Ramblings of Jeff Somers, author
THERE WERE seven of us. I’d already given them all nicknames for easy reference, just in case I had to choose which one of them should be killed instead of me, in some sort of horrifying turn of fucked-up events. I had also decided I would have no mercy.
As a reminder to all and sundry: I will be reading/talking/stumbling about cursing out in public next Saturday, if anyone finds that sort of thing entertaining:
WHAT: The SFSNNJ Face the Fiction series.
WHERE: Well Read Books, 425 Lafayette Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506; 973-949-3440
WHEN: Saturday, September 10, 2011, 8PM
Come on by and bring something to throw at me. Preferably rolls of money and bottles of liquor. Whatever I can catch unbroken I can keep!
The F-Bomb Project, possbly the most important thing ever done in the history of ever, has a second episode! YAY!
Someday your grandkids will ask where you were when you saw the F-Bomb Project videos. So make a note.
Continuing my series of essays about SFnal Movies Beginning with the Letter “P” Starring Actors Who Really Ought to Have Better Things To Do, I watched the movie Priest the other day, starring Paul Bettany.
This was a mistake.
The film is based on some sort of Korean graphic novel I have never heard of. Which means nothing. The list of things I have never heard of is vast, and no one cares about it. The list of people in the world who, in turn, have never heard of me or Avery Cates is also vast, and dwarfs most known quantities. Let it drift.
The basic idea is: In an alternate universe, vampires (which are freaky ugly monsters, not suave, good-looking European gentlemen or teenagers) have always fought humans. For centuries they battled, with the vampires slowly getting the upper hand despite the technology and 24-hour existence of the humans. When things looked most grim, the Church (which is, basically, the Catholic Church, invoking the old trope of All Christians are Catholic), somehow figures out how to train Priests, human killing machines specially trained to destroy vampires. While everyone else crowds into walled cities under the Church’s protection, the Priests go forth and kick ass, presumably with Jesus Power helping them along, and kick so much vampire ass the vampires surrender and are locked into reservations. The Priests are deemed too scary and are decommissioned and forced to take up normal lives, but because they are feared they struggle to assimilate back into society. The huge tattoo of the Cross on their faces might also have something to do with their shunning.
That’s back story. There is a plot, yes. It involves the main character seeking to avenge the death of his brother and rescue his daughter-in-law (or IS she?) from a former priest turned super special human hybrid vampire, and discovering a vampire uprising in the process.
That’s all you need to know about the plot. The real question is, does any of this work. The answer is, no.
The main problem I have with the film is that the whole priest/church part is completely superfluous. Sure, imagining a world where Roman Catholic Priests are trained as superhuman vampire killing machines is a cool idea, but that’s all it is, an idea. To make it into a universe, we need to see how this impacts things. How the religion has mutated, how the Church has incorporated vampirism into its teachings and beliefs. How the religious beliefs of the priests influence their personalities and personal struggles. Instead, it’s just used as the barest of a sketch, and then we have many many fight sequences where Paul Bettany kicks vampire ass.
If nothing else, since the vampires clearly have sentience, you might imagine the question of whether a vampire has a soul might come up, and that this question might be of interest to mean and women who believe in God and life after death and all that. The vampires, however, are treated as standard CGI-Orc beings, meaning it is sure as hell okay to murder them by the dozens, and to enjoy the spectacle of their slaughter. I don’t have any problems with this, per se, but if AlternatePriests don’t give a fuck about killing things that scream in pain as you kill them, then I would like to explore a bit about how they came to this frightening mindset.
In short, Priest is a shallow set up and then a very long fight sequence. If that’s your thing, enjoy.
One thing I would recommend: If the movie comes up for free on TV, watch the opening animated sequence. It’s fun, it summarizes the backstory efficiently, and is entertaining as heck. Then change the channel.
So, we survived a hurricane. Some leaky roofs, water in the crawlspace we’ll be pumping out (apparently) for a week, and a lot of effort and sleep loss, but overall, nothing we couldn’t handle. Now, trying to get through to the roofer might be an adventure.
The best way to celebrate life’s little triumphs is to post your mediocre guitar playing, amiright? I said, AMIRIGHT?
Herewith:
Song422
Song424
Song428
Song429
Song430
Song431
The usual disclaimer: 1. I admit these are not great music; 2. I claim copyright anyway, so there; 3. No, I cannot do anything about the general quality of the mix, as I am incompetent.
RENOVATION FAILURE
(A Play in One Act)
<JEFF is at Home Depot, mystified>
JEFF: Excuse me, where are the door saddles? For an interior door?
CLUELESS HD EMPLOYEE: We only have these two kinds.
<JEFF buys one>
<JEFF is at home>
JEFF: Hey guys, I bought this saddle. They said it was one of two they had.
<CONTRACTOR1 gives JEFF his sad face>
CONTRACTOR2: Uh … we’ll just pick one up for you tomorrow.
JEFF: <slumping in defeat> Dang.
AND: Scene.
Here it is – Episode One of THE F-BOMB PROJECT!
Rock on. If you submitted a video and it isn’t used here, rest assured you are in my plans for episodes two and onward.
Nice to see reviews of the first Avery Cates book still coming out 4 years after it published! Found this today over at the IGN blogs, a very thoughtful review that touches on a lot of aspects of the book:
“It reads like a mixture of Blade Runner, Ocean’s Eleven, and Atlas Shrugged. If you are a fan of alternate realities, cyber-punk, and dystopian futures, you will love this book as I have.”
Yeah!
This is what happens when you have an idea just before the weekend: That’s right, a trailer for a trailer!
Come on, people. Get cussin’.
Yesterday on Twitter while rambling on pointlessly as usual (my tweets can be boiled down to <joke about pants> + <joke about liquor> + <random comment on what I’m writing> + <link to something vaguely interesting on the Internet> = hilarity) I thought about creating a book trailer where a bunch of people read one line from a passage in The Final Evolution or something, and I spliced them together into a trailer (inspired by this.)
Then Bill Cameron said “If my passage doesn’t have a lot of f-bombs, I’m not doing it. Hahahaha.” And I thought, yes. Let’s create a trailer of people reading just lines with the word fuck in them. I mean, I counted 593 of them in The Final Evolution alone.
Then, I thought, why not make that into a trailer for the whole series? Boom.
So, here’s the deal: Got Avery Cates books? A video camera of some sort? Film yourself reading any line, from any of the books, as long as that line contains an F-Bomb. Send it to me. Everything else is up to you: How you do, where you do it, what line you read, what you’re wearing, how many of you are involved – go nuts. Have fun. All I ask is that when you send me the clip, you identify exactly what line you’re reading by book, page, and line (just to spare me from having to search for each instance). Email everything to mreditor@innerswine.com
I’ll need a bunch of these to make it workable, so I won’t be doing any work on it until I have critical mass. So encourage everyone you know to send me a clip!