I don’t know why but all of a sudden I can see none of my site’s incoming links. Not that I have a lot, or am linked to very frequently, but it is of some small comfort to know that they are there. Technorati even tells me I have zero incoming links. Did the zombie apocalypse happen whilst I wasn’t paying attention?

Onto less self-indulgent matters. Paid the mandatory visit to the flicks to see Indy last night. There’s been a whole bunch of whingeing about this movie not being all that in the Indiana Jones stakes and how this or that was ridiculous or lame. Well, newsflash for ya folks, it was an Indiana Jones movie no more no less.

Let me explain to you where I’m coming from.

As a five year old my life was all about the Star Wars, I wasn’t an observant child and living in the UK in 1979 the first I heard about Star Wars was when one of my school friends said he’d seen it and started showing me the lovely lovely mechandise that went with that first movie. My first experience of Star Wars was the Darth Vader TIE fighter with the pop off wings. But by this time it was 1980. Star Wars had come and gone at the cinema. I’m not sure I’d ever been to the flicks. I was destined to only dream of how good Star Wars could be until I was about 10.

My dad actually took me to see Return of the Jedi when that came out. I was a scatty kid with too much action going on in his brain to pay much mind to what was going on outside it. The Star Wars obsession was more about imagining what could be going on in that movie than caring what actually did. And to be honest I didn’t care about the people until they fought with lightsabers and I didn’t care about that as much as the space ships fighting (which my dad was keen to explain couldn’t actually happen like that in a vacuum, no sound and lasers don’t work in discrete lumps like that. My dad was a fun guy to be around if you were 6, trust me).

For some reason I could more readily comprehend the plot lines of comic books than all this space war stuff. For some reason the idea of someone pulling on a pair of tights and taking on supervillains was far more accessible to me than anything else.

Ask me to watch something about some guy with a whip (wasn’t he that Han Solo guy who flew the Millennium Falcon?) who spent most of his time talking, fighting or clinging onto objects travelling at high speed whilst fighting and I tuned out. I simply didn’t get Indiana Jones or the Lost Ark. I mean for me to get that someone would have to tell me what a Lost Ark was, wasn’t it something to do with Noah? And what did that have to do with Nazis?

Essentially I couldn’t concentrate on Raiders. I eventually got, yes, the comic book version of the movie, read it, was surprised that I never noticed the ending and then determined to watch the movie. You know what? It was okay.

No more, no less, it was okay.

Indiana Jones did not define manliness for me. Indiana Jones was not the epitome of cool to me. Raiders of the Lost Ark was fun but not any sort of a pinnacle of action-adventure for me (the first movie with action elements that I actually sat and watched utterly absorbed was, of all things, Silver Streak… go Gene Wilder!) . Indiana Jones was just some dude who got chased by a boulder (and remember by the time I could take in Raiders everyone and his dog had been chased by a boulder in the frequent rip offs that inevitably follow such an event) and then got involved with some Nazis over a big gold box full of bad ju ju.

If I was going to point to one thing about Raiders that stuck out for me it’s the scene with the ferocious sword weilding bad guy doing his juggling swords bit and Indy just shooting him. Great gag.

By the time Temple of Doom came out I could sit through that at the cinema. So I did. I didn’t get the idea of prequel. I didn’t know what a thuggee was. The bit where some guy’s heart got ripped out was pretty cool but again it all seemed to happen in a mush of stuff I didn’t really get and I just left the cinema none the wiser as to why people worshipped Indiana Jones.

Last Crusade was more something to do than a must-see cinema event. Thus it was a complete surprise to me. Firstly I had read the comic book of the movie before watching the film and thus was eagerly anticipating every scene as I’d only read it in black and white at this stage (spoilers were an unknown quantity at this stage). And when I actually could see Harrison Ford and Sean Connery go at each other like that with some real acting I completely dug it.

As I left that cinema Lost Crusade was by far my favourite Indiana Jones movie. I don’t care what anyone else says that’s how it went down in my brain.

So you take me into a cinema and show me the Crystal Skull and am I going to sit there and whinge that it’s not as good as Raiders or Doom but it’s on a par with Crusade? Of experience not.

To me it’s just more of the same stuff. And crucially it feels like Indiana Jones. It fits, tonally, with the other movies. If you watched all four together they would feel of a piece. It’s not important, in historical terms, for a piece of filmmaking to feel fresh and new in its time. Historically it is important that if it is one of a set it doesn’t upstage or invalidate other members of its set (Highlander 2 I’m looking at you). It’s vital in historical terms that a stranger to the world of Indy could sit and devour the four movies and not really notice a tonal shift.

I think Crystal Skull achieves this beautifully. I think that it’s a great technical piece of filmmaking from the point of view of direction, production, acting and writing. That may mean to some people it looks a bit like nothing new. It’s not supposed to be anything new. It’s supposed to be the continuing adventures of Indiana Jones and it is. I am glad to say that I walked out of the cinema with two abiding impressions. One, I hope I can tie down tone for continuing characters so tightly in future projects and two, I wouldn’t in the least object to a fifth Indiana Jones adventure and I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary.

The Book: Republic by Charles Sheehan-Miles

Review Category: E-Submitted requested review.

The Blurb: Welcome to the America of the future: an intrusive federal government; economy going down the tubes; and terrorism, domestic and foreign, wracking our nation. In 2016 America has become a place of fear and suspicion. Terrorism and government crackdowns have brought on a cycle of spiraling inflation and unemployment. Basic civil liberties are at risk in a country changed, yet frighteningly familiar. A prominent citizen and commander in the West Virginia National Guard, Ken Murphy, must protect his family and his country, and identify where his loyalties lay in an increasingly dangerous conflict.

Preview Available: Yes, the electronic version is freely distributable on a creative commons licence and there’s an audio book!

Would I buy this? Hell yes.

The Product: I received a PDF reviewer’s copy but the PDF typography was indistinguishable from a commercial publication. So I would take that as a guide. The whole product’s pretty darn nifty in a production values way. I spotted maybe three typos. SO no more than a real book.

The Nitty Gritty: There’s something important about a book like this to me. Having looked at some of the other reviews of the book I guess maybe in Britain we just don’t get as much of this stuff as American audiences do because some people accused it of not being controversial enough.

If this is the case then I am at a loss to imagine why Sheehan-Miles’ words are not on sale in every bookstore in the US and beyond. The man’s a great storyteller with a punchy, economic use of language. The only thing I could readily identify about his work that was, perhaps, non-commercial is that it is unashamedly biased rhetorical storytelling. As long as you accept that the book is not going to be a balanced and fair representation of the current world (which of course alternative histories and dystopian futures are intended to reflect) then you’ll be okay.

This is not to say that the characters are not well drawn. The central characters who are all linked via the central character Ken Murphy of the West Virginia National Guard are all pretty three dimensional. Or at least two and a half dimensional; I have actually met people who are two and a half dimensional in real life so you can’t complain about the verisimilitude in that respect either.

If I was to have a problem then it is that some of the characters, particularly Murphy feel very “set up”. To have a man who finds himself in a position where he can have no doubt that helping West Virginia bid to secede from the United States is the right thing for him to do takes some narrative back flips. I understand that we had to sympathise with Murphy’s difficult ideological stance by any means necessary but the parade of very personal tragedies visited on this man to make his choice acceptable would have tried the patience of Job. It’s nearly comedic in its extremity. Nearly. There is one scene concerning this character that very nearly made me burst into tears. So I guess that counts as Sheehan-Miles skirting the edge between tragedy and comedy to its limits and proving a master of narrative balance.

If I were to have one other criticism of the book its that there are long tracts of military action noodling where you can’t really understand exactly what’s going on or why. I’m sure to a fellow military enthusiast and one who knows the tactical layout of West Virginia it would all be much clearer but I just knew there were some guys in tanks feeling a bit nervous. This went on for many pages and then the story started again.

The power of Republic rests in its shameless manipulation of emotions and its soap opera characters. There’s also a strong dose of edginess. Sheehan-Miles communicates effectively the gravity of the statements he’s making about this attempted secession and it makes the book feel dangerous and subversive, even if its really the kind of thing the average American talks about at the dinner table. I don’t know that it is, and if it is it’s the kind of thing the American television and film industry is careful to tone down in America’s cultural output. As a Brit reading this book I did feel I was getting the inside word on some heavy thoughts that are dwelling front and centre in the American psyche.

The book’s major success is that it makes you feel connected to West Virginia and its inhabitants and for a while you’re happy to boo along at the wicked pantomimic federal government. Afterwards, you wonder whether anyone could really be as shallow and casually wicked as the feds are painted in this book. This is the book’s major weakness, it sacrifices a little of its credibility in order to pack a heavier melodramatic punch. You end up taking it with a pinch of salt instead of with an upraised fist.

Even so I’d heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants a raw, emotional experience mixed in with a clear and purposeful ideological standpoint. This is a thrilling read and I can’t wait for more.

I’ve been mulling over a post for a while about the difference between writers and storytellers. I used to think of myself as a writer but recent experience has shown that I am far more of a storyteller. Not saying that there is any heirarchical benefit to being one or the other it’s just that they are distinctly different things. A writer, for example, will always concentrate on writing things and the way things are written. The essence of creative writing is the analysis of creative writing or English Language comprehension exercises from school.

Such analysis asks: Why did the author employ word x to describe concept y. A writer is forever attempting to polish their expression.

A storyteller is always trying to economise expression.

A writer attempts to evoke.

A storyteller attempts to convey.

A writer asks does this scene work?

A storyteller asks is this scene needed?

Of course there’s a fair degree of overlap, but it’s a matter of central aesthetic. For example a writer will extol to the ends of the earth the virtues of reading but will largely ignore the benefits of cinema, or narrative computer games, or narrative other sorts of games, or theatre (then there’s that rare beast the playwright but that’s a whole other, er, story).

A storyteller doesn’t really care how a story is told as long as it is told well.

Recently emerging, blinking, into the daylight from the new Iron Man flick I noted that certain storytellers want to imbue their stories with a little bit of everything. Neil Gaiman is an example of this who mostly sticks to the written word. I think Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man, is another whose medium is visual images. The common distinguishing feature of the storyteller in today’s world is the labelling of their works as “messy” or “a mess”.

One of the things the great directors and writers have in common in the modern age is that they tend to have great difficulty shifting gears in a narrative. A lot of the people who can quickly churn out decent product are people who have a natural aptitude for doing one task or approaching things from a certain angle repeatedly. The storytellers, on the other hand, tend to veer haphazardly left and right at first before eventually learning to pull off tricks that the more quickly able can only dream of (or they crash and burn).

Also, I think a writer/director type artist who approaches things from one angle doesn’t have the urge to leave their chosen field to hammer out the corners of their technique by doing something else for a bit. I remember when I used to act my performance was raised if I was doing singing lessons at the same time. By the same token I truly believe that if I can write a good Role Playing Scenario or computer game then it would help me write a better novel afterwards.

The computer game project has been my bete noir for many years now. No toolset has really provided the support to a storyteller that the storyteller needs to get on with the job. I was briefly hopeful when I got my hands on NeverWinter Nights last year but again the limitations reared their ugly head.

The major limitation of designing NWN modules, for example, is actually nothing to do with the tools themselves, it’s more the set up. The central tenet of Dungeons & Dragons and its children is that you create your character and then you become the hero in some exciting story which allows you to prove your heroism and grow in power.

Except, children, one lesson I ever learned is that it doesn’t work like that. It really can’t. The point of a tale of heroism is that the hero is in the right place at the right time. A place filled with monsters that could be taken out by a barbarian, a ranger, a paladin, a ninja or a wizard depending on the mood of the player isn’t a specific story.

This is a problem all computer games face. Computer game heroes with a few notable exceptions are ciphers. If there is a story to be told through the computer game medium then the player is merely an ancillary presence in the uncloaking of that story. NWN characters tend to enforce this encipherment upon their very surroundings. Any kind of set dressing is just that, mood and atmosphere are sacrificed to endless phat lewt chests and killable monsters.

Having said that I think I’ve got an idea that cracks the NWN problem which I shall start exploring directly. *Sneaks off before anyone notices contradiction between op ed and action.*

Ahead of the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which is the best title evar IMHO) the usual luminaries in the press have been talking about the title with anticipatory glee. It was while listening to this commentary I came across the piece of intelligence that Temple of Doom was both, apparently, the darkest of the three and also the one that underperformed at the box office (relatively speaking).

The two factors were then linked and the radio commentators moved on to other topics.

Got that everybody?

Darker tone = box office poison…

I think both points are a little specious to be honest. I think despite its rollicking action clothing Raiders is pretty hardcore ending the way it does. I think what may have been a little more relevant to the lower box office of ToD was that in this episode you had some signs of the bad sequel - Short Round being the key one. Also it was actually a prequel which meant, oh my gosh, no Nazis. Also the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are recognisable artifacts where as the weird glowing stones of wallamalloo are not.

In short (round) I think if you wanted to see what undermined Indy and the Temple then you might want to go a little further afield than just assuming people turn off when the tone is darker.