Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Paperbacks from Hell

In the ’70s, and ’80s, there was a massive boom in horror cinema in various stripes, from the US and Italy, combined with the general boom in Exploitation films. This boom wasn’t just limited to film. This period also saw a dramatic increase in the amount of horror novels published in the US – with highly successful novels like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Amityville Horror, and Jaws (all of which were later adapted to the screen), leading to an accompanying rise in horror novels.

Paperbacks from Hell goes into this boom and basically breaks down the slew of horror novels into manageable chunks. Not by year, but by sub-genre, getting into what gave each subgenre its appeal. White Flight from the cities and the success of The Amityville Horror helped boost the popularity of haunted house stories, and so on.

The tone of the work is somewhat irreverent – recognizing that when you have so many hundreds upon hundreds of horror novels in myriad sub-genres can lead to a very high level of crap, and a lot of formulaic writing. It makes for a book that I’d almost describe as what you’d get if Brad Jones wrote a guide to Exploitation film.

The book also pulls no punches when it comes to criticism. Author Grady Hendrix makes it clear that some of these genres in particular, especially those who put the horror in an urban setting, are basically written to play on conservative fears. Hendrix does a good job of calling attention to a great deal of the misogyny that with those books, along to other bits of bigotry (especially when it comes to the writing of people of color and gay characters). In turn, the horror books based around rural are also based about more progressive observations – the coal town making a deal with the devil to reopen the mine and bring the jobs back (but in turn opening a portal to hell).

While some of the big names, like Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, and Poppy Z. Brite are certainly mentioned – their work helped keep the boom going, and their fiction has been able to endure long after the paperback boom has ended – he puts a lot of focus on other, lesser known horror authors. By no means are they all good, but they are all certainly interesting, either in terms of the particular fears they called on to fuel their work, or their own personal careers.

The book is also interspersed with a wide variety of color images of the covers of these various books, which on its own makes for engrossing viewing. As the books in these various genres go more and more over the top in an attempt to one-up both the last installment, and their competitors , so the covers get more and more hilariously macabre, going from creepy, to gross, to bizarrely absurd.

If nothing else, as I read this book, I found myself wishing there was a Youtube show, like The Cinema Snob, which approached these genre with the same degree of irreverent humor as he does in that show. I’ve already got a bunch on my plate already, otherwise I’d be willing to take up that torch myself. Still, there is definitely a space in internet horror fandom for someone to take it up instead.

Paperbacks from Hell is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions. There’s also an audiobook forthcoming. However, due to just how absolutely important the art is to this book, in terms of showing how these books were presented to the public, I cannot recommend the audiobook when it comes out, and I’m hesitant to recommend the Kindle edition as well. The Paperback edition is the best way to go, with the covers of the various books presented clearly in vivid color.

If Hendrix was to edit a coffee table book compiling their favorites of the covers from this period, I would also give that a clear recommendation, as the covers for these books are intense, over the top, and truly have to be seen to be believed.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Part the Fourth – Verily A New Hope

I like Shakespeare. While certainly presentation can mean a lot when it comes to a play, a good cast and some good staging can take some of the Bards more “meh” plays and make them enjoyable (such as with Henry VI), and his work can be adapted to a variety of other settings.

So, when I found out about the adaptations of the Star Wars Original Trilogy (and, later, the Prequel Trilogy), to something similar to the work of the Bard, my interest was piqued. However, plays are best when they are performed instead of simply being read off of the page – as anyone who has had to silently read Shakespeare for High School English class will tell you. That is, in part, why most English teachers worth their salt will have the class read the play aloud.

Consequently, when I found said trilogy was also available as audiobooks from Audible, I was now much more interested in picking them up. The audiobooks imagine them as a (mostly) full cast play, with a few of the readers playing multiple parts. For example, the reader who voices Leia also reads the Stage Directions, and I think that the reader who does Obi-Wan also voices the Chorus.

As with the Bard’s plays that featured dialog in other languages (like French in Henry V), dialog in the various constructed languages – like Huttese, Shyriiwook, or R2-D2’s beeps – are not translated, though it’s still rendered in iambic pentameter. R2-D2 does have asides in regular English, which gives him some more explicit character depth. This makes sense as while he had some character depth in the films, it was more implicit, drawn from the sound design by Ben Burtt and the operation by Kenny Baker.

The text of the play has a mix of modifications of the dialog of the films, and some original dialog. Well, original-ish. The play on multiple occasions cribs heavily from Shakespeare’s other work. Luke is possibly the worst offender in this regard, though C-3P0 has a bit that weirdly cribs from Richard III at the start of the play. It’s something that causes a problem with the flow of the story – things are moving along at a nice clip, and your mind’s eye has you both in the midst of the film, and with how the imagined play is performed, before you run into something cribbed from another work of Skakespeare’s canon, and you’re bounced right out of your groove.

Some work better than others though – after getting out of the Stormtrooper armor when they’ve escaped from the Trash Compactor, Luke gives a variant of the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech, while examining the Stormtrooper’s helmet. This works a little better than some of the other speeches, because while Luke has seen death prior to this part of the story – the troopers who boarded the Falcon would make for the first time he’s actually killed anyone, and everyone else he’d shot after that point had clearly been in self defense instead of in cold blood, so it makes sense for him to get reflective.

I really enjoyed listening to the play, and given the choice between either just reading it or listening to the audiobook, I prefer the audiobook – though reading along while listening to it wouldn’t hurt as well. The publisher also put together teaching resources to go with the book, and I could see this being really useful for teaching a High School English class about Iambic pentameter and how Shakespeare’s plays were structured, through presenting a story that the class is already intimately familiar with in addition to Shakespeare’s plays.

I’ve already picked up the rest of the original Trilogy, and will review the rest of those as I come to them. Sadly, the Prequel Trilogy version have not gotten an audio book adaptations, so I’ll have to go with the written versions once I get to those.

Shakespeare’s Star Wars is available from Amazon.com, and purchasing the book through that link will get me a commission based on your purchase.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Nintendo Power Retrospectives: Part 74

This time we start 1994 with issue #57 of Nintendo Power, with another Looney Tunes licensed game, and a winter sports game roundup.

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Games Reviewed:

  • Bugs Bunny in Rabbit Rampage – Sunsoft
  • Young Merlin – Virgin Interactive
  • Skyblazer – Sony
  • Inspector Gadget – Hudson
  • Winter Extreme – Electro Brain
  • Winter Olympic Games – US Gold
  • Riddick Bowe Boxing – Extreme Entertainment
  • Brett Hull Hockey – Accolade
  • Pro Sport Hockey – Jaleco
  • Sports Illustrated Football & Baseball – Malibu Interactive
  • ABC Monday Night Football – Data East
  • Relief Pitcher – Left Field Entertainment
  • BCA Championship Pool – Mindscape
  • Side Pocket – Data East
  • Lester The Unlikely – DTMC Games
  • Choplifter III – Ocean Software
  • Arcade’s Revenge – LJN
  • Bart & The Beanstalk – Acclaim
  • StarTropics II – Nintendo
Posted on by Alexander Case

Editorial: State of the Patreon

Hello everyone,

This year was my first year in a while where I had no Patreon backers. The backers who I did have previously decided that their funds were better used elsewhere, and considering world events at the time they dropped out, I couldn’t argue with that. I can’t particularly argue with that anyway – your money is your money. However, going a year with no backers got me thinking that perhaps I could do more to provide more for my backers, so I’m making some changes to my support levels.

If you’re already a $5 backer, by this point you’ll notice that you’ve also been getting copies of my written reviews about a week in advance. That’s going to stay a common thing going forward. Since a lot of the reviews I’ve been doing (outside of Nintendo Power Retrospectives episodes) have been adaptations of earlier reviews for video, this gives you even more of a head start.

On top of this, starting in January (with either my second video or my first video, depending on how I’m able to wrangle the Youtube back end), all of my future videos will get uploaded with their privacy setting set to “Unlisted” instead of “Scheduled/Private”. This means that Patrons at the $5 level will get episodes up to 1 week early (concert and film vlogs will be made available when the episode is uploaded).

As far as my Let’s Plays go, currently the archives for the LP are stored on YouTube as “unlisted” – and from there I take my copy, chop it up into reasonably sized pieces, and upload those onto my YouTube channel. For backers who would like to see these earlier, which would you prefer: getting the YouTube archive its entirety, uncut (and at its full length), or would you prefer it cut into more manageable pieces for easier viewing?

Currently I’m not putting that much work into editing them, mainly for the interests of time, as only have a couple days a week to do recording and editing at present (the rest of the week – when I’m not at work – is spent on the Nintendo Power Retrospectives). If backers show enough of an interest, I can put more time upgrading the presentation on these. With the time I have available, I can probably do presentation on par with the videos on Gopher’s channel.

Is there a perk that get you to back my Patreon? What level would you be more willing to pay for some of the existing support levels? Please let me know in the comments and I’ll take it under consideration for future adjustments to my perks.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

 

Posted on by Alexander Case

Editorial: Tabletop RPG Publishers need to promote themselves better.

When I read an analysis of a work of fiction – and the person doing that analysis looks at the world presented in this fiction, sees how it’s fleshed out, and because it’s fleshed out goes “This would be better/best as a video game!” I become kind of frustrated. In particular, I become frustrated because it would also work just as well for a tabletop RPG setting. A great example of this is the below installment of the “Mother’s Basement” video series, where host Geoff Thew discusses the narrative and worldbuilding of the excellent recent anime Made in Abyss, and determines that as good as it is, because of that worldbuilding it would be better as a video game:

My frustration isn’t because the opinion is objectively wrong, or because video games are somehow inferior as an medium. It’s frustrating because there’s this mindset I feel in video game fandom circles that tabletop RPGs don’t exist. They’re the thing that people used to day back before MMORPGs, and now nobody plays them anymore. I don’t mean “nobody” in the sense of nobody of consequence – that tabletop RPGs are viewed with the contempt that was/is shown to LARPers in geek circles. I mean that they just don’t exist – that the person who plays RPGs is like the Tasmanian Tiger, who occasionally emerges from the bush, and then runs back into hiding.

Even the gaming news sources that do talk about RPGs tend to focus on certain more niche sides of things. Austin Walker of Waypoint is way into the narrativist Indie game side of things (which is fine – I don’t believe in bad-wrong-fun). It’s also frustrating because there’s so much more to RPGs than that, and most game sites are only willing to do one of three takes.

  1. RPGs don’t exist anymore. People played them when I was in college, but nowadays tabletop RPGs don’t exist.
  2. The only tabletop RPG ever is Dungeons & Dragons. There was Shadowrun and Vampire once upon a time (and I know about those because of their video games), but they no longer exist. This isn’t helped by some forces within the game industry (like the new shepherds of White Wolf and the World of Darkness – and old White Wolf too for that matter)
  3. Dungeons & Dragons exists, but we’re only going to talk about more artistically minded small press RPGs, like some of the Powered by Apocalypse World games or Dogs in the Vineyard.

Quick note about #3: There is anything wrong in these games – it’s just that there’s an excluded middle – there are games that have gotten visibility among tabletop RPG fans, but nobody outside of that circle knows about that are worth discussing and considering – from Runequest, to 7th Sea, to Savage Worlds.

Anyway, my frustration is born out of the fact that these omissions very much come out of ignorance, whether because the people who made these statements have never had the opportunity to play an RPG, or their experience was a bad time at one game, and they dismissed the medium entirely.

I’ve tried to push back against this through videos of my own, giving recommendations based on existing video games and RPGs that are in print, but my audience is small, and there’s only so much I can do by myself, much as I love tilting at windmills. This also isn’t helped by the fact that, for very valid and understandable economic reasons, much of tabletop RPG publication is done online through PDFs instead of through brick and mortar stores, and any connection between big box booksellers and tabletop RPG publishers (in terms of trying to get their books there) is a thing of the past.

What this does mean is that tabletop RPG publishers need to take some cues from Wizards of the Coast (and then some) when it comes to promoting your stuff. There are a ton of livestreams on Twitch and videos on YouTube through the Dungeons & Dragons and Geek & Sundry YouTube channels showing people playing D&D.

Chaosium, Green Ronin, and other tabletop RPG publishers should be doing something similar for their own systems. Get people to stream Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Blue Rose, and other games. This not only shows people having fun playing the game, but it also shows people who have never played an RPG before how to play the game.

Additionally, and this is a little thing, but whenever a new Bundle of Holding comes out, the new bundle should get tweeted at @Wario64 (or someone similar), to signal boost the bundle.

Finally, the tabletop RPG industry is kinda in a Crab bucket situation. Tabletop RPGs are surviving and enduring, and as long as the books exist it won’t go anywhere, but unless there’s growth in the player base, there’s no room for growth in the industry – especially for people to make money at this full time, for companies to hire the kind of staff that’s necessary to help maintain a necessary level of professionalism (HR departments and publicists to prevent stupid crap like what happened recently with Bill Webb of Frog God Games and TSR Alum Frank Mentzer.) To do that, the industry needs to stop this stupid undermining bullshit. Politely discourage fans on your boards from slagging and actively attacking other companies games (at least professionally published games – they can slag FATAL all they want), and don’t do that yourself. If we work together, we can get out. If we promote a culture of undermining and slagging each other, we promote the perception that all our games are crap, and not worth people’s time, attention, and money.

So, in short:

  • Show people having fun playing your game.
  • Use avenues people are already watching to look for game deals, to showcase deals for *your* game.
  • Don’t run down other publishers – promote how you’re different, instead of “They suck, we’re better!”
Posted on by Alexander Case

Legends of the Force: Episode XV – The Last Jedi Vlog

There’s a new Star Wars movie – I take a look at it and (while avoiding spoilers for the rest of the film), takes a look at Luke’s teaching style in this movie.

Opening Credits: Star Wars Theme from Super Star Wars on the SNES.
Closing Credits: Chiptune Cantina Band from Chiptune Inc.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Comic Review: Tales of the Jedi (Part 2)

Having finished the second book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, this seems like as good a time as any to take a look at the comic book storyline discussing the rise of Exar Kun – The Freedon Nadd Uprising and Dark Lords of the Sith.

Credits

Freedon Nadd Uprising

Writer: Tom Veitch
Pencils: Tony Atkins
Inks: Denis Rodier
Lettering: Willie Schubert
Colorist: Suzanne Bourdages
Covers: Dave Dorman
Publication Date: August – September 1994

This is available independently in a Kindle/Comixology edition from Amazon.com.

Dark Lords of the Sith

Writer: Tom Veitch & Kevin J. Anderson
Pencils: Chris Gossett (1-5), Art Wetherell.
Inks: Mike Barreiro (1, 3, 5-6), Jordi Ensign (2, 4),
Lettering: Willie Schubert
Colorist: Pamela Rambo
Cover artist: Hugh Fleming
Publication Date: October 1994 – March 1995

This is available independently from Amazon.com.

Both stories are available in a combined form in Tales of the Jedi Vol. 2 (along with the next two arcs of the comic).

Plot Notes

Following the defeat of Queen Amanoa in the events of the first Tales of the Jedi storyline, Jedi Master Arca Jeth has decided that it’s best to remove the remains of Sith Lord Freedon Nadd from Onderon to the nearby moon of Dxun. As Jeth, and his students Ulic and Cay Qel-Droma, Tott Doneeta, and Master Thon’s former pupil Oss Wilum, move Nadd’s sarcophagus and the remains of the former queen, Amanoa, to Dxun, they are attacks by followers of Nadd, stealing the sarcophagi.

The Jedi consult current Queen Gallia’s father, King Ommin, for assistance. To their surprise (but not exactly mine), Ommin turns out to also be a Nadd cultist, betraying the Jedi. Arca Jeth is captured, through the rest of the Jedi get away. Meanwhile, another group of Jedi, including Nomi Sunrider are sent to help defend the planet.

While all of this is going on, two other Sith Cultists – Satal and Aleema Keto – heirs to the throne of the Empress Teta system, steal a book on the Sith from the Galactic Museum, which leads them to Onderon. They manage to steal a few relics of Freedon Nadd and return to their world home system, and murder their parents to seize the throne.

Once again, the Jedi are drawn into action to take down the two. As Republic and Jedi forces work to retake the Empress Teta system, a Jedi Knight named Exar Kun raids the crypt of Freedon Nadd and takes several relics. Nadd’s spirit directs Exar Kun to Yavin IV, and the temple and Sith laboratories of an earlier Lord of the Sith known as Naga Sadow. Nadd manages to corrupt Kun to the Dark Side of the Force, making him accept the mantle of the Sith in order to heal an otherwise mortal wound.

Back in the Empress Teta system, the Keto siblings are able to fight the Republic forces to a standstill using their Sith powers, and in particular Aleema’s ability to conjure illusions. As Kun turns to the Dark Side, a wave of power runs through force, that allows the forces of the Keto Siblings to attack a gathering of Jedi, with their battle droids killing a bunch of Jedi, including Master Jeth.

In response to this, Ulic Qel-Droma proposes a hazardous plan – to infiltrate the forces of the Empress Teta system, and to attempt to overcome the Sith from within.  Several Jedi masters, along with Ulic’s brother Cay and Nomi Sunrider, attempt to talk him out of this, but he decides to go forward with this plan anyway. Ulic manages to gain the confidence of Aleema, but Satal does not trust him – drugging him with a Sith poison that will kill him if he tries to draw on the Light Side of the force. Kay and Nomi attempt to pull out Ulic, but he insists on staying to see this through.

This all comes to a head when Exar Kun travels to the Empress Teta system himself. Kun kills Satal, and ends up doing battle with Ulic. Ulic puts on an amulet from the cache of Sith artifacts in Aleema’s possession – which resonates with a similar amulet that Kun had on his person. They get a vision of a Sith Lord far older than Freedon Nadd. He informs them that this moment has been planned for long before they were born – Exar Kun is to be the new, true Dark Lord of the Sith, with Ulic Qel-Droma as his apprentice.

Worldbuilding

  • That there was an ancient race known as the Sith, and they were enslaved by a group of Dark Jedi, who called themselves the Lords of the Sith.
  • The Force has something in common with Qi in Wuxia novels or humors in medieval medicine. It’s not just a matter of mindset when powers are used, it’s mindset and body chemistry in unison. Thus, when Exar Kun’s body is rebuilt by Freedon Nadd, he can block Kun off from the Light Side, and the same applies for the Sith poison that is injected into Ulic Qel-Droma.
  • We have the first mention in print of Korriban – Sith Tomb world, the place where they buried their secrets on their death, but specifically with the intent that later Sith Lords would come their to try and retrieve those secrets, and thus placed challenges that would have to be overcome to obtain those secrets.
  • First appearance of the Empress Teta system, and first major mention of Naga Sadow.

Characterization

Ulic Qel-Droma: Still somewhat naive and brash, but also somewhat driven and idealistic, as he’s willing to put everything on the line to infiltrate the Sith in order to end this war once and for all.

Cay Qel-Droma: Still the more mature brother, tries to talk Ulic out of his plan, and tries to pull him out with Nomi Sunrider.

Nomi Sunrider: At some point fell in love with Ulic. Is a little more willing to use her lightsaber, and she’s demonstrated the ability to use Battle Meditation to get her opponents to turn on each other.

Master Arca Jeth: Dies during the Battle Droid attack on the Jedi gathering.

Oss Wilum: Has a vision that he will be “learning a great deal” from Ulic Qel-Droma.

Other Notes

This installment does a great job of building up the backstory for the events that are going on in the Jedi Academy trilogy, while also forwarding the existing Tales of the Jedi storyline. That said, again – I feel this would work better as an ongoing comic than a bunch of short miniseries, but that’s how Dark Horse rolls in the ’90s.

Final Thoughts

This is a great continuation of the story from the last Tales of the Jedi series. This ups the scope to a more galactic threat, and gets across why this is a big deal.

The Keto siblings are generally introduced in an interesting manner. They are something of an archetype – rich, decadent spoiled brats who turn to occultism when bored – almost the Star Wars equivalent of Fenris from the Marvel universe (though with less implied incest).

That said, once Exar Kun is introduced in full in Dark Lords of the Sith, it’s made clear that the Keto Siblings are placeholder villains. They’re certainly dangerous, but the amount of attention that Exar Kun receives makes it clear that he’s the big bad – something that is made all the more clear if you read Dark Apprentice.

The action this volume is well done, and the environments panel layouts and art really works with the scope as well. We have some tremendous vistas in this story – which in the modern era of decompressed storytelling would probably be shown as massive two-page spreads, but here are kept a little more confined. Still, they’re given a lot of page real estate to play-up the impact of the art.

The end of this part is definitely a cliffhanger, and it feels almost like our Empire Strikes Back moment, but we’ll see when we get to Part 3 of Tales of the Jedi, with The Sith War.

However, on the novel side, we need to finish off the Jedi Academy trilogy with Champions of the Force, and after that we have, on the comics front, Dark Empire II.

 

Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Stalker (1979)

A while back I reviewed Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic science fiction film Solaris. However, of the various films in Tarkovsky’s filmography, while Solaris was and is extremely well regarded, it’s a film that hasn’t built quite the same following behind it as Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, Stalker. While Solaris got a highly regarded remake approaching 30 years later from director Steven Soderbergh, Stalker has gotten a series of games that draws more, visually, from the film than from the novel that inspired it.

Stalker effectively follows three characters, the titular Stalker, and his two charges, known only as Professor and Writer, as they travel into The Zone – a geographical area where weird stuff has started happening after a meteor landed. Inside the zone is The Room – where whoever enters will receive their heart’s desire. As they travel through The Zone, the three talk about their personal philosophies, and why they chose to travel to the Zone.

To be frank, in the various axis of Science Fiction that I brought up in my review of Solaris, this is a film that uses Science Fiction purely for set dressing. This could just as easily be a film about two people accompanying a lay-priest through a hazardous journey to reach a shrine that has a holy relic that is said can work miracles. This is especially case when it comes to the subject matter of the film.

With Solaris, both with the source material, and with the interpretation of the book’s themes by Gorenshteyn and Tartakovsky, they made the film about interpersonal connections, both among humans and the potential between the human and the inhuman.

Stalker, on the other hand, is about faith and belief. The Stalker is a true believer. He knows what The Zone can do. He’s traveled this route many times before, and he understands. He has internalized his belief in the Zone’s power, and the faith in what it can do. It’s a part of him, possibly not only in terms of his identity.

On the other hand, the Writer and the Professor are more pragmatic. The Professor respects the Stalkers judgement and with one exception, respects his instructions. The Professor breaks from the Stalker’s instructions only when he realizes that he has forgotten his rucksack and must return to get it (as the contents of his bag also related to his Desire). Ultimately, when the trio reaches The Room, the Professor reveals that it his intent to destroy the room, and possibly the Zone itself, with a portable atomic bomb that he’s snuck into the Zone – as he believes that The Room’s power is too dangerous to be trusted by people, that people are not worthy of its power – that the unholy cannot be trusted with the holy.

By contrast, the Writer is a complete skeptic. He frequently scoffs at the rules put forward by the Stalker, chafes at his instructions, and when he encounters potential peril, he turns on the Stalker. Meanwhile, while talking about his own career as a writer, he frequently puts blame for his lack of success on others – that Editors, Critics, and Publishers don’t properly understand his work. He complains about their appetites – not only material appetites, but appetites for reading, cloud their mind to his brilliance. Only briefly does he admit any personal failing – claiming that he’s lost inspiration – before dismissing his earlier remarks later. He fits perfectly into the archetype of the creator who attacks any and all critics of their work, taking the view that if you don’t like their work, then you don’t understand their work.

There’s also the character of the Stalker’s daughter, “Monkey” – who was born without the use of her legs, due to the Stalker’s trips in and out of the Zone. In the film, scenes shot outside the zone are filmed in a sepia monochrome, while scenes within the zone are in color, much like with The Wizard of Oz. The exception is scenes from the implied point of view of Monkey, which are always in color – and the end of the film reveals that she has some telekinetic abilities, implying that there is a little of the Zone within her.

I’ve had to think a lot about what makes this film something that would be science fiction – why the earlier narrative framework I suggested wouldn’t work just as well if not better. The best answer that comes to mind is that this is a story that, possibly like Tarkovsky’s earlier film Andrei Rublev (which I admit I have not seen), which confronts the topic of faith, but unlike Rublev, is dependant on having characters with a more modern, and in particular more Soviet take on skepticism and religion.

If I had one complaint about this film, it’s that I think the contrast would have been stronger had the scenes within the Zone been in a 16:9 aspect ratio, with the scenes outside staying in monochrome and 4:3. However, going from the documentary material on the film, the movie was a tremendously troubled production, in particular with the developers ruining the negative from the first round of filming.

The film also has one thing in common with the John Wayne film The Conqueror – it was filmed in a tremendously toxic environment. While the environment of the Zone is very beautiful, it’s also toxic as hell, with industrial pollution in the environment giving much of the cast and crew cancer, including Tarkovsky himself.

As with Solaris, this is a film I absolutely recommend watching, though I admit I may be completely off base when it comes to the themes of faith in the film – I’ll let someone more versed than I get into that (and if I do find a good essay on the topic, I’ll pass it along).

The film is available from Amazon.com on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you buy the film through those links, I’ll get a small commission on the size of that order, which will help support my work. Also, please consider backing my Patreon.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime (Video) Review: Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (2014-2015)

I’ve previously reviewed the first two Fate anime. Now it’s time to review the third – Ufotable’s adaptation of the second route – Unlimited Blade Works.

Footage Property of Aniplex and the Unlimited Blade Works Production Committee – used under fair use for purposes of criticism.

Fate/Stay Night Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewDl1Eob1Ho
Fate/Zero Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-E84C2lFqk

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