Welcome to Night Vale the Novel

Authors Jeffrey Cranor (center) and Joseph Fink (right) at the Castro Theatre

Although I like to think I'm not a crazy Welcome to Night Vale fangirl, I have been to four events for the hit spooky-funny-quirky podcast. In January 2014 I attended a panel at Haight-Ashbury's Booksmith and then a live show at the Mission's Victoria Theatre (I wrote about both events here). Earlier this year I caught a second live show at the much bigger Fox Theatre in Oakland. And on 10/29/15, I attended another Booksmith event: the release of Welcome to Night Vale the novel, held at the Castro Theatre.

The book, written by the co-writers of the podcast, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, has been rabidly anticipated by legions of fans and debuted at #4 on the New York Times bestsellers list. Having read it...I'm interested in what other fans think, mostly because I wasn't that into it. While I found the book entertaining, I didn't find it strong, deep, or lasting. Characterization and plotting issues took away from the enjoyment for me. Other reviewers, like speculative fiction stars Cory Doctorow and Amal El-Mohtar, have been effusive, so maybe there's something I'm missing. Maybe I'm like Cecil Palmer with Steve Carlsberg's scones. Or maybe I'm just Steve Carlsberg.

Fans line up for the 10/29/15 event

It's impossible to not compare the novel to the podcast, for better or worse. Not only are the tone and voice similar, but there are endless references to what's gone on in the fake newscast, and even segments of Cecil's reports. And while this dry, oddball humor often works well in the novel's prose, sometimes it falls short. This is especially true in the aforementioned news reports. Reading the transcripts makes you realize just how how much voice actor Cecil Baldwin brings to the material. Details that might have gotten laughs as asides on the podcast (the many rituals and oddities of the town) clutter up the pages here.

Despite the presence of Cecil's reports, the biggest change from the podcast is the lack of Cecil. His show is incorporated into the narrative, but he's not really present as a character. There are probably fans who are relieved by this, and fans who are deeply disappointed by this. Cecil's romance with scientist Carlos has been one of the most popular parts of the podcast, inspiring swoons and fan art galore, but it has also threatened to overpower the podcast at times, and some worry about the series devolving into pure fanservice. Cecil and Carlos are great, but Night Vale can and does excel even when they aren't in the picture (such as standout episodes "A Story About Them" and "The September Monologues," for example).

Like this, except they're an actual (fictional) couple

Fink and Cranor compromise here: Cecil and Carlos are not the protagonists, but how amazingly in love they are is mentioned about a billion times. It's not clear if this is an earnest attempt to appease fans or a self-parody. Carlos does get a cameo, as do other favorites like Cecil's sweet but hapless brother-in-law Steve, angelically protected Old Woman Josie, and intern-turned-mayor Dana Cardinal.

The main characters in the novel are two women we haven't seen much of before: Diane Crayton, single mom to a fifteen-year-old shape-shifting son, and Jackie Fierro, perpetually nineteen. Diane is unsure how to tell her son, Josh, about his absent father. Jackie doesn't know why she's perpetually nineteen. After a (or rather, the) man in a tan jacket gives them both notes reading "King City" and they both start seeing a blond man around town, their quests converge.

Diane, I felt, was the heart of the story. This wasn't surprising after hearing Jeffrey Cranor speak at the Castro event - he talked about how his own experience of being raised by a divorced mother helped him identify with the character of Diane. While this sort of personal history isn't a requirement, it is possibly why Diane feels so authentic. She's one of the most "normal" people we've seen in Night Vale: a PTA mom in a dull office job. But this normality alone isn't what makes her relatable - that comes from the specificity and depth Cranor gives her (although a collaboration, Cranor worked more on the "Diane" sections). The way she agonizes over what to write in a text, her mixed feelings about her secluded spot in the office, and her anxiety over meeting a colleague outside of work make her not just a stock "soccer mom," but a real woman we care about.

We get nearly none of that with Jackie. Her backstory is intriguing and typically Night Valean: a girl who has been nineteen for decades, watching her former classmates grow up and grow old. She can't remember her childhood or how she started working at the pawn shop she returns to everyday. But all we get of her character are a few signifiers. For example, she says "man" and "dude" a lot. Sometimes she's a retiring homebody and sometimes she acts in a way that seems intended to make the reader say, "What a badass." While plenty of people are sometimes homebodies and sometimes badasses, her personality shifts seem to have more to do with the needs of the plot than with her own complexity or growth. So much of how the plot progresses has to do with the bond Jackie and Diane develop, but that bond felt forced and artificial to me.

Fink spoke of being drawn to Jackie much like Cranor was drawn to Diane, but it's hard to say what he sees in her and wants to show us. This is especially frustrating when you consider the many characters of the podcast who became dear to listeners with just a handful of well chosen words. Why weren't the writers able to do in a novel what they can do in a few sentences? Would a voice actor have been able to bring to Jackie what Fink and Cranor couldn't? Maybe those listening to the audio book read by Baldwin will have a different impression.

Spoilers below Hiram!

Beyond the characterization issues, the plotting falls apart a bit at the end. Our protagonists finally get to King City, and there are some haunting and unsettling descriptions of the town, but we don't get much of a satisfying conclusion at our destination. The explanation for the ubiquitous "King City" notes was almost definitely thought of after the fact. We finally meet Troy, Josh's (and Jackie's) father, but we don't learn much about him, and why one of his children was thought to be needed by the city is unclear. Why is Jackie stuck at nineteen? Is it because of who her father is or just a Night Vale thing? These questions are answered with a shrug, but it's a shrug that feels unearned.

My biggest disappointment was the revelation of the identity of the man in the tan jacket. The mysterious character with his deerskin suitcase full of flies has haunted Night Vale since episode 14 in 2013, and he always seemed to be a part of one of the secrets behind the scenes, possibly with ties to former mayor Pamela Winchell. It turns out he's the mayor of King City but was forgotten because of Troy for some reason and needs to spend more time with his family? You deserved better, Evan Eric Elliott man in the tan jacket!


Image info:
Crappy photos: mine
South Park: from episode "Tweek X Craig," which is amazing
Welcome to Night Vale novel cover: official page
Hiram McDaniels: Night Vale Wikia

Eff the Haters; Pan is Bonkers But Fun

Note date in lower right corner.

When the first trailer for Pan landed - who knows how long ago, since this movie got shelved once or twice - I knew two things immediately: it looked questionable, and my friend JD and I would definitely see it. I don't remember how Peter Pan became a thing for us. We've been friends for over 15 years, and somewhere along the way the Peter Pan thing happened. Maybe because we both watched the Mary Martin version a billion times as children? Because of the Peter Pan marathon party she threw when the terrible sequel Return to Never Land came out in 2002? Because she forced me to read the actual Barrie novel and it was actually really interesting?

Anyways, we were obviously going to see this movie together, despite the Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily drama, despite the weirdness of Flamboyant Blackbeard Hugh Jackman, despite the delayed release, despite the mountain of bad reviews. And so we saw it this past Sunday.

And it was amazing.

I don't mean that it was a masterpiece of cinema. But we had feared a bland, characterless, rote fiasco, and this was a much better kind of fiasco. This is a crazy, loving, fanficish fiasco. Spoilers below.

His boat has his face on it.

It starts out with a not unfamiliar British setting: bright-eyed troublemaker Peter and his best friend get into mischief in an orphanage run by sadistic nuns. Blah blah blah brick in the blah. Then we learn that the nuns are selling children to fantastical flying pirates: Blackbeard and his drag show/circus-themed crew, and Peter is one of the victims.

Let's just focus on that for a moment. This human trafficking deal between English nuns and Neverland pirates is never explained or brought up again. Despite Neverland being unknown in "our" world, these nuns somehow have a way to communicate with the pirates for these transactions. Maybe this is a Vatican secret?

Moving on, as the pirates re-enter Neverland with their human cargo there are some absolutely gorgeous special effects involving fish and crocodiles swimming in floating spheres of water, and then we're in a giant mine and Blackbeard is leading all the miners in singing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" a cappella.

At this point JD and I fucking lost it. WTF was happening? Was this a Moulin Rouge shout-out, since that movie also used that song in similarly blase fashion? Was Blackbeard leading a Nirvana cult? Were they all going to sing "Rape Me" next?

Trying to out-Johnny Depp Johnny Depp.

In the mines where kidnapped men and boys from around the globe dig for pixie dust, which Blackbeard needs to snort through a Darth Vader mask to stay young, Peter meets Captain Hook, who at that point is just Hook and has both hands, and Hook's work buddy Sam "Smee" Smiegel, a clipboard-carrying middle-management guy.

Hook is super hot, a trend started by Jason Isaacs in Universal's 2003 Peter Pan (probably the best version to date) and taken to the next level by Colin O'Donoghue in Disney's franchise soap Once Upon a Time. WB's entry in this Hot Pirate Cold War is Garrett Hedlund, who is indeed very hot and likable. The Hot Pirate Cold War is not entirely non-canon.

I thought Hedlund's voice sounded like Tom Hardy's in Mad Max: Fury Road, and JD thought he sounded like Karl Urban as McCoy in the new Star Trek movies. Both of us assumed he was a non-American trying and failing to do an American accent, but that's actually his voice and he's from Minnesota. That's what Minnesotans sound like, I guess (JD and I are born and bred Silicon Valley girls, so obviously we have no accents...to our ears, at least). Why is James Hook, who in the Barrie story is so English he attended Eton now a Minnesotan miner? Who knows. At least Hook's future life partner Smee is a British person: Adeel Akhtar, best known for prescient terrorism comedy Four Lions.

Peter, Hook, and Smee are hunted by the Neverbird.

After an unremarked upon child murder and Peter waking up in Blackbeard's bed to learn that he's thought to be the foretold messiah of Neverland, Hook, Smee, and Peter manage an escape during which Hook learns to fly a ship in trial-by-fire fashion. Then they crash in the Neverland forest and have some Timon/Pumba/Simba hang-out time until the "Savages" kidnap them.

What to do with the stereotypical Indians of Barrie's 1904 story has been a conundrum for modern retellings. This version decided to go with no Native American imagery and a multicultural cast, including Aboriginal Australian Jack Charles and South Korean Na Tae-joo. But despite considering actresses such as Pooja Hegde and Lupita Nyong'o for the role of Tiger Lily, they went with white Rooney Mara. I mean, I remember my mom explaining the issues with a blonde Tiger Lily back when I was watching the Mary Martin VHS in the early 1990s, and that was a 1960 production. Mara does fine as a slightly cold warrior who eye-fucks Garrett Hedlund, but let's be honest: anyone could eye-fuck Garrett Hedlund.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

And here's another big departure from Peter Pan canon: the Hook/Tiger Lily romance. Tiger Lily is traditionally around Wendy's age and like her, gunning for a relationship with Peter that Peter, who will never go through puberty, can vaguely sense but can't fully reciprocate. Here she's older and knew Peter's mother (Amanda Seyfried): a sex slave of Blackbeard's who was saved by the prince of the fairies, fucked that fairy to create Peter, and then returned to Neverland to fight to the death alongside the Tribe and the fairies against the pirates.

By the way, when members of the Tribe die, they explode into brightly colored powder like a Color Run of Death.

Yep.

Then we've got some pretty typical action-adventure plotting. Smee betrays the group to the pirates (albeit on threat of death), solving/ruining a potential Smee/Hook/Tiger Lily love triangle. Peter can't fly because he doesn't believe in himself. Hook and Tiger Lily eye-fuck, unable to do more since this is a PG movie and they're also with Peter most of the time. Hook takes an abandoned ship and leaves to go back home (Minnesota?) alone, but predictably returns just in time to help save the day, having realized Neverland is his real home (or maybe Minnesota just sucks). Peter and Tinkerbell have an obligatory meeting. Peter believes in himself and flies. Blackbeard is killed. Peter gets to talk with his dead mom via fairies becoming a pixelated image of her?

Anyway, for the happy ending, Peter, Hook, and Tiger Lily take the flying ship back to the orphanage and rescue/kidnap all the orphans. Then the group heads back to "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning."

I liked the ending, but wow... We close with a happy makeshift family: Dad Hook, Mom Tiger Lily, and Son Peter. But the opening narration hinted that the rest of the traditional Peter Pan story will still happen. Which means if we're sticking to canon, at some point:

-Peter chops off Hook's hand and deliberately feeds it to a crocodile
-Tiger Lily develops romantic feelings for Peter
-Hook attempts to murder Tiger Lily by slow drowning, and also wants to murder Peter and the orphanageload of kids he just helped rescue.

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

On the drive back from the theater, JD and I tried to imagine how this Breaking Bad-level familial destruction would happen. Does Hook take too many "fishing trips" with Smee? Does someone become a blue pixie dust kingpin? Apparently lots of tearful and shouted recriminations are in store for our adorable leads.

Reverse course! Reverse course!

Random notes:

-The movie is beautiful and the 3-D is worthwhile.

-This story starts during WWII, even though the original Peter Pan is placed much earlier. It's possible this flash forward was solely for the Blitzkrieg scene, although I'd like to hold out hope that the time change is meant to indicate we're seeing a different Peter Pan whose new surrogate family maybe won't become a Euripides tragedy.

-Levi Miller is a good child actor. Although this version didn't feel classically "Peter Pan" (this Peter seems too grounded to me to morph into the somewhat sociopathic anti-adult original), the role asked a lot emotionally of its star, and Miller delivered.

-Peter's fairy dad used his one day alive as a human to have sex with Amanda Seyfried. Understandable.

-Speaking of which, I liked that Peter's parents were a "warrior and a prince" instead of the more common "warrior and a princess." I also liked that his mom trained Tiger Lily in warfare.

-When Hook, Smee, and Peter are first captured by the Tribe, to spare their lives Hook has to defeat the Tribe's strongest warrior (in trampoline-aided combat). JD was hoping Hook's Rufio would be that warrior, but alas, I don't think this production had the rights to the sexual awakening of millions of older millennials. Rufio would match the Tribe's crafting-disaster aesthetic, though.

Bang-a-rang.

-Astoundingly, Hugh Jackman's weird Blackbeard getup is apparently the one he's worn that most gets his wife's motor running. Do you think they kept the bustle for private use?

-That Hook is a good guy softie in this version is a huge change, but I think it makes sense when you consider the history and meta nature of the Hook role. Traditionally, the actor playing Hook also plays Mr. Darling (originally Barrie was going to have Hook be a double role for the Mrs. Darling actress, but changed it to Mr. Darling before showtime). The idea is that for children, adults - especially parents - are both loving protectors and meanie villains who don't let you do what you want. With gentle, nerdy Mr. Darling (the Disney animated movie slanders him) out of the picture for this film, Hook takes on a welcomed paternal role for Peter's early years as Peter Pan. The hand-chopping times come closer to adolescence when you start getting weird feelings about Mom.

-There will probably not be a sequel, and I kind of hope there's not. I enjoyed this movie, and I love King Lear, but I don't want to see Peter Pan: King Lear. I'm just going to imagine everything's nice and peaceful and that when Hook and Tiger Lily have ridiculously gorgeous children, Smee babysits. Basically, this is not a remix I would have ever imagined, but I was won over.

-Other not-so-bleak possibility for the future: maybe Hook will have to fill the power void left by Blackbeard in order to prevent someone worse from doing so, and he'll have some sort of "we'll pretend to be enemies but not really" arrangement with the Tribe and the Lost Boys a la Wicked or The Dark Knight? If I'm overthinking this, I blame being up at 5am with kidney stones.

Actually...she is kinda checking him out in 1911.

Image info:
Most: MovPins
1911 title page: Wikipedia

Movies I Want Right Now That I Can't Have Right Now

Get it, Mia!

There are a number of movies coming up that I'm impatient to see. Some will be out in a few weeks, some in nearly a year, but they all feel like they're taking forever to get here. Here are the movies I'm most mad I can't see yet, in order of release date.

Crimson Peak

Do it for all of us, Mia

I jump when my toast pops up, so this movie will probably terrify me. But that's okay, because it's Tom Hiddleston. And, as the trailer has promised, he takes off his clothes (I'm a lot more understanding of stuff like Sports Illustrated's swimsuit annual now that so many movies cater to the female gaze). Hiddleston teams up with his onscreen sister-in-law from Only Lovers Left Alive, Mia Wasikowska, general phenom Jessica Chastain, and the guy who said "MAKO" a lot in Pacific Rim in this Guillermo del Toro haunted house movie. With a great cast, great director, and lush Gothic visuals, I'm sure the nightmares will be worth it.

Bonus Upcoming Hiddleston: Loki and the Scarlet Witch will pair up to do Southern accents in I Saw the Light, AND he's also starring in High-Rise.

Using the teaser trailer because of the cover of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand." Nick Cave is always a plus.

Out: October 16, 2015

Room

Entertain your captive child with Eggshell Snake(tm)!

The "princess locked in a tower" trope is ancient. And while it features in countless fairy tales and video games, it's rooted in the very real fear that if you're a woman, some asshole might kidnap you and imprison you somewhere in order to rape you repeatedly. The Cleveland and Jaycee Dugard cases are just two of the biggest headline-makers of the past few years. These horrors have been reflected in contemporary culture in various ways, including Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which creates bright humor out of darkness. Room, by Emma Donoghue, is a thoughtful wonder of a novel. Embracing the challenge of writing a non-cloying child narrator, Donoghue tells the story of two survivors: a young woman who was kidnapped and the son she births and raises in captivity.

I'm sharing the teaser trailer here because the full trailer is kind of an all-over-the-place mess. I hope the movie itself does the book justice.

Out: October 16, 2015

Macbeth

Did you spend all our blood money at Sephora?

If you're Michael Fassbender or Marion Cotillard and also married to either Marion Cotillard or Michael Fassbender, I'm not sure why you would strive for anything else; you have reached peak achievement. Just chill in that French-Irish sea of beauty. But the Macbeths refuse to chill when it comes to the possibility of ruling Scotland in the 1040s, even though it's not like crowns are going to get them indoor plumbing or anything else remotely good. I'm really excited for this. After the disaster of last year's Cymbeline, we need (or at least I want, because I'm greedy) a big, successful Shakespeare adaptation to follow the promise of 2014's blockbuster broadcast of Coriolanus (more Tom, no apologies) and the near-perfect 2013 Much Ado About Nothing. I'm pissed that we're getting this two months after the UK does, in December instead of October. Are they sending an actual reel of the film by dinghy? Maybe they're hoping the Christmas spirit will make Americans more likely to see Shakespeare, even if it's the play containing the famous lines:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

God bless us, every one!

Out: December 4, 2015  >:(

Batman vs Superman

Oooooooh, Superman's in trouble.

I think all DC fans are on pins and needles for these next two. Like most of the internet, I found the Batman vs Superman marketing pretty laughable (So grimdark! Ben Affleck? What's with the title - is the Kent family farm in a class action against Wayne Enterprises?), but I'm including the above screenshot because that's the exact moment I gained some faith in Batfleck. Seeing him run through Superman-caused destruction to save a small child and then glare at the sky convinced me that this Bruce Wayne is pissed off and motivated enough to really take on the Man of Steel.

Out: March 25, 2016

Suicide Squad

A true gentleman carries a lady when she's trapped in unusable shoes.

The "DC = grimdark" fears were further fanned by San Diego Comic Con footage of Suicide Squad set to morose music, but hopefully David Ayer's film has some actual fun in it. I mean, it is about an off-the-books supervillain task force whose members have names like Captain Boomerang and Killer Croc. But it's likely that a good portion of Suicide Squad's success will depend, fairly or not, on its two most popular characters: Harley Quinn and the Joker. Margot Robbie seems perfect for Harley (this is the character's first live-action appearance), although it's weird that someone born in 1990 will be in a romantic triangle with Jordan Catalano and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. There's been a lot of drama regarding both Robbie's and Jared Leto's characters' design (though mostly Leto's), and to be fair, it's pretty easy to imagine Robbie Quinn and Joker Leto re-enacting this scene, though obviously Batman would never let anyone choke to death on their own vomit.

What the dynamic between them will be also has a lot of fans anxious. Interpretations of the relationship can range from "supervillains in love" to "Harley is the poster child for domestic violence." Their relationship origin story has been told various ways in the canon, but I prefer it when Harley's transformation to supervillain Harley Quinn is done by her own initiative. Is a good decision? No, but it's hers. The Adam Glass version in the "new 52" Suicide Squad comics, the most probable source material for the film, is my least favorite. Not only does Harley not have a say in becoming Harley Quinn, she wasn't even deviously planning on a trashy tell-all true-crime book while treating the Joker - her boss was. She does kill her boss and free the Joker when she finds out, but it's done in a sort of fugue state. Weak.

So I've gone on for two paragraphs while barely mentioning any of the other characters/actors, which I feel is going to be pretty typical for this movie. Sorry, guys! Viola Davis will likely be fantastic as boss lady Amanda Waller. Will Smith has the right former-military-precision/soulful-interior look for Deadshot. I'm also looking forward to seeing Catholic gangster supervillain El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and stereotypical Aussie supervillain Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), whom I call Sargent Australia in my head.

Sidenote: I love that we now have a real-life DC villain marriage with Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith.

Here's the trailer, which was first seen as leaked SDCC footage. How do you do have a Bee Gees song in a Suicide Squad trailer without it being "Stayin' Alive"???

Out: August 5, 2016