The Fantasia Film Festival usually runs around three weeks, but 2020 and its myriad of challenges meant this year’s festival lasted only two-thirds of that. Time moves fast, faster still during Fantasia, and so it came about that with a sudden shock I found myself in the final hours. I had three on-demand movies still to watch that I hadn’t gotten to, and only one on a fixed schedule, my first of the last day.

That film was called Fugitive Dreams, and it was directed and scripted by Jason Neulander from a play by Caridad Svich. It opens in an abandoned gas station where a Black woman, Mary (April Matthis) is about to slit her wrists in the ladies’ room. At which point a White man named John (Robbie Tann) bursts in, grabs some toilet paper, and almost incidentally stops her suicide attempt. The two of them, neither entirely mentally healthy, become squabbling comrades as they set out across what appears to be an empty midwestern America, sometimes riding the rails like hobos in old movies.

The exact era of the story’s difficult to pin down; after drive-in movies have been around a while, but probably before cell phones and the internet. On their journey John and Mary meet other drifters, including the menacing Israfel (Scott Shepherd) and his mute mother Providence (O-Lan Jones). Interleaved with this story are dreams, visions, and memories — along with lies and questions, notably about John’s background and parentage. It all makes for a surreal road movie without a real destination.

Most of the movie is stunning high-contrast black-and-white, and it’s quite striking — like an older film in its lighting, but a modern one in its visual storytelling. Some dreamlike segments are in colour, and while they look fine, other than a recurring image of a poppy field none of them quite match the stark beauty of the wide-open monochrome spaces, or of a nighted conversation in a shuddering boxcar. The acoustic soundtrack’s a fine match for the imagery, emphasising the way the film aims at evoking classic Americana. Old movies are referred to in dialogue, a kind of imagined paradise for John, and the sense of a road-trip film is very strong.

So are the religious overtones, visible in the names of the characters, and in the choice of an abandoned church for the film’s climax. But to what end is less clear. The empty church echoes the empty landscapes of the film, and hints at the characters’ abandonment by God; if you see them as searching for the divine, it’s certainly a downbeat symbol. But it’s a little unclear what the characters actually are seeking. A home, perhaps, but that’s left underdeveloped.

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Strange Seas and Shores by Avram Davidson (Ace Books, 1981). Cover uncredited.

Avram Davidson was one of the most respected fantasy short stories authors in America during my formative years as a reader. He was nominated for the Nebula Award ten times, the World Fantasy Award nine times, and won a Hugo for his classic story “Or All the Seas with Oysters.” That’s some serious street cred right there.

He’s not well remembered today, though. Criminally, we haven’t paid much attention to him at 免费加速器手机版 either (aside from a Birthday Review by Steven Silver), and that’s a serious oversight. I found his third collection, 蚂蚁免费版ⅴpn buried in a collection I purchased recently, and want to settle in with it this weekend. I also found 免费加速器手机版 at the 免費加速器; here’s a taste.

In his Introduction to Strange, Ray Bradbury notes that Davidson (1923 – 1993) crafted his short stories in the mode of the renowned Saki, O. Henry, and Chesterton. That is to say, Davidson employed surprise or trick endings in his short fiction, preferring to withhold the background detail of his plots at the outset, letting these details unfold along with the narrative, with the revelation / punch line coming in the last paragraph or sentence.

Many of the entries in Strange Seas and Shores are five or fewer pages in length, so providing synopses of these tales is essentially the same thing as disclosing spoilers… Some tales use quirky or satiric humor for their revelations… Others take a grimmer tone… Some of these stories have a ‘New York City’ sensibility to them, Davidson’s home throughout most of his life. In this manner they represent a sort of alternate approach to John Cheever’s examinations of NYC life in the postwar period.

It’s interesting to observe that Davidson steadfastly adhered to the classical, or traditionalist, format for his short fiction, even as the New Wave movement overtook sf publishing. His writing is clear and unambiguous, devoid of stylish affectations, although this being Davidson, readers will need to prepare for an expanded vocabulary: ‘circumambulation’, ‘nostra’, and ‘ratiocination’, among others…. Strange Seas and Shores is dedicated reading for Davidson aficionados; those others, who appreciate short stories in the ‘classical’ mode, may also want to seek it out.

Want to know another thing I discovered about Strange Seas and Shores this weekend? It is not the same book as his 1965 collection, 加速器vnp无限. For the last 40 years I’ve gotten these two titles confused. Glad to get that cleared up.

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Science fiction has strong historical links to the adventure genre, but ideas-oriented science fiction tends to move away from adventure. Adventure fiction typically focusses on individual protagonists doing world-altering things, and a science fiction backdrop makes for a fictional world susceptible to alteration. But much actual social change is driven by organisations and groups, and science fiction that wants to talk about ideas usually acknowledges that. At the extreme you get something like Asimov’s early Foundation stories: tales in which the inevitable working-out of sociological forces are at the centre of the story, not the actions of a single hero. It’s not impossible to balance a quest-story about a single protagonist with a realistic portrayal of a world defined by its social structures, but tales that pull off both aspects are worth noting.

Which brings me to writer-director Noah Hutton’s 蚂蚁vp(永久免费), an excellent near-future science fiction film that does both things very well indeed. Not too long from now, the quantum internet connects the world. To make the quantum computing systems work, cablers need to connect long cables between large cube-shaped nodes. These nodes are built in wilderness areas, so cablers have to walk through the woods trailing a wire behind them. They get paid well for this, in gig-economy fashion: if you have a cabler medallion, you log into an account, select a path, and take your cable along the path. You have to hurry to get the cable laid before a bot passes you by and steals the route, though, for if that happens you don’t get the points that’ll give you your payout.

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This is an excellent set-up, and Hutton explores it with profound intelligence and creativity. He has a background in documentary film, including two films about the oil industry and an ongoing project about an attempt to build a computerised simulation of a human brain; this perhaps helped him develop a future world that feels so deeply real. Lapsis is a thorough and solid extrapolation of the modern world, not just in terms of the macro scale of the class system and the gig economy, but in smaller stuff like the cheerful interface for the cablers’ accounts. Or the way the sharing economy has expanded to the point people rent storage space in their garage.

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The Court Jester (Paramount 1956)

Swashbuckler heroes tend to be boisterous and aggressively cheerful, embracing whatever life throws at them, not reacting so much as over-reacting to every joy and challenge, happy to be outside the constraints that keep normal folk like us from picking up apples in the grocery by impaling them on the points of our swords. Swashbuckler films often have comic overtones because it fits the character of their devil-may-care protagonists. And some swashbuckler movies take the plunge into outright parody. Here are two of the latter, plus an immediate predecessor that helped pave the way.

The Flame and the Arrow

Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1950
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

Burt Lancaster burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1946 playing a tender tough guy in The Killers, a dark film noir based on a Hemingway story, and he soon earned a reputation for excelling at edgy, dramatic roles. But before Hollywood, and before his service in World War II, Lancaster had been… a circus performer. In the 1930s he was one-half of Lang & Cravat, a comical acrobatic act with his diminutive partner and lifelong friend Nick Cravat, who, as part of his shtick, never said a word, leaving all the snappy patter to Lancaster.

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If you collect anything, then you know the feeling. You see a 永久免费加速器推荐 which speaks to your obsession and you must have it. Forget whether or not you need it (or even if you can afford it); the fact is, you have found an unspeakably wonderful treasure which must be yours. For a timely example, check out Haunted Mansion Fan Page or Mansion Addicts on Facebook and you will find huge communities of people who will snap up anything even vaguely related to Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction. I’ve seen people proudly post pictures of red glassware they found at a local resale shop which “has the look of” the table settings in the ride’s ballroom scene. Even that isn’t as collecting-obsessed as I’ve come across. If you have ever seen Black Gate boss John O’s basement, then you know The Library of Congress doesn’t have a book collection that big.

Though I’m not quite that obsessed, I do have a thing for the original Universal Studios monsters. You know the ones; Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. I have figurines, Christmas tree ornaments, stuffed toys and a life-sized standee of Bela Lugosi as Dracula; who, as for any normal Goth Girl, was my first crush. Afterall, these black and white movie treasures are where it all began for me.

But of course, I’m justifying…

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Tone is one of the most important characteristics of a story, one of the hardest to get right, and one of the hardest to discuss. The feel of a story, what is above and beyond the mechanics of plot or the construction of character or even the specifics of imagery, is a large part of what comes to mind when you think of a story after the story’s done. And tone can be the main concern of a storyteller; it’s a perfectly valid artistic choice to subordinate narrative logic or character motivation or whatever else to the feel the story’s supposed to instill. Or, at least, it’s a valid choice when it works. Which brings up the difficulty in describing tone. It’s often hard to explain what creates it and how well that succeeds, but more, the perception of tone can vary wildly. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. Particularly when the tone is abstract.

Which is all useful to remember in viewing Laurin. A German production shot in Hungary, it was written and directed by Robert Sigl and released in 1988. A 4K restoration’s drawn attention to the movie, and this year’s Fantasia hosted its Canadian premiere. The movie aspires to the tone of a dream or a fable, and whether it succeeds will likely depend on the individual viewer.

It’s set in a small town in Europe in the very early twentieth century. People have begun to disappear, particularly children. Laurin (Dóra Szinetár) is a young girl whose mother has died a bizarre death, and whose father is absent at sea. She’s drawn into the mystery of the missing youths, investigating castle ruins and a mysterious man in black.

And that’s essentially the movie. It aims at creating a dreamlike tone more than a tight dramatic plot, and at only 84 minutes, that’s not unreasonable. It is very slow, and the story simple. Dialogue’s mostly underwritten. Does it work? I would say some aspects, certainly. For me the movie was undermined by its way of telling its story. But that approach is probably central to what the film’s doing, and it’s possible I’m overly concerned with a narrative structure in which Laurin itself is less invested. There is the raw matter for a structured story here, but the movie is more interested in tone than structure. If you can put aside the desire to follow the development of a story and instead dwell in the moment of what you see, that tone might be enough for you.

To go into more detail, let’s start with what clearly works. The film’s gorgeous. There’s an intense autumnal atmosphere in the rich colours of the woodlands and the deep shadows of the night photography. Interiors of homes have the close, overstuffed feel of the late Victorian era (or, in this case, early Edwardian). Contrasting with both is a schoolroom setting that is appropriately muted and drab. There’s a lushness too in the detailed costumes, as there is in the movie’s use of long shots of forests and stone ruins. Note also that despite the feverish tone that emerges there are no special effects to challenge the mood.

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Covers by Sam Weber (Empire of Silence) and Kieran Yanner (Howling Dark and Demon in White)

Christopher Ruocchio’s debut novel 永久免费加速器推荐 (DAW 2018) was the opening volume in the epic Sun Eater space opera. Library Journal called it a “wow book… stretched across a vast array of planets,” and my buddy Eric Flint labeled it “epic-scale space opera in the tradition of Iain M. Banks and Frank Herbert’s Dune.” 永久免费加速器推荐, the second in the series, was published last July, and won Ruocchio an even wider audience.

The third novel, Demon in White, was easily one of the most anticipated novels of the summer. It was published in July and, with some 300 reviews at Goodreads, boasts an amazing 4.70 ranking — a rare accomplishment. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite Amazon review, from Dave Wilde.

The third novel in this science fiction series begins with palace intrigue so deadly and dangerous that even Hadrian the Half-Mortal thinks he might just be safer in the heat of battle.

Much of the story has Hadrian and Valka and the rest of Red Company digging through ruins or ensconced in study in an ancient library. Nevertheless, for those looking for breathtaking ferocious battle, it’s all here, nastier, dirtier, bloodier, and more terrifying. On the way, the legend of Hadrian grows as the royals fear he is on his way to becoming so powerful that even the throne will fall to him.

Balanced against fierce battles against mankind’s greatest enemies — the kind that views humans as cattle to be slaughtered for dinner — are mystical questions about fate and coincidence and free will and what forces are out there beyond history. Whose tool is Hadrian and who does he serve? And whose tools are the enemies? The fate of the universe just may hang in balance.

Demon in White was published by DAW Books on July 28, 2020. It is 784 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $14.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Kieran Yanner. See all our recent coverage of the best in new SF & Fantasy series here.

Yesterday I wrote about a horror-comedy that worked because it found a strong balance between its horror and its comedy, while deriving both tones naturally from its characters. The movie I watched after that one was also a horror-comedy. But it was less successful.

The Day of the Beast (instagram免费永久加速器) was released in 1995, and has a 4K restoration on the way from the fine people at Severin Films. Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, and written by de la Iglesia with Jorge Guerricaechevarría, it follows a mild-mannered Spanish priest, Ángel (Álex Angulo). He’s cracked the secret code of the Book of Revelations, and worked out that the Antichrist will be born on Christmas Day. But he’s not sure where. So he’s decided to catch the attention of Satan, by committing all the sins he can think of. He’ll then sell his soul to learn where the Antichrist is being born, and go there to kill the infant. (Presumably, if you’ve gotten to the point of selling your soul to Satan, infanticide becomes a triviality.)

Ángel wanders through Madrid, gathering an eclectic variety of supporting characters. A friendly metalhead, José María (Santiago Segura), becomes his henchman. A mysterious TV psychic, Professor Cavan (Armando De Razza) may know something. And then there’s a mysterious gang going around murdering homeless people and leaving graffiti commanding “clean up Madrid”.

It all works very well for the first half of the film. Ángel’s plan is a ramshackle bit of plotting, but it works to get across the basic comedic idea of a cloistered man who doesn’t understand sin very well trying to be evil. Thanks to Angulo’s performance the movie gets a lot of mileage out of meek Ángel being bad, and on top of that the secondary characters are sketeched in with verve and originality. De Razza’s arrogant psychic makes for a good contrast with Ángel, and the way he’s set up and brought into the film works well.

Unfortunately, the movie then switches gears for the second half. It doesn’t really become a straight-ahead horror film as the first half occasionally hinted, though. It instead becomes something of an action movie, starting with an extended sequence in which the film’s leads escape from an apartment building. Various running-around ensues, none of which is particularly interesting, and the movie concludes with a sequence in which the leads are irrelevant to the working-out of the story. (You can almost see a parody of the visitation of the Magi, if you squint, but for no obvious purpose.)

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Cover by Brian LeBlanc

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most people aren’t very happy with how 2020 has turned out. However, there have been some bright spots. For one, fans of quality Sword and Sorcery have plenty of new reading material, as I’ve released six titles so far this year through DMR Books.

Things kicked off in grand fashion with the reprint anthology 免费加速器手机版, which collected stories that were rare or overlooked in some way. The lead story is “The House of Arabu” by Robert E. Howard, a historical fantasy set in ancient Mesopotamia. It’s not especially well-known, as it features no recurring characters, but I think it’s one of Howard’s best. (I included it in my article “The Ten Greatest Sword and Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard.”) Other highlights include the unabridged, rarely reprinted version of “Necromancy in Naat” by my favorite author, Clark Ashton Smith, and a previously unpublished version of A. Merritt’s classic “The Woman of the Wood.”

Let me tell you about that…

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天行破解版无限免费 by Jon Richter (TCK Publishing, May 1, 2020). Cover uncredited

Jon Richter’s new novel Auxiliary: London 2039 has been described as “a cyberpunk thriller featuring a noir detective” (by the Caffeinated Reviewer). But it was the heading on the back cover (“A good detective is never obsolete”) that really piqued my interest. Here’s an excerpt from the feature review by Roger Hyttinen at Roger Reviews.

It’s a dark combination of the detective noir, cyberpunk, and sci-fi genres. Our main character, Carl Dremmler, is the kind of detective you’d find in a 1940s noir story: he drinks too much, has a painful past, is a bit crass, and picks up strangers for sex (though he often has sex with his personal humanoid robot). I thought the author did a fantastic job of meshing the different genres, and they all worked seamlessly…

The setting for this dystopian thriller is more than a bit disconcerting and grim, taking place in the near future where machines pretty much run the world… Detective Dremmler is called to the scene of a grisly crime. A young man has allegedly murdered his girlfriend by crushing her skull with his cybernetically-controlled prosthetic arm… However, the distraught man protests that the arm, whose chip is controlled by TIM, acted on its own accord and that the man couldn’t stop it… As Dremmler and his partner begin investigating deeper, he soon begins to suspect that there’s a lot more going on here than what he first thought and the case then morphs into something else entirely….

The story was fascinating though certainly dark, creepy, and profoundly unsettling. This book captivated me from beginning to end as the twists started to pile up. I thought this was a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel that’s both provocative and shocking. Compelling, dark, and intense, this story of technology gone wrong kept me guessing until the end and took me places I very much didn’t expect.

Jon Richter is the author of two horror collections and two crime novels, Deadly Burial and Never Rest. Auxiliary: London 2039 is his science fiction debut. It was published by TCK Publishing on May 1, 2020. It is 223 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $2.99 in digital formats.

Read all our coverage of the best new SF and fantasy here.