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Preparing for the Film Release

BlindessJosé Saragamo’s Blindness was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the inhabitants of an unnamed city go blind one by one, the very fabric of society begins to decay until it is transformed into an animalistic morass of survival. That is the premise of Saramago’s intensely powerful and challenging novel. The core of the story revolves around seven people, among the first to go blind, along with a doctor’s wife who for some reason never loses her sight, but keeps this fact hidden from all save her husband.

Saramago explores how the removal of sight causes the destruction of the social structure. Even before the entire community goes blind, the government, fearing (rightly) an epidemic, quarantine all the blind under inhumane conditions. Yet as the worst of human society emerges, so too does compassion and cooperation, as we follow the seven main characters and watch as they form their own family to insure their survival.

Blindness is not a beach-reading novel that you can flip through in a day. It require concentration and reflection. Saramago pulls the reader into some pretty horrific situations as some of the downtrodden take advantage of others. With the character of the doctor’s wife, the sole sighted person in a city filled with the blind, Saramago creates a character both helpless and with great responsibility to those around her. It’s an insightful allegory to our world today.

I decided to read Blindness after finding out that it has been adapted for the screen by writer/director/actor extraordinnaire, and my pal, Don McKellar. It’s sure to be a harrowing experience.

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I think I’m glad Joss Left the Wonder Woman Movie?

Joss WhedonThe A.V. Club has a great interview with Joss Whedon, creator of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the television series turned movie, Firefly/Serenity. I’ve been trying to get Joss to come to the Massachusetts Library Association’a annual conference for the last couple of years, but other than a couple very curt e-mail message from his assistant’s assistant, haven’t had any luck yet. Don’t you think Joss would rock at a library conference? He has created the hippest librarian ever in Buffy’s Watcher, Giles. (Okay some might argue – myself included – that Oracle/Barbara Gordon/formerly Batgirl is the hippest librarian ever.)

Recently Joss has been doing some comic book work, including a new “season” of Buffy in comic form, and for Marvel, Astonishing X-Men. Over the past year or so, Joss has also been working on the movie version of Wonder Woman, something that had me brimming with potential excitement (with Joss on board, the movie’s gotta get made!). Of course, anyone who knows anything about movie development knows it can be hell, and even if you’re Joss Whedon, there are times when you’ve just got to throw in the towel. Apparently the Wonder Woman people just didn’t buy Joss’ concept for the film and after a lengthy period of frustration, Joss decided to give it up and leave the project.

Surprisingly, upon reading this interview with Joss, I think I might be happy that he’s leaving the Wonder Woman film. Here’s an excerpt from the interview where he discusses his concept:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing that sort of exemplifies my feelings. The idea was always that she’s awesome, she’s fabulous, she’s strong, she’s beautiful, she’s well-intentioned, she thinks she’s a great big hero, and it’s Steve Trevor’s job to go, “You don’t understand human weakness, therefore you are not a hero, and you never will be until you’re as helpless as we are. Fight through that, and then I’ll be impressed. Until then, I’m just going to give you shit in a romantic-comedy kind of way.”

Wonder WomanNow, I try to reserve judgment on a film or any sort of entertainment until I actually see the finished product, and perhaps if Joss had ever made the Wonder Woman film I would have loved it (a good chance of that, actually, since I do enjoy lots of his work). That said, and as an avid reader of the Wonder Woman comic, that concept sounds like a really bad idea to me. Still, I guess we’ll never know, and I suppose it would have been nice for Joss to prove me wrong and make something really cool for the WW movie.

Anyway, fans of Joss should definitely check out the interview.

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Engrossing Fantasy of the Highest Caliber

Shriek: an afterwordWhenever I am going to meet an author I try to read some of their work beforehand. At ALA this year I attended a dinner with Jeff VanderMeer, and on the plane to DC I started reading his latest fantasy novel Shriek: An Afterword. I only made it through the first 100 pages of so before meeting him, but I could tell there was quite a bit of talent in the man.

Shriek: An Afterword is of that fantasy genre that I don’t often read: alternative histories that may or may not be earth. It is also a biography of sorts of the Shriek siblings, Duncan written by his older sisterS Janice. Likewise it is a “biography” of their strange city, Ambergris. In Shriek, Janice is looking back on her life and writing an afterword for one of her historian/writer brother’s books. The Shriek’s lives were marked by the sudden death of their father after receiving the announcement that he had won a prestigious literary award, when they were children. Is this event the one that started Duncan down the path of an obsessive historian with radical theories perhaps too outlandish for others to fathom? And is this why Janice longs for recognition even while self-destructively indulging in every pleasure imaginable? The Shrieks eventually become fixtures in Ambergris’ culture, both reaching populist heights and tragic lows.

The river-city of Ambergris itself is perhaps the most potent character in the novel. Think of a grand, decaying New Orleans, complete with an underground city of quasi mushroom dwellers known as Gray Caps and you might get a sense of what Ambergris holds. Duncan’s obsession focuses on the Gray Caps and his first work, Cinsorium: Dispelling the Myths of the Gray Caps becomes a best-seller. During his research, Duncan uncovered hints of dark secrets connecting the Gray Caps to an horrific event that nearly destroyed the city years back. He also picked up a bizarre fungal condition that remained with him for the rest of his life. Janice unspools the pair’s story with tantalizing hints of their fate, augmented by notes from her brother, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradicting what she writes. It is a fascinating and compelling addition to the city’s lore.

VanderMeer has created a masterfully detailed, complex, fantastical novel, so utterly and darkly creative. The voices of Janice and Duncan are unique and true, revealing their all-too human flaws even while endearing them to the reader. Shriek: an afterword calls to mind Mary Gentle’s glorious White Crow novels, Rats & Gargoyles and Architecture of Desire in its gloriously giddy sense of the historical and the fantastic. This was one absorbing and entertaining read.

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Is Helen Slater Revisiting Supergirl?

Helen SlaterDo you know who the lovely lady pictured at left is? (Okay, I’m betting that the title of this blogpost gave it away.) Who here has thought of Helen Slater recently? Well, as the proud owner of the SUPERGIRL DVD, I surely recognized Helen Slater’s name when it appeared in this Newsarama blogpost. Helen Slater and several of her films are surely some of my guiltiest pleasures, in fact, I challenge you to find anyone who has seen and for the most part enjoyed, all of Helen Slater’s first five feature films: SUPERGIRL, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, RUTHLESS PEOPLE, THE SECRET OF MY SUCCE$S, and STICKY FINGERS. After that (okay, some might say sometime in the middle of that) Helen’s film career took a downward turn, but I just found out that she has been doing some respectable television work of late, including episodes of “Seinfeld,” “Will & Grace,” “Boston Public,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Grey’sHelen Slater as Supergirl Anatomy,” and “Crossing Jordan.” Now Newsday.com reports that Helen may play Supergirl’s aunt in upcoming episodes of “Smallville!” How cool is that?

What’s even cooler is that I have discovered that Helen has her own website, and that she has released not one, but two CDs as a singer/songwriter/pianist. Also, in keeping with her heroic origins, Slater and Jake Black, a comic-book writer from “Smallville” magazine, have submitted a Supergirl pitch for DC Comics. Now that’s something I’d love to see.