The Monday Miscellany | The Tunnel, Books to Die For, Quantum Conundrum

There's been such a ghastly glut of found footage horror movies of late that it can come as no surprise when a high-quality contender slips through the cracks. That's exactly what The Tunnel is: a shockingly accomplished shoestring spookshow very much in the mode of Paranormal Activity. No prizes for guessing that it was met with an overwhelming meh upon its release, either.

That said, The Tunnel deserves better, particularly considering how little it cost to put together. It's an interesting story, actually. Back before Kickstarter kicked off, the mooted movie's producers went to the public for funding. Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvery aimed to sell individual frames of the final film for AUS$1 a pop, but for one reason or another - the aforementioned attitude surely had something to do with it - they only managed to raise a quarter of their budget.

They went ahead and made the thing anyway, for about £25k. Considering this, the result is simply stunning. That isn't to say The Tunnel is without its issues, foremost amongst them an over-reliance on interviews apparently conducted after the fact of the accident - interviews which spoil who survives from the first, in fact - but the performances are uniformly strong, the scares are certainly there, and in a found footage horror movie, these aspects are of paramount importance.

The plot, meanwhile, provides a plausible rationale for the form of the film: when a news and current affairs crew take to the flooded subway under Sydney to report on the homeless living therein, they find more than they had bargained for. They find... monsters! And of course they capture them on camera.

Imagine [rec] meets The Descent. Fancy seeing that? Then The Tunnel is for you.

Oh, and hey: you can download this film for free. Legally, even! 

***

Books to Die For is an odd beast of an anthology, but for what it is, which is almost impossible to quantify, it's brilliant — and beautiful to boot. Hodder & Stoughton's lovely hardcover, out on August 30th, contains a staggering array of essays in which "the world's leading mystery writers [...] come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written."

Co-edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke, Books to Die For is essentially an insider's guide to the genre, featuring a who's-who of its foremost proponents on their favourite mystery fiction, which ranges from ye olde right through to the postmodern, covering authors including Stephen King and Douglas Adams. Joe Lansdale recommends Raymond Chandler, Max Allan Collins goes to town Mickey Spillane, Kathy Reichs writes about Thomas Harris.

Meanwhile: Michael Connelly, Jeffrey Deaver, Charlaine Harris, Minette Walters, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Jo Nesbo, Dennis Lehane, Peter Robinson, Elmore Leonard, Eoin Colfer, Michael Koryta, Tana French. And know that this is just a fraction of the non-fiction on offer in this massively ambitious anthology. Books to Die For is in excess of 700 pages long, after all, of which the table of contents takes eight. It even comes complete with an index!

Admittedly, some of the contributors are more immediately engaging than others, but none of the essays in Books to Die For run long at all. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it means the dull ones are over in no time; a curse because you get the sense some writers are only just getting into their swing when the word count comes crashing down. I'd have given a lot for a little more leg room in that regard.

All told, though, if you're in the least interested in mystery fiction, Books to Die For really is a book to die for. Now then: can we have a speculative fiction edition next?

***

When I blogged about Portal co-creator Kim Swift's Quantum Conundrum a couple of days before its release on Steam, I wasn't exactly hot on it. I'm still not, but now that actually I've played the thing - from start to finish, because it's the summer, and what else am I going to do? Go outside? - I can speak to the actual experience rather than its lackluster launch trailer.

Then again, I wasn't far off the mark, worrying about Quantum Conundrum's tepid sense of humour. Six or so hours of paltry punchlines later, if I hear Q crack another crappy joke, I'm going to snap a Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD. Don't test me, I'll do it!

Luckily, the puzzles are markedly more engaging than nonsense narrative John de Lancie is saddled with, wherein his mad scientist talks your innocent nephew through a wacky mansion. In short: Professor Fitz Quadrangle is stuck in some strange dimension, full of belly button fluff and other such stuff. It's up to the player to help him escape by powering up generators in three discrete wings, each of which introduces a new dimension.

In the first, fluffy, you can use your magical glove to make the world light and white, thus enabling you to pick up heavy things - like safes - and deposit them on weighted platforms to progress. So far, so simple — and the heavy dimension fails to make things more interesting. But when you gain the power to slow time, and finally to reverse gravity, the puzzle-solving Quantum Conundrum hinges on does pick up.

The only thing hindering your progression through the game's forty-odd test chambers then is the platforming, which is so poorly implemented as to be practically perverse. Jumps are floaty, movement is imprecise, and guys: gravity's a bitch. This is a fundamental fuck-up when the majority of Quantum Conundrum's most promising moments rely on your ability to flit around rooms on top of fast-moving objects. As to that, at least the checkpoints aren't too terrible.

Don't get me wrong: solving the puzzles in Quantum Conundrum is actually a bunch of fun. The kicker is, implementing your answers is an absolute nightmare. Add to that an inane script, a slow start, an uninspired aesthetic, and some outright derivative design decisions... folks, I'm afraid the whole package feels second-rate. Give it a miss unless you're a fan of frustration.

The Monday Miscellany | Another Earth, The Burma Chronicles, Rayman Origins

For a more formal introduction to The Monday Miscellany, feel free to click here.

Truth be told, though, but there's not really so much to tell. The Monday Miscellany is basically a space for me and you and we to talk about things that I either can't summon a thousand words' worth of stuff and nonsense to say about, or are so very far outside the purview of a blog at least ostensibly about speculative fiction that I'd have a right cheek trying to pass said off as such on anything more than an occasional basis. 

What more do you need to know?

***

Let's get things started with another Oscar oversight: Another Earth. A shoe-in for Best Picture, if you ask me, but no one did, and in the end it didn't even make the longlist. This is the third and final proof I'll offer - after my reviews of Project Nim and Take Shelter, here and here - that the Academy have taken a brain vacation.

On our Earth, Brit Marling is Rhoda Williams, an astronomy aficionado and Another Earth's lovely leading lady. Her life has been shaping up pretty nicely - she's just been accepted to M.I.T. - but after a party one night, news breaks that a new planet has appeared from the other side of the sun. It appears identical to our own, and Rhoda can't resist a stupefied skyward stare. Thing of it is, she's driving, and she's drunk. Inevitably, she smashes into a parked car with a happy family in it, killing everyone but the father.

Four years later, Rhoda is released from prison, but the overwhelming sense of guilt she feels still has a hold on her. After several suicide attempts, she resolves to face up to her train-wreck effect on the planet; she visits the surviving father in his home, ostensibly to apologise, but balks at the last second and says she's a cleaner. To her surprise, John Burroughs takes her on, and in their time together - with this terrible secret between them all the while - Rhoda helps him get over his grief.

Meanwhile, the other earth has inched closer and closer to home, and United Space Ventures is giving away a single ticket to the first flight there.

Another Earth is one of the best science fiction films I've seen since Moon, but beyond the synopsis, it's not really about the science. The implications of a parallel world play a part in Rhoda's motivation, particularly in the hypnotic last act, but largely, Another Earth is about a pair of broken people who find comfort in one another's company. It gets uncomfortable on occasion - use you imagination - but however perverse the idea appears, there's a curious beauty to the scenes they spend together, brought to life by a spare script, two terrific actors and a first-time feature director with an eye on the sky.

Kudos too for the stunning soundtrack by Fall On Your Sword, which I immediately added to my playlist of awesome instrumental music, alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the last couple of albums The Chemical Brothers put out. Clearly Cahill was aware of its excellence as well, because he integrates Another Earth's opening credits with the powerful title track, 'The First Time I Saw Jupiter.' Those three minutes alone are award-worthy, and Another Earth only gets better.

Not so Guy DeLisle, the graphic memoirist who gave us Pyongyang and Shenzen, a duo of terrific travelogues chronicling the author's working holidays in China and North Korea. The Burma Chronicles is longer than either of its predecessors, but I'm afraid quantity does not equate to quality in this case.

And that's the first problem: The Burma Chronicles feels thin. Slight despite its size. Distracted, perhaps. I wouldn't go so far as to say ill-informed, but the circumstances of DeLisle's time in Burma - or Myanmar - are such that he has little of value to impart, beyond some anecdotal stories about parenthood and the same sort of inoffensive social commentary he's put better before.

That isn't to say that The Burma Chronicles is a waste of space. On the contrary, it's a rare look inside another little-seen society, complete with some wonderful moments of wit and insight, but because DeLisle is traveling with his family, the reader isn't often afforded the opportunity to see beyond the surface of this place, and these people.

And that other pillar of Pyongyan and Shenzhen's success - the occasional glimpses into the working life of an international animator - is almost entirely absent. Given that DeLisle's trip to Burma came about because of his wife's work with Médecins Sans Frontières - basically Doctors Without Borders - I suppose that's not terribly surprising, but DeLisle is excluded from this world as well. He's surrounded by stories, as ever, little and large, but he can't quite draw them out as deftly and elegantly as he has in the past.

Still, DeLisle is a solid author when the right circumstances present themselves, and the beguiling simplicity of his Herge-esque art is in full effect in The Burma Chronicles. He sees the key frames of every encounter, and renders them excellently... if, one senses, a little lazily on occasion. A good non-fiction graphic novel, then, but Guy DeLisle is capable of great.

Speaking of great... after several weeks of sessions short and long, my fun-sized companion and I finally beat the triumphant return of Rayman, aka Rayman Origins. It took us quite the while - it didn't half get tricky towards the end there - but I wouldn't take a second of the experience back. Not even the several hours I spent soloing the unlockable Land of the Livid Dead levels; my platforming skills haven't been stretched so thin since Super Meat Boy, but all the same, I loved this game, to the point that I have a hard time conceiving of a single soul who wouldn't.

And don't think I'm some rabid Rayman fan. If anything, I'm the exact opposite; before now, one of my guiltiest gaming secrets was that I'd never played a Rayman game. Not even a Raving Rabbids. Well I'll tell you this for free: I'll be playing the next one now.

The first thing that strikes you about Rayman Origins is its dreamy appearance. Particularly considering that it began life as a downloadable Wii-Ware affair, it's a gorgeous game, lavishly lit, perfectly rendered and smoothly animated. The seemingly simplistic appeal of side-scrollers like this and Mario and all the other console mascots is such that they don't need to be beautiful. The fact that Rayman Origins is so artful and aesthetically fetching is just the icing on the cake.

But cake has rarely tasted so great, and I don't mind saying I've tasted some great cakes in my time. The actual platforming mechanics are easy to pick up yet demanding to master, and you do a lot more than run and jump in Rayman Origins. You also swim, wall-run, float, slide and shoot; indeed, eight of the ten worlds you speed through unlocks a new ability, which the subsequent levels teach you to use. All of which means that things are rarely as straightforward as they appear. For a minute it might look like all you need to do is run to the right, but then you have to hop onto a handy mosquito and the bullet hell begins. For serious.

As it happens, Rayman Origins is actually an incredibly difficult game, and surprisingly substantial. The first couple of worlds are easy-going enough, but just when you think it's all over, the developers pull a Zelda, and it's not, not by a long shot. From here on out, however, the pure fun of the experience so far becomes punctuated by moments of utter frustration. It's not that Rayman Origins is unfair, or even cheap... it's simply a much more hard-core platformer than its appearance and sense of humour suggests, along the lines of Splosion Man or Team Meat's aforementioned masterpiece.

Credit to it, then, that the drop-in, drop-out couch co-op is as well implemented as it is. I mean, can you imagine the hell of Super Meat Boy with two to four players on the same screen? Rayman Origins could have been that in a heartbeat, but instead it takes a leaf from Nintendo's book, allowing players who've fallen behind or lost a life to bubble up, a la New Super Mario Brothers. Saying that, some of the later levels simply do not allow for two players to progress, and that's a real problem.

Beyond that, though, I couldn't bring myself to say a single mean thing about Rayman Origins. It's clever, it's pretty, and pretty funny to boot. I had an absolute blast shooting through it. But more importantly, so did the casual gamer who played every last minute of it with me.

The Monday Miscellany | Alcatraz, Mass Effect: Invasion, War Horse

For a more formal introduction to The Monday Miscellany, feel free to click here.

Truth be told, there's not really so much to tell. The Monday Miscellany is basically a space for you and me and we to talk about things that I either can't summon a thousand words' worth of stuff and nonsense to say about, or are so very far outside the purview of a blog at least ostensibly about speculative fiction that I'd have a right cheek trying to pass said off as such on anything more than an occasional basis. 

What more do you need to know?

Let's get this show on the road!

***

With Lost fast receding in my mind's eye, and Fringe essentially on death's door - more's the pity - it feels a lot like the heyday of J. J. Abrams-produced projects on television is over. Or almost is. I mean, who even remembers Undercovers? How about Person of Interest?

Actually, that's terribly disingenuous of me: the only reason I don't remember Person of Interest is because I haven't the time to see a single episode yet... how has it been?

I'm certainly keen to sit down with a fat batch of Person of Interest episodes whenever the opportunity to do so next presents itself, but for some reason, Abrams' other new series this season grabbed me immediately.

What does that say about me, I wonder?

In any event, four episodes in, I've found Alcatraz to be a fun but deeply uneven experience. The premise is only so-so, the impressive cast has been incredibly disappointing to date, and there's no question that the uneasy balance it attempts to strike between its serial and its procedural elements is working against the series on every level; in the attempt to serve both masters, and both audiences, Alcatraz could very well end up disappointing everybody. It will if it keeps on like this.

But for now, I'm staying optimistic. Abrams' brainbabies often take a little while to find their feet - Fringe was no different, and these days it's one of the shows I most look forward to watching - so though Alcatraz could certainly have started out stronger, the thing to remember here is potential. And Alcatraz has potential written all over it.

I have my reservations, then - the escapee-of-the-week formula needs attention stat! - but I'm pleased to hear that enough viewers are tuning in week in and week out to keep Alcatraz on the air for the time being. Fingers firmly crossed the showrunners can work out the weak links in their cast and writing staff before folks on our side of the divide lose interest.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to get myself good and excited for Mass Effect 3 - because we're only weeks out from it now, and I feel nothing so much as nervous - I read all four issues of Mass Effect: Invasion, the latest miniseries out of Dark Horse.

Now I'm not entirely averse to them, but I don't make a habit of buying into tie-ins. What sold me on this series, as opposed to all the others I ignore, was, as ever, the talent involved in its gestation and creation. For those of you who don't know, Mac Walters is the lead writer of the games proper, and with his name right there on the front cover of all four issues, well... I couldn't not give Mass Effect: Invasion a shot.

Alas: lies. Fibs. Willful subliminal salesmanship.

Mass Effect: Invasion is not, as it transpires, written by Mac Walters at all. Some other guy scripted it based on an idea of his - about an all-out attack on the space station Aria T'Loak runs out by the mysterious Omega 4 Relay, masterminded by none other than The Illusive Man - and this other guy (Knights of the Old Republic writer John Jackson Miller) just doesn't do the universe justice. His prose is awkward and verbose, and there's some truly dreadful dialogue.

Tell you what, though: Mass Effect: Invasion looks pretty pretty, if quite conventional, thanks to Omar Francia -- another Star Wars import. So there's that. Sadly decent art can't save a poor story, so even if you're in the same position as I found myself - looking to get psyched about Mass Effect 3 - I'd advise you to steer clear of this silliness, lest you come out as bereft of enthusiasm for the actual game as I.

Last but not least for this inaugural edition of the Monday Miscellany, I thought - what with Oscar fever gripping the globe... or not - that now would be the time to catch up on a couple of Best Picture candidates. So last week I sat down with Steven Spielberg's latest family-friendly affair.

War Horse is based on the early 80s classic of the same name, of course, about the life and times of Joey, a thoroughbred through and through. I've never read the Michael Morpugo, however, so I can't speak to the quality of this movie as an adaptation, but as a film in its own right, it's beautiful but unbelievably bloated, and unfortunately, in terms of pacing and moreover passion, it's as flat as the day's last pancake.

Perhaps I'd have looked more kindly on War Horse were it not for John Williams' obvious and utterly uninspired score - which I would add lifts liberally from Star Trek, of all things - and the casting of some of the younger actors, in particular Celine Buckens as Emilie, with her dreadful parody of a French accent et al. Perhaps... but probably not. 

It's a shame, because the talent's certainly there, on camera and off. War Horse could have been Black Beauty for a new generation, but I'm afraid it's a far cry, and why the Academy have nominated it for Best Picture over the likes of Drive and the finest of all the Harry Potter films would be a mystery if we didn't already know the Academy was and will always be an assortment of snobs.

In all fairness I wouldn't take back the nearly three hours it took to see War Horse through, but I wouldn't want to suffer through them again either. It's not a terrible film, this... I'd even say it's worth a watch if you want to run your heart through the ringer a bit - to keep it on its toes, you know - but when that's the nicest thing you can think to say about one of the nine Best Picture nominees, something fishy is afoot.

So Alcatraz: yay. Mass Effect Invasion: nay. And as to War Horse? Well, you may. But don't expect anything special.

The Monday Miscellany | An Introduction

I post a whole lot of reviews here on The Speculative Scotsman. Not as many as some sites, perhaps, and as one man I'd have a hell of a time trying to compete with the blog conglomerates - the io9s and the Fantasy Factions and so on and so forth - but if you average it out, I write two or three reviews each week, and that isn't including the articles of mine which appear elsewhere.

You'd think that'd be plenty. You'd think I'd have a hard enough time getting all of the above together and sitting pretty enough that I'm comfortable showing them, and sharing them, and some weeks I do - at the best of times I'm sort of a slow writer - but equally, don't for a minute think that I blog about absolutely everything I read, or see, or play, or whatever: I most certainly do not.

That's been a source of some small frustration to me, not only of late, but all through the years I've been doing this thing. As discussed a little while ago, I have real trouble turning off the critical instinct. For better or for worse - more often for worse, in my experience - I find myself standing in judgement of almost everything I consume. In the privacy of my own home, say, I've slated the nightly news.

But breathe easy: I probably won't be writing about the Beeb in the Monday Miscellany. Never say never, but you know... it's not likely.

Anyway, as it stands, I just don't have a suitable space on the site to offer up my thoughts on things that I either can't summon a thousand words' worth of stuff and nonsense to say about, or are so very far outside the purview of a blog at least ostensibly about speculative fiction that I'd have a right cheek trying to pass said off as such on anything more than an occasional basis.

Well. With the advent of the Monday Miscellany, that sorry state of affairs ends today. Right here, and right now.

As with most of the most interesting things in life, the Monday Miscellany is founded on a fib, because it won't be a weekly thing. There won't necessarily be a Monday Miscellany every Monday, or even on most of the Mondays, of which - fun fact! - there are approximately 52 each year. But from this moment on, some Mondays will be more equal than other Mondays, and on those Mondays, I'll be able to burble about the stuff I wouldn't otherwise cover at all.

The Monday Miscellany, then, whenever there is one, will consist of several short reviews, nominally stitched together whenever possibly, but that's not the point, and I won't be losing any sleep over shoddy segues. The miscellaneous criticism therein won't be comprehensive, and it won't attempt to be; if I have enough to say about any one thing, I'll say it in a traditional review instead. But if I don't, or I don't think the thing I'm writing about is apt to appeal to terribly many of you, then I'll have this special space in which to talk about it.

That said, I solemnly swear to at least try to keep it (reasonably) relevant.

I expect the shorter format might lead to some interesting developments. To begin with, with less space - I intend for reviews featured in the Monday Miscellany to top out around 300 words - there'll be substantially less filler, which yes, I know I've been guilty of before, and as like as not it's an offense I'll be guilty of again, if a little less often from here on out. So there's that.

There's also the thought that, with this new space to fill, I'll be able to blog about some less standard fare. I don't mean malts either. I mean short stories and short story collections. I mean more small press novels... even the odd self-published affair, if it's worth it. I mean one-shot comics and albums I think you might be interested in reading about. I mean Flash games and downloadable content. I mean episodes or arcs of certain television shows; maybe short films and indie movies too.

Really, the remit includes pretty much everything I can think of at the moment, and whatever else occurs to me from this point on.

It's actually quite exciting, to finally start in on this thing. The idea's been rattling around in my head for months - alongside a few others you'll be hearing about shortly - and now that I'm ready to let it loose, I feel... hell, I feel relieved.

Obviously, I have high hopes for the Monday Miscellany. I'm not going to ask you to join me in song over its inception just yet, but I believe a good few of you will like it too. Fingers crossed, as ever!

Before I go, the better to let this new feature speak for itself, do stay tuned to TSS today, because the first proper installment of the Monday Miscellany will be along shortly. Among the stuff discussed: an Oscar candidate that left me wondering what in the world the Academy are up to... the new JJ Abrams show, which I've quite enjoyed, despite hiccups here, there and everywhere... and last, and indeed least, a comic book released to set the scene for Mass Effect 3, which if anything dampened my enthusiasm for a game I was expecting to be one of the best released in 2012.

All that, and more - actually, about that... - at two o'clock today, on the damn dot.

Come along for the ride, won't you?