Quick review 2: The Mist (movie)

I read The Mist once in 1990, and I have always thought it was a brilliant story, and would have loved to see it made into a good film. It's a great story, both as a scary science fiction / horror and as a thoughtful piece about human behaviour in extreme circumstances. I was quite excited to read that the story was being filmed, and even more so when the reviews came back very positive, although there was talk of a "shocking ending" which was obviously different to the novella's ambiguous one.

So, tonight (in celebration of the end of the semester) I brought the DVD home for some serious veging. I was impressed - it's a really faithful, and really good adaption of the novel. Every aspect of it - the claustrophobic nature of the situation, the disintegration of civilization in the face of a mysterious, apocalyptic event - was done perfectly. And then we get to the ending.

There are a couple of things wrong with the ending. It has been praised for being not a typical Hollywood ending, which is kinda stupid considering that Stephen King rarely writes Hollywood endings. While the novella's ending is ambiguous, the film's new ending is very bleak, which I am OK with, after all the movie is basically about the end of the world. I would have vomited blood it it was the kind of schmaltz that Spielberg wrecked War of the Worlds with. What annoyed me about that aspect of it is that it's a cheap cliche in horror movies. Oh, what a relief, the hero has made it to the end of the movie. Rooaar! The monster's little brother is hiding in the back seat and leaps at him. Roll credits. IT'S A CLICHE.

Why I hate the ending Part Deux (contains a big spoiler for the movie here). After the bleak ending, the mist is clearing, and the good old US army are restoring order and the American way of life. OMG, it was all for nought. They should have stayed in the supermarket all along, it wasn't really the end of the world. Bet you feel a bit silly now! There are two aspects of this I hate: that the whole premise of the movie is diminished is EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTING. The second, huge, gag inducing one is that it STINKS, like a bloated maggotty dead water buffalo in a manure pit on a hot day, of being some post-September 11 American military propaganda exercise. Don't you worry about the end of the world, my fellow Americans. The military will save you. What seems like a tactless piece of propaganda diminishes the whole film. My advice is to press the stop button on the DVD just after they see the really big monster towards the end of the film. Then you will have seen the best of it which is pretty close to Stephen King's original story.

Quick review 1: Pushing Ice, by Alistair Reynolds

Oh that I could be like my erstwhile Nanowrimo writing buddy Filthy and vent my spleen in the most creatively offensive manner on the intarweb. Alas for me, and fortunately for you Gentle Reader, I can't quite carry that off, so here is the first of my somewhat cranky but nonetheless fairly polite reviews.

First, Pushing Ice, which is a book of the Science Fiction kind. Although it's a somewhat enjoyable read if you're into this genre, overall it is a sloppy, lazy piece of work. It feels like it was cobbled together - there's about 80% of a decent story in there, but it is marred by a whole lot of stupidly unbelievable character development (if that's the correct term) and gaping plot holes, especially relating to the motivations and actions of some of the alien races encountered in the story.

Although I enjoyed The Prefect, on the whole this is putting me off Alistair Reynolds.

Welcome to the House of Snot

We are all coughing and spluttering with some mid winter cooties and lurgi and stuff at the moment. Freya was a bit sick on Thursday, we thought it was pneumonic plague or perhaps dutch elm disease, so I took the day off to look after her. I needed to go to school to get some stuff (such as the answer sheet to the exam I will get around to marking shortly...) and Freya charmed everyone by being really quiet and hiding behind my legs. Once she had got the idea of talking to people she was better, when one of the other teachers popped in to talk to me she said "I'm Freya!".

Today we all have come down with the same sort of lurgi, and have taken it fairly easy, although I traipsed across half of Melbourne or perhaps Australia to pick up a funky wee bedside table for Freya's room that we got off ebay.

Glad that it's the shortest day this weekend... these dark mornings are a bit tedious.

Funny chick...

The other night I was walking down the hall and I pulled Freya's door closed, thinking she was asleep. "Hey!" she yelled, as the room went dark, "you just wrecked my room!"

Wisdom of Freya...

Conversations with Freya are a bit challenging at the moment... they tend to go along the lines of "you are the poo poo poohead, wee wee poo poo wee wee." Sometimes we get a haiku:

"Wee wee poo poo poo,
Poo poo wee wee poo poo poo,
Poo poo poo wee wee."

The other popular lines are "you're not my friend anymore" and "you're not coming to my party", which are also fairly charming!

Today she had a birthday party for one of the creche kids & went in full fairy regalia. A good time was had by all, but in the afternoon she was pretty wrecked and manic. We had a good conversation in the bath: "My butt is where poo comes out of." "What are your ears for?" I asked. "For getting earwigs out of them!" What is your mouth for? "Chewing!". What is your nose for? "Sniffing!" What are your eyes for? "Blinking!". Shortly after that we went to bed and she recited almost a whole storybook word-for-word, clever chick.

Novel approach to discipline...

Freya in her "naughty basket"...





Actually it's nothing bad at all... Freya wanted to hide in here so she could say "Boo!" to Reb.