Video Pick: Donnie Darko

Written and directed by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhall, Mary McDonnell, Maggie Gyllenhall, Jena Malone, Patrick Swayze.  For years, people whose opinions I value have recommended the 2001 film Donnie Darko highly.  Last weekend we finally sat down and watched it, so now I understand why.  This is one of those movies that defies convention:  Is it sci-fi?  Is it psychological thriller?  Teen drama?  You can tell the studio was having a tough time pinning Donnie Darko down as well – the trailers and on the DVD were just awkwardly awful.  (Note the dueling themes of the promo materials below.)

Pseudo-Horror Promo

The movie starts with young Donnie (Gyllenhall) waking up on the side of the road beside his bike.  He smiles to himself and pedals for town, and your immediately asking yourself what’s going on with this kid.  Writer/director Kelly quickly proves adept at holding back certain details of character and plot points until just the right moment, which adds to the mystery and suspense.  It turns out, Donnie has been taking psych meds to deal with his emotional and mental problems as well as seeing a shrink.  The Darko family is otherwise a fairly standard suburban crew.  Older sister Liz (M. Gyllenhall) is taking a year off before going to college, younger sister Samantha seems a decent kid, and Mom and Pop are supportive and perfectly normal.

So when Donnie gets into an argument with Liz, curses at the dinner table, and acts like a total dick to his mom, you have a tough time reading him.  Is he a spoiled kid or does he really have issues?  Turns out, it’s the issues.  That night a voice rouses him to a trance-like state and entices him from his room, telling him he needs to get out of the house.  Donnie follows, sees the source of the voice in the distance (a mysterious yet sinister figure in a bunny-suit), who tells him the end is nigh, about three weeks from now.  Donnie wanders off and ends up sleeping at the golf course.

Books: Gaudeamus

…by John Barnes

In Gaudeamus, the reader gets a rare combination of authenticity and weirdness that combines science fiction, detective fiction, and a good dose of self-deprecating humor.  John Barnes uses the technique of casting himself as the 1st person narrator and his buddy Travis Bismarck as the protagonist.  This allows Travis, a private detective with a storyteller’s mentality, to pop in and expand upon his increasingly strange tale of secret government research and extraterrestrial game wardens.  Meanwhile, the author/narrator frees himself to tell character-revealing back stories, comment on society, and scoff at his buddy’s story while secretly hoping it’s all true.

You can cast it as metafiction or an ironic and over-the-top nod to creative non-fiction.  Barnes use of the p.o.v. shifts between himself and Travis illustrates the allure of different types of storytelling, and it stands up to inspection also.  In other words, Barnes could (and does seem to) claim that hey, this is all true – it’s what my friend told me, and here’s the back story from my perspective.  It’s the kind of narrative technique that would spark a lively debate at your college writers’ workshop – if, that is, they could be bothered with something that has sci-fi overtones.  I suspect Mr. Barnes would find this amusing.

Imagine Greater?

Did you notice this over the last week?

The Sci-Fi Channel decided to rebrand to ‘SyFy’ in an attempt to capture the ever-elusive “broader audience”.  In the process they have, naturally, pissed off the majority of Geek Nation.  Their marketing shclubs have issued statements  like this:

“We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi.  It’s somewhat cooler and better than the name ‘Science Fiction.’ But even the name Sci Fi is limiting.”

Or…

“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular.”

Ouchie.  Talk about your blatant negative stereotyping.

I guess the suits at NBC/Universal (show us the U.S.-Mexico game on a channel we can watch!) in all their sagacity know programming better than the average dysfunctional geek.  They are flush with success coming off their best ratings year ever, and like a big bank loan exec. circa 2006, they feel invincible.

BSG Ending – Part II

Last time on Beemsville, we discussed the Battlestar Galactica Series Finale (at least to a point) and the precarious proposition of television show endings.  Having written about some elements I enjoyed and appreciated, this section of the critque may seem a bit more…  critical.  But lest I open myself up to raging fanboy attacks, let me once again profess my affection and admiration for the show.  BSG has been one of my favorites because it’s smart, challenging – more than bubblegum for your brain on a Friday night.  BSG has time and again proved worthy of serious critical analysis…  But don’t expect too much of that here; I’m just going to whip some stuff against the wall and see what sticks.  Spoilers after the bump.

Battlestar Galactica – An Ending

Finally got the chance to finish watching Battlestar Galactica the last week or so, including the two-hour finale last night.  I was almost dreading the viewing, for several reasons.  First off, the initial several episodes of the final season were very bleak and in some respects tough to watch.  I was worried Eick and Moore may have lost the plot and were spiraling towards infamy.  Second,  BSG has been the best show on for several years and even if some elements had begun to feel played out as they entered the 4th season, I was sad for it to end.  Finally, I was worried about the actual ending.

TV shows have had some pretty terrible endings.  Consider X-Files or The Sopranos. You also have shows that simply don’t have endings, they have one last episode that ain’t much different, except it’s worse because the show has lost its momentum and creativity, which is why it’s been canceled or pulled in the first place.  Or they become these awful maudlin exercises with the cast taking their final tearful bow.  Occasionally you have endings that are satisfying and memorable.  MASH of course, and Seinfeld, and Family Ties (I always get choked up when I think about Michael J. Fox finally making it back to 1985 in time to take that truck down to the lake…)

BSG set the bar pretty high.  You always knew, by the way they structured the episodes, followed a pretty tight narrative line, and frontloaded certain characters with an array of portents, destinies, and thematic signposts, that Moore and Eick had an ending in mind.  With all the great press and awards the show has received (though ridiculously, no Emmys for anything other than special effects), with frakkin’ Whoopi leading a retrospective on BSG at the United Nations, you might have some concerns they’ve started taking themselves too seriously.  Always a problem in the entertainment industry.  And yet the writer in me can appreciate total commitment and immersion into the story.

So what’s the Beemsville take on Battlestar Galactica’s ending?  Read on after the bump.  Massive spoiler alert, naturally.

Books: The Skinner

…by Neal Asher

The Skinner is well-crafted intelligent adventure sci-fi.  It’s the second of Neal Asher’s books I’ve read, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.  It builds upon premises set forth in his first book, Gridlinked, which posits an intergalactic future with warp gates known as ‘Runcibles’, a vast confederation of humans called the Polity (which happens to be run by superintelligent AIs), and plenty of rogue cyborgs, weird alien races, and deadly planetary vistas thrown in for good measure.

Asher’s universe also imagines humanity as nearly immortal in a basic sense.  That is to say, through physical enhancement – cybernetic, genetic, memory transplant, etc. – the humans of these books can live is as long as they like.  Theoretically.  Assuming, of course, they don’t meet a particularly nasty and violent end, they can afford the upgrades, and they don’t become bored and choose death (either consciously or subconsciously).  This theme of immortality/longevity plays strongly throughout The Skinner. And in the brutal Darwinian ecosystem of the Planet Spatterjay, it provides a nice counterpoint.

Take, for example,  one of the main characters: the reification, Sable Keech.  Keech is a walking corpse, his body a mash-up of robotic parts and dead-but-constantly-replenished flesh.  His mind consists of half an organic brain and a computer with memory and personality uploads.  Not the most popular or socially acceptable version of immortality, but effective.  And Keech has a mission: find and kill the villains who not only killed him 700 years earlier, but were also responsible for war crimes rivaling those of  Hitler or Pol Pot.

In the Book Hopper

Looking at the recent content, it seems we’ve been lax in postings about books, reading, and scifi goodness.  This will soon be rectified.  I can explain: I decided to go back an reread Ray Feist’s Magician (which is a big-ass book) to see how it compared to my teenaged memories of the novel.  Not surprising, but it definitely seemed a lot more awesome to my fifteen year old self.  I also read The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan by William Sanders around Christmas: a fun if somewhat dated nuclear sci-fi yarn.

I’ve been reading some comics — expect something on Ed Brubaker’s Sleeper soon — and catching up on some short fiction with Weird Tales and other miscellany.

Right now I’m about to finish Laurell K. Hamilton’s Narcissus in Chains, which the wife read and recommended, and then it’s on to Neal Asher’s Skinner, David Keck’s In the Eye of Heaven, John Barnes’ Gaudeamus, Steve Erikson’s House of Chains (yes!), and probably Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose in no particular order.  Yeah, that should keep me busy for awhile.  I’m a little bit obsessive about my reading, and of course always reserve the right to sneak something else in that catches my eye, but expect to see more book posts in coming months.

Openings – ‘Replicator’ story

Here are the opening few paragraphs for a story I’ve been trying to finish for far two long.  The working title has Replicator in it, because that’s the piece of forgotten technology at the base of the story.  It’s sort of a future-history narrative.  And yes, I’ve set myself a deadline to get that first draft complete.

Books: Kop

…by Warren Hammond

Kop is sci-fi detective noir with a dark hard edge.  It’s a well written debut novel with the kind of flawed yet sympathetic protagonist you look for in detective books.  And make no mistake — this is a detective book first and science fiction second.

We’re OK with that.

What Warren Hammond has done is use established elements of conventional sci-fi tropes to create a dingy and corrupt tropical world called Lagarto.  Lagarto is the perfect analogue for a depressed and isolated third-world colony.  Once it had a flourishing single export economy; now it has mostly lizards.  In fact the Lagartans are so poor, so backwards, they barely have any hi-tech at all.  They drive Petrol-fuel cars, there’s no beaming tech, no nano tech, no super net.  It’s a lot like Mos Eisley in a swamp.  In fact, what Hammond has done with Lagarto is to effectively roll back the clock to a very 1930s-type place.