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Book Review: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Everyone knows and loves Miles Vorkosigan. The “little admiral”, who thanks to a chemical attack on his mother while she was pregnant suffers from a shortness of build, brittle bones, and an drive to prove himself against all comers. He is the heart and center of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan universe. But what about Ivan? “Ivan, you Idiot”? The breezing through life cousin of Miles, who seems mostly engaged in trying to avoid the wrath of his mother, and any responsibility whatsoever? Wine, women, and having a good time as much as he can, without a care in the world or a thought in his brain. Is he really as stupid and shallow as Miles makes him out to be? Aral Vorkosigan, father of Miles,  once mused that Ivan couldn’t possibly be faking his stupidity — or is Ivan better at this than even Aral realized?  Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance gives us an entire novel to explore a story about Ivan and of Ivan, and a reconsideration of who and what he is, what he thinks he is, and what he wants to be.

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Around the World: Ms. 45 (1981; dir. Abel Ferrara); Trauma, Gender Violence, and Revenge Fantasies

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(Trigger warning:  this review involves discussion of sexual assault, trauma, and gender violence.) Two years after the release of his gritty and noisy murder-fest, The Driller Killer (1979), Abel Ferrara returned to the director’s helm with Ms. 45 (1981), a revenge “fantasy” film.  Though Ms. 45 still demonstrates some of that rawness present in Ferrara’s first feature film production, it is by far a smoother film, making excellent use of its mostly unknown and untested cast, especially Zoë Lund, the protagonist from which the title, Ms. 45, gets its name.  Of Ferrara’s early films, Ms. 45 is certainly the most compelling, if not because it is a tighter, thematically expedient production, then because of its somewhat brutal (and uncompromising) exposure of the sexist underbelly of NYC — a common theme, it seems, in Ferrara’s work.

Announcements and Errata

Next Month’s Film (and Where to Watch It): Jurassic Park (1993)

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In our recent episode on The Swimmer (1968), we announced that to honor the upcoming release of Jurassic World (2015), our next movie would be Jurassic Park (1993)!  Since this film is pretty darn popular,  it will be airing on a number of TV and Cable stations over the next few weeks; it is also available in various digital formats! We also really want to hear from you, the listener.  If you’ve got a comment or question that you’d like us to discuss at the end of the month, send an email to totallypretentious[at]gmail[dot]com or use our handy contact page! Here’s how you can watch it!

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Book Review: Queen of the Deep by Kay Kenyon

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Janet Zabrinski, now Jane Gray for the stage, is an actress with dreams of being in a Broadway production. It’s not an easy life, however, in the big city of New York. Her best friend and roommate Rickie is battling cancer. Things seem to be just falling apart, with strange dust storms, the world crumbling, and an odor of decay about the city, and the entire world. Even as the role of her life falls into her lap, an encounter with a childhood friend, a childhood friend that Jane had thought to be imaginary, sends her into a space between worlds, and to another universe. A strange universe indeed, one shaped and in the appearance of a great ocean liner, a world whose fate has unexpected connections to Earth. And to Jane herself.

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Mad Max: Beyond Patriarchy — On Fury Road’s (2015) Visual Rhetoric and Apocalyptic Social Rebirth

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If you haven’t seen Mad Max: Fury Road (2015; dir. George Miller) yet, I highly recommend it.  Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a film I didn’t know I wanted.  There are a lot of things worth discussing here, but in particular, I want to explore two elements of the film that I think make it a significant work of cinema. Visual Rhetoric and Mad Max (in Brief) In my review of  The City of Lost Children (1995), I argued that Mad Max : Fury Road is primarily interested in storytelling as visual versus a story funneled to us through narrative proper.  The point I want to make about the visual qualities of Mad Max — an idea that also applies to The City of Lost Children, albeit mobilized for different purposes — is that there is so little in this film that is told to us as a narrative (i.e., in exposition, dialogue, or in literal narration) that it compels us to focus not on the narrative (the plot), but on the conveyance of meaning within its visual landscape, both in the straight symbolic sense and in the characters-doing-things sense.

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Book Review: Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

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It is England during the reign of King George V. The Machine Age is at its peak, and human society is in flux, becoming increasingly urbanized, secular. The Great War has come to a close, but the traumatic devastation it has wrought echoes on in family’s lives. Nations struggle to recover and political/economic turmoil presages greater conflicts and changes to come. What the future holds is not only a concern for humanity, but also for The Besiders, a race that has lived alongside us in the margins, driven further into the isolated shadows as human civilization spreads. Eleven-year-old Triss Crescent awakens in a bed surrounded by her parents and a doctor, her memory fragmented and incomplete. She gradually recalls that the family is together on vacation, and that she has had an accident, coming close to drowning in the Grimmer, a local millpond. But she has difficulty remembering the details of how she fell in, or how she managed to get out. Triss’ younger sister Pen was there to witness the accident, but Pen sulks in the corner of the room, far from Triss, and won’t say more than angrily proclaim that Triss is lying, pretending; that Triss is not who she claims to be.

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