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Firefly rewatch:
(1) When I rewatched Terminator:TSCC, what really stood out was the beauty of the cinematography (and the characters, but that goes without saying). This time on Firefly, what I’m noticing is the sound design. It’s not just that space is silent, but all the locations have a distinct aural texture. Well done, Mutant Enemy!
(2) 1x03, Bushwhacked, Mal, of the sole survivor of the Reavers: “Charity’d be a bullet in the brainpan.” Never noticed that callback in the movie before. I found a list of callbacks and (alleged) inconsistencies, though many of the latter seem quite handwavable: the best callback of all is the Trans-U Reaver ship.
Claudia Gray, Spellcaster: Nadia moves to a small seaside town with her lawyer father and little brother after her mother, a witch, runs off, devastating the family and interrupting Nadia’s own magical training. As it turns out, the town is under a curse. Despite the bar on revealing witchcraft to men, Nadia discovers that the mysterious and sexy Mateo is more involved in magic than he knows. Together with a young woman who also seems to be specially affected by the curse, they fight an ancient witch whose pact with ultimate evil threatens the survival of the entire town. Magic here is done with memories and emotion; it’s a good start to a new series—there’s an end, but a promise of more trouble to come—and I’d be very interested to see Nadia’s lack of training/life experience actually affect her ability to do spells in a more tangible way.
Harlan Ellison, Web of the City: Ellison’s first novel, written in the 1950s and rereleased under the Hard Case Crime imprint. Rusty Santoro tries to survive his gritty Brooklyn neighborhood, which involves gang fights, loose women, and other traps. Not my kind of thing.
Courtney Summers, This Is Not a Test: High concept: What if the zombie apocalypse happened on the day you set aside to kill yourself? Sloane, a suicidal teenager abandoned by her older sister to her physically abusive father’s lack of mercies, finds out. Since she doesn’t want to take other people with her, and since she’s discombobulated by the sudden change in the world, she ends up trapped with several other teens in her high school. It’s a painful book, with plenty of teen politics; zombies hunger for life, while Sloane hungers for death.
Connie Willis, The Best of Connie Willis: Free review copy. Reading a bunch of Willis’s well-known stories together, including The Last of the Winnebagos and Even the Queen, the word I most want to use is “kind.” Standard characters are oblivious to other people—sometimes harmfully so, when they’re the antagonists, and one of them really takes mansplaining to a whole new level in a story about choirs and uncommunicative, disapproving aliens. But ultimately the antagonists are silly rather than evil; fundamental conflicts of values appear as, essentially, mistakes. (This is, I think, why Willis’s fascination with the London Blitz involves a portion of the war where bombs just drop from the sky, faceless; she doesn’t have to deal with the bombers when the enemy is Death.) Wouldn’t it be pretty if it were true? Also included are three speeches for awards ceremonies; Willis’s love for books and the hope they offer did make me tear up.
(1) When I rewatched Terminator:TSCC, what really stood out was the beauty of the cinematography (and the characters, but that goes without saying). This time on Firefly, what I’m noticing is the sound design. It’s not just that space is silent, but all the locations have a distinct aural texture. Well done, Mutant Enemy!
(2) 1x03, Bushwhacked, Mal, of the sole survivor of the Reavers: “Charity’d be a bullet in the brainpan.” Never noticed that callback in the movie before. I found a list of callbacks and (alleged) inconsistencies, though many of the latter seem quite handwavable: the best callback of all is the Trans-U Reaver ship.
Claudia Gray, Spellcaster: Nadia moves to a small seaside town with her lawyer father and little brother after her mother, a witch, runs off, devastating the family and interrupting Nadia’s own magical training. As it turns out, the town is under a curse. Despite the bar on revealing witchcraft to men, Nadia discovers that the mysterious and sexy Mateo is more involved in magic than he knows. Together with a young woman who also seems to be specially affected by the curse, they fight an ancient witch whose pact with ultimate evil threatens the survival of the entire town. Magic here is done with memories and emotion; it’s a good start to a new series—there’s an end, but a promise of more trouble to come—and I’d be very interested to see Nadia’s lack of training/life experience actually affect her ability to do spells in a more tangible way.
Harlan Ellison, Web of the City: Ellison’s first novel, written in the 1950s and rereleased under the Hard Case Crime imprint. Rusty Santoro tries to survive his gritty Brooklyn neighborhood, which involves gang fights, loose women, and other traps. Not my kind of thing.
Courtney Summers, This Is Not a Test: High concept: What if the zombie apocalypse happened on the day you set aside to kill yourself? Sloane, a suicidal teenager abandoned by her older sister to her physically abusive father’s lack of mercies, finds out. Since she doesn’t want to take other people with her, and since she’s discombobulated by the sudden change in the world, she ends up trapped with several other teens in her high school. It’s a painful book, with plenty of teen politics; zombies hunger for life, while Sloane hungers for death.
Connie Willis, The Best of Connie Willis: Free review copy. Reading a bunch of Willis’s well-known stories together, including The Last of the Winnebagos and Even the Queen, the word I most want to use is “kind.” Standard characters are oblivious to other people—sometimes harmfully so, when they’re the antagonists, and one of them really takes mansplaining to a whole new level in a story about choirs and uncommunicative, disapproving aliens. But ultimately the antagonists are silly rather than evil; fundamental conflicts of values appear as, essentially, mistakes. (This is, I think, why Willis’s fascination with the London Blitz involves a portion of the war where bombs just drop from the sky, faceless; she doesn’t have to deal with the bombers when the enemy is Death.) Wouldn’t it be pretty if it were true? Also included are three speeches for awards ceremonies; Willis’s love for books and the hope they offer did make me tear up.
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