Enjoy The Silence

Doctor Who's new monster, The Silence, looked oddly familiar to me when they made their debut appearance in The Impossible Astronaut on Easter weekend. It got me to thinking that really, if the Silence were the answer to a math problem, it'd probably look something like this.

One part Cantina Band members


...times 2 parts The Gentlemen from Buffy...

...plus 1.5 Voldemort...


...equals The Silence.


Regardless, they are kickass.

Now what was I talking about again? (geeky Doctor Who reference.)

Year of 25 Books: #12 - The Day of the Triffids

I picked up this book entirely because of Brendan - a guy whose blog I read and book reviews I enjoy on GoodReads. He reads at about 100 times the rate I do. I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure he's already read at least 50 books in the time its taken me to get to twelve. But anyway, he read and reviewed John Wyndham's sci-fi classic The Day of the Triffids and I'll be damned but I didn't even know it was a book. I figured it was just a bad 60's monster movie that probably ran on late night TV a hundred times a year when I was a kid - back in the days before late night TV was sold to the highest bidder.

The Day of the Triffids is, as Brendan said, a good post-apocalyptic thriller. The book opens with the protagonist, Bill Masen, in the hospital with his eyes bandaged. He tells the story of how triffids - 8 foot mobile plants that display semi-sentience and also carry a dangerously poisonous sting - came to be. While the origin of triffids is deliberately vague, the theory that Masen (who happens to be a biologist who specializes in triffid behavior) puts forth is that they were genetically engineered by the Soviets, with their seeds inadvertently released into the world. Eventually through the pruning of the triffids' stings and the creation of triffid nurseries, mankind and triffids learn to occupy the same space, but it always seems an uneasy peace. In fact, the reason for Masen's hospitalization is a triffid sting to the eyes.

He also explains how the night before, a brilliant green meteor shower lit up the night sky, which has now led to the blinding of anyone who witnessed it. Fortunately for Masen, he is left unaffected due to the fact that his eyes were bandaged. The hospital is eerily quiet, as are the London streets surrounding the hospital. He eventually removes his bandages himself and heads out. While the vast majority of the population has been blinded by the meteor shower, there remain a handful of sighted people left to pick up the pieces of civilization.

Brendan points out several commonalities between this novel and the zombie/infected movie 28 Days Later (which I am due to rewatch at some point - my favorite part being the scrawl on the side of the church wall THE END IS INCREDIBLY FUCKING NIGH.) Nowhere is this more evident than in his initial venture into the all-but deserted London streets, save the blinded people trying to make their way around. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the similarities between the two were intentional.

Those expecting a traditional sci-fi yarn with the evil plant-monsters deliberately bent on world domination will be sorely disappointed. Triffids, rather than intentionally bringing about the end of human civilization, appear to just be taking advantage of the tragic blindness to befall the human population of the planet. Without the human caretakers to cut out the stings and tether the mobile triffids in place, they simply fill in the gaps that are naturally left for them. While they are malevolent, they are, as I said, not deliberately so. Because of this, they seemed a little bit neutered to me and not as effective as sci-fi monsters as they otherwise might have been.

Instead, what we get is what amounts to a character study in how people would respond to an apocalyptic event and how civilization would persist. Much of the human interaction proves that even in the face of a world-changing event with deadly moving plants on the loose, our worst enemy is still us. I found this an interesting take in what would otherwise have been a by-the-numbers monster novel, but I also found myself longing for a little bit of nasty monster vs. human action. I didn't feel like the book ever truly gave me that - rather, as I said, it just showed the triffids naturally taking advantage of our disadvantage, turning violent only when they had to.

I realized while I was reading this book that the 1981 BBC miniseries of The Day of the Triffids is streamable on Netflix. From everything I've read, it's a faithful adaptation of the book. I'll be streaming this very soon and may even report back on how it compares to the book. From everything I've read, the 1963 film adaptation that I was familiar with is apparently a bastardization of the book and one best avoided.

As an aside, this was the first book that I purchased as a Kindle edition from Amazon. I don't have a Kindle, but read this book about 50% on the iPad and 50% on my Droid phone, both of which have free Kindle apps. I enjoyed the Kindle eBook reading experience. However, publishers and Amazon need to get their shit together and not charge MORE for the Kindle version than the print version. The Day of the Triffids was something like 4 bucks, but I noticed that MANY Kindle versions are at least 2-3 dollars more expensive than their print counterparts. Amazing.

A no-leafed Clover and the main event

There are times that I am just amazed by the amount of information that we have at our fingertips. Never before has there been such a wealth of information just there, ripe for the picking at any moment. The flip side to this is that there exists the possibility of slipping into the vortex of the internet with no warning. A quick "oh, I'm just going to check this one web site fast" can frequently result in me randomly Wikipedia-surfing or stream-of-consciousness surfing from one site to another until I wonder what happened to my morning or why it's suddenly 2AM.

I don't know how it happened, but the other morning, I was reading about Cloverfield (a movie I am overdue to rewatch, but sadly, one that will not make for good viewing on my iPod) on Wikipedia. I got to wondering, as I am apt to do, if the monster had its own Wikipedia entry. By George, it (he?) does. I was amazed and intrigued and enthralled. Of course, I read every last bit of it. The actual article is about the creation, concept and design of the creature and I would have preferred it to have been written as if Clover actually existed - kind of in the vein of the Anchorpoint Essays, which are highly detailed scientific analyses of the Xenomorph from the Alien movies (referred to as Internecivus raptus on the site - I love them for giving it binomial nomenclature!!) But then I found that article here.

I love living in a world where a movie monster gets its own online encyclopedia article. Seriously, when you think about the World Book encyclopedia or whatever, what are the chances that Clover would get his own entry? Slim to none. But there it was.

As Heidi was telling me from a book she read (The Long Tail, I think) - yes, Wikipedia is fallible, but what source of information is not? It also self-corrects very quickly and people doing the writing (for the most part) feel passionately about their subject material, so they are going to strive to make it as accurate as they can. And passionate people are the best type, even when you don't necessarily share their passion.

And it's the gift that keeps on giving. Tonight I was listening to the interminable 11 minute extended remix of Streisand's "The Main Event/Fight" and it made me wonder what its origins were as it was clearly not an amateur-made mix. As it turns out, it was actually on the soundtrack to The Main Event and although the movie was a dog, the song is quite a good slice of late 70s disco! But perhaps my favorite version was the WTF! moment on one of her latter-day tours during which she actually performed the song.



The juxtaposition of the cheesy disco and Barbra's huge ball gown just crack me up.

And yes, I just did a blog post that managed to mention both a 350-foot tall movie monster and a Streisand disco song.

As Jeff and I would say, "Calzone for Barb." (#3)

A monster by any other name

As was noted in a previous post, I was nearing the end of Relic and was, consequently very eager to see the movie. Relic the book is a taut, well written, well paced sci-fi/horror thriller that leaves you wondering until the very last page about everything. After viewing Relic the movie (which arrived from Netflix on Friday), I wish I could say the same about the movie.

I was already more than ready for my expectations to be dashed, but I did not expect them to be dashed as they were. Multiple characters that were essential to the story were written out completely or merged into one amalgam of a character. Conflicts that moved the story forward in the novel were excised to make room for other, less important, plot lines. And that doesn't even begin to address the great issue I took with their depiction of Mbwun, aka the Museum Beast, He Who Walks on All Fours.

Mbwun was the monster that was lurking in the subbasement of the museum - but in the movie, probably because they couldn't figure out how to pronounce the name Mbwun, they felt the need to change the name of the monster to the Kothoga, which, in the novel, was the name of the ancient Brazilian tribe that alternately worshiped and feared Mbwun. The book makes it very clear that Mbwun has a reptilian component, but also (for reasons that become very clear later in the story) a large simian component as well.

Apparently, the makers of the movie did NOT read the book, or at least, chose to disregard that portion of the book, because I felt that the creature was entirely too reptilian and not nearly simian enough for me. Here's a couple pictures of the Mbwun Kothoga (sorry) from the movie, one a close up of the face, another, a model based on what the monster looked like in the movie:

The only thing that I would call "simian" about this monster is the presence of hair. Apart from that, it looks kind of like a cross between the Predator and a lizard, along with a bit of Alien (Lord knows that the thing was slobbery enough to be related to the Alien.)

I had a much different view of the monster in my mind, although I will admit that they got the back half of Mbwun right in my mind. It's just that I expected something a little bit more like the monster in that Creepshow episode "The Crate" - something like this.

(Holy God, did that thing scare the crap out of me as a kid or what? Although I think the thought of being married to Adrienne Barbeau's character in that segment was only slightly less frightening.)

That would have captured the simian aspect of it MUCH better than the makers of Relic the movie did.

Finally, I did find a fan's conception of Mbwun while I was reading the book, which I think might have colored my mental image a bit. Probably a bit more simian than reptilian, but hey, you can't win 'em all!

So anyway, I will try to purge the movie version of Mbwun from my mind once I decide to pick up the sequel to Relic called Reliquary.

One thing I will say for the movie though - the exterior shots of the museum (Field Museum in Chicago) and the city skylines just made me want to go to Chicago again - and soon!

(P.S. Sorry if I caused nightmares amongst the more sensitive of my readers!!)