It’s the ass-end of winter down under, but while going for a stroll on my lunch break, I happened across the first daffodil of the season!
Spring is on its way, and I personally cannot wait. This has been an awful winter, not just grey and wet and dreary, but also filled with bugs and illnesses. I’m a generally fairly healthy person, but I had so many days off this year, as did many of my colleagues.
Throughout this year I’ve managed to have very set “themes” for each month: epics in March, eighties fairy tales in April, Shakespeare in May, teen movies in June, Robin Hood/Ivanhoe in July... but August was definitely “miscellaneous.” Aside from finishing up The Tudors, which has been part of my ongoing Plantagenet/Tudor dynasty viewing, and finally getting to The Dark Crystal movie after going through the novels, comics and prequel show, I really just went where the mood took me this month.
For this post, keep in mind that I usually write reviews for things as I read/watch them, and that usually doesn’t make much of a difference in what order they're read. But this month the way I format everything I’ve been reading/watching (stage shows first, then comics, then short books, then novels, then movies, then shows) didn’t always match up with the chronology in which I read/watched them – for instance, I had Little Thieves finished before reading The Goose Girl, the fairy tale upon which the novel was based, and so which therefore comes first in the ranking. Then I finished up with The Tudors before getting to Firebrand, even though the film is positioned in this post before the final season of that show.
So some of these entries will feel a little out of order based on what I have to say about them, and when I got around to watching them.
Six: The Musical (bootleg)
Having just wrapped up the final season of The Tudors this month, I naturally had to finally watch a bootleg copy of Six: The Musical in terrible quality.
The conceit behind this show is that the six wives of Henry the Eighth have gotten together to hold a competition with each other – not over who was the most popular of the six queens, but who got the rawest deal at the hands of their husband. Catherine of Aragon, the faithful wife who was pushed aside for a younger model? Anne Boleyn, who was executed on fabricated charges for not delivering a son? Jane Seymour, who never got the chance to watch her son grow up? Catherine Howard, who had her head cut off for promiscuity? Or Catherine Parr, who had to give up the man she truly loved because no one can say “no” to the King of England?
You’ll notice that Anne of Cleves wasn’t in that line-up, because the show is very well aware that she got the best deal. To quote: “Rejection! How could anyone ever overcome a fate as devastating as being forced to move into a resplendent palace in Richmond, with more money than I could ever spend in a lifetime, and not a single man around to tell me what to do with it?”
There is some fun to be had in filtering the lives of these women through a modern lens – not just the costumes and colour-blind casting, but things like Anne of Cleves’s portrait being described as a “profile picture,” or the tune of “Greensleeves” being rearranged into a techno beat. The downside is that at a very brisk seventy minutes with no intermission, the story – such as it is – has no time for nuance. Anne Boleyn is a party girl, Jane Seymour is a love martyr, Catherine Howard is an airheaded child... it’s not surprising, but it is a bit simplistic.
Still, you have to admire a show that commits to having only women – and only six at that – on the stage for its entire duration, throwing themselves into the performance of a Spice Girl pop concert/American Idol-esque mashup that eventually culminates in them realizing that competing with each other was a fool’s game.
And though the inspirations are obvious (the deliberate anachronisms from Hamilton, the way the women get to make up their own completely fabricated happy endings, à la Atonement) it would still make for a fun girl’s night out. I hope it reaches New Zealand shores at some point.
Mary Anne Misses Logan by Anne M. Martin
This is a book of issues.
My first issue is the cover. It’s a great cover, so kinetic and engaging, with the girls having a great time hanging out with each other at the skating rink, no boyfriends in sight. The problem? This scene never happens in the book. Never! They don’t even discuss going to the skating rink at any point.
My second issue is that this is the first Mary Anne book since the one in which she ended her relationship with Logan, and she’s already decided she wants him back. Well, that was fast. Are you sure he’s grown out of the overbearing behaviour that you broke up with him for in the first place? There is some mild discussion with Dawn at the very end of the story that raises this issue, but it feels like lip-service rather than something Mary Anne should be giving serious consideration to.
Were readers so very desperate to see Mary Anne and Logan hook up again that we don’t really get a chance to see them spend time apart?
Third issue is that the story itself, like Mary Anne, is pretty boring. Her entire grade is given an assignment that involves doing in-depth research on an author and their books, during which they’ll be partnered with three other students. Mary Anne worries herself into a state over who she’ll have to work with, and is mortified when it turns out to be Miranda Shillaber, Pete Black and Logan.
Things get worse when everyone’s high school nemesis Cokie switches out with Miranda, having convinced the teacher that Megan Rinehart is the only author she likes, and said teacher wanting to encourage her in a subject she’s not that good at. Only Mary Anne knows the truth: Cokie is after Logan, and using this project as an excuse to spend time with him. She cites the events of Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery as evidence.
Only, hang on… Cokie’s role in sending creepy letters to Mary Anne had nothing to do with her crush on Logan, because it was her friend GRACE that had the crush. Cokie was just doing it out of spite and a love of shit-stirring (and I suppose, misplaced loyalty to her friend). This book would have us believe that she’s had a thing for Logan all along. I smell a continuity flaw.
The project apparently gets enough traction that several of the authors whose books are being studied visit the school for a presentation, and Cokie embarrasses herself by not doing any of the work, and so simply reading the blurb on the back of the book in front of everyone. It’s pretty satisfying, actually – a punishment that fits the crime instead of what we usually get: either the dead weight getting away with their laziness when someone takes pity on them, or an excessively over-the-top punishment that would leave them traumatized.
Fourth issue is that the babysitting subplot is also rather dull, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the A-plot. Apparently the Delaney family has moved away in-between books and a new family taken their place. There’s no fanfare to any of this, the story opens with the girls already familiar with the Kormans as clients, the Delaneys having been gone for a while. (I actually think their departure was the subject of one of the Little Sister books, but it gets no such coverage here. They’re just gone, so we’re no longer going to hear Amanda bragging about how her cat is worth over three hundred dollars).
Anyway, the new kids are Bill, Melody and Skylar, who I had absolutely no memory of EXCEPT the little detail that Skylar is afraid of the fountain in the entrance hall to the house… only for some reason I attributed this reaction to Archie, which makes absolutely no sense since why would the Rodowskys be living in the old Delaney house?
In any case, the kids are still getting used to the new house and are convinced there’s a monster in the toilet that makes strange noises. Nothing really happens with this, apart from the babysitters trying to convince them that there’s no such thing as monsters. This plot is never resolved in any meaningful way.
And that’s it really. Standard Mary Anne instalment.
Stacey and the Missing Ring by Anne M. Martin
I’ve finally made it to the Mysteries! I am inordinately excited about this, mostly because some of my favourite memories of late childhood involve stretching out in the sun with an Apple paperback mystery, usually featuring the Stoneybrook babysitters or the Sweet Valley High twins. If a ghost was involved, I was in absolute heaven.
Some experiences from childhood come with an array of sensory memories; distinct feelings and images that are conjured up by frequently-read books – and I have that about this sub-series: a vivid internal ambiance of vicariously solving small-town mysteries with a bunch of teenage girls. Stoneybrook and the Babysitters just come alive for me in these Mystery books in a way they don’t in the main series, and I’ll be curious to see if this feeling extends into the titles I’ve never read before. Because naturally they sound exactly like the sort of book that would bring on nostalgia-fuelled flashbacks to childhood: Claudia and the Lighthouse Ghost, Mary Anne and the Music Box Secret, Babysitters’ Haunted House… yes, yes, yes!
I can also tell it was around this time that I was starting to be weaned off the Babysitters Club, as I own only a handful of the main series after this point – I do however have books one-to-nine in the Mystery series, which indicates my priorities when it came to what kind of stories I was most interested in.
Conceived as a spin-off after realizing that the mystery-themed books in the series were the most popular, these instalments were notable for having darker covers than the usual pastel shades (deep blue to start with, though this changed later on) and of course, a mystery as the focus of the plot. Despite being an off-shoot of the main series, they followed the continuity of whatever was happening in the “real” books at the time, and occasionally introduced characters or contained events that would reappear or be referenced in the main series arc – so like the Super Specials, they couldn’t be skipped.
The mysteries came in one of three flavours: crime-fighting, frightening occurrences while babysitting, or supernatural phenomena. Towards the start of the series the books were usually quite grounded, dealing with missing kids or threatening notes, but later on the girls were taking down sophisticated crime rings and laying unquiet spirits to rest (which is something to look forward to).
So the first book in the series is rather staid, especially in comparison to some of the hijinks that happen later on. Stacey picks the worst possible time to openly covet a diamond ring, since when she takes on new clients the Gardellas (who will never again be seen or mentioned outside this book) she’s accused of stealing Mrs Gardella’s diamond ring, which was on her dresser during the time Stacey was left in the house with their baby daughter Tara.
She’s horrified at the accusation, and all the more so when Mrs Gardella says she’ll be telling other babysitting clients what’s happened. This leads to a lull in business, as well as a job cut short when the Prezziosos return home early from a fundraising event after being approached by the Gardellas at the function (though they don’t believe the Gardellas’ story, they were just upset by what was said).
Eventually Stacey comes up with a plan which makes very little sense. Although she continues to insist she didn’t take the ring, she offers to babysit the Gardellas free of charge until the price of the ring is paid back, as a good-will gesture. How weird is this, let me count the ways. First of all, even though Stacey is attempting to save the reputation of the club, she doesn’t owe these people a thing. They’ve accused her of a serious crime she didn’t commit.
Second of all, why would the Gardellas, who honestly believe that Stacey lifted their jewellery, let her back in the house? This is somewhat resolved by the fact that they ask another babysitter to accompany Stacey, a responsibility that falls to Kristy. So… is Kristy getting paid to be there? Or does she have to do this for free as well?
Thirdly, is Stacey even aware of how much a diamond ring costs? Because between how upset Mrs Gardella is that hers is missing and the fact that her mother blanched at the idea of buying one for her thirteen-year-old daughter, that’s kind of the WHOLE POINT of this entire mess. I’ve no idea how much the Club charges for their services, but according to this plan, Stacey will be babysitting for free until Tara is in college.
Finally, Stacey and Kristy put their plan into action once they’re inside the house, which is to search the place from top to bottom in search of the ring. They end up discovering it when they follow the Gardellas’ cat to one of its hiding places, where – sure enough – it’s stashed the ring. This is a reasonably good solution to the problem, though because I’m a suspicious bitch, I can’t help but feel that if I suspected a babysitter of stealing my belongings, then let her back into the house for another job, only for the missing items to be oh-so-conveniently found while she’s left alone there, I’d probably assume she took them in the first place, felt the heat, and then returned them at the first available opportunity – and blame the cat for good measure.
Not that it makes a difference, because the Gardellas admit they never actually got around to telling anyone else about the missing ring. They only told the Prezziosos, and that was because they randomly bumped into them at that party by accident. The lull in business was a total coincidence, the Club’s reputation was never truly at stake, and hopefully Stacey will watch Blood Diamond in fifteen years to learn why diamond rings are a bad idea.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given that this is the first instalment of a secondary branch of the series, this story is remarkably self-contained. It involves brand-new clientele that are never seen again after this story (not that I blame either party for never contacting the other again) and – even stranger – a chapter that introduces a little boy called Joey Conklin who ends up taking a running garden hose into the Prezzioso house. He’s given a huge amount of focus in the single chapter in which he appears, with Mary Anne’s notebook entry stating: “there’s a new kid on the block, and this little terror might just be a challenger to the ‘walking disaster’ title that Jackie Rodowsky now holds.”
As far as I know, he’s never seen or heard from again. It’s actually kind of weird. Maybe he was just karmic punishment for all the passive-aggressive shit that Mary Anne pulls, since she’s the one left cleaning up his mess.
There’s also a scene in which the girls visit the mall and get the giggles on overhearing a couple of women trying on shoes, but insisting that their foot size is much smaller than it actually is. I’m positive that this exact same scenario is used in Mary Anne’s Makeover, though it’s Mary Anne and her father who overhear the women in question. Stay tuned.
The real MVP of the book is Kristy, who demonstrates that she’s Club President for a reason. She might be bossy and a bit conceited at times, but when the chips are down, she STEPS UP. On hearing that Stacey has been accused of stealing, she immediately says: “I know and you know you didn’t take that ring,” and later accompanies Stacey back to the Gardella house to help her search for the ring. You know you can rely on that girl absolutely, and since Kristy and Stacey never get a lot of “screentime” together, it was nice to see them get some decent interaction in this book.
But it all ends on a baffling note, in which Stacey declares: “I may get the birthstone ring after all. My mom told me last night that she and my dad talked about it, and they might go in together to get it for me for my next birthday.” Wow, you learned nothing, girl. Also, we never hear about this ring nonsense again, so I’m going to assume the McGills don’t end up doing this very stupid thing.
The Goose Girl by Gillian Cross
A bit further down you’ll find that I read a YA book this month that was based on the fairy tale The Goose Girl. I discovered this about halfway through the book in question, and realized I had very little familiarity with the original story. Which is odd since fairy tales are kinda my thing. In my mind it got conflated with the one about the golden goose that everyone got stuck to and the one about the girl who produced jewels in her mouth every time she spoke, but these are in fact two completely different stories.
Recalling that a while back I purchased a very slim paperback at a book fair that retold the story, I dug it out of my bookshelf in order to give Little Thieves its proper context. Turn out that story involves a princess being sent from her home to her future husband’s kingdom, only for a maidservant to steal her clothes and take her place, threatening her on pain of death to never reveal their true identities. The only other witness to the crime is the princess’s horse, who can speak only “when the time is right.”
On reaching the prince’s kingdom, the former princess is put to work as a goose girl, though naturally the deception is revealed in due course, in part due to the talking horse finally speaking... after it has been killed and its head mounted on the gate. It’s an odd little tale, and though it includes plenty of popular fairy tale motifs (such as a talking animal and the true bride) I don’t think I’ve ever come across it before.
There are other elements of the story that make it into Little Thieves – strange little details such as a linen cloth spotted with drops of blood, and a punishment involving a barrel full of nails, though nothing that accounts for the fact the protagonist is struggling with a curse that involves jewels sprouting up all over her body (I’m pretty sure this is why I initially equated it with the story of the girl who had jewels fall out her mouth every time she spoke).
Mostly though it’s built around the conceit of a servant girl stealing the identity of a highborn lady, though obviously with a lot more context and motivation given to the participants. But you can read about that below...
Tales of the Great Beasts by Brandon Mull and others
This is the heroic counterpart of the other anthology of short stories in the Spirit Animals series, though the most striking different is that this is a prequel, whereas Tales of the Fallen Beasts serves as something of a bridge between the original series and its sequel.
It’s also a little like the Animorphs book I read this month (see below) in that it chronicles the doomed cause of the Great Beasts as they attempt to halt the global invasion of Stetriol, a conquering nation (which bizarrely enough, is a fantasy equivalent to Australia) that is doing the old “trying to take over the world” thing.
Though there are technically only four Great Beasts, there are five stories in this anthology, the first being the odd one out considering it delves into the background of Feliandor, the king of Stetriol. Exploring his boyhood and the pressures laid upon him, it attempts to explain why exactly he chooses to start conquering the rest of the world... though that’s a lot of ground to cover in a short story, and it’s not entirely convincing.
Things are on firmer ground when we turn to Jhi the giant panda, Uraza the leopard, Briggan the wolf and Essix the falcon, along with the human attempts to try and recruit these animals in the growing conflict. Yin goes in search of Jhi in the bamboo maze in order to find a cure for her sickly younger brother, while the indifferent Uraza is drawn into the fight by a young trickster called Tembo when he teaches her that neutrality is not an option.
Briggan’s story follows a similar trajectory when a girl called Kataline deliberately goes in search of the great wolf to secure his leadership for their cause, though it all ends on a slightly different note with Essix, whose tale is simply a recounting of the decisive battle between the united allies and Stretriol’s armies, providing a direct lead-in to the starting point of the original series.
Naturally there are other links to the series, whether it’s characters turning out to be the ancestors of future protagonists or the appearance of notable artefacts that get handed down from one generation to the next, and it’s altogether a reasonably solid set of prequel tales – no more, no less.
Animorphs: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K.A. Applegate
The second of the two Animorphs spin-offs I’ve read over these past two months, which fill in some of the backstory and context of the series as a whole. This once deals with the Yeerk invasion of the Hork-Bajir home world, and the gradual decline of that species as they gradually become the host-bodies and shock troops of those parasitical sentient slugs.
As far as I know, this is chronologically the earliest of all the Animorph stories, seeing as it details the first steps of the Yeerk species as they learn about the wider galaxy, escape their home world on a stolen ship, and begin their slow but sure conquest of the galaxy by taking over the bodies of other, more powerful lifeforms.
Framed by Tobias visiting a secluded valley on Earth where a family of free Hork-Bajir live in secrecy, he is told the story of three individuals: Dak Hamee, a Hork-Bajir who is a seer among his people, Aldrea, the daughter of the Andalite scientist who accidentally unleashed the Yeerks upon the galaxy, and Esplin 9466, a Yeerk that will eventually become the Big Bad of the main series, Visser Three.
Their lives become intertwined when Aldrea’s family is sent to the Hork-Bajir planet, ostensibly to engage in scientific research of the primitive race, but obviously just to exile her father Seerow after his catastrophic mismanagement of the Yeerks. There she meets and befriends Dak Hamee, who is renowned among his people for his insight and wisdom, a once-in-a-generation seer who is believed to have been born to assist his people in an impending change.
That change is all too obvious once the Yeerks arrive, and immediately seize on the Hork-Bajir as a precious resource for their war effort – with their hulking size and massive claws (which are really just to scrape the tree bark that comprises their diet) the species are deadly weapons once the Yeerks take control of their bodies. Applegate has never shied away from depicting shades of grey in her long-running series, and although it’s obvious to Dak Hamee that his people must resist the Yeerks by any means possible, their willingness to fight and kill the invaders is portrayed as the tragic corruption of a once-peaceful, simple people.
This moral ambiguity is especially true in the character of Aldrea, who – as an Andalite – is technically one of the overarching saga’s heroes, but one who carries the arrogance and condescending attitude of any “we know best” colonizing power. She means no overt harm to the Hork-Bajir, but for a long time she’s unconsciously certain of her own superiority. It’s only until she learns the full extent of the measures her people are willing to take in order to wipe out the Yeerk threat that her mind begins to change.
It’s impressive that this is a story entirely populated by aliens; with the involvement of not a single human character. More than that, we actually get some insight into the physical experiences and thought processes of creatures whose biology is profoundly different from our own, namely the heady experience of a near-blind and largely interchangeable Yeerk taking over another species for the very first time: the sights, the smells, the freedom of movement, the sense of individuality – it’s no wonder they’re all so gung-ho about taking over the galaxy.
It's a story that’s infused with both hope and tragedy. On the one hand, we know it’s not going to end well for anyone. By the time the main book series kicks off, all these characters are long-dead. And yet hope always lingers, not only in the descendants of Dak Hamee and Aldrea, but the torch that has been passed to the likes of Jake, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias and Marco, who are carrying on the fight.
Applegate handles the balance exceptionally well – as mentioned, she never stints on depicting the psychological cost of war, and much of her material now has sobering new echoes and implications in light of our current events, a full two decades since the saga’s first publication in the early noughties. Back then I never made it past book seven, but reading these supplementary materials makes me want to start from the beginning and work through the whole thing.
Trimalchio’s Feast by Caroline Lawrence
Another set of short stories, these ones strewn throughout the very carefully constructed timeline that makes up the course of The Roman Mysteries. Caroline Lawrence’s seventeen-book saga should be required reading for all young people: not only for the mysteries, but the sheer amount of research she puts into her chosen setting, and how vividly Ancient Rome comes to life as a result.
Featuring six stories in all, the foreword not only provides each one's placement in the chronology of the series, but also a little about how Lawrence was inspired to write them. Some are book-chapter length; the shortest is only a couple of pages. Most are in the series’ usual third-person, but one uses Jonathan as a direct narrator, writing down his experiences as a young gladiator, and another presented as a letter to Emperor Vespasian from a local magistrate.
The downside is that not all of the stories featured here are mysteries, and you definitely have to be familiar with the books to understand some of their context (like why, for example, Jonathan’s father is so unkempt and depressed in “The Case of the Talking Statue.”)
Something else that’s commendable is that Lawrence is unapologetically historically correct when it comes to the hard truths of the Roman Empire, and the mindsets of those living within it. One story ends “happily” when a spiteful slave is sold off in the slave markets, and another with a fraudulent fortune teller being threatened with crucifixion. It’s a tad confronting, but also a somewhat refreshing change of pace.
It’s a nice companion book for the series as a whole, though the stories would probably work best if they’re read while you’re reading your way through the main books, each at their appointed place in the timeline. They act more like little garnishes to the larger arc, as opposed to a decent meal on their own terms.
Diadem: Books 4 – 5 by John Peel
The final two instalments of the Diadem books that I own; part of a series I will probably never complete given that it’s been so long out of print. Perhaps a second-hand bookstore will one day avail me, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
The interesting thing about it is that by this point, the storyline that comprised the first three books in the series has been wrapped up fairly neatly. The Big Bads have been defeated, our three heroes have discovered the truth about themselves, and the titular Diadem has been saved. That’s... a pretty rapid wind-up to a LOST-style narratives (full of clues and riddles and secret identities) that could have very well been stretched out across the full length of the twelve books.
What’s left to do? Well, it turns out that what follows are largely standalone adventures in which Score, Helaine and Pixel continue to hone their magical abilities, provide assistance to any sympathetic creatures that need their help, and travel the various worlds of the Diadem. Kind of like Doctor Who, which is hardly a coincidence given the author’s contributions to that franchise.
In this case, the trio assist a newfound unicorn ally win back his herd from an interloper who usurps his position through magical interference, and then journey back to New York after Score is attacked (again magically) by persons unknown in order to blackmail the friends into using their combined power in service of nefarious goals.
The second story is considerably better than the first (in fact, the unicorn plot barely makes any sense) but the saga in its entirety was just begging to have been made into a cheap television serial with badly-rendered CGI like The Knights of Tir Na Nog back in the nineties. Man, I would have watched the heck out of that.
In lieu of a relatively compelling threat like the Triad or the ongoing mysteries surrounding characters such as Oracle and Shanara (who still appear, but in what can best be described as tech or research support) the strength of the books lie in the developing friendship between the three leads. They’ve learned to trust one another, and now they’re growing as both individuals and a team, drawing on each other’s strengths, covering for their weaknesses, and learning more about their backgrounds and ambitions.
There are still plenty of annoying quirks, like how sometimes the protagonists cast spells by talking backwards or without vowels at length, which is an absolute headache to read. Helaine continues to be a classic nineties not-like-the-other-girls (“she had no desire to know how to remove warts, or cast a love spell, or get rid of mice – these were the sorts of things that the goodwives of her world were supposed to be able to do, and they had always seemed totally pointless to her”) but Peel is astute enough to know that her arrogance and classism are flaws that need to be overcome.
Still, I loved the fact that when something needs doing, she does it. At the end of the second book, she flat-out kills a guy. Like, just throws a dagger into his chest and doesn’t look back.
There’s also some reasonably funny bits of comedy, as when the kids are still honing their magical abilities while being attacked by goblins. They end up creating clouds of laughing gas around their foes, and levitating any that aren’t affected. Then Score conjures up custard pies to throw at them. “There was absolutely no question that this had to be the stupidest fight ever held.”
As ever, it was the interconnecting cover art that snagged my imagination, though it stopped at book six, after which an entirely different publishing house picked up the series. But those initial covers were a wee bit formative; that fantasy/sci-fi blend that felt so unique to me at the time. I’m a bit sad that I can’t follow the kids into any further adventures.
Night of the Living Rerun by Arthur Byron Cover
I’ve been very lax on my Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch because I’ve wanted to read this tie-in novel before the season one finale, knowing that the story takes place before the Master’s defeat. And yikes – what happened? All of these books are glorified fan-fictions to one extent or another, but the preceding titles (Halloween Rain and Coyote Moon) have at least been coherent. This reads like a first draft.
And that’s a damn shame, since this book includes some of my favourite subjects: former lives reliving past tragedies in the present-day, the Salem Witch Hunt, and the life and times of a previous Slayer. I’m always down to learn more about previous Slayers since the show itself was so inexplicably uninterested, but the delivery leaves a lot to be desired.
Buffy has been having strange dreams, and Giles suggests keeping a diary of her nightly visions. She ends up with pages of scribbled events from the Salem Witch Trials, which involved a past Slayer called Samantha Kane.
From there... well, it’s kind of a muddled plot. Apparently there were four individuals who were using the Salem Witch Hunt as a cover for trying to summon a giant demon (a bit like the Mayor, I imagine) from the Hellmouth, only to be thwarted by the Slayer at the cost of her own life. There is also a witch involved, who raises the dead... for some reason.
Now, in present-day Sunnydale, these four spirits have taken over the bodies of Xander, Giles, Buffy and... um, I forget who the last one goes into, who go about trying to reenact the ritual that brought forth the demon all those centuries ago. Somehow, the Master is the one who is responsible for these possessions, but don’t ask me how. All this also involves a sculpture that Buffy’s mother is displaying at her art gallery, but I forget how it’s important.
Along with the muddled plot, the writing is just plain bad. For example: “He slid across the top of the desk like a stone skipping across a lake.” Er, stones don’t slide across the top of a lake, they skip. That’s why they call it skipping stones. “The Master laughed until the echoes rang up and down the tunnels like a scream from an infinite abyss.” His laughter sounds like a scream? And if an abyss is infinite, it does not – by definition – have anything in it, including laughter. “[Giles] missed them both completely, landing rump-first on the hard tile floor. He didn’t have time to say anything else, because he was still sliding across the hall.” Wait, he falls on his ass and then keeps sliding across the floor? Huh? At another point, the Master thinks: “I have often wondered what it is like to dream, or to sleep. Is that essence of humanity?” First of all, vampires can sleep, so what’s he talking about? And to answer his question, no, I don’t think that sleeping is the essence of humanity. Why would it be? Animals sleep as well.
None of the characters sound like they do on the show; heck, they don’t even sound like real people, either in their internal dialogue or in the conversations they have with each other. It’s shame in a way. Reincarnation, past slayers, witch hunts – I love all this stuff, but the way the story is told is just sloppy.
Lives of the Saints by Leigh Bardugo
The last of the Grishaverse material that currently exists, and nice capper on my re-read (or first-time read in some cases) of the saga in its entirety. This is a compendium of stories regarding the Saints that make up the theological framework of Ravkan religious belief, that being the country where most of the Grishverse books take place. It surprised me by containing stories that were not only quite short (providing only a brief summary of why certain individuals were elevated to the rank of sainthood after their deaths) but which were very much supposed to be In-Universe retellings of the Saints' exploits.
In other words, this is a book that Ravkan parents might read to their children at night; the book itself a defictionalization of something tangible that exists in their world, like how the Buzz Lightyear movie was what Andy watched as a child in the Toy Story films. (The cover art backs this up, as the book itself looks to be bound in red leather with Ravkan cursive on the front – though I can’t say for certain, as I only read the e-book. But ignore that blue bottom half, apparently it’s just a dust jacket).
This is an important distinction, because it doesn’t really add any further insight into the nature or purpose of the Saints. As I’ve discussed before, the concept as it exists in the Grishaverse books is fascinating, since it’s very heavily implied that the Saints are just Grisha whose lives have grown into legends, with embellishments and narrative flourishes affixed to their stories, granting them the status of holy men and women well after their deaths.
In other words, the stories presented here are not supposed to be accurate accounts of the individuals involved – which the reader should pick up on as they go. For instance, we know there was much more to the story of Sankt Ilya than what is recounted in this volume, and that many of the stated facts are wrong regarding the nature of his dead child. Likewise, we know that Alina could not have possibly helped the protagonist in the story told about her, as she’s still very much alive (and living in seclusion) at the time when it’s supposed to take place.
That’s a shame in a way, as I would have liked to have know more about the real lives of the Saints, not the stories that have been applied to them. Still, Bardugo seems to be committed to the ambiguity of her invented religion, and it’s always fascinating to read books of this nature (see also: The World of Fire and Ice, which is a history of Westeros recounted by a scribe who’s actually living in it).
It ends up being a non-essential little companion piece, which gives us some extra details on some of the more famous saints such as Juris, Lizabeta, Grigory and Neyar (that last one having made an appearance in the second season of Shadow and Bone) and is probably of most interest only to completists. And apparently Ben Barnes read the audiobook, so that’s cool.
Ghost Drum by Susan Price
The funny thing about this book is that it’s really quite good – but because it comes at the tail-end of my Slavic fantasy reads, a lot of the material feels like well-covered territory. And that’s a damn shame since this won the Carnegie Medal way back in 1984. It’s therefore in the unenviable position of being the very thing that might well have originally inspired this current surge in Slavic-based fairy tales, while also rendering everything unique about it to be blasé by recent standards.
Though the real irony is that this is a reprint, a publishing decision which was no doubt brought on by the ongoing demand for YA Slavic fantasy, only for it to now feel like an imitation of all those much later stories. Which as I said, is deeply unfair.
Susan Price is a gifted author, though like Anne Pilling, I suspect her work is too dark and uncanny to draw in a devoted fanbase. Truly, she pulls no punches with what she writes for a young audience – here for example, the protagonist is killed when she’s deliberately impaled with a large stake. Though she finds a way to reanimate her body, it’s not before hungry wolves chew off one of her arms. You know, for kids!
It's presented as an oral tale, in such a way that it almost demands to be read aloud. The framing device is of a learned cat chained to an oak tree (a stock fairy tale character popularized by Alexander Pushkin, who is also referenced in Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale) who sings songs if he goes in one direction, and tells tales if he goes the other.
Unfolding over the course of several generations, this story is about the witch Chingis, who is taken from her home as an infant and raised by the witch who lives in the house with chicken legs. Meanwhile, the Czar’s unwanted son Safa is raised in a tower room, with no inkling of the outside world beyond what his nursemaid can tell him. (Yeah, it’s Room, twenty-six years before that book was published).
One day these two individuals will meet, but the path to each other is a long and strange one...
Though Price doesn’t go deep into characterization, for that’s never the purview of fairy tales, she does create dense and evocative imagery, from the dark opulence of the Czar’s palace to the stark coldness of the Iron Wood that ghosts traverse after death. It’s a slim book, and yet I’m not surprised that it goes down like a very rich plum pudding, for every sentence is leaden with meaning and weight, and not a single word is wasted.
Another thing that interested me is that even though I’ve only read a few of Price’s books, I love how you can often pick up on a writer’s specific interests; the subjects and themes they keep returning to. In this case, I know that Price is deeply into fey lore and shamanism, which are also heavily present in The Sterkarm Handshake and The Bearwood Witch, even though if I provided a synopsis of all three books, they would sound like they had nothing in common. And yet, you can definitely tell they were written by the same hand.
She also likes to go hard not only on monarchies and the right of kings, but those that allow these institutions to flourish (“if the world were well-rid of every Czar, then the most greedy, the most cruel, and the least truthful of those left would called themselves Czars – and the rest would let them do it”) as well as the power of words and how they can shape people’s minds:
“Suppose that a Czar or Czaritsa ordered their people to fight a war, a stupid war, a war that should never have been fought. Thousands of people are killed for no good reason, and their families left to mourn them. Much, much money is spent on canons and swords, so there is no money to spend on other, better things, such as seed to grow wheat to feed the people – and thousands of people are cold and hungry because of this war.
The Czar is afraid that if the people find out how foolish and wasteful the war was, they will be furious and do him harm. So the Czar uses word-magic. He says to the people, “The war was not foolish – no! It proved that our people are the bravest and best in the world because they died for us, and killed so many of the enemy. I know you are starving, my children,” he says to them, “but that shows how noble you are and how willing to make sacrifices for the Mother-land. I, your Czar, am proud of you!”
He says this and repeats it over and over again, and he makes his servants repeat it over and over to everyone they meet – and the magic works. The people forget to be angry. They grow glad that their sons and brothers were killed, and proud that they themselves are cold and hungry. This is the very simplest kind of word-magic, but it is very powerful, my daughter, very powerful indeed.”
In hindsight, I really wish that I had read this at the start of my Slavic fantasy project, for it really is an evocative and thought-provoking piece of work. It also reminded me a lot of Margaret Mahy’s YA novels, though don’t ask me how or why – I can only tell you I kept thinking of The Changeover and The Tricksters while reading this. One day I’ll return to it, and hopefully be less burned-out on its setting and subject matter.
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
I was a few chapters into this story when I learned (not sure how, I may have glanced at a couple of reviews) that it was actually a retelling of The Goose Girl, a fairy tale I was unfamiliar with. If you’d asked me, I would have said it was the one where the girl gets stuck to the goose, and then everyone who touches her also gets stuck to her in a long chain of people, but that’s clearly a different story.
In any case, it clearly involves a servant girl stealing her mistress’s identity, and being punished for her crime by gradually getting changed into gemstones. (Edit: That last part is incorrect, and appears to be a conceit original to this particular book. I think I was equating it with the other fairy tale about the girl who had jewels fall out of her mouth every time she spoke).
This is a fleshing-out of that premise, in which the servant girl’s motives and backstory serve as an explanation as to why she commits this identity theft beyond mere greed, naturally making her out to be much more sympathetic than in the original tale. It’s a decent idea, though I probably would have liked it a tad more if I’d had preexisting knowledge of the aforementioned fairy tale.
That said, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that everyone wants to be first to do something second, which is especially true among YA writers. Think of all the vampire romances after Twilight, or the deluge of dystopias after The Hunger Games. Well, Slavic fantasy has been The Thing for a while now – and I should know, because I’ve spent the last year reading them all. (Though terrible feminist retellings of Greek myths are starting to edge them out).
Leigh Bardugo kicked it all off with Shadow and Bone, and it’s been thieves and deals with gods and houses with chicken legs and onion domes and kvass ever since.
But that said, Little Thieves isn’t bad, and is more Germanic than Slavic in its setting, even if they probably should have gone with a title that wasn’t so reminiscent of the Dregs in Six of Crows (heck, this author’s last book was called The Merciful Crow. I suppose if you’re gonna heavily borrow, you may as well make sure everyone knows what you’re borrowing from).
Vanja Schmidt is a young woman living perpetually undercover. Thanks to a magical necklace that changes her physical appearance, sometimes she’s the Princess Gisele, betrothed to the powerful but dangerous Adalbrecht von Reigenbach. Sometimes she’s Gisele’s own servant Marthe, who can sneak around under everyone’s noses without anyone noticing her. And sometimes she’s the Pfennigeist (the Penny Phantom) who robs the homes of the wealthy – usually when there’s a party going on downstairs. Between these three identities, she’s managed to forge a living for herself.
In truth, she’s a nobody, the adopted daughter of Death and Fortune (just go with it) who was given to them by her mother when she was just a child, the family having too many mouths to feed. Near the start of this story, Vanja is cursed by another goddess, to gradually change into “her greed” – that is, to endure pearls and rubies and other gems erupt across her body. The only way to save herself is to act selflessly, but because of her trauma and upbringing and a thousand other psychological reasons, it’s not that easy.
A series of flashbacks tells us more about Vanja’s former life as a servant to the real Princess Gisele, and how drastic circumstances led her to stealing her mistress’s identity – as well as what happened to Gisele once she was left a penniless nobody. Naturally, we get to hear Gisele’s side of the story as well, and thankfully this is one of those tales where women aren’t pitted against each other, regardless of their circumstances.
In many ways, it’s standard YA fare, with all the prerequisite tropes: a protagonist who only speaks in pithy banter, a deep-seated trauma to work through, an adversarial love interest, the queer beta couple, a plethora of short, choppy, portentous declarations that just come across as self-important – but there are also a lot of wrinkles to the formula that I enjoyed. For instance, I like that Vanja is very flawed – understandably so, but not let off the hook just because she’s had a hard time of it. There are no pity parties here, and the reader is allowed to form their own opinions of her.
I also like that her love interest isn’t a gloomy bad boy who just needs the Love of a Good Woman Who Understands Him, but a complete dork, complete with spectacles and the name of Emeric. This time around she’s the bad girl and he’s the straight shooter, and it makes for a more interesting dynamic.
The first-person narrative is more spritely than usual, even if it involves that droll, sardonic tone that’s so prevalent in YA (including uses of “well, that happened” and “I did. I did do that,” and “Vanja, no.” “Vanja, yes!” *eye-roll*) as well as a tendency towards overwrought melodrama: “we have passed through the thorns, we have thrown out the wolves, we have told our own stories, named our destinies ourselves...” Okay hon, take it down a notch.
But most importantly: Margaret Owen is a good writer. There are some very good ideas and insights and turns of phrases throughout the story, which elevate the story from a standard fairy tale retelling to something more special. For instance, here’s her description of Vanja having a mind-altering potion magically extracted from her body:
“Have you ever felt the sting of a sliver, looked at it, and realized it’s going to hurt almost as much coming out? Have you ever pulled a loose thread, only to see the cloth bunch and wrinkle? Have you ever looked at the veins and arteries in your hand and wondered how many of them branch through you, fragile and immeasurable as roots in soil? Now imagine that delicate network of blood vessels is full of splinters, and they are all being pulled out the way you would pull on a loose thread, and your nerves are the cloth crumpling in their wake.”
It’s lovely: three recognizable experiences to form a clear analogy of the otherwise indescribable thing that’s happening. There are some really nice woodprint-like illustrations in here too, though I’m not sure who provided them, and I enjoyed the Germanic ambiance and the relatively solid world-building too.
Now that my huge stack of Slavic fantasy reads is finally coming to an end, I’m glad it’s concluding on a high note.
Rear Window (1954)
It was movie night at work and our democratically-elected choice was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which many had never seen before. This was perhaps my third or fourth time watching it, and – as is the case with all the very best films – you notice something new each time.
These days, people are probably introduced to the parodies or knock-offs that Rear Window inspired long before they get to the film itself (for me it was The Simpsons episode where Bart thinks Flanders has killed his wife) though some preliminary research into the history of the film revealed that the short story from which it was adapted (“It Had To Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich) was itself inspired by another short story called “Through a Window” by H.G. Wells.
Yes, that H.G. Wells. I just love the way stories can flow into each other like this, across decades or even centuries.
So the premise of a paralysed or otherwise incapacitated person witnessing what may or may not be a crime has been around for quite a while. In this case, it’s B. “Jeff” Jefferies (we never get his first name) who is held up with a broken leg. Between the New York heatwave and his uncertainty about how to proceed in his relationship with glitzy socialite Lisa, he’s not having a good time of it.
His nurse Stella advises him not to overthink it – according to her, it’s simply a matter of two people liking each other, but Jeff has a front row seat to varying states of matrimonial “bliss” going on amongst his neighbours in their shared apartment block, who naturally have their windows opened and curtains drawn back to cope with the heat.
This is the thematic backbone of the film in its entirety: the nature of heterosexual relationships and how much they kind of suck, whether it’s the newlyweds that quickly get over their honeymoon period, the actual murder that occurs in the opposite flat, or the obvious incompatibility of Jeff and Lisa, regardless of how much trauma-bonding they do over the course of the investigation.
Still, they are a lot of fun to watch. Their dialogue is too witty and sophisticated to be anything but scripted, yet there’s a naturalism in how they speak, sometimes talking over each other or interrupting one another, that makes it sound spontaneous. There might be a staged quality to their interactions, but it fits in with the setting of all the other windows that surround them, forming their own separate stages to other peoples’ lives.
This of course leads to the most notable element of the film: that the action never leaves Jeff’s apartment (excepting only a couple of close-up reaction shots from other characters towards the end of the film). Everything we see is either contained within the main room of his apartment, or from Jeff’s limited point-of-view as he spies on his neighbours – either through binoculars or his long-range camera lens. That the film is as engrossing and suspenseful as it is given these limitations is a testament to Hitchcock’s instincts as a director. Terrible person, excellent filmmaker.
Also significant is that we never really get a clear idea of exactly what happened to poor Mrs Thorwald. All the pieces are there – the suitcases, the mistress, the dog – but perhaps having learned his lesson from the conclusion of Psycho, in which a convenient psychiatrist is on hand to summarize the entire plot for the benefit of the viewer, there is no similar wrap-up here. We can only surmise that Thorwald killed his wife in a pique of anger, dismembered her body and removed the various parts via his suitcase, and then roped in his mistress to take his wife’s trunk to the train station. The details are opaque in order to keep Jeff (and the audience) guessing.
It's also a story of voyeurism and emasculation. Jeff’s broken leg speaks for itself, as does his pleased expression when he trades out his binoculars for the much longer telescopic lens on his camera. But it’s the women that have to do the legwork in the investigation, and when Lisa is caught Jeff can do nothing but writhe in his chair. Then he’s thrown out his own window.
The problem with the voyeurism angle though, is that the story eventually rewards Jeff for doing it, creating something of a Broken Aesop. Despite everyone criticizing what he’s up to, it’s pretty difficult not to peep into other people’s homes when you’re laid up with a broken leg and everyone’s blinds are pulled up due to the heat. And ultimately, if he hadn’t, then Thorwald would have gotten away with murder.
It's something to chew on, and provides an excuse to watch it all over again: the death of the poor little dog, the moment Thorwald looks up and sees Jeff spying on him, and the vignettes that take place through each window: Miss Torso, Miss Lonelyhearts, the newlyweds, the composer – each one telling their own little story.
The Dark Crystal (1982)
My foray into The Dark Crystal franchise continues, this time with the film that started it all. It was actually rather fascinating watching this on the heels of the Netflix show for the first time, since a lot of what is featured here is expanded upon there (as well as in the novels and comics).
Much like the expansion of a coral reef and how it eventually grows larger than the submerged rock from which it originated, the supplementary material that was inspired by The Dark Crystal now far exceeds the scope of the film itself. This now feels like a single chapter to a much bigger story; one that began long before its inception, and will continue for long afterwards as well.
As such, it’s not surprising that its opening requires some lengthy exposition by an omniscient narrator to lay down the basic world-building: there’s a dark crystal, a missing shard, two distinct species, and a world on the brink of desolation. The Skeksis live in the Castle of the Crystal, prolonging their lives through the absorption of its light, while the Mystics live in exile, with a single Gelfing called Jen in their care.
There are now only ten Skeksis and Mystics left, though this number dwindles to only nine when the Emperor and Jen’s Master perish at the same time near the very beginning of the story. Jen is left with only one task to complete: to find the missing shard and return it to its place in the crystal – only then will the world be restored.
What follows is a fairly paint-by-numbers quest, which is elevated almost solely by the imaginative puppeteering that’s on display. Jen himself is a pretty bland hero, called the Chosen One and with a prophecy affixed to him, though neither are really necessary in getting him where he needs to go. (Protip: if a character is going to do things anyway, without the need of a prophecy to tell him to do them, then just let him take action on his own steam!) Most of the time he comes across as rather whiny and unintelligent, and you can’t help but feel that Kira would have made the better protagonist of the two.
Like I said, the film’s most interesting aspect is to see how it fits in with the Netflix show. The Skeksis have gone back to using the crystal itself for sustenance, even though the option to drain living creatures of their essence is still open to them (the issue is finding enough living creatures for the essence to have any effect). Things like the black mushrooms (or Gobbles) and the power of music are established here but expanded upon the show/novels, and dreamfasting in particular is a concept that’s delved into much more deeply elsewhere. I almost felt a little reverent watching it happen here, knowing that Gelfings haven’t partaken in this ritual for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The ruins that Jen and Kira stumble upon are clearly meant to be the remains of Stone-in-the-Wood and Kira even sits on Maudra Fara’s throne, now exposed to the elements. Likewise, J.M. Lee’s world-building also provides added context to the story, having given names and context to various details that are simply there in the film – back in 1982 no one had any idea that there were once seven Gelfing clans, but now it’s clear that Kira is a Vapran and Jen a Spriton.
There’s only one wrinkle in the continuity between show and film. The film posits that the Gelfings were hunted down and killed because of the prophesy stating they would one day destroy the Skeksis and restore the Crystal of Truth: “by Gelfing hand or else by none.” In the show, the genocide begins because they’re being rounded up and drained of their life essence – no mention of any prophecy at all. At that point in time, the Skeksis wanted to use Gelfings, not eradicate them. Perhaps a second season would have cleared this up a bit.
Ultimately, the story of The Dark Crystal is the world that it creates. That’s where its beauty and interest lies, and the best way to enjoy the film is to soak in all the details: the flora and fauna, the ancient Gelfling carvings, the little critters that scutter around the Castle of the Crystal, the rotting opulence of the Skeksis (even if their pointless court politics end up taking way too much screentime).
You can’t beat the old-school look of the film, whether it’s the grainy quality of the film itself, or the fact that the puppeteers had no CGI to assist them back in the eighties. As a result, the Netflix Gelflings feel a bit more personable, but the overall “dusty” look suits the later time span of the film. It’s a bit like comparing the prequels to the original trilogy in Star Wars: one was clearly made first, but still looks like it took place much later in the chronology of the story.
There are plenty of things to complain about: the fact that the Chamberlain wanders around going: “hMMMmm” in a way that suggests he’s got something important on his mind (though if he did, he never spits it out), the woodenness of the main character (and weirdly enough, Jen is naked in his introductory scene – I’d never noticed that before!) and that completely unnecessary narrator (I’d like to have my memory wiped and then watch this for the first time without the exposition, just to see if I could get my bearings without his help).
But that’s The Dark Crystal for you. The story is its world, and that is now a tiny part of a much greater saga.
Twister (1996)
All the promotion around Twisters (plural) only made me crave rewatching the original, having not seen it for at least fifteen years. I was addicted to this movie when I was a teenager; I’ve probably watched it dozens of times, and so I was inordinately excited to see it again.
And it held up! Some of the special effects are a bit dodgy, but since a lot of it was practical (essentially just turning on the wind machine and throwing things at Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt) it still looks pretty good. Throw in some decent stakes, team camaraderie, Joss Whedon-esque banter (literally, he contributed to the screenplay) and plenty of solid action sequences, and what’s not to like?
As stated, I watched this religiously as a teenager and enjoyed coming back to it as an adult. Although I was surprised to discover that I recalled nearly every single scene and story-beat... except the frequent cuts to the weather station, where a couple of desk jockeys go about their day and provide intel to the storm-chasers across the course of the film. No doubt I’d forgotten them because they don’t impact the story at all, but it was still a little disconcerting.
Bill and Jo (the aforementioned Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt) are married storm-chasers – or at least they were before their separation. Now Bill is a weatherman who wants to finalize the divorce so he can marry his relationship-therapist girlfriend Melissa, who joins him on tracking down Jo in the field. She’s about to head out with “Dorothy,” an untested storm-gauging prototype of Bill’s design, which will hypothetically release dozens of sensors into the eye of the tornado and provide readings on its configuration from the inside.
If all goes well, it could provide critical intel that will lengthen the amount of time for storm warnings. The catch? That the team has to get dangerously close to a tornado to activate the device properly.
You have to admit, that’s a great set-up, and the emotional heart is carried by the still-lingering feelings between Jo and Bill. Maybe an F-5 tornado that nearly kills them both is enough to rekindle their relationship?
Two major subplots involve a rival team of storm-chasers, and the love triangle with Melissa, a character that the film is surprisingly kind to. Disposable Fiancées are often eventually revealed to be terrible people that the protagonist was an idiot to get into a relationship with in the first place, but Melissa remains a nice enough person throughout (she’s also useful as someone the experts can deliver exposition to for the benefit of the audience). The worst that can be said about her is that she’s just a little stuck-up (and her job as a therapist is a constant source of ridicule throughout the film – it was the nineties, after all) but she’s never mean or petty, and bows out gracefully when it becomes apparent that Bill’s heart is still with Jo.
The “evil” storm-chasers, led by a smarmy Cary Elwes, aren’t handled quite as well, and could probably have been cut from the film without too much fuss. The funny thing is that they’re not really villainous, just mildly dickish, but we’re meant to see them as the bad guys because they rely on corporate sponsorship and drive ominous black jeeps – not like our scrappy, ragtag heroes in their convoy of beat-up vans.
Still, it does allow for my absolute favourite example of Evil is Angular that I’ve ever seen on-screen. The trope basically posits that good characters are designed with curves and softness in mind, while evil ones are all sharp points and hard corners. You see it mostly in animation. But here... oh man, this is hilarious: both storm-chasing teams have their own versions of Dorothy; each filled with tiny sensors. There is absolutely no difference in either design save for the fact that the sensors on Jo’s team are spherical, whereas those in Cary Elwes’ device are cubes. EVIL CUBES!! Those MONSTERS!!
It's genuinely adorable. I mean, if it weren’t for those cubes, I’d be sitting here thinking that Bill – who is the first one to throw an unprovoked punch at Cary Elwes – was the real dickhead.
All things considered, I would have happily given up either the love triangle or the rival storm-chasers subplot to focus more on Jo’s team, which never really feature as an actual team. Movies like this are tailormade for fun banter and camaraderie among experts in the field, but all we really get are familiar faces. Alan Ruck! Philip Seymour Hoffman! That woman who guest-starred in a couple of episodes of Roswell! The nerdy science guy from LOST! The guy from the “got milk?” commercial! And believe it or not, Anthony Rapp is here too, as a background guy on Cary Elwes’s team. And Jo as a little girl was played by Alexa PenaVega, who went on to play Carmen in Spy Kids.
There are some other glitches here and there: all the featured animals, whether horses, dogs or chickens, are always WAY too calm in any impending storm scenes, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why Jo’s mother (played by Rusty Schwimmer in the opening scenes) was replaced later on in the film by Jo’s aunt (played by Lois Smith). Seriously, there’s no discernible reason why they invented a brand-new character when Jo’s mother had already been established, and who would have had greater insight into her daughter’s trauma, drive, and relationship with Bill. It’s weird.
But on the whole, it’s a quintessential crowd-pleaser, and Jo is a pretty impressive female lead for the nineties. She’s clearly in charge of the operation, and the men take their orders from her without question. There’s no overt bitchiness or rivalry between herself and Melissa, though it’s also interesting that this is something of a reverse My Girl Friday, with the woman and not the man as the character still hanging onto the marriage.
And it’s just so nineties: the white tank tops, the presence of one (1) Black guy, the ongoing ridiculing of therapy, the raw-instincts-versus-high-tech theme... I’m not saying all these elements are necessarily good, only that they capture a very specific period of time.
Firebrand (2024)
I was looking forward to watching this after finishing up with The Tudors; especially the opportunity to watch the same sequence of events (namely the final years of marriage between Henry the Eighth and Catherine Parr) play out in a different medium, with a very different tone. Where The Tudors was pure melodrama, Firebrand is a moody and sedate character piece, which is more interested in capturing an ambience than telling any actual story.
Which is strange, since I came in expecting either a dark comedy or a straightforward biographic account of Catherine Parr, the titular “firebrand.” It’s not really any of these things – in fact, what it mostly reminded me of was Spenser, as both films are meandering and plotless and gloomy to the point of pretentiousness.
Period dramas seldom explore Catherine Parr, who by the time she married Henry was already twice a widow. Unlucky in love and without any children of her own, she’s usually characterized among the six wives as the oldest, wisest one (on The Tudors, Joely Richardson was cast in her mid-forties, though Catherine was only thirty-one when she became queen) though she made her own share of mistakes and wasn’t exactly a great stepmother to Elizabeth.
Still, the final title cards claim that “neither men nor war ever defined [Elizabeth’s] reign” (lol, whut?) and credit this to Catherine Parr’s influence. Which is odd since up until that point the film seemed rather critical of Catherine, first by having Anne Askew accuse her of selling out by marrying the king, and then by demonstrating very little of her Reformist zeal. There’s nothing on the subject of the books she published (the first Englishwoman to do such a thing under her own name) and the famous interrogation in which she wriggles out of an arrest by convincing Henry that she was simply engaging in spirited debate to distract him from his leg ulcer is removed completely.
This seems like a bizarre oversight for a film that calls its lead heroine a “firebrand” (most of the time she’s pretty constrained) and I was looking forward to seeing how Alicia Vikander would handle the scene in comparison to Joely Richardson. The Tudors portrayed it as Catherine realizing she’d gone too far, and backpedalling madly in order to save her own life. I was hoping it would play out here with a little more cunning and strategy on Vikander’s part, but there’s no such scene here at all.
In fact, Catherine comes across as rather dour throughout, as someone reluctant to take advantage of her position to advance her cause, and who was pushed against her will into the role of queen. Everything unsurprisingly revolves around an unrecognizable Jude Law as King Henry: a bad-tempered, mercurial, revolting man-baby; the type of person who prays for strength to vanquish his enemies, who interrupts people before his questions are properly answered, that yells “shut up!” before anyone has even said anything. His mood swings rule them all.
The focus on him is to be expected, as he’s very much the locus around which all else revolves, but Catherine is shunted to the sidelines as a result, and we don’t get much of a glimpse into her internal life. All you really need to know is that everything culminates in Catherine smothering Henry to death with a pillow and no one asking any questions, which... I mean, what can I even say about that?
The film is most interested in providing snapshots of Tudor life, from the rowdy and chaotic court scenes, in which people are talking or singing over each other on a whim, to capturing the day-to-day difficulties of life in the sixteenth century.
There are a couple of nice scenes, such as when the women listen from the floor below as Henry throws a tantrum above them, but the whole thing comes down to a rather shoehorned-in message that states Protestant tolerance won out over Catholic fanaticism. That’s an astoundingly simplistic note to end on, and probably didn’t have as much to do with Catherine Parr as the film would have you believe. And not just because she did not, in fact, assassinate Henry the Eighth.
The Tudors: Season 4 (2010)
And... scene.
I’ve come to the end of The Tudors, and it was a satisfying enough finish, if one keeps in mind that there is no “finish” to history. The participants die, but life goes on.
Despite being a little scattershot here and there, the fourth and final season wisely divides itself into two clear arcs: the first five episodes dealing with fifth wife Catherine Howard, and the last five bringing Catherine Parr to the fore. Neither woman holds a candle to Marie Doyle Kennedy’s Catherine of Aragon or Natalie Dormer’s Anne Boleyn, but the final wives at least prove to be more compelling than Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves.
Though in saying that, the added context of this season helps clarify the latter’s role in this particular drama. The Tudors skimmed over the facts of Henry and Anne’s botched first meeting to instead establish that Henry simply didn’t find her attractive, which was baffling considering Joss Stone was in the role. However, this season makes it easier to grasp what they were going for: having set aside Anne for Catherine, Henry ends up realizing that his initial wife wasn’t such a bad catch after all.
This season she’s used as a deliberate contrast to Catherine Howard, making her thematic purpose clear. To quote the lyrics of that SNL skit: “you had a whole-ass meal but you left me for a snack.” Or in more period-appropriate terms, she’s the Madonna to Catherine’s Whore, even as the writers add enough nuance to mitigate this misogynistic dichotomy (such as the two women enjoying each other’s company, and Catherine’s affairs being treated largely sympathetically).
It’s understandable that Henry was leery about his fourth marriage – specifically that he didn’t want to marry before he’d even seen the woman. In many ways, Anne of Cleves was his first “going in blind,” political union. He knew Catherine of Aragon for some time prior to their marriage, had a prolonged and passionate courtship with Anne Boleyn, and affixed a fairy tale purity to Jane Seymour. Then came lust with Catherine Howard and companionship with Catherine Parr. But Anne of Cleves was strictly business.
And yet between her youth and strength (suggesting she could have given him a second, healthier son) and his gradual warming to her after the dissolution of the marriage, the show posits that she just might have been his perfect match if he’d given her a chance. Physically more robust than Jane Seymour, and more placid and sensible than Catherine Howard, Henry realizes too late that sex and desire aren’t everything, as the final scene between them (in which they spoon in bed, fully clothed) demonstrates.
That’s the problem with the Madonna/Whore mentality: a woman can’t be both these things, especially not at the same time, and men like Henry always seem to want the one they don’t have. In this case, Anne’s agreeability and virtue eventually become far more appealing qualities than the lustfulness Catherine incites, though Henry grasps this far too late.
It’s almost like the Catherine of Aragon/Anne Boleyn drama staged in reverse, though this time around Anne is wise enough to capitulate to the king’s wishes and get what she can out of the divorce, securing her own happily ever after with minimal anguish (and leaving me with the sudden urge to rewatch Black Swan).
As for Catherine Howard... well, it’s probably impossible to dramatize her life and choices without characterizing her as a nit-witted airhead. Unlike Anne Boleyn, who was surely innocent of the adultery charges laid against her, it would seem that Catherine did in fact carry on an affair with Thomas Culpeper – even if it was an emotional rather than a sexual one.
Obviously this show isn’t going to pass on the opportunity to get its attractive cast naked and horny with each other, but you still have to wonder what on earth Catherine was thinking, especially since she was a cousin to Anne Boleyn, the last queen who had her head removed for infidelity. Tamzin Merchant, in one of her first roles, leans into the depiction of Catherine as little more than a child, who simply has no comprehension of what she’s doing or why it might be construed as treason.
(I suppose there is one other possibility for how Catherine might be portrayed, and that’s as a victim of abuse who cannot differentiate between love and exploitation, but that would have required more set-up and character work than this show was willing to give her).
It also remains unclear to me what Lady Rochefort’s motivation was in all this. The woman seems doomed to be portrayed as a mean girl in most adaptations of this period, though a part of me wonders if she deliberately wanted to help cuckold Henry in revenge for what he did to her husband and sister-in-law. Unfortunately, in this version of events she hated the pair of them, so that doesn’t fly.
In any case, it makes for difficult viewing to watch Catherine’s growing panic and despair as reality sets in around her, not helped by the fact that they make the poor girl get naked constantly – even when she’s practicing putting her head on the block. I’ve an innate horror of beheadings, so her slow march to doom was a tough watch.
The show also stints on the reactions to these events from Elizabeth and Mary. Granted, they’ve never been the focus, but I’m convinced that Catherine Howard’s execution had an indelible effect on the real Elizabeth, and it’s a shame they didn’t delve into that beyond a brief declaration that she’s never going to marry.
And so it’s onto the sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr. Following in the footsteps of Sam Neill, Max von Sydow and Peter O’Toole, Joley Richardson gets the “special guest star” billing in the opening credits, and her take on Catherine can be summed up in her own words: “I never wanted to be the Queen, but since I am, I may as well use what influence I have to further the cause I believe in... the cause of the Reformation.”
Henry seems to have learned from Anne of Cleves that companionship is the key to happiness, and like Anne, Catherine was a sensible woman, yet driven in part by her deep belief in her political ideals. She wrote and translated several books, though when the accusation of treason comes, Kate is portrayed as being in a near-panic; her answers to Henry’s questions depicted as wild backpedalling instead of a canny and carefully executed strategy.
Which... okay, fine. It’s a perfectly valid interpretation of events, and one that’s clearly been established with the theme of how Henry will quite easily dispose of any queen that displeases him. As always, his wives are frantically fighting for their lives. But (unsurprisingly) I still would have preferred a wiser, more level-headed Kate, and am looking forward to seeing how Alicia Vikander handles this same material in Firebrand.
This season also covers the capture of Boulogne and the trial of Henry Howard. There’s a lot of table setting for both these plots and I initially couldn’t fathom the inclusion of Howard or his rivalry with Seymour, until of course the cards started to fall with Catherine (to whom he was related). Still, neither plot is hugely interesting, and a lot of these characters just fall out of the action before the final episode.
Likewise, the rules surrounding the cast billing on this show continue to confound me. Sir Francis Bryan ends up as another inexplicable between-seasons disappearance, whilst Lothaire Bluteau gets to be in the opening sequence despite appearing in a handful of scenes across only a few episodes. Sarah Bolger gets her long-overdue upgrade to the opening sequence; meanwhile, poor Anthony Brophy, who has diligently played Eustace Chapuys for all four seasons, remains trapped in the end credits.
Also gone is Brandon’s wife, which at first I chalked down to the unavailability of the actress, only for her to show up in the final episode (that said, she was heavily veiled, so perhaps it was someone else). This is seemingly done in order to give Brandon another love interest in the form of a young French woman who is fighting alongside her father in Boulogne, and travels with him back to England to come his mistress. It’s also rather pointless.
At least there’s a final round of “hey, it’s that guy!” before the end. Allan Leech is the big one, looking very fresh-faced before his longtime stint on Downton Abbey as Branson, and Joan Bulmer also looked familiar, till IMDB clued me in on the fact that she guest-starred in Downton Abbey as well. Torrance Coombs (Reign, Still Star-Crossed) is Culpepper, making a niche for himself as the guy in absurd period dramas.
Michael Elwyn also makes an appearance as Catherine Parr’s second husband, though I know him better as Marian’s father on the BBC’s Robin Hood, and – look who it is!
He goes uncredited and doesn’t get any lines (that is, the dialogue that’s attributed to him in a quick scene sounds dubbed to me) but it’s definitely Eoin Macken! So not the only Merlin actor to take their baby acting steps here.
And then the final episode takes it all home. Whatever else his flaws as a writer may be, Michael Hirst knows how to put deeply evocative imagery on the screen – in this case a white horse galloping toward the camera as a symbol of impending death. It comes for Brandon, and later it comes for the king himself, this time with Death wielding a sword upon its back as the night skies swirl above him.
(I know there was a lot of ridicule directed at the aging makeup applied to Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but it didn’t really bother me, as it’s his voice and body that does most of the work. And if it wasn’t convincing on some level, then his reappearance as a young man in the vision of his impending death wouldn’t have caused such a jolt to the system).
Marie Doyle Kennedy, Natalie Dormer and Annabelle Wallis return as Henry’s first three wives, to visit their children and read him the riot act, which provides a nice bit of closure for their characters, and a chance to see the actresses one last time. (I’m only sorry they didn’t find a way to bring in Joss Stone and Tamzin Merchant – the former on a quick visit and the latter as a ghostly figure dancing in the hall, maybe?) just to have all the wives present in a single episode, given that they were very much the narrative backbone of the show in its entirety.
Thankfully, some kind soul on YouTube long-ago reedited the opening sequence to feature just the wives:
And they’re all featured in a beautiful montage of Henry’s life, set to the soaring strains of Trevor Morris’s “Jane Seymour’s Theme.” I have to admit to feeling a little verklempt, especially when the final title cards explain what happened to Henry’s family after his death (one last nitpick: Elizabeth is identified as “Mary’s half-sister” as opposed to “Anne Boleyn’s daughter.”)
But that brings me to the end of The Tudors, a show that never pretended to be anything other than what it was. I can’t even call it a rewatch, since I’d only ever viewed it through YouTube clips and compilations, but it was a fairly rewarding experience, and an essential part of my ongoing journey through dubiously-portrayed English history (having started all the way back with The White Queen in September last year). I’m under no delusions that these shows are anything but the Sparks Notes version of history, with a side-order of studio mandated boobs and butts, but next up is Becoming Elizabeth, and I’m looking forward to it.
DuckTales: Season Two (2018 – 2019)
Like most kids that grew up in the nineties, I diligently watched DuckTales, and knew every last word to the opening theme song. Watching the remake all these years later, it’s interesting to note what’s been updated and what has remained the same. Along with modernizing some of the characters and giving the season an underlying story-arc, you can tell there’s a newfound slight unease to the fact the main character is a billionaire who hoards most of his fortune in a giant money bin on the edge of town.
As such, most of the plots have to do with treasure hunting, not the excesses of capitalism. Freeform diving into coinage is kept to a minimum. Webbigale has gone from a rather babyish little girl to a quirky pre-teen. Huey, Dewey and Louie are no longer interchangeable, but have distinct personalities and separate interests. Launchpad is a full-blown himbo, and it’s amazing.
Most of all, most of the episodes are structured around an ongoing plot about the triplets’ missing mother Della Duck, who has been stranded on the moon for the entire duration of their lives. She’s desperate to get back to them, but her alliance with a community of moon-dwelling aliens ends up having some far-reaching consequences. It’s not a hugely inventive storyline, but Della herself is a great character, and her attempts to get home to her boys surprisingly poignant.
Even better is the continuation of the storyline with Webbigale and her friend Lena, the latter of whom was being used by Magica De Spell as part of her nefarious plotting against Scrooge. Not content to simply slap a happy ending on Lena’s story with the defeat of Magica, the show delves a little deeply into the trauma she underwent, and her ongoing trust issues with the people around her. Again, it’s nicely done, with genuine pathos (relatively speaking, we ARE still talking about a cartoon with talking ducks).
And of course, the cameos. I’m not just talking about the likes of GizmoDuck and Bubba the Cave Duck, who were staple elements of the original cartoon, but Darkwing Duck (still voiced by Jim Cummings!) and the Three Caballeros. From what I know about season three, this trend continues, and though normally this level of fanservice and Easter-eggery would get on my nerves... it’s a cartoon. It’s fun and it never obscures the storytelling.
In a way it’s a shame this whole thing ended with season three – you get the feeling the writers/creators are only just getting warmed up.
Slow Horses: Season 2 (2022)
I literally managed to squeeze this one in over the last two days of August. The second season of Slow Horses doesn’t diverge much from the first in its general premise: the rejects of MI-5, working out of the dreary and underfunded Slough House, are in fact the right people for the job when it comes to saving the country from white nationalists and Russian sleeper agents and terrorist attacks… even if they swear and fight and screw up along the way.
This season starts with Phil Davies in a rather bemusing role: it’s essentially a fake-out cameo in which he tails a man and promptly dies without a single word of dialogue, kickstarting the plot when it turns out he was an old associate of Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, the diffident supervisor of the Slow Horses.
Naturally, everyone on the team gets allocated tasks which end up converging in the final episode, though this season takes the gloves off when it comes to the wellbeing of our main cast. At least one carry-over character from the first season dies in the line of duty, leaving us with the sense that none of these wannabe heroes are safe.
New additions to the team are Shirley Dander, at Slough House because she assaulted her case officer, and Marcus Longridge, a family man who grapples with a gambling addiction. At only six episodes, it’s a great show for a two-night binge watch, and has all the droll humour, dark subtext, twisty espionage and pedigree acting you could ask for. (Keep your eye on Jack Lowden – I suppose at this point he can be said to have “made it,” but damn he’s good. His career can only get better from here).
But it’s Gary Oldman who headlines the drama, his slovenly appearance and boorish behaviour perfectly juxtaposed with Kristin Scott Thomas’s cold elegance and cut cheekbones. That said, he inspires me to try and coin a phrase that captures my weariness with the constant whining about wokeism in mainstream culture these days.
In the wake of Disney’s cancellation of The Acolyte, there’s been fresh arguments about how everything is being taken over by “progressive agendas” and “DEI recruitment”… and yet how can anyone seriously believe that’s true when a character like Jackson Lamb exists? For all the moaning and boo-hooing about women and people of colour in title roles, it’s not like there’s a dearth of the inverse: old white dudes who are rude, unkempt, miserable, and grossly unpleasant who are nonetheless protagonists of high-budget dramas because they are just that good at their job.
Seriously, the anti-woke crowd need to stop complaining and watch this. It’s core theme is essentially “losers and assholes are actually very important.” Totally for them!
Shōgun: Season 1 (2024)
Very controversial opinion: I didn’t love this. Shōgun seems to have been one of the undisputed highlights of everyone else’s 2024 streaming experience, and yet I remain pretty lukewarm about the whole thing. The acting is superb, so are the production values and the casting and the special effects and the historical accuracy… and yet!
Perhaps it was because my friend and I watched it over too long a period; an episode every time we had the chance to catch up on the weekends. Most people watched it on a regular weekly basis, which would have allowed for greater memory retention and a more even flow of the storyline. But for some reason it just didn’t click with me the way I wanted it to.
John Blackthorne is the maritime pilot of a trading vessel that ends up shipwrecked on the shores of Japan, in which he’s almost instantly seen as both a threat and a potential commodity to the various daimyos and the political factions they belong to. He’s gradually drawn into the culture and power circles of Japan, particularly that of the powerful Lord Toranaga and his translator, Lady Mariko (who I made August’s Woman of the Month).
It’s based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, which has already been adapted for television prior to this back in the eighties, and I’ve heard so much positive and negative commentary about it as to leave me a little bewildered about the whole thing. Some cry historical inaccuracy (in which dozens of characters are performing seppuku on little more than a whim), others cultural appropriation, others white saviourism, and still more insisting that it’s a surprisingly respectful text for the time in which it was written. The discourse goes on.
Since I haven’t read it, I won’t speculate, though the show seems to have benefitted hugely from focusing on its Japanese cast, making sure there were similarly a lot of Japanese people behind the scenes, and having most of the dialogue spoken in Japanese with subtitles. Blackthorne may be the audience surrogate, but there’s no doubt that this is Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai’s story from start to finish.
The story in its entirety is really one very long political stratagem put into effect by Chessmaster Toranaga, who commands so much loyalty from his friends, allies and retainers that they will do almost anything to assist him in achieving his goals. That makes for a deeply compelling character, one that Sanada is clearly up to the task of portraying, but the political landscape is so complex and the character motivations so opaque that I struggled to make sense of what was actually happening from one episode to the next.
Now, that’s on me. Like I said, I watched this in entirely the wrong way: with too-long stretches between episodes and an inability to keep track of what everyone was doing. I’d actually really like to track down the book and the eighties’ miniseries before tackling this show again with more clarity, as I strongly suspect I would enjoy it more with the foreknowledge of where it’s all heading.
I feel a little apprehensive about this review, as like I said, Shōgun seems to have been universally adored by everyone else. (Though my friend commented: “it’s not bad, but people have been saying it’s Game of Thrones done right... and that makes me extra glad that I never watched Game of Thrones.”) If you felt differently, then by all means tell me where I went wrong with this one.
It may interest you to know that once the Mysteries series started, following BSC continuity became more or less impossible for readers in the UK, as the main series was being published monthly on a delay of about two years after the US, but the Mysteries started being released long before the main series had caught up, which resulted in the two series being massively out of sync at all times and characters and plot developments appearing in the Mysteries without explanation. This may be part of the reason the British publishers eventually cancelled the franchise entirely, actually.
ReplyDeleteThe UK covers for the Mysteries were a significant improvement on the appalling ones for the main series, though.
That's a weird way to publish something; though I suppose the writers themselves have to share some of the blame: they could have easily made them more standalone, like the Super Specials.
DeleteI really love Six - while I have my criticisms about some of the choices (Anne Boleyn claiming "politics - not my thing"?!?) I do have to defend Catherine Howard's "All you wanna do" as having a shred of nuance in the growing desperation at her inescapable and escalating exploitation - it's palpable when seeing it live.
ReplyDeleteI actually really enjoy Tamzin Merchant's performance in The Tudors as well - although the show leans into infantilizing and sexualising her, it does make a great contrast to Mary's self-aware rigidity (Sarah Bolger really comes into her own this season), even if she was more Parr's contemporary than Howard's. I also love the opening credits with every character artfully placed around the throne - it really is a lost art!
This is a reasonably good solution to the problem, though because I’m a suspicious bitch, I can’t help but feel that if I suspected a babysitter of stealing my belongings, then let her back into the house for another job, only for the missing items to be oh-so-conveniently found while she’s left alone there, I’d probably assume she took them in the first place, felt the heat, and then returned them at the first available opportunity – and blame the cat for good measure.
I thought this even as a child - as an adult I have to wonder why they didn't just call the police if this ring was so valuable?
I also re-watched Twister recently in anticipation of the sequel (which was...fine) and also think it really holds up well. The 90's was hardly a bastion of tolerance or inclusivity but it really did give us some great female protagonists!
I do have to defend Catherine Howard's "All you wanna do" as having a shred of nuance in the growing desperation at her inescapable and escalating exploitation - it's palpable when seeing it live.
DeleteI think the terrible quality of the bootleg I watched probably obscured most of the nuance! Hopefully I'll get a chance to see it on stage at some point.