true power in the story (so much so, that it edges toward a case of Trinity Syndrome). But whereas Katrina’s power comes from a place of love, Lady van Tassel’s is based in hatred and vengeance – and I can’t help but feel there’s an alternate-world cut of this film in which their rivalry takes centre-stage, in which they’re the protagonists duking it out for control of the van Tassel house and fortune.

Because I’m fascinated with this sort of thing, I tracked down the original screenplay to see how it compared to the film as it ultimately appeared. There’s some interesting stuff here, from lines scenes that make more sense in the script (at the beginning of the film, Ichabod waves a piece of paper around states: “Our jails overflow with men and women convicted on confessions worth no more than this one!” but the script reveals why it’s worthless: he’s just extorted it from the caged prisoner in the background of the shot in order to prove his point) to a rejiggering of certain scenes and lines of dialogue.

More interestingly, there was an entire subplot about the crone who lives in the Western Woods, eventually revealed to be Lady van Tassel’s sister. Ichabod originally found the witch’s body after her murder, and realizes that the way in which she was killed is drastically different from the other murders (being significantly messier). He also notices that a bauble worn around the woman’s neck has gone missing, one which eventually reappears on Katrina, further implicating her in the crime – though of course, it’s actually Lady van Tassel that’s given it to her for the express purpose of said implication.

There’s certainly more of a feminine presence in the original script, from hints that Ichabod’s mother is watching over him in the form of a cat, to a surprisingly affectionate scene between Katrina and her stepmother in which the latter is brushing the former’s hair – even a few extra lines of dialogue that help Ichabod ascertain that the deceased Widow Winship was young and attractive (thereby leading him to the realization that she’d secretly married van Garrett).

There’s a lot of stuff in there that didn’t make it to the final cut, so perhaps it warrants its own post sometime further down the track… but for now, I have fond memories of Sleepy Hollow, it being the first horror movie I ever saw on the big screen, and me being so young that my dad had to come with me. It’s the spookiest of all fairy tales, and year after year, never fails to sustain its atmosphere of crawling dread.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

I only became aware of this cult classic recently, and a timely article on Den of Geek sealed the deal. The title of the film is itself a bit of wordplay: it’s not actually about gingersnaps, but a teenage girl called Ginger (pronoun) who snaps (verb). Much like Stephen King’s Carrie, its horror elements are actually an extended metaphor for adolescence, with each girl’s horrifying experiences beginning in the moment she gets her period.

Ginger and her younger sister Brigette are late bloomers when it comes to womanhood, instead spending their days staging elaborately violent death scenes with household objects and a camera. Both outcasts at school, they’re utterly inseparable thanks to Brigette skipping a grade, and it’s on the night they’re out trying to kidnap their bully’s dog that Ginger is attacked by an unidentified creature (moments after she gets her aforementioned period).

As you might expect from having watched any werewolf movie at all, Ginger starts to undergo a transformation, one that continues the analogy of womanhood by focusing on hair, menstruation and burgeoning sexuality. As Brigette grapples to find a cure for her sister, Ginger’s behaviour grows more and more erratic.

It’s a strange little film, one that earns its notoriety through an unflinching look at Ginger’s psyche and bodily transformations, and its restrained lack of interest in anything that doesn’t serve the central metaphor (we never get any sort of background on the original werewolf that infects Ginger; it’s just a plot device).

It’s deeply reminiscent of The Craft (which I also watched this month, but I want to discuss it in more depth in its own post) in regards to the female experience, supernatural metamorphosis, and the pangs of adolescence being combined to make an unsettling, open-ended story that’s either about a woman’s empowerment or her subjugation. It’s honestly hard to say.

Byzantium (2012)

Well, that was definitely a Neil Jordan film. He’s not an auteur by any stretch of the imagination, yet there’s a distinct aesthetic that runs throughout all his material, whether it’s his film, television or book offerings (okay, if it’s that obvious, maybe he is an auteur).

Moving back and forward across time, we’re introduced to vampires Clara and Eleanor, a mother and daughter who are clearly on the run from something, constantly moving from place to place together despite their deeply fraught relationship. In the coastal town of Hastings, Clara seduces the owner of a rundown hotel known as Byzantium, while Eleanor befriends a young man called Frank who suffers from leukaemia, each unaware that their pursuers are closing in on them.

Interspersed throughout the whole thing are flashbacks to their making: the whys and wherefores of how each one became a vampire, with Jordan’s genuinely original take on the genesis of vampires and the purpose of their existence. Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan are great as the mother/daughter duo, and good enough actresses to convey the weight and frustration of their bond and history together without much in the way of dialogue.

There are plenty of familiar faces among the supporting cast as well: Jonny Lee Miller, Tom Hollander, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Sam Riley (who’s got one of those faces, and also turned up in Rebecca, below). Also: a great aesthetic of moody coastlines, seedy hotels, shoreside carnivals, stylized flashbacks…

SPOILERS

If one thing bugged me, it’s that the women are ultimately reduced to damsels in distress; saved by a man who has a change of heart concerning the all-male cabal of vampires (of which he’s a part of) that’ve been hunting them down for centuries. After everything we’ve seen of these women fighting tooth and nail to endure the world around them, it’s a disappointment for their continued survival to hinge entirely on a change of heart from one of their pursuers.

Also, they set up a brilliant scene between Saoirse Ronan and Maria Doyle Kennedy in which the former confesses her immortality to the latter, and then points out that she won’t be able to prove it for years and years and years, not until the day she can reappear in Kennedy's final hours and still be as young as she ever was. And then, instead of ending on a scene of this precise event happening, they go and kill Maria Doyle Kennedy. Boo.

Rebecca (2020)

SPOILERS

Have you ever watched a film that so completely misses the point of its source material that it’s almost awe-inspiring? Such is Netflix’s Rebecca, which takes a Gothic Romance and turns it into an actual romance, a psychologically complex narrator reimagined as an empowered heroine, and a weak and cowardly love interest who is now (apparently) Prince Charming.

I mean… wow. This film was always going to exist in the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 classic, but there was at least one reason to justify its existence: the long-gone restrictions of the Hays Code which prevented Hitchcock from preserving the central twist in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, which reveals that Maxim de Winter killed his first wife Rebecca in a pique of rage and jealousy.

There’s a bit more context to it than this (he was deliberately goaded, and the big surprise of the segment is actually that our unnamed narrator – his second wife – is delighted by this development) but the Hays Code was leery about a man getting away with murder, thereby forcing Hitchcock to change the murder into an accident, and consequently sapping the original story of its potency.

And yet despite being able to maintain this plot-twist, Netflix’s take on Rebecca choses to sand down almost every other sharp edge in the entire story. Du Maurier’s novel is many things, but essentially a profound subversion of a modern fairy tale, in which a young woman is swept off her feet by a wealthy, handsome and attentive older man and whisked away from her life of drudgery to become mistress of the beautiful Manderley.

But it’s here things get complicated. The house is haunted (not literally, but certainly in every other sense of the word) by the spirit of Maxim de Winter’s first wife Rebecca, who was beautiful and vivacious and glamourous, and clearly the complete opposite of the meek and milquetoast narrator of the story whose voice we’ve been listening to throughout her courtship and early marriage to Maxim, and who now can barely control her spiralling sense of inadequacy and desperate need to be loved.

Between her wild imaginings over how the staff and community must be judging her, and the very-real contempt that housekeeper Mrs Danvers exhibits toward her, the second Mrs de Winter is clearly headed for a nervous breakdown – until the body of Rebecca is discovered in her boat off the coast, at odds with the story her husband spun to the police, and she’s told that not only did Maxim never love his first wife, but that he killed her after she claimed to be pregnant with another man’s child.

Now energized by this revelation, our protagonist does everything in her power (which admittedly isn’t much; and there’s little doubt over the fact Maxim will get away with his crime given the way he’s protected by the authorities) to clear her husband’s name – only to end up right where she started, travelling the world with a much older person that she must wait on hand and foot… only this time it’s her emotionally manipulative husband instead of the odious Mrs van Hopper.

The conclusion of the book loops back around to its beginning, which revealed right off the bat that our so-called heroine and Maxim are living a listless, meaningless existence travelling from one hotel to the next, forever haunted by Rebecca and the fear that she might find another way to destroy them from beyond the grave.

Rebecca has won, will always win. It’s glorious.  

The way it all unfolds on the page is sublime. Every chapter holds a new surprise, and yet everything feels inevitable. It’s like reading a myth or an ancient fairy tale: something that feels larger than the author, and yet which is told from an unexpected perspective that we both pity and despise. This is the only way Rebecca could ever be told, and could ever end.

And weirdly enough, it’s not like director Ben Wheatley doesn’t know this (stating: “I loved the idea of du Maurier basically going out there to troll her fan base. She’s basically going, “So you like romantic fiction? I will write you a romantic novel, which will totally ruin the genre for you forever”) or that anything I’ve described doesn’t technically happen in his adaptation. But the context and meaning has been changed utterly, in what appears to be a baffling attempt to empower the narrator.

This second Mrs de Winter manages to charm her future husband with dreams of travel and talk of subjects she’s read in books, consummates her relationship with him on the beaches of Monte Carlo long before they’re married, and eventually runs off to investigate the claims of Rebecca’s pregnancy by breaking into her doctor’s office and reading her file on her own, in a scene that’s utterly pointless considering law enforcement catches her in the act, and there is literally nothing she could have done if the records had confirmed a pregnancy.

It reeks of empty “wokeness”, a clumsy attempt to inject what a producer or writer thinks is modern feminism into a story that doesn’t require it, presumably out of fear that the audience will dislike the main character. Because God forbid a female character be complex or neurotic or selfish or loathsome – she instead must be flattened into bland “likeability,” when the entire point of the book is that we DON’T like her.

Her book version's exhaustive anxiety about how Rebecca was superior to her in every respect ultimately proves true, as I doubt there’s any reader who won’t eventually long to be spending time with Rebecca instead of her tedious replacement. It’s Rebecca, long dead, who is more alive than any other character in the story. The very book is named after her, while the name of the actual narrator goes eternally unsaid. Like I said, Rebecca wins – on every conceivable level, even a meta one.

(I mean honestly, the film doesn’t seem to realize its own stupidity. If you’re going to empower the second Mrs de Winter, then for God sake, she’s needs the dignity of an actual NAME. If you don’t commit to that simple humanizing gesture, then what’s the point? But of course, they can’t do that, because they know her nameless state is a fundamental part of the book, thereby demonstrating an awareness but not an understanding of this very deliberate creative decision).

The final scene of this film is of the protagonist in her husband’s embrace, breaking the fourth wall by glancing over his shoulder directly at the viewer in what can only be an expression of victory; a look in her eyes that is quite Rebecca-like in its inherent arrogance and seductiveness.

This, admittedly, is a feminist take on the material that could have worked, if it had presented the protagonist as a young girl deliberately chipping away at her own innocence and morality in order to save a husband who doesn’t deserve it, a man who will now have to live out his days as much in thrall to his second wife as he was to his first – but that would have required events to play out very differently, and any retelling of the story which does have the second Mrs de Winter essentially turn into Rebecca would have inevitably ended with her letting him go to the gallows in order to inherit his wealth and property.

Instead we get this voiceover ending: “This morning I woke up in our stuffy little room in Cairo. Just another stop in our quest to find the perfect home. When I look in the mirror, I can see the woman I am now. And I know I have made the right decision. To save the one thing worth walking through the flames for. Love.”

It’s almost worth watching just to marvel at its cluelessness, though it’s not totally without merit. Kirstin Scott Thomas is unsurprisingly good, and Lily James much better than I thought she’d be. The cinematography is gorgeous, especially the dramatic sands of the Cornish coast and the buttery warmth of Monte Carlo. Costumes are good, excepting Maxim’s hideous mustard suit. (Stop trying to make mustard happen. It’s never gonna happen).

And yet, even the obvious is missed. Insofar that we do root for the protagonist and hope that (for her sake at least) Maxim avoids the noose, the character of “wise fool” Ben exists in what is the novel’s only adherence to what we might call traditional fairy tale values. He’s an important witness in the investigation, and yet because of Rebecca’s cruelty and the second wife’s kindness toward him, his testimony goes in Maxim’s favour. It’s a detail that you’d expect this adaptation to seize upon, something upon which to laud the heroine in comparison to her dead rival, but after introducing Ben, the film goes on to do absolutely nothing with him. Go figure.

Justice League: War (2014)

The second film in this specific train of continuity of DC animated movies wastes no time in bringing out the big guns. This is the Justice League uniting for the first time (as I said, in this continuity) to fight Darkseid, and becoming a superhero team along the way. The usual suspects are here: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Cyborg – though they swap out the usual spot filled by Aquaman in favour of Shazam.

Any continuity errors can be waived due to the timey-wimey shenanigans that took place in The Flash Paradox, the semi-official start to this branch of the franchise, in which many members of the League already seemed to know each other. Here they’re clearly meeting for the first time, and deal with a fairly straightforward invasion plot involving the characters gradually becoming cognizant of a coordinated alien attack and joining forces to combat it.

The strongest part of the film is naturally the rapport and banter that exists between the Justice League members, and I’m sure you’ve already seen that gif-set of Batman and Green Lantern interacting, in which the latter is astounded to find out that Batman is just a normal guy in a batsuit (as opposed to a vampire). For the most part though it’s just a standard superhero film, in which said superheroes are remarkably petty and egotistical for most of the run-time.

The world of adapted comics and the myriad of continuities that exist between the various live-action films, animated movies, television shows and cartoons is a source of some fascination for me, with regular beats and details often being carried over from one to the other. Comic books are perhaps the only material that is adapted so regularly and with so many similar components retained between multiple versions of what is essentially the same story – so what stays? What changes? What elements of plot, design or characterization are sacred and which are throwaway? And why?

In this case there are plenty of echoes between this and other adaptations, from Wonder Woman enthusiastically discovering ice-cream to Batman inevitably butting heads with Superman. And given that I’m currently making my way through the third season of Young Justice, this is the second time in a month that I’ve watched the origins of Victor Stone’s cyborg body and how it pertains to Apokoliptian technology (third time in recent memory if I include Ray Fisher’s role as Cyborg in 2017’s Justice League).

It’s not a great start to the movie series, with little in the way of decent character establishment and (like Zack Snyder’s films) going too hard too early in regards to the threat the heroes must face, but in all honesty I’m mainly here for the Batman-related stories, which are coming up soon…

iZombie: Season 4 (2018)

Still pressing on with show, although a lot of fun has been seeped from its otherwise crazy premise: after being bitten by a zombie at a boat party, the aptly named Liv Moore counteracts the onset of zombification by getting a job at the morgue and feasting on brains of the recently deceased. There’s a side-effect though: she temporarily takes on the memories and personality traits of the dead, which leads to her joining forces with a police detective in order to solve crimes.

Yeah, it’s a lot to get your head around, but it’s a fairly solid basis for a procedural show – nothing mind-blowing, but consistently entertaining. Kinda. This season lost me a little bit, what with its juggling of about twenty subplots that initially have nothing to do with each other, and only tenuously coming together in the last handful of episodes: Liv running an underground railroad, a teenage girl discovering she's immune to the zombie infection, Blaine’s father starting a religious cult, Major becoming morally compromised while working for Filmore Graves, Clive having intimacy problems with his recently-zombified girlfriend… it’s a lot.

By the end of last season the zombie secret was out, and Seattle became Ground Zero for the infection, thousands of people having been deliberately infected so as to normalize the condition and create an independent state for the new species. This initiative is spearheaded by the Fillmore Graves organization, which has proclaimed martial law over the city, and vows to keep its citizens safe after a wall is built around its borders.

Liv ends up taking over an underground railroad which smuggles sick and dying people into the city so that they might be scratched and therefore healed of their afflictions – though the moral conundrum that rises from this is that there’s a shortage of edible brains being transported into the city, the very substance that keeps those infected from going into mindless zombie rages.

This pits Liv against Fillmore Graves (whose name – as I’m sure you’ve noticed – is as punny as Liv’s) though not in any meaningful way. Having established that the creation of more zombies puts the rest of the population at risk due to the food shortage, and Fillmore Graves introducing capital punishment to deter anyone entering the city to become zombified… Liv just goes ahead and scratches people anyway, without any thought given to the wider ramifications. What’s the point of an ethical challenge if you’re not going to engage in it?

Furthermore, the premise of Liv taking on the traits of the murder victims whose brains she’s devoured has now gotten completely out of control. What used to be a fun little quirk is now an overblown gimmick in which Liv acts like she’s got multiple personality disorder, taking on a range of identities that are so over-the-top she feels more like a caricature than the subtle metaphor for mental illness that this plot mechanism was originally conceived to be. (Though I am fond of the drama queen persona that declared she was taking on a “difficult accent” for a role, only to end up using Rose McIver’s natural kiwi accent).

The main cast is much better this time around, in terms of what they do and how they interact with each other: in particular Liv, Ravi and Peyton feel like a self-made family that unquestioningly supports and cares for one another (poor Major is largely kept to his own subplot this season). They’re what keep me coming back, and with only one more season left, I may as well see it through to the end.

Moving On: Time Out (2020)

This is actually the first episode of the eleventh season of a show I’ve never watched before – but this specific episode featured Angel Coulby, and I’m always going to turn up whenever she’s around.

An anthology show that’s been airing since 2009 (honestly never heard of it before!) about people at pivotal moments in their lives, this particular episode deals with a guy that’s been wrongly accused of a crime and is now trying to maintain a normal life while wearing an ankle monitor. Running into a single mum and her young son at the local pool, they tentatively begin a romance while Joe struggles to maintain the restrictions set around his supervised parole.

It’s one of those stories in which the phrase “take it in the spirit with which it’s given” is necessary. In real life, the fact that Lisa easily believes Joe is innocent and has no problems whatsoever about the criminal record he kept from her for a protracted period of time is a massive red flag, and doesn’t translate well to a romance. Drama, yes. Romance, no.

Joe also fails to tell her that if he doesn’t get back to his apartment by seven, he’ll be returned to prison for the rest of his sentence, which means she’s given no forewarning about the consequences of spending the night with him, and is subsequently stuck waiting for him to get out of prison (of course, she’s there to pick him up when he finally gets out).

But Tom McKay plays Joe with a sincerity that allows the audience to believe that he’s telling the truth about his innocence, even if it would have been a more interesting story if it had focused on giving Lisa the chance to be leery about entering a relationship with a convicted felon, and taken the understandable steps of seeking out more information about the situation (which is what any sane woman would do, especially if she had a child). Instead it’s just her womanly instincts which tell her it’s a great idea to forge ahead with this relationship.

Still, it’s always nice to see Angel Coulby – I just wish someone would give her her own series.

Cleopatra in Space: Season 1 (2020)

I read all available instalments of Mike Maihack’s Cleopatra in Space graphic novels earlier this year (save the last one, which isn’t released in New Zealand yet) and loved them, so naturally the animated adaptation was at the top of my TBW list.

For the most part it stays true to the premise and characterization of the original novels: the Cleopatra is hanging out with her friend Gozi when a well-aimed slingshot uncovers a hidden temple. Cleopatra goes inside, finds a glowing tablet inscribed with strange runes, and is promptly hurtled thirty-thousand years into the future. There Cleo discovers that the Nile Galaxy has been overrun by the evil Emperor Octavian, and Cleopatra is looked upon as the prophesied saviour destined to free everyone from his tyranny.

It’s a fun setup for a story, but whereas the graphic novels took it fairly seriously, with a strong sense of the stakes, a few character deaths, and an aesthetic that was highly reminiscent of Star Wars (let’s call it grunge sci-fi), the show is far more interested in light-hearted hijinks set in and around the high school that Cleopatra enrols at – which proves to be quite an odd choice, as it also keeps in several of the main plot-points that shape the novels. There are big epic moments such as a betrayal from a trusted mentor, several off-planet missions, and the discovery of a second tablet that could change the course of history, but here they play out almost as a distraction from the lighter high-school dramas.

Heck, they don’t even get to the true identity of Octavian this season, even though that would have been the perfect capper to the final episode. I’m not sure what their long-term game plan is, but it already feels like they’ve missed the opportunity to really establish an appropriate tone for what is essentially a war story.

Other than that, there’s a lot to love. As in the graphic novels, I love the Egyptian-inspired future-tech, whether it’s the pyramid facilities or the sphinx-shaped space-bike, and they definitely improved on Brian and Akila, the inevitable boy/girl combination of best friends/sidekicks. In the books they’re just humans, but here they’re reimagined as a cyborg and a fish-alien respectively, each with a lot more personality in both design and voice.

And speaking of voice actors, special mention has to go to Sendhil Ramamurthy as Khensu, a talking cat who is appointed as Cleopatra’s mentor, and who (despite his apparent wisdom and self-importance) is still very young himself. Mentor/apprentice bonds are some of my favourite relationships in fiction, and the way Cleo and Khensu bounce off each other is the highpoint of the series.

I wish it had adhered closer to the perfectly good narrative thread that the graphic novels provided for it, but I still liked it a lot: great animation, cute characters, unique aesthetic, and some genuinely good standalone episodes.

Edit: So I got it wrong and the first season DOES actually end with Cleopatra learning Octavian's true identity. I was just under the impression there were twenty-five episodes instead of twenty-six.

The Owl House: Season 1 (2020)

This new animated series was very much promoted as the Next Big Thing, and… it’s fine. There’s a lot to like: the female leads, the quirky setting, the jabs at overused fantasy tropes, and yet it didn’t quite grab me in the way I wanted it to. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland mixed with Harry Potter; the randomness of the former’s setting combined with the stringent magical rules of the latter – an odd mix to be sure, and not one that’s entirely ironed itself out yet. 

Luz Noceda is a young teen with an overactive imagination who skips out on summer camp in order to follow a strange woman through a magical portal. Said woman is Eda the Owl Lady, a rebellious witch who scavenges stuff from the human world and is constantly avoiding the authorities because of it, accompanied by her very cute demon companion King (embodying the familiar gag of a tiny monster with delusions of grandeur – think Stewie in Family Guy or Luci from Disenchantment).

Luz is thrilled to be on the Boiling Isles, a world of magic and mystery – though there’s certainly an element of the grotesque and sinister to the place that puts the audience (if not Luz) on their guard. Remembering the hysteria that ensued from the religious fundamentalists after Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry became popular almost makes me want to see their reaction to the existence of Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, where Luz manages to enrol in order to learn the basics of becoming a witch, and the principal seems to have some sort of devil literally perched on his head.

But behind this fairly standard coming-of-age adventure set in a magical school is a backdrop of evil authoritarianism that enforces a strict regime of when/where/how magic is allowed to be practiced. Or so we're told. Honestly, this part isn’t that well conveyed, as the terrible Emperor that is apparently imposing his will over the Burning Isles is only sporadically mentioned: outside the first and last episodes, there’s no real indication that these characters live in a dangerous totalitarian state, and Luz is merrily roaming around the place with no sense of her own (presumed) vulnerability.

The first two episodes of the show were fantastic, which very much took the usual fantasy tropes (as they exist in Luz’s imagination) and twisted them up into something far creepier: for example, Luz eagerly following a treasure map that promises to take her on a mystical quest dotted with character archetypes from her favourite book series… only for it to go very, very wrong. It was such a dark and distorted take on what you’d usually expect from a show like this, and yet the rest of the series never truly recaptures that episode's twisted magic.

Still, I liked the rapport that develops between Luz and Eda (who is a powerful witch in her forties – how often do you see that?) and the slowburn enemies-to-friends-to-something-more…? relationship between Luz and classmate Amity Blight (well… at least in theory. I’m glad that there’s a casual depiction of a same-sex crush between two main characters, but the ship itself doesn’t thrill me). Some of the imagery and characterization is unforgettable, and there’s certainly a sense of a carefully planned narrative arc at work involving the strange curse placed upon Eda, the involvement of her estranged sister Lilith, and their joint history at Hexside School. And yet...

The show is accompanied by some short films called Owl Pellets, only a few seconds long, that fill in a few narrative gaps, and after-show specials called Look Hoooo’s Talking, hosted by two owls that point out some of the important details that viewers may have missed in each episode. That’s a lot of supplementary material to watch in order to get the whole picture of what’s happening.

Honestly, it feels like Disney has gone all-in on this particular show, and though the disparate pieces are good, it’s not quite coming together into a coherent whole. There’s still time to right the ship, and you can’t say it’s not ambitious, so fingers crossed that season two will be more tightly written.

(I did however greatly appreciate a sly jab made at Harry Potter which pointed out just how profoundly stupid the rules of Quidditch are).