Giant Squid Creations

I was four when Return of the Jedi came out. I don't remember seeing it, but I do remember Dad giving me a book with pictures of the characters in it. I remember being jealous of a kid with toy lightsaber I saw at Jenolan Caves. And I remember my Star Wars toys. I'd get some every birthday and Christmas for years. I still have them - to be honest I now have more than I did as a kid. At the heart of all that was Princess Leia, a strong woman, born leader, attitude to spare and incredibly loving and compassionate. She'd get her hands dirty, take charge when needed, lend an ear. She was everything anyone could want to be. Carrie Fisher brought Leia to life. Not just by playing the role, but in the script too. I recently saw a page of the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back with handwritten edits she made. The scene is vivid in my mind and it's her edits that make it memorable. And that's the thing, Carrie Fisher was so much more than a fictional princess. Sh

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer My rating: 2 of 5 stars I can see why this book is divisive in the reviews. It's well written, but it's over the top. If it was just Oskar, it'd be okay I think, not great cause he's a pain a lot of the time, but better. It's the grandparents and their storylines that sink it for me. Thomas was interesting for a chapter, but I couldn't take him as a sustained character, and Grandma just needed to - I don't know what but ugh. The idea is great, the people left behind dealing with the spaces in the landscapes of their lives. And there's some powerful writing in there. But overall, the characters and the total story, just don't carry it for mine. View all my reviews

I'm sitting on a train with tears in my eyes. Gene Wilder died. I didn't know him. I believe he was a good man. He was old and unwell, now he's at peace. He's passing is therefore sad but well earned. Not enough for me to be near tears for a stranger. So why am I? While he was brilliant in all the roles I've seen him in, I think my grief stems from Willy Wonka. Gene Wilder was not Willy Wonka, he didn't write his dialogue, and through technology Willy Wonka will always roam the chocolate factory, but Gene breathed life into the character. He took the words on the page and made them live. That breath is gone. Perhaps it is that I mourn. I don't remember when I first saw the movie. Its images and scenes have always floated in my mind. I didn't really remember the kids or the sentimentality of Charlie and his family. I remembered the man in the purple suit with the top hat. He was wise, he knew how things worked. And he lived in a factory where things wer

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink My rating: 4 of 5 stars What to say about The Reader? Unsettling, thought-provoking, uncomfortable. They all come to mind as ways to describe it. It's also well written, compelling and convincing; while I know the line between truth and fiction is always blurred and especially so in historical fiction, there was a need to remind myself this is not autobiography. Not directly anyway. But even now as I sit here, having finished it 12 hours ago, I don't know how to feel. But, that's the point isn't it? Schlink has thrown out the rule book on how to feel about such a sacrosanct subject. I do not know Hanna, cannot know her, the narrator in the end does not know her and he knew her better than anyone else. We don't know what she did, why she did what she did or anything else. Only that what she did was, by usual standards unconscionable. Should I even want to understand what can only be condemned? There are no answers here. Only the ques

With the success of superhero movies of the past few years mostly down to Marvel, it was important for DC to do something to level the playing field and, Suicide Squad , the third movie in its series, certainly sets itself apart. First, there are the heroes, a group of infamous villains co-opted to work for the ‘good guys’; it’s the old Dirty Dozen concept but with meta-humans, as characters with super powers are called these days. That in itself can be a tricky task for a story in any medium but Suicide Squad does it well by humanizing the meta-humans in simple but effective ways, Killer Croc, for instance, is the downtrodden outsider, the mistreated freak with an understandable grudge against everyone, rather than simply a mutant killer who lives in the sewers. Second is the movie’s place in the current DC film universe. Not only is it a notably darker universe than Marvel’s, or most versions of DC’s own, it’s a series that focuses not on the real-world potentialities of meta-

The Lover by Marguerite Duras My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a book I wish I could have read in one sitting. I think it needs that to achieve its full effect. The fragmenting of time is what made this book for me, seeing the scattered memories come together had its own special fascination. Unfortunately, possibly because I did read it in a number of sittings, it lost my interest toward the end. View all my reviews

26 Views of the Starburst World: William Dawes at Sydney Cove 1788-1791 by Ross Gibson My rating: 2 of 5 stars I found this book frustrating as it swung from fascinating history with interesting musings to wild conjectural ramblings that had no basis and seemed to contradict some of the actual history. At the same time, it could just be a historical fiction novel written with the wild conjectures as a given, and then I'd think there was basis and accept things that could be fanciful, so I'm glad Gibson flagged his 'divinations'. On the other hand, he'd then make statements about Dawes with no reference to how he knew such things about him, were they conjecture or based on what few accounts he had to draw on? I may never know. View all my reviews

My train is going along through a mist tainted gold by the morning sun. A journalist wept. My wife wept. Thousands more are weeping. It's not the first time this year either. First Bowie, now Prince. There are others but not quite on that level. When some celebrities die there are complaints about the media caring more for one Western life than hundreds of others. These are valid statements and at times very on point. But with some figures, usually artists, there is a reason for media coverage and mass declarations of grief. These are the artists who have touched society. They have touched thousands of individuals. They have inspired. They have consoled. They have elated. They have caused change. When these people die, someone who has been an intimate part of our lives has died. We probably never met them, we may not have liked them if we did, but their art is a part of our lives. And for that we will always mourn. Keep dreaming - you know they did.

I finally watched John Carpenter's The Thing recently and wasn't that something. I had wanted to see it for a long time because of all the SF TV shows that did their tribute episodes. It’s a great concept and the remote locale and limited cast raise the tension in ways worldwide versions like The Host , or I presume, The Fifth Wave , can hope for as the pressure disperses. For those totally lost, the Thing is an alien that can resemble anyone it's killed. And it's in a remote Antarctic station. Anyone there could be part of the Thing and could become part of it if you lose sight of them. What makes the story work is the paranoia the situation creates. I believe that's why so many shows do their tribute episodes too. Unfortunately, I think John Carpenter's version didn't do enough with that element. The characters were paranoid no doubt but the atmosphere of the film lost its paranoia early on. The movie became a series of scenes of ye

I just finished reading a story about an invention called the Tickler. It starts out as a joke about a mechanical reminder so you wouldn't need a secretary (it was written in the early '60s) and ends up being a telepathic hive minded robot that controls the thoughts of the entire population. Once I finished it, I opened up my laptop and this thing flashed at me at the bottom of the screen - "I'm Cortana. I can help you. Ask me anything." There's that circle next to it, white and ominous like some unblinking eye. It was eerie. It's like the time I'd recently finished reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 where the main character's wife detaches herself from reality within a TV show that has become her family. The screens are three walls of the living room, she really wants the fourth wall put in, closing the reality, putting her on the stage with the actors and letting her exit the real world. Then I turned on the TV and saw an ad for Big Brot

It's Jules Verne's birthday so I thought I'd reminisce a little about my experiences with the works of this wonderful creative spirit. I can't remember a time when his name didn't mean something to me, that's probably a slight exaggeration but not much. Hearing about travelling with Captain Nemo in the bookshop at the beginning of The Never-ending Story became synonymous to me with adventure and the excitement you could have reading. I heard there was the man who went around the world in 80 days, and another who went to the centre of the Earth. These were thrilling concepts to my young imagination. At some point I must have seen some of the 1950s film of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and the dinosaurs and volcanic eruption stayed embedded in my imagination. (So it was very exciting when I found it on DVD in a garage sale). Despite these early impressions and the resulting desire I had to read his books, I was in my late teens before I read one. Even

I watched Jupiter Ascending with my wife last night. When it was finished she asked me if I enjoyed it, I said I did and asked her opinion, she thought it was terrible and had ended up watching it for how bad it was. Now, we don't agree on everything and this is hardly the first movie I enjoyed that she didn't, but I realised I enjoyed it because it was in the tradition of the old pulp novels of the first half of last century, which I love. But being a fan of such pulp fiction does require you to forgive certain things other people may not. Jupiter Ascending is a Planetary Romance slipped it into an action film. Consequently, the characters don't get much depth and are rather two-dimensional, and some of the villains (Titus in particular) seem somewhat ludicrous. But the whole notion of planets being farmed by galactic mega-corporations is fun pulp SF and the plot is ripe for a serialisation in old-school Amazing or Astounding . And from that point of view it's a go