BOOK WORMHOLE: JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL – VOLUME II

Or, The One Where Jonathan Strange Goes To War And Annoys Lord Wellington. Or, even more appropriately, The Tipping Point, because this is the volume where so much changes.

When we last left off, the magician Mr Norrell had removed himself from Yorkshire to London to bring about a renaissance of English magic. We’d been introduced, briefly, to Jonathan Strange and to a number of other characters: Sir Walter Pole and his wife, Lady Pole; the beggar magician Vinculus; Norrell’s London friends and helpers Drawlight and Lascelles; Sir Walter’s servant Stephen Black; and a host of others, including the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, who is given no other name but with the information given through dialogue and footnote I can’t help but guess at his identity. We had also been left with the foreknowledge that the second volume would bring Jonathan Strange to London, to Norrell’s doorstep, and that he would become his pupil. And he does, but not because he asks, rather because Norrell does. It’s a bit surprising even though we know it’s coming, because Norrell has done everything to ensure that he is the only practicing magician in England, but that’s very much a part of it. What better way, after all, to ensure that his authority goes unchallenged than to have the only other practicing magician subordinate to him?

Norrell’s authority is a constant in both volumes of the novel, and I know it will continue into the third volume as well. It’s one of the—if not the—primary characteristics he has, and one of the first things we know about him. From the beginning of the novel, when Norrell agrees to perform magic for the York Society under the conditions that they will give up studying magic (even if they never perform it), we are told that what he wants is authority over magic. He doesn’t just want to be the best magician, he wants to be the only magician, and in order to accomplish this he will seemingly do anything, including threatening people and hording all magical knowledge for himself. Strange threatens this authority, but as I said Norrell’s taking him on as a pupil circumvents this threat, at least in his eyes. Norrell will have Strange studying until they both die, which will maintain their teacher-student relationship and allow Norrell to continue to be the authority on magic; Strange will never get a chance to grow above him (especially when Norrell keeps books that would likely facilitate this growth locked in his library in Yorkshire). As the volume progresses, it continues to be made painfully clear that Norrell is absolutely terrified of losing his position as the authority on English magic, and nothing makes this so prevalent as when Norrell agrees to persuading Strange to go to war, to prevent the possibility of Strange getting his hands on some newly-available books of magic.

Which, for someone who desires stasis, is a very stupid thing; war is never static.

In my review of Volume I, I mentioned how Clarke works with the historical period her story is set in, including having historical figures appearing within the novel alongside the fictional characters. Volume II is where she makes ample use of this, beginning right when Strange heads to Spain and the troops led by the not-as-yet Duke of Wellington. At first, Strange is useless. Wellington doesn’t want him, Strange can’t think of anything to do, and overall the army appears to not be in need of his services at all. But Strange refuses to just turn around and go back to London, and eventually is able to use his magic to aid the army. Spain, quite literally, is never the same.

It’s during his three years helping Wellington that Strange’s opinions really start to diverge from Norrell’s. They have always had differing opinions about some things (faeries and the magician the Raven King being two big ones), but for the most part Strange appeared largely content to be Norrell’s pupil. But on his own using magic outside the safety of a London sitting room, to such great purpose, Strange begins to wonder if he wouldn’t learn more away from Norrell, who seems so stifling when Strange finally returns. As I said, war is not static, and neither are the people who participate in it. Strange saw all the worst of humanity, the things we can do to each other for glory or victory or when faced with our mortality down the barrel of a gun. And Strange didn’t just observe, he did things for the sake of helping his country that made him question the sort of magic he was performing, as he “was obliged to invent most of the magic he did, working from general principles and half-remembered stories from old books”, as he did before he became Norrell’s pupil. One of the most striking images of Strange during his time in Spain is when he reanimates seventeen Neapolitan corpses. Strange watches them come to life “apparently without emotion”, altogether appearing rather nonchalant and the antithesis of the gentlemanly magician Norrell would want him to be. A portrait of Strange painted with the Neapolitans, whose enchantment lasts and who stalk Strange, begging to be returned to full life, shows what dialogue and description up until that point have not: what his experience, both with war and with magic, has done to him.

“In the picture Strange is seated on the ground. His gaze is cast down and his arms hang limp at his sides and his whole attitude speaks of helplessness and despair. The Neapolitans crowd around him; some regarding him hungrily; others have expressions of supplication on their faces; one is putting out a tentative finger to stroke the back of his hair. It is, needless to say, quite different from any other portrait of Strange.”

Even after his three years, Strange joins Wellington at Waterloo and has an experience I’m certain will be significant in the next volume. Strange is confronted by a French cuirassier on horseback, sabre raised, and “[w]ithout thinking” Strange prepares to “smash horse and horseman out of existence” with one single spell. But then, he freezes. He had told Wellington, once, that “‘[a] magician might, but a gentleman never could’” kill a man using magic, and it appears that for all that he has used magic to misdirect and frighten and raise the dead, when faced with killing a man who stands inches in front of him, Strange is a gentleman. After, “[h]e believed he wandered about in a dazed condition”, although he can’t really remember, and I’m sure that he will be faced with this again, this very human decision to having to stand there, look someone in the eye, and decide whether or not to kill them or risk himself—or someone he cares about—being killed instead.

Strange returns to Norrell, Norrell who has been occupied with the same tasks as he was years before, with the same people, living comfortably in his house in London instead of sleeping on floors and trekking through muddy fields. Norrell has remained in his desired static state, the only thing that appears to have changed being his age, and when he meets Strange he meets his worst fear: a very real, and very willing, threat to his magical authority. Who he meets is a man who embodies everything about the nickname Wellington bestowed upon him in Spain: Merlin. I found this an extremely apt nickname, and not only because Strange was a magician and Wellington the heroic knight. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s take on Merlin’s origins have him being the son of a demon (specifically an incubus) and a nun. A cruel father and a wronged mother; this is very allusive to Strange’s own origins. Merlin also worked for the betterment of Britain, like Strange, and his relationship with Wellington is very much like Merlin’s relationship with King Arthur, one of advice and aid. Wellington himself is Arthurian, a hero of Britain, and the book Reinventing King Arthur: The Arthurian Legends In Victorian Culture by Inga Bryden gives examples of this comparison having been made by Wellington’s contemporaries, such as in a political cartoon that depicts Wellington in a very Arthurian manner. Strange’s state of shock during the Battle of Waterloo is also rather allusive to the Vita Merlini, a version of Merlin’s life which has him going mad after a battle. Of course, as yet it’s not a complete comparison; Merlin is primarily defeated by a woman (Nimuë), and thus far Strange has not been defeated by anyone. But he does have a wife, Arabella, and after they first met Norrell said that “‘[m]agicians have no business marrying.’” At first I thought that this was just Norrell being Norrell, resenting any distraction in the pursuit of magical knowledge and now in his spending every waking moment with his new pupil. But now I can’t help but wonder, is it more than that? Is it foreshadowing? Is Arabella a (possibly unwitting) Nimuë?

It’s looking more and more likely the more pages pass.

Strange’s relationship with Arabella is in the background. We rarely see them alone together (although, to be fair, for a good chunk of Volume II he is away from her in Spain), and consequently we only see the typical Romantic relationship, all politeness and distance and, very much on Strange’s part, indifference. But in both their public interactions and the brief private ones were are allowed to see, I found them rather complimentary. Arabella is practical where her husband is impractical, polite where he is rude. If it weren’t for the magic he performs and the grace of his wife, Strange probably would have been kicked back to Shropshire long ago. Arabella says as much, telling Lady Pole that she has been “‘obliged to go in and rescue him before he says something he had much better not.’” She saves him, she says, and towards the end of the volume we are given a glimpse into just how much Strange actually cares about her, and at the risk of spoiling everything, it appears that Strange will get a chance to save her (although a part of me would love it if she saved herself).

Arabella needs saving for the same reason Lady Pole does, and Stephen Black. The gentleman with the thistle-down hair, who I mentioned oh-so briefly in my review of Volume I, is a character whose best description is as the villain, although I’m not quite sure it’s so simple as that. He is a faerie, one of the race that Norrell steadfastly claims magicians need not align themselves with, which is ironic because Norrell is the one who brings the gentleman with the thistle-down hair into the story to begin with.

Hypocritical Norrell; is it any wonder that I have difficulty sympathizing with him sometimes?

Norrell performed a spell early on in the novel, something more than what Strange did during the war, and employed the use of someone he claimed that he had no need of in order to accomplish it. He tried to make it without consequences, but there they were: ones that he didn’t bear but Lady Pole did. And Stephen Black. And as the novel progresses the gentleman with the thistle-down hair is becoming more prominent, and manipulating the human world more and more, and now there’s Arabella, who didn’t do anything except marry a magician and make Lady Pole her friend. The gentleman with the thistle-down hair isn’t only attracted to her, he wants to use her to get to the magicians he hates. It’s unclear at this stage whether or not he will be able to get to Norrell. As said, the Strange that returned from Spain is a man dissatisfied with his place as Norrell’s pupil, who no longer believes that it is where he is supposed to be and who is more willing to voice his contrary opinions; a Strange who threatens Norrell’s stasis, and in fact turns Norrell’s stasis against him. The new Strange has had worlds more practical experience than his teacher, and is more ready to embrace the ideas and practices Norrell rejects, and to in fact be the kind of magician that, from what we are told, is rather reminiscent of the Raven King: the inventor, the prodigy, the Greatest Magician of an Age.

The whole volume is a set up for Volume III, building on Strange and Norrell’s relationship and then, piece by piece, disagreement by disagreement, picking it apart until we are left certain that at some point they are going to clash. In Volume I, I was sure of it. They will be allies first, then enemies, the entire thing smacking of a relationship that reminds the comic book aficionado in me of Professor X and Magneto. But now, with two volumes completed and the final one begging to be read, I’m not so sure anymore. The man with the thistle-down hair has become a common antagonist for Strange and Norrell, both because of who he is and who he has hurt, and I can easily see them joining forces. Suppositions aside, however, Clarke works with this volume beautifully. Its density is sometimes a struggle, the level of detail and depth she provides to her constructed world seeming almost too much, as something in the way of the primary action you are aching to get to. Once you get to that action, however, I found that it was worth reading every lengthy footnote. This isn’t, after all, just a fantasy novel Clarke is writing, it’s an alternate history, and the richer and more detailed this world and its characters become the more you can believe that they could have existed, that in some alternate universe they did.

The entire function of the volume as a place of transition can, I think, be summed up in one single paragraph from the novel. It encapsulates every feeling and every foreshadow, and is strengthened by the richness of its speaker’s character, sending a shiver carving its way down your spine:

“Until this moment it had never seemed to him that his magicianship set him apart from other men. But now he had glimpsed the wrong side of something. He had the eeriest feeling—as if the world were growing older around him, and the best part of existence—laughter, love and innocence—were slipping irrevocably into the past.”

How right Strange is. I can’t wait to read more.

Article originally published in September 2011

[ENDED] WIN Eureka’s INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES Starring Lon Chaney, Jr

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We’ve teamed up with Eureka! Entertainment to giveaway three copies of Inner Sanctum Mysteries: The Complete Film Series, which is available on Blu-ray on January 18th.

Death, dementia, dark arts… it’s just another day in the forbidding and fascinating world of the Inner Sanctum! Get ready for unlimited thrills and chills as all six classic of Universal Pictures’ Inner Sanctum Mysteries come to Blu-ray in the UK for the first time ever! Based on the popular radio shows of the 1940’s, horror icon Lon Chaney, Jr. (The Wolf Man), gives timeless performances in six spooky feature-length films.

Calling Dr. Death (dir. Reginald Le Borg, 1943) – A doctor is not sure if he murdered his wife and has his nurse try to find the truth by hypnotising him.

Weird Woman (dir. Reginald Le Borg, 1944) – While on a trip, a professor falls in love with an exotic native woman who turns out to be a supernatural being.

Dead Man’s Eyes (dir. Reginald Le Borg, 1944) – When an artist is blinded, an operation to restore his sight depends on another person willing to donate their eyes.

The Frozen Ghost (dir. Harold Young, 1945) – A stage mentalist and a discredited plastic surgeon are involved in mysterious goings-on in an eerie wax museum.

Strange Confession (dir. John Hoffman, 1945) – Flashbacks reveal the events leading up to a man’s revenge on the racketeer who took advantage of his wife.

Pillow of Death (dir. Wallace Fox, 1945) – A lawyer in love with his secretary is suspected of suffocating his wife, among others.

Check out the trailer below and enter the competition for your chance to win a copy.

 

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INNER SANCTUM MYSTERIES: THE COMPLETE FILM SERIES starring Long Chaney Jr, a must-own collection for every classic horror fan, is OUT NOW on Blu-ray and can be purchased here https://amzn.to/35JlXfw

SPECIAL 3-DISC BLU-RAY EDITION CONTAINS:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations of all six films. | Uncompressed LPCM monaural audio tracks | Optional English SDH subtitles | Calling Dr. Death – Audio commentary from screenwriter/film historian C. Courtney Joyner and Regina Le Borg (daughter of director Reginald Le Borg) | Weird Woman – Audio commentary from author Justin Humphreys (The Dr. Phibes Companion) and Del Howison (Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre) | Strange Confession – Audio commentary from screenwriter Peter Atkins (Hellraiser II, III, & IV) and screenwriter/film historian C. Courtney Joyner | Kim Newman on The Inner Sanctum Mysteries – New interview with journalist, film critic, and fiction writer Kim Newman | This is the Inner Sanctum: Making a Universal Mystery Series [55 mins] | The Creaking Door: Entering The Inner Sanctum [15 mins] – History of the Radio Series with author/radio historian Martin Grams Jr. | Mind Over Matter [20 mins] – Archival interview with actor Martin Kosleck (The Frozen Ghost) | Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Radio Episodes – A selection of episodes from the original radio series | PLUS: A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the series by Craig Ian Mann.

MONKEY SEA, MONKEY DO: THE SECRET HISTORY OF SEA-MONKEYS

Whatever American comic books you read in the seventies and eighties, you couldn’t help but come across adverts for all kinds of wacky stuff. Alongside offers to sell Grit magazine (what even was that?) door-to-door, trunks full of plastic army men, and X-ray glasses that would definitely allow you to see the girl-next-door’s private parts, was an invitation to grow your own friends. These delightful creatures, called Sea-Monkeys (obviously because they resembled the ape-like beings in the ad art, right?), would be dispatched to your door, along with everything you needed to help them thrive and survive.

What kid could resist that? What kid wouldn’t want tiny humanoids, albeit with weird tails and antennae, living in the corner of their bedroom? What kid wasn’t disappointed when what they actually received was tiny, tiny shrimps that really didn’t do anything?

The Sea-Monkeys story began in 1957 when, eager to cash in on the craze for ant farms that had exploded the year before, an intrepid inventor named Harold von Braunhut came up with the idea for ‘Instant Life’, an aquatic pet colony formed of brine shrimp.

Von Braunhut was born just plain Harold Braunhut but added the preposition to make him sound more German. You’d think that a Jewish American who had lived through the Second World War wouldn’t be so keen to play on his Germanic side, but von Braunhut wasn’t an ordinary Jewish American. He was a keen white supremacist and was looking to add distance from his Jewish roots – the Washington Post reported that he bought arms for a Ku Klux Klan faction and regularly attended the annual conference of the Aryan Nations.

Questionable politics aside, von Braunhut saw potential in his Instant Life product, and worked with a scientist named Anthony d’Agostino to develop it into a viable prospect. Essentially, the creatures that would later become Sea-Monkeys were artemia, brine shrimp that entered cryptobiosis – a dormant state that reduces biological functions to an absolute, often undetectable minimum – when they were starved of water. Von Braunhut had come across them when he visited a pet store; whilst still in cryptobiosis, brine shrimp are used as fish food, but von Braunhut reasoned that, if the cryptobiosis could be reversed in the home, the little scamps would make ideal pets. Look, we know it sounds mad, but he made millions off it, honest!

Von Braunhut and d’Agostino came up with a way to turn ordinary tap water into an artemia-friendly environment, and would-be shrimp wranglers would be sent two sachets – one containing the brine shrimp and the other containing a powder which would turn their water into brine. To ensure the shrimp would live long enough to hold the imagination, the boffins also tweaked their very DNA, creating a species – artemia nyos (after the New York Ocean Sciences lab in which they worked) – that is not found in nature. What’s more, these creatures breathed through their feet, were born with one eye and miraculously developed two more, and reproduced asexually, although there were both males and females of the species! Sales of Instant Life were steady if not spectacular, and in 1962 von Braunhut renamed his creatures Sea-Monkeys, because he figured their long tails looked like monkey’s tails.

In the early 1970s, von Braunhut decided to rebrand the pesky swimmers and enlisted the cartooning skills of comics legend Joe Orlando. Orlando created the smiling, pot-bellied humanoids that have become a staple of pop culture kitsch over the years, and von Braunhut marketed them through ads in all kinds of comic books – Marvel, DC, Archie, whatever! – to a saturation point of over three million pages of advertising a year. The ad copy promised ‘a bowl full of happiness’, and billions were sold to curious, excited, soon-to-be-disappointed children all over America.

Keen to further part children from their hard-earned, Grit-selling money, von Braunhut came up with a series of accessories and playsets. There were a range of treats for your little friends, including a ‘banana treat’, ‘red vitamins’ (containing ‘every known vitamin your Sea-Monkeys need for robust health!’), and ‘sea diamonds’. For those who wanted adventure, you could buy the Sea-Monkey Circus, Sea-Monkey Ocean Zoo, or Sea-Monkey Ski Trail. Von Braunhut was a keen motorcycle racer – he competed under the name The Green Hornet – and even developed a Sea-Monkey Speedway, but nothing could quite match the strangeness of the Sea-Monkey Fox Hunt. Yes, for just a few dollars, you too could experience the thrill of chasing a frightened animal to its death, only in the form of barely visible crustaceans!

All this grifting caught the attention of the New York State Attorney General, Louis Lefkowitz, who issued proceedings against von Braunhut on the grounds that the creatures were not actually monkeys, and thus marketing them as such was fraudulent. A judge decided in favour of von Braunhut, comparing Sea-Monkeys to sponge cakes (which do not contain actual sponge) and butterflies (which, in this reality at least, are not made of butter).

Such was the ubiquity of Sea-Monkeys that they inspired a video game in which you had to guide the Sea-Monkeys gradually away from danger, as well as appearances in such pop culture hungry TV shows like The Simpsons, American Dad, Roseanne, South Park, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Night Court, but by far the strangest spin-off came in the form of a live-action TV show of their own.

The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys was the brainchild of comedian Howie Mandel, who had starred in St Elsewhere and provided the voice for Gizmo in both Gremlins movies. When Mandel’s daughter became the latest pre-pubescent victim of the Sea-Monkeys craze, Mandel decided that they could be “bigger than the Ninja Turtles” and obtained the rights. In the show, Mandel played The Professor, who accidentally enlarged three Sea-Monkeys – Bill, Dave, and Aquarius – to human size, and the series followed their adventures in trying to fit into the human world. Debuting in prime time on CBS in September 1992, the show was off the air by Christmas, lasting just eleven episodes.

Sea-Monkeys were not the only thing Harold von Braunhut invented – he was also responsible for the aforementioned X-ray specs, as well as the Kitoga, a spring-loaded extendable baton for ‘self-defence’, and also promoted the act of a man who would dive from forty feet into a tub of water – but they were his most lasting creation. And, a decade after his death, they continue to thrive, although the ownership of the rights to the creatures is in dispute between von Braunhut’s widow, Yolanda Signorelli, and the toy company that licensed them. Hmm, a battle for the ownership of mutant crustaceans between a woman who starred in surreal nudey flick Venus in Furs and the ominously named Big Time Toys? Now THAT’S a movie!

[This article was originally published in STARBURST issue 455, December 2018.]

Five Films to Check Out on Horror Channel This Week – 110121

horror 110121

To save you getting lockdown blues, we’re going to be giving you our picks of what to watch on Horror Channel each week. Here are some of our favourites this week:

Tuesday January 12th, 10.50pm – The Dead 2: India (2013)

The follow-up to the Ford Brothers’ modern zombie classic shifts continent, but doesn’t lessen the intensity. It also serves as a precedent of why people should be careful entering other countries during the current pandemic, as one infected worker sparks an infestation of the undead.

Thursday January 14th, 9pm – Honeymoon (2014)

A couple’s nuptial are spoiled when a series of bizarre events. Starring Rose Leslie (who probably hasn’t lived down the “You know nothing Jon Snow” catchphrase) and Penny Dreadful’s Harry Treadaway.

Friday January 15th, 12.55am – Freaks of Nature (2015)

A group of outcasts band together when their town of humans, vampires, and zombies are pitted against each other by aliens. With a starry cast including Mackenzie Davis, Bob Odenkirk, Joan Cusack, Patton Oswalt, Vanessa Hudgens, and Denis Leary.

Saturday January 16th, 10.45pm – The Final Girls (2015)

Fun comedy horror in which the daughter of a scream queen and her friends are transported into her final film, a ‘80s slasher called Camp Bloodbath. Taissa Farmiga is as fantastic as ever.

Sunday January 17th, 6.40pm – The Body Stealers (1969)

An investigation into the disappearance mid-air of some British paratroopers uncovers an alien plot in this cult classic also known as Thin Air. The great cast includes George Sanders (Village of the Damned), the distinctive-voiced Patrick Allen, and Maurice Evans (Uncle Zaius in Planet of the Apes)

Tune into Horror Channel on Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 68, Freesat 138.

Author Andy Weir Talks PROJECT HAIL MARY, THE MARTIAN, and More!

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Known for stranding Mark Watney on Mars in THE MARTIAN, author Andy Weir is back with another isolated, pressurised space tale, PROJECT HAIL MARY! It’ll see astronaut Ryland Grace awaken with memory loss to a confusing, save-the-world situation. Andy’s books have captured the attention of readers all over the world, with his genius sci-fi ideas even being wonderfully interpreted to the big screen by none other than Ridley Scott, and we have no doubt that PROJECT HAIL MARY will one day achieve a similar result!

How and when did the idea for Project Hail Mary come about?

After The Martian and before Artemis I worked on a novel called Zhek. I ultimately abandoned it because it just wasn’t working. However, some of the elements of Zhek were very solid, so I built a story around them. I can’t give too much away without spoiling Project Hail Mary, but several plot elements clicked together really well.

How long did it take to come together, and how did this process compare overall to any book that you’ve worked on before?

I came up with the idea slowly. Even ignoring the time spent working on and ultimately rejecting Zhek, it was still slow. There were a few things I had to work out for the story to make sense.

So, how would you describe Project Hail Mary to someone that – for some unforgivable reason – isn’t familiar with your writing just yet?

It’s a story of a lone astronaut on a desperate mission to save Earth from annihilation. Problem is: he has complete amnesia and no idea what his own name is, let alone what he’s supposed to do to save humanity.

Given that it shares similar themes to The Martian, what do you like most about isolating a story to one character, whilst putting them under immense survivalist pressure?

The story becomes much simpler when there’s only one character to focus on. As long as the character is likeable and the readers like spending time with them, you’re fine. That having been said, this differs from The Martian in several ways – the main character here isn’t fighting for his life, he’s trying to save Earth. Also, a lot of the book is flashbacks so we see this character interacting with the other characters much more often than poor Mark.

 Leading on from this, and you probably get this question a lot, but we must ask, what originally attracted you to writing stories that are set in space? What is it you just love so much about working in that setting?

I guess I’ve just always been a nerd. Space is my thing. And since I’m in to it, I’ve researched it a ton. And that leads to ideas, and so on.

What was the hardest part about putting Project Hail Mary together for you, and why?

The main character of Ryland Grace himself. When I first started writing, I didn’t have a unique or interesting personality for him. But as I wrote, his personality developed and became clearer to me. Then I went back and rewrote the earlier scenes to match the personality that came forth. It worked out well but I spent a lot of time working on the book worried that the main character was boring.

We can’t let you go without asking a couple of questions about the brilliant Artemis. Looking back, how happy are you with it still, and also, what do you remember the most about putting it together?

I’m happy with it. What I remember most about it was the tremendous research and effort I put into make Artemis itself – the city on the Moon. I worked out how to make it, how it could be financially solvent, what things would be like there, etc. I had a lot of fun doing that.

There’s an Artemis film in early production, with directors Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet already behind it. A great trio to say the least. How excited are you for that, and what would you really like to see come from the film?

I’m super excited! But I try not to get my hopes up too much. You never know with Hollywood. You can never predict if a film will get greenlighted. There are usually a bunch of factors left up to chance that have nothing to do with your story. Market activity, other films in the studio’s slate for that year, availability of the big-name performers, etc.

Also, was there anything you learnt from putting Artemis together that you maybe applied to the creative process for Project Hail Mary?

I think so. I tried very hard in Artemis to make characters with depth and complexity. Also I worked hard to make sure no one was ‘perfect’. Everyone had flaws, especially the main character Jazz. But I think I went too far. A lot of people didn’t like Jazz – they found her obnoxious and self-destructive. So for Project Hail Mary I dialled it back. Ryland is a very likeably person but I believe he also has depth. I’m still learning how to make good characters.

Finally, why should STARBURST Magazine readers check out Project Hail Mary?

Because if they don’t, I don’t get money from royalties, and that would be a tragedy!

PROJECT HAIL MARY is released May 4th from Del Rey.

[ENDED] Win a Copy of Horror Hit RELIC on Blu-ray

relic comp

 

Thanks to our good friends at Signature Entertainment, we have two copies of the fantastic horror film RELIC to giveaway. Find out more about the film and enter the competition below:

A deeply unsettling psychological horror, Relic is the unforgettable debut feature from writer and director Natalie Erika James who brings a fresh and profoundly human twist to the genre.

When elderly mother Edna (Robyn Nevin), inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) rush to their family’s decaying country home, finding clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence.

After Edna returns just as mysteriously as she disappeared, Kay’s concern that her mother seems unwilling or unable to say where she’s been clashes with Sam’s unabashed enthusiasm to have her grandma back. As Edna’s behaviour turns increasingly volatile, both begin to sense that an insidious presence in the house might be taking control of her…

Following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Relic screened to wide acclaim at BFI London Film Festival 2020. Directed by Natalie Erika James, the film features unforgettable performances from Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins the Returns, The Party & Shutter Island), Robyn Nevin (The Matrix, Top of the Lake), and Bella Heathcote (The Neon Demon, Dark Shadows).

Special Features (exclusively on Blu-ray and on iTunes):

London Film Festival 2020 – Natalie Erika James Intro and Q&A Hosted by Michael Blyth

Interviews

Relic Shoot Timelapse

Behind the Scenes – “Lost” & “Stunts”

Check out the trailer:

 

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Signature Entertainment presents Relic on Digital HD January 8th and Blu-ray & DVD January 18th

Amazon Blu-ray: https://amzn.to/3b36IBn

iTunes: https://apple.co/39zjA1v

Visit our review to find out our thoughts on the film, and read our interview with its director, Natalie Erika James, to go behind the scenes.

OH MY! An Interview with GEORGE TAKEI

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STARBURST catches up with GEORGE TAKEI, an actor whose portrayal of Sulu in STAR TREK made him a legend and whose humanity earned him iconic status…

STARBURST: There was a motto on Star Trek: live long and prosper; did you think that the show would go on as long as it has?

George Takei: Ah yes, the Vulcan greeting; live long means to go on and on and on. We are not going to live long. As you know, some of our colleagues have passed on, but they have contributed to the prosperity of Star Trek. And prosper; we have six spin-off series, we call them our children, and a seventh, Picard, starts this month, and we have the 14 feature films. That’s really a phenomenon; a TV series that was low-rated for three seasons has gone on and become this sensation of 14 major budget feature films, a wall of Star Trek books. We are also action figures. So we have lived long and prospered! I see no indication of us not continuing to do so.

After The Original Series finished, the show returned in an animated form, and you were back in that – what was that like for you?

It was not as satisfying as the live-action, because then we were there on the set together, playing scenes with each other. With the animated version, when I arrived at the recording studio, Leonard might be leaving, and I would step into the booth and do just my lines. The scene might be with Leonard or with Nichelle, but it would only be me alone with my lines highlighted. Then when I’m finished and leaving, Jimmy Doohan would be coming in, so it was not a very fun way of working.

But overall there are nothing but good memories for you with Star Trek then?

I’m very proud of my association with it, there have been stressful moments, but they go with the uplifting ones. We used to shoot into the wee hours of the morning, but some of the wonderful scenes worked beautifully. And I have fond memories of the fun episodes like The Naked Time – that episode where I, at last, get unchained from that damn helm console, and I get to take my shirt off, grab my fencing foil and demonstrate my swashbuckling prowess.

Absolutely, whenever you search classic Star Trek, that iconic image always comes up.

You went on to the movies and then actually returned in Voyager as well. Would you have liked to do more as a captain in your own series?

You know that there was this movement that began after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country by the fans for a new TV series called Starship Excelsior with the brand new captain of the Excelsior, Captain Sulu. The Star Trek fans don’t just sit back and absorb it as entertainment, they take the show that they see as a stimulus, as inspiration, and they act on it. And one of their actions was to try to get Captain Sulu a regular TV series. But the powers that be at Paramount are deaf, dumb, and blind.

The readers of STARBURST were particularly taken with Star Trek VI – it’s a good thriller and it had a strong political message.

Exactly, yes. From the first scene when Praxis explodes, and the vibrations come through the galaxies and shake the Starship Excelsior – that explosion was inspired by what was happening in reality at Chernobyl. The explosion at Chernobyl signified the crumbling of the Soviet Union, and – onscreen – of the Klingon Empire. The David Warner character, the ambassador from the Klingon Empire, was essentially Gorbachev, coming to the west to build a rapprochement over the crumbling Soviet Union.

Yeah, it’s a very clever film, full of Shakespearean quotes and a lot of allegories. With politics, you’ve had a platform, and you’ve used it very wisely; you’ve done a lot for LGBT rights and you’ve spoken up for a lot of people that don’t have a voice or find it very difficult. You once joked about going after Devin Nunes’ seat in Congress, would that be something you’d ever really do?

Did you know the date that I posted that? April 1st. Some people didn’t get that, and they started signing cheques that we had to send back. That immediate reaction was so, so wonderful, though.

You’ve also very recently brought out a graphic novel, They Called Us Enemy, about your experience as a young Japanese American during World War II.

Yes, we were imprisoned by the United States government. I remember that morning. It was terrifying, I had just turned five years old; my parents got me up very early. They got me up, and they dressed us hurriedly. My brother and I were told to wait in the living room, and my father said they’d be doing some last-minute packing in the bedroom. And so we were just gazing out the front window, looking at the neighbourhood. Suddenly, we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway. They carried rifles with shiny bayonets. They stopped at the front porch, and they began pounding on the door; it was a terrifying sound that seemed to make the whole house tremble. My father came to answer the door, and literally at gunpoint, we were ordered out.

We were innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry. We had nothing to do with Pearl Harbour. My mother was born in Sacramento, California, my father in San Francisco. They met and married in Los Angeles, we were two generations of Americans. My grandparents were the immigrants, and they were innocent as well. And yet, we looked exactly like the people that we were at war with. We were at war with Germany and Italy also, but Italian Americans and German Americans looked like the rest of America. It was without question a racist act and a hysterical, irrational act. There was no charge, no trial. Due process, which is the central pillar of our justice system, simply disappeared. We were imprisoned in camps with barbed wire fences; I still remember that fence that combined us. High sentry towers with machine guns pointed us. When I made the night runs from our barrack to the latrine, searchlights followed me. That five-year-old me thought it was nice that they lit the way for me to pee. It’s the same experiences like that of my parents, but parallel, different stories. I wanted to tell that child’s story because I want to reach a youth readership: preteens, teens, young adults, but via the child’s account, I also led them into the larger story of the harrowing experience for my parents. But I wanted to reach young people via the comic strip format. When I was a teenager, I read comic books voraciously, and I remember retaining the information; you know at that age when you’re a teenager, you’re absorbing information through your pores. And I wanted to reach young people, while they’re still absorbing because they’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow. They’re going to be the movers and shakers of tomorrow. Some may run for public office, and I think it’s vitally important for them to know that history of the United States – a time when we reacted so irrationally, so hysterically, and in such a racist way, which is entirely contrary to what we stand for as Americans, and, if we have a populace that’s informed that way, we won’t let it occur again.

There are parallels to today…

Yes, but that is an even lower, grotesque aberration because we were always together with our parents, we were never separated. What they’re doing today is tearing away infants and putting them in filthy cages with human waste and overcrowding them, and to really underscore the evil, they’re randomly scattering them to the far reaches of the United States, far from the southern border. Also to make the situation worse, when the court orders the children be brought together with their parents, this administration is so incompetent that they can’t find the right child or the right parents to bring them together and those children’s lives have been permanently changed.

The novel is incredible, there are many things we didn’t realise about the time, and it tells the story so vividly. Although it’s distressing, it’s equally uplifting and the way that you introduce some of the childish wonders into it makes it more palatable. One thing that did come across was that your mother and father seemed incredible people. Do you feel that they live on in you, with their values?

My mother was a gutsy lady, and my father said ‘people just make mistakes’; it’s my responsibility to tell their story. That’s been my mission: to raise awareness because there are people today that I consider well-informed but when I tell them about my childhood imprisonment, they’re shocked. They’re aghast, they don’t know about it. We have a lot of glorious chapters in American history, but we don’t know about the instances where we failed our ideals. And I think we learn more from our failures than we do from the glorious chapters that we already know about. And that’s where I’m trying to fill the void, with this object lesson of the importance of people who cherish the ideals of our system to participating in a democracy.

We wish more people were as brave as you are.

Well, the Star Trek philosophy, infinite diversity in infinite combinations, I think is what we need to know more about and take into our bodies at a time like this. Our culture is universal. What happens here affects us in Southern California, what happens in China affects our economy, we live in a global society. And what we said on Star Trek was that the Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth, and the strength of our starship is having the diversity of it all coming together and working in concert, as a team, and boldly going where no one has gone before.


THEY CALLED US ENEMY is available now and can be purchased HERE.

[This interview was originally published in issue 469, February 2020.]

[ENDED] WIN Sci-Fi Drama LX 2048 on Blu-ray

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We’ve teamed up with Dazzler Media to giveaway three copies of the new sci-fi drama LX 2048.

Synopsis:

In the near future, the sun has become so toxic that people can no longer leave their houses in daytime, and normal life is conducted mostly inside the virtual realm. Against this dystopian backdrop, a dying man seeks to ensure the future wellbeing of his family, while coping with what it means to be human in this new reality.

From writer-director Guy Moshe (Bunraku, Holly), LX 2048 is a powerful, thought-provoking sci-fi starring James D’Arcy (Dunkirk, Agent Carter), Anna Brewster (Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Versaille), Gina McKee (Catherine the Great, Bodyguard) and Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods, The Good Fight).

To be in with a chance of winning, just watch the trailer and enter via the widget below…

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Dazzler Media presents LX 2048 on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download January 25th

Five Films to Check Out on Horror Channel This Week – 030121

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To save you getting lockdown blues, we’re going to be giving you our picks of what to watch on Horror Channel each week. Here are some of our favourites this week:

Tuesday January 5th, 4pm – 6-Headed Shark Attack (2018)

C’mon, admit it; we’re all suckers for The Asylum films. The epitome of the guilty pleasure, they are perfect for vegging out to. This classic ups the ante on its predecessors by giving the mutant shark yet another head. Forget subtlety, this is pure, brainless fun.

Thursday January 7th, 9pm – Knuckleball (2018)

Legendary actor Michael Ironside is a grumpy old grandad who pops off far too soon in this terrifying tale that has a young lad (Luca Villacis from Channel Zero) having to fend off a murderous neighbour during his weekend away.

Friday January 8th, 4pm – Mysterious Island (1961)

A story by Jules Verne and the special effects mastery of Ray Harryhausen? What’s not to love? This tale has a group of Civil War soldiers, led by Michael Craig, marooned and having to face the likes of giant crabs, enormous bees, and prehistoric chickens. Herbert Lom appears as Captain Nemo in spectacular fashion.

Saturday January 9th, 11pm – Doghouse (2009)

Great British ‘lad’ comedy horror directed by Jake West (Razor Blade Smile) and starring a host of famous faces, including Stephen Graham, Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke and a brief appearance from Emily Booth. A boys’ weekend away, meant to cheer one of them after a divorce, ends in carnage when they face a village of zombies.

Sunday January 10th, 9pm – Frankenstein (2015)

Bernard Rose, director of the original Candyman, takes a crack at Mary Shelley’s classic story, updating it and making the monster even more sympathetic. Cast includes Xavier Samuel as Adam, the creation, Danny Huston as the misguided doctor, Carrie Anne Moss as his wife and co-creator, and Tony Todd as the blind man the creature meets during his terrifying travels.

Tune into Horror Channel on Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 68, Freesat 138.

Michael Ironside | TOTAL RECALL

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When making a genre movie in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there were a clear set rules that had to be adhered to in order to make it a success: hire Arnold Schwarzenegger as the hero, cast Sharon Stone as the femme-fatale and as for the bad guy? Well, there was only one guy you needed to call and it seemed that back then, everyone had one particular actor on speed dial… Michael Ironside.

“Total Recall was one of those great gifts that was given to me,” Ironside says with a warm smile, speaking from his home. “I’d just come off V, which had garnered a lot of heat and there’s a lot of crossover between Richter and my character in V. In V, I constructed someone that couldn’t give affection and couldn’t receive affection and that character actually helped build the foundation for the character of Richter. Paul, I think wanted a much more in-depth, much more specific emotional character and we worked on that. I worked on that very hard.”

While 1990’s mega-budget sci-fi blockbuster Total Recall was arguably Ironside’s biggest mainstream exposure, it certainly wasn’t his first foray into the genre, or for that matter, the hearts of sci-fi fans around the world. It was in 1981 that the Canadian-born actor exploded onto the scene (literally) in David Cronenberg’s Scanners, followed by a string of appearances in film and TV, predominantly as the bad guy.

“It’s my experience that you don’t pick your type,” Ironside says when asked about the uniformity of his on-screen roles. “It’s an old story that if you hit an old lady with a shovel and people make money off it, then that’s what they want you to do. I’ve used this metaphor the last 23 years; the shovel may become gold plated and the lady may turn out to be Diana Rigg, Sophia Loren or whoever, or the shovel may become an Uzi or a stick of dynamite. Millions of dollars are invested in this, people take risks on you. It’s very hard to get hired if you haven’t shown what you can do. And once they’ve made money off you it’s very hard to get somebody to say, ‘Well why would I get you to do this when that guy over there does it and I make money off of him doing that. He kisses the ladies and you kill them’. So what I do is I make a lot of money playing ‘heavies’. I’ve done it over my career and actually still do quite a bit.”

The life of a well-paid film actor is as far removed as you could imagine from Ironside’s humble beginnings. Hailing from east of the Don river in Toronto, Ironside was the eldest of six siblings and lived in a house just twelve and a half feet wide that he also shared with his grandfather and various pets. “Where I grew up there was no privacy,” Ironside explains, “There was always somebody from the neighbourhood in the house so it was always very crowded. So privacy was in reading and writing and I would create my own things when I was writing.”

It would be Michael’s escapism through literature that would prove to be the stepping stone towards his later career, although it would take the intervention of someone that believed in him to kick start it. “I was writing my autobiography when I was 13 years old. And this student teacher named Judy Millen saw what I was doing and she said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m writing my life story’. She didn’t laugh and she asked if she could take a look and I let her take it home. She came back and she said, ‘Your dialogue and your characters are absolutely brilliant but your descriptive narrative is shite’. So I asked what she meant and she said, ‘Have you ever thought about writing plays?’ At that time all I knew was basically Shakespeare and the stuff they touch on at High School in a working class background and she gave me Ibson and Strindberg. Strindberg would go on for two or three pages with description, he was such a control freak. So I asked, ‘Why would I do this? I can’t do my whole life’, and she said, ‘No, take one episode’.”

“There was an episode that had happened to me when I was 13, before I started writing this, where there’d been a fight at home and I basically ran away for two days. I stayed at a Salvation Army shelter downtown. I was big enough and old enough that they let me stay and I saw some stuff there. There was an old fella who was trying to get me to kill him, he had me almost convinced that he could give me super powers if I killed him. Because he was crippled and he couldn’t get out and he didn’t want to live anymore. We tried to convince me to suffocate him. There was a guy who got beaten to death in the shower and the attendants didn’t give a shit because they didn’t want any trouble. There was 180 guys sleeping in three different dormitories. So she says, ‘Take that, it’s one set, maybe two acts, maybe three’. So I did it, she gave me some editorial choices and stuff and I handed it in after the summer and she said, ‘Wonderful’ and I went away and carried on writing. She went ahead and entered it into a Canada-wide contest for University students and I knew nothing about it. She was a bit of a champion in the sense that she wanted more money spent at a grass-roots level in education. She was from a fairly literate family, she and her sister moved into the neighbourhood because they believed if you’re gonna teach in the neighbourhood you have to live in the neighbourhood. She thought money should spent on children in education not on the finished product in Universities. So to make a point she didn’t tell anyone I was in Grade 9 or 10 at the time, she entered it and it won first prize.”

The incredible win would wind up setting Ironside on a path towards the arts, which was as far removed from the life his family knew at the time as he could possibly imagine. He just didn’t know it yet! “I had a full time job at night as a young teenager, I was painting factories at night and then going to school in the daytime. I came home one day and there were all these suits in the kitchen with their hats on so I thought it was the police. They were all talking to my Mom and I remember hiding thinking, ‘Fuck, what have I done? I haven’t done anything wrong’. And I heard my Mom say, ‘We can’t send our kids anywhere physically but we can send them there in books’, and I thought, ‘What’s she telling that to the police for?’ So I buggered off, went to work and came home later that night about 12 (I worked about 5.30-12/12.30, if I skipped lunch I could come home early). Now my father always went to bed at 11.30 as soon as the news was over. That man worked three jobs for us to make ends meet. He’d come home, dinner was at 5/5.30, sit at the table and talk until 6 and then he would go doing what he did, fixing things in the basement and things until 11, watch the news and then go to bed at 11.30. I came home at 12.30, the light was still on in the kitchen and he was still awake. I thought, ‘What the fuck’. So I go in and I said, ‘Dad I didn’t do anything’, he said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I saw the cops were here’, he said, ‘No, no they weren’t cops they were reporters. Evidently you won some contest. Who’s this Judy Millen?’ I said, ‘She’s my teacher in school, she’s been helping me with my writing,’ and he said, ‘Ah. Well she went ahead and entered this in a Canada-wide University contest and it won first prize so you get a chunk of money (either $5,500 or $7,500) and you get to have your play produced anywhere in Canada. But there’s a huge stink because you’re not in University, she’s making some political statement’. He said, ‘They’re trying to figure this out and I’ve got an idea for you’.”

In retrospect, Michael admits that it wasn’t just Miss Millen that helped make the right choices for him. “I get emotional when I tell this because I didn’t realise until I was well into my 40s what my Dad did”, Ironside says. “He said, ‘If you give up the money, they can split the money half and half between second and third place and you get to see your play produced.’ So I said, ‘Okay’ and he wrote it up and I signed it. They agreed to it, they got the money and I got my play produced. It didn’t hit me until I was in my 40s, that my Dad had never seen that kind of money in his whole life. This is a man who’s worked three jobs to make ends meet and he says, ‘Give away the money and you get the chance to see something you wrote’. The gift of parenting, when parents understand stuff.”

Winning the competition and seeing his play produced (by a small Canadian company called Factory Lab) gave Michael the boost he needed to find his feet in the creative arts. His second play, East of the River was picked up by the Toronto Workshop and while he was writing, he began taking acting roles to help enhance his understanding of the process from their perspective.

“There’s an old saying,” Ironside explains. “If a dog shows up in the same place enough times, they’re going to give it a screen test. It’s not whether you get the screen test, it’s what you follow it up with. You have to be constantly moving forward. There’s no standing still in this industry. You’re either going backwards or you’re going forwards. You’re either learning and progressing or you’re going backwards and then you’re forgotten. So it’s not getting a break, it’s what you do with the bloody break. What you follow it up with.”

As time would tell, Michael Ironside followed up his successes with a string of TV and film appearances. But while it would be Scanners that would put his face on the map (literally all over it in little pieces) it was roles in successful shows such as The A-Team, Hill Street Blues and most importantly, the alien drama V that would begin to make him a household name.

“The original story, I’m told, was that that was a lot like the Man in the High Tower,” Ironside reveals. “What if America had lost the war. And the Networks were like, ‘This is bullshit, who’s gonna watch this?’ so he went off and made all the Nazis aliens.” V would be the springboard that propelled Michael to more mainstream fair, including the likes of Top Gun, while it would be the role of Richter in Total Recall that would firmly cement him as a genre favourite. His follow up, as General Katana in the often-lamented sequel Highlander II would be no exception. In fact, no sooner had we begun chatting than Ironside spotted my replica Masamune samurai sword from the first Highlander film sitting behind me. “Hold on a second”, Ironside says with a grin before disappearing off camera. When he returns, he’s waving his screen-used sword from The Quickening. “You wanna go?” It’s a moment that would make any fan of either Highlander or Ironside grin from ear to ear. “I’m a huge fan of Japanese history and storytelling,” Michael expounds. “My father took me to see The Seven Samurai. I was very, very young. I actually got to show that to my daughter about 10 years ago – she’s now 24 – and that’s the basis of The Magnificent Seven. I remember in an interview with Kurosawa they asked, ‘do you feel abused or feel like you’ve been stolen from when people take your material?’, he said, ‘No, it’s not what you steal it’s how you steal’. It’s that whole thing of how all movies are about six or seven plots. I think it was D.W. Griffith who said ‘There are only really eight storylines out there and six of them are Westerns’.”

Today, Ironside continues to both act and write, “I’m a morning writer, I’m writing right now,” although these days he has the luxury of being able to pick and choose his roles. “I do large films where I get to affect distribution and I have a bit of say in things,” Michael explains. “And then I’ll go out and do small independent films where I’ll play the father, grandfather, damaged son or someone who has a certain amount of empathy about them. I do things that make me stretch. I got offered a job last year to do a film in Chicago and it was another psychopath, ageing paedophile motherfucker that they’re hunting down. They offered me a lot of money for it and I just told them that I’m not interested. I told my agent that the little boy in me just wants to go home after three days if there’s nothing there for me to reach for. Instead, I went and did this little independent film with no money in Upstate New York and had an absolute ball. The larger films allow me to put my daughters through college and make sure they’ve got a car and can pay for their vet bills and stuff. Then the smaller films I get to experience growth and learning. I don’t need the profile. Some work and some don’t.”

As we wrap up our chat, we turn our attention back to Total Recall and his time working with director Paul Verhoeven, not once but twice. “Of all the directors I’ve worked with, Paul is in the top five of what I would call true directors,” Ironside elates. “He’s in absolute charge of everything, he knows exactly where he wants everything and where he wants it. He’s a true craftsman. He said about a year ago, ‘We should do a third one’. Quite a few years back he said, ‘I’m going to do Speer, Hitler’s architect, I would like you to play him as an older Speer, the man who gets out of prison’. So he sent me over a book on Speer and I read all this stuff and this sociopathic character, such an amazing character, despicable human being. But he couldn’t get money for it. But he does say he wants to do a third one.”

And for that, we wait eagerly.