David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer.
If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee!
He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.
Alvin and the Chipmunks meet Frankenstein is a 1999 straight-to-video cartoon film distributed by Universal Studios revising the version of the title characters from the 1983-1990 TV show. Three child-sized anthromorphic chipmunks Alvin (Ross Bagdasarian Jr) , Simon (Ross Bagdasarian Jr), and Theodore (Janice Karman), live with their adopted dad/manager Dave (Ross Bagdasarian Jr).
It is part of a short series of revival films, one of which has been previously reviewed: Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman. As with that one, this one focuses on the boys coming across a class pulp era movie monster, this time Frankenstein (well, and Frankenstein’s monster).
The movie starts as the chipmunks are performing at Majestic Studios theme park and they get lost and they wander into an attraction where an actual Victor Frankenstein (Michael Bell) is laboring to create an actual Frankenstein’s monster (Frank Welker). As with the original Frankenstein’s monster, the creature is actually pretty friendly and befriends the boys, and Dr. Frankenstein has other plans.
As with the previous one, the title kindof gives away any possible suspense that there might have been about what was going to happen, and though some unexpected things did happen those things seemed unrelated to the Frankenstein plot at all, and so were just kind of… baffling? It’s an okay movie with some catchy numbers, might be worth watching with the kids if you see it streaming.
Bears Vs Babies is a tabletop/card game from the makers of Exploding Kittens and The Oatmeal, wherein you build fearsome Frankensteinian monstrosities to defeat and eat armies of vicious babies.
Each turn you have several moves (how many depends on how many players) to stitch together your monstrous armies, attaching heads and limbs to bodies to build your fighting force to overpower the vicious elemental baby armies. Each additional body part adds fighting power, and certain attachments give extra moves as well–like tools that will give you an extra move per turn (at the expense of a point of fighting power) or a hat which multiplies that monsters fighting power. Then anyone can use their turn to provoke an army of babies and see who wins, at which point all the monsters who fight in that war are discarded whether they win or lose and you build up your armies again.
The game takes a bit to figure out exactly what the objective is and how to go about it, but once you get the hang of it it moves pretty quickly. If you have a game fresh out of the box I recommend following the instruction manual which starts you playing with a smaller simpler deck to get some of the basics down before adding additional types of cards to the deck.
It’s a fun game for a variety of ages, which depends some on skill and some on luck so can be a good choice kids in early grade school, who will have a chance to win. It’s fun and silly and as with Exploding Kittens much of the appeal is looking at the cool and silly illustrations.
Audience Broad appeal, most kids should be able to play this at preschool if you want (and as long as you’re not worried about them being upset at the premise of fighting vicious babies).
Challenge There is some skill trying to figure out how best to build up an army, and especially if you’re playing with people who try different strategies there is a decent challenge in trying to figure out how best to counter what you think they will do.
Session Time Once you get the hang of it, you can probably play a full round in 15 minutes or so.
Replayability A lot of the initial appeal is just seeing the silly and fun illustrations for the monster parts, so that wears off after you’ve seen them all, but it is a quick game to play and the strategies and style can shift quite a bit depending on what cards you get so there’s quite a bit of replay value.
Originality I like these game-makers in large part because they come up with silly ideas, cool illustrations, and do a great job finding a new feel and strategy so it feels like its own unique thing.
Overall Fun game for a wide range of ages, if you like Exploding Kittens you’ll probably like this. Definitely worth a play!
This is one of a series of articles wherein I examine a music video as a short film, focusing on the story rather than the music, trying to identify the story arcs and characters motivations, and consider the larger implication of events.
The film this week is She’s My Man by Scissor Sisters, about an epic and violent battle between a couple at a restaurant. Fair warning: the film does depict quite a few acts of domestic abuse. As well as the title implying a stance about gender roles that some may prefer not to delve into.
And if I had to change one thing about this film it would be the title, intentionally misgendering a woman because she is aggressive. I think it’s done for a laugh, but I did not find that funny. If I didn’t enjoy other aspects of it greatly I might not have recommended it at all.
The film starts with a couple, a man and a woman, seated across from each other at a table at a restaurant, chatting (we can’t hear what they’re saying) and enjoying each other’s company. This mood does not last long as apparently he says something that offends her, and she responds in anger, visibly shouting “What?!” with a wave of her arms. I got the impression they are no strangers to sudden fights breaking out, apparently having been together for quite some time and having come to accept them as part of the relationship.
The film is a series of escalations in this fight. She escalates the fight by throwing her napkin at him, which they are soon sending back and forth as quick as a tennis match. Soon they both escalate the fight simultaneously by both reaching for the surprisingly large knives in their table settings and dueling over the table with them. He collects all of the plates and she dares him to throw them. He does, and she dodges the first few, and catches plates in both hands, her teeth, and between her feet and throws these back at him, hitting him with every one, and she breaks another thrown plate in mid-air with a karate chop.
Although she has shown incredible physical abilities, we start to see her more supernatural powers next as she doffs her jacket and sets it flying across the room to punch her man in the throat, leaving him gasping.
The waiter comes out with new plates and she throws one of them as well and the waiter makes a heroic dive to retrieve the plat before it impact. He manages to hit her for the first time with the remaining plate, and then she really flies into a rage. When the harried waiter arrives with a new covered platter he places it and retreats before she throws that, but the man launches the platter into the air, spilling the lobster out of the platter, and makes a super-human jump to catch it and launch it at her; the claws catch her long hair and sever it at the shoulders.
One of the restaurant staff picks this unfortunate time to deliver the check and she splits him half up his torso with her bare hand, and moments later cuts the chef clean in two. Finally she delivers the coup d’etat by using her magic to compel her jacket to hold him still while her severed locks of hair strangle him until he goes limp. Once he is lying on the floor she makes a show of regret and she picks him off and carries him out of the scene while they seem to chat cordially again.
Before I get into examining the plot and themes further, I would like to mention that what made this film remarkable to me was not the plot or the themes, but the practical special effects on display here. The legs of the two characters on the screen are clever puppetry performed by black-clad puppeteers who are often entirely visible against the black background of the scene. In addition, anything thrown or moving of its own volition in the scene is also operated by puppetry. The most impressive part, in my opinion, was the man’s jump to reach the lobster–the scene takes what looks like a 90 degree camera “bullet-time” style camera rotation from horizontal to looking directly down on the scene, but as far as I can tell the camera is stationary throughout the whole film and any apparent movement is actually the set and characters being moved instead. In this case that included all of the surrounding tables being lifted off the ground by more of the puppeteers and rotated 90 degrees while the actors did their best to hold the same facial expressions and upper-body position except for the rotation. It was really quite impressive! Many of the special effects, especially the stick-thing legs, look kindof weird, but I was really impressed by it and the surreal look of it was very appealing.
As for the subject matter of the piece, it depicts a very serious subject (domestic abuse) in a light that seems like it’s meant to be aiming at humor–if that’s the intent I think it misses most of the time. While I enjoyed the film, much of that had to do with the awesome special effects, although when she cuts the kitchen staff into pieces with her bare hands and they manage to get themselves off stage under their own power that was darkly humorous. But overall it is a very hard film to recommend to people because of the “domestic abuse as humor” angle.
Somewhat tied into that, I find the title of the film makes me wonder what the filmmakers were trying to convey: “She’s My Man”. I’m not sure if they’re trying to say that she is the more “manly” of the two because of her determination, physical prowess, and aggressiveness, asserting dominance in the relationship through her abuse, in the role that stereotypes dictate is the man’s to hold, a woman holding a role defined by its toxic masculinity?
I’m not sure. But, even if it’s hard to recommend without knowing if the person I’m talking to has a history that involves domestic abuse, the practical effects in this are really extraordinary!
(Next up in the Music Drilldown series will be “Foil” by Weird Al Yankovic)
Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman is a 2000 straight-to-video cartoon film distributed by Universal Studios reviving the version of the characters from 1983-1990 TV show. Three child-sized anthromorphic chipmunks Alvin (Ross Bagdasarian Jr) , Simon (Ross Bagdasarian Jr), and Theodore (Janice Karman), live with their adopted dad/manager Dave (Ross Bagdasarian Jr).
Alvin has been having nightmares about monsters, and is constantly reading his monster facts book, having become convinced that their new neighbor Mr. Talbot (Maurice LaMarch) is a werewolf. Alvin seeks out proof of what he believes to be their neighbors dark secret while trying to navigate their everyday life, including acting in the play adapted from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
This might be appealing to kids of the appropriate age, but it doesn’t have very broad appeal like the best cartoons do. Much of the mystery of the movie is kindof spoiled by the title because you know from the title that there must be a werewolf somewhere in the story and so Alvin’s crackpot theories have to be true of someone, if not the neighbor. It’s fine if you have a kid at a young enough age to enjoy it, but it’s not too likely to have broader appeal. (We happened to catch it on streaming)
Corporate Gunslinger is a science fiction action/drama novel by Doug Engstrom premiering this week with Harper Voyager. Full disclosure: Doug has been a friend for years and is a member of the same small writing group as me, this review was based on an advanced reader copy from the publisher.
Kira is deeply in debt, so deeply that she has decided to sign a contract to become a gunslinger who settles disputes for a major corporation by representing them in good-old-fashioned gun duel (albeit with science fictional tweaks to the format). The story takes place in a sadly-plausible future United States where this is the norm. She must fulfill her contract to make enough money to have a chance of paying off her debt. The alternative is worse: lifelong debt slavery enforced by a chip that makes sure she is always under their control.
Kira is not the fastest, nor the most accurate, but she is working hard to get better at both, and her background gives her an edge that others don’t have. She was a theater major hoping to make it big and she intends to use this the best she can to better understand her opponents and convey the persona she wishes to convey. If she wants to stay alive and in control of her own life she has to find a way to win matches and live with herself afterward.
This story is dark and not for the light-hearted, but I think that it is a glimpse at a future we would better avoid. Kira is a relatable protagonist though she is pressed into doing terrible things on behalf of her corporate employer to save herself. It is no lighthearted book but it is compelling and Kira is easy to root for in her seemingly impossible situation. I quite enjoyed it and am happy to recommend it.
Corporate Gunslinger’s official release date is June 16, 2020. I hope you check it out!
This is one of a series of articles wherein I examine a music video as a short film, focusing on the story rather than the music, trying to identiy the story arcs and characters motivations, and consider the larger implication of events.
The film this week is Genghis Khan by Miike Snow, an action/spy movie turned romance.
The film starts with a line of men in military uniforms standing at attention as their commanding officer (who is dressed in military garb also and has a very distinctive metal prosthetic nose) walks past them to the center of the room large concrete room where a man in a bowtie and a tuxedo shirt is strapped to a table with a giant laser mounted on the ceiling pointed directly at him. The scenario calls to mind the third act of a James Bond film where the villain has captured bond and it is just about time for Bond to make his escape, but this time the villain is our protagonist.
And, of course, next is the monologuing, which the villain does to the music, seeming to be in a happily vindictive mood, taking little dancing steps in celebration at the imminent devise of his rival. Only knowing what we have seen so far in the film, the choice of monologuing topic is a bit odd, saying that he “gets a little bit Genghis Khan” and doesn’t want him to “get it on with nobody else but me”. Is there a romantic, or at least sexual, history between these characters? James Bond has certainly had trysts with women villains before in his films, but this could be an interesting new angle to it.
A scientist in a white coat delivers a remote control to our villain, and with great relish from him and great fear from his captive he poises his finger to press the button but is interrupted with a buzzer that announces that it is 5pm, and apparently the supervillain bunker workday is over and it’s time to go home. This is a particularly interesting moment in the film, because clearly he has been looking forward to this moment for a long time, it’s surprising that he would go home just because the clock struck. Perhaps he has felt strongly about work-life balance and it’s important to him that he leave on time and leave his work at the office. Perhaps he gets paid for supervillainy only during his work hours and killing the spy when he’s not getting paid for it would make him a chump in his own reckoning. Perhaps it’s an insurance/worker’s comp thing where he could get in trouble for working outside of working hours. Perhaps his family expects him home at a particular time. In any case, with a roll of his eyes, he heads home, leaving the spy strapped to the table overnight.
At home he is greeted by his lovely wife and his children: a young boy and girl. He smiles when his daughter waves to him, but the manufactured smile quickly slips. As they eat dinner together he stares blankly and his wife seems to notice something is amiss, but doesn’t say anything, and later in bed she is sleeping soundly while he sits up in bed (stilling wearing his uniform) and continues to mull.
The next day, back at the supervillain office, he continues his monologue to the spy again, if anything with more vigor, and his energy seems to be contagious as well, even soldiers passing through the scene say “ooh” along with the song. The laser is powered up again and there seems to be nothing keeping the spy from his doom. But he hesitates, and monologues about wanting to make up his mind but not knowing himself, and instead of pushing the big red “KILL” button he pushes the big green “RELEASE” button.
The spy leaps up from the table and within seconds a squad of soldiers faces him down with automatic weapons, but the villain orders them to let the spy go, and the villain turns away to let the spy make his escape. But, instead of leaving, the spy carries on with the same monologue about not knowing himself, and he turns back, and sees out loud the main monologue again about getting a little bit Genghis Khan. The two join hands, and perform a series of cute pair dance moves together.
Flash forward to a scene at the villain’s home again. This time he has a more genuine smile as the kids come to greet him, and the spy (now in more casual clothes) is just putting dinner on the table. They have happy conversation and they share a romantic look over the table between themselves, and later they are both reading in bed in a quiet and pleasant moment as the villain smiles to himself and everything seems to have ended happily…
Until we see that this bedroom is being surveilled by none other than the villain’s ex-wife, who repeats the mantra about being a little bit Genghis Khan and not wanting him to get it on with “nobody else but me”, and ominous music plays as the film ends.
This one is really interesting and fun in its subversion of the superspy-and-villain nemeses trope. Even if someone hasn’t seen many James Bond films, there are so many parodies and homages that you can’t help to have absorbed some of it, and so it is a clever way to set up a short film. “I know what this is” you say as you see the giant laser, and just a little bit of set-dressing sets up your expectations, before dashing them and going a different direction. Spy movies rarely (if ever) show a villain having a stereotypical family life at home, so that in itself is a new angle on it, and the reversal at the end with a new villain promises potential for a sequel–apparently living with him all these years has taught her some tricks. What role will our erstwhile villain play in the next story? Will he continue his previous villainous ways even though he is happier at home? Or was his happiness at home inextricably tied with his villainy? Has the spy turned his allegiance’s as well, is he exiled from his home country for fraternizing with the enemy, or is this development still a secret from them. I look forward to seeing the sequel to find out!
(Next up in the Music Video Drilldown series will be She’s My Man by Scissor Sisters)
The House With a Clock in its Walls is a 2018 fantasy film based on a 1973 book of the same title by John Bellairs.
In 1955, after his parents die in a car crash, ten-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) moves in with his weird uncle Jonathan (Jack Black), and meets the neighbor Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett). At night he hears a strange ticking in the walls that he can’t find the source of, and as he looks for the source he finds his crazed uncle smashing through a wall with an axe and various objects in the house have taken a life of their own. His uncle confesses he is a warlock, and Florence is a witch, and the clock in the walls is a dark and dangerous secret the previous owner of the house had left there.
This is a fun premise for a movie, and Black as the exuberant and weird uncle, and Blanchett as the kind and interesting neighbor are very good in their roles. I felt that overall it was good, but felt like the final act of the movie was its weakest so it felt like a little bit of a let-down, but it’s still a fun watch, and a good one for the kids.
Star Vs. the Forces of Evil is an action comedy cartoon about an interdimensional mage-warrior princess visiting Earth. Season 1 aired on Disney XD between January and September 2015.
Star Butterfly (Eden Sher) is a princess of Mewni, a magical parallel dimension. On her 14th birthday, her parents the king and queen give her the family heirloom magical wand. When she accidentally sets fire to the castle, they send her away to Earth for training. She ends up enrolling at Echo Creek Academy where principal assigns her to pair up with Marco Diaz (Adam McArthur), who has a reputation for being very straight-laced and by-the-book. Soon after Star is attacked for the first time by the monster Ludo (Alan Tudyk) and his gang of henchmonsters who want to steal the wand and she discovers her magical abilities and finds out that it’s also fun kicking monster butt.
Star is fun-loving, impulsive, has a low tolerance for boredom, and gives her everything to everything she decides to do. Marco, in many ways, is very different very careful, nervous, risk-averse, and more likely to talk himself out of doing something than to just dive in as Star would. But they very quickly become best friends, complimenting each other as friends, each acting as a kind of balancing force on the others extreme tendencies. Ludo and his gang of monsters are a recurring element as he continues to try to attain the wand, and Marco and Star work together to fend him off.
Most of the episodes feel largely episodic, small standalone adventures, but many of them do add elements to build backstory for larger arcs, more about Star’s family and the history of Mewni.
A lot of the appeal of the show is the fun drawing style that goes along with Star’s unique and powerful spells like “narwhal blast” and “blueberry cupcake bazooka”, and the writing and voice acting is superb.
And if you like this season, there are three more! Highly recommended, one of my favorite shows.
This is one of a series of articles wherein I examine a music video as a short film, focusing on the story rather than the music, trying to identiy the story arcs and characters motivations, and consider the larger implication of events.
The film this week is Run Boy Run by Woodkid, a black-and-white fantasy thriller chase.
The first image we see is of an isolated stark white building in the mountains, with a narrow tower that resembles a skyscraper design, though much smaller. The only sound is the deep and resonant ring of a deep church bell. On the third stroke of the bell the visual stillness of the scene is broken as the title character, the boy who is never named, exits the building on the right, sprinting as though his life depends on it.
After the fourth toll of the bell we see the boy much more closely. He is wearing what appears to be a schoolboy’s uniform with short pants, a lapeled jacket, a collared shirt, and a backpack. Even as he runs at an incredible pace, he checks over his shoulder for signs of pursuit and his terror is evident as tears stream down his cheeks. The pounding percussion of the music underscores the urgency, as do the lyrics: “this world is not made for you” and “they’re trying to catch you”. It’s not clear what exactly is pursuing the boy, but with his evident terror and the superhuman effort he is putting into escape, I can’t help but root for him every time I see this. As the film opens, we
He is joined by a pack of crows flying in the same direction, and at first we have to wonder if these are what he is fleeing from, or at least if they are agents of what he is fleeing from. And soon the boy outpaces the flying crows anyway.
After the lyrics say “this race is a prophecy” and “break out from society”, a new creature joins the scene: what appears to be an earth elemental of moss and grass and stone with long pointed horns rises up from the level ground directly under the boy, and the boy falls. The pace of the music slows as the creature rises to its full height from the ground, humanoid and as tall as a tall man, and it appears that everything may be lost; he may have lost the chase. The boy struggles to raise himself back to his feet but before he can the creature scoops him up under its arm (roughly but the roughness appears to be from a sense of urgency rather than malice) and begins running in the same direction the boy had been running.
When the boy has had a moment to catch his breath, the elemental returns the boy to his feet and they run together. Meanwhile the elemental beckons offscreen and soon more and more elementals of a similar size, some that appear to have cattle skulls for heads. The original elemental hands him a sword, and others arm him with a two-horned Viking helmet and a round buckler shield. At this point in the film the boy no longer appears scared–he looks determined and fierce. This support from an unexpected corner has bolstered his courage, though we still have not seen what pursues him.
When the boy leaps from a rock he lifts off up into the clouds before landing safely back among the elementals again–clearly this boy is just beginning to discover his extraordinary abilities, and reveling in his newfound freedom! He beckons to the elementals and yet more of them rise from the ground, and in more variety, ranging from tiny ones that run on all fours, to ever larger and larger that are dressed and armed as warriors and seem to be built of stone and tree trunks. An airship rises in the distance, presumably associated with the rest of these warriors supporting the boy. The boy at this point appears happy for the first time in the film, smiling and joyous and confident.
We see ahead to his destination: a major metropolitan center of immaculate white buildings that recall the style of the building he is running away from, but many more and denser. We see one building with banners flying a sigil of two crossed keys: the symbol of the rulers of the city? The boy finally stops on a rocky promontory with a view of the city and he raises his sword to it, though it’s unclear whether this is a sign that he is saluting it as a sign of safety or home or if he has hostile intent. Are the elementals merely an escort to ensure his safety, or does he plan to lead them in an assault on the city? Why do the elements follow him? Does he have family or friends waiting for him? What is the prophecy that speaks of his escape? At no point in the film do we see his pursuers–is he trying to run away from responsibilities, from becoming a man? Or is there a real pursuer, and what is their intent?
The film ends there with more questions than answers, but in a way that left me hungry for more: I have seen at least one other by Woodkid that seems to tie into the events of this one somehow, with the boy and the sigil of the crossed keys, though I haven’t seen enough to understand the story of this one better–I will try to watch more and give my interpretation as I can!
(Next up in the Music Drilldown series will be Genghis Khan by Miike Snow)
Patternmaster is a 1976 science fiction novel by Octavia Butler, first book in the publication order of the Patternist series, and the final book chronologically in the storyline.
The story takes place in a distant future where the two dominant groups of humanity are the Patternists (powerful networked telepaths that are the result of selective breeding for telepathic traits) and the clayarks (semi-human creatures created by mutated human DNA altered by an alien plague). The Patternists have long been the dominant group, with their powerful telepathic, telekinetic, and healing abilities (with individuals being stronger at certain abilities), and the clayarks mostly living as roving bands with stolen weapons in the wilderness between defended compounds.
But the order of everything is in jeopardy as the Patternmaster, the most powerful telepath who ties all the rest together, may not have long to live. The clayarks seem to sense the uncertainty and seem to be massing for greater attacks.
The protagonist of the novel is Teray, one of the children of Rayal. With the upcoming succession, assumptions and understanding about the existing order no longer stand and Teray finds himself just trying to find a place to stand in the world that seems to be shifting all around him.
This is the chronological conclusion that the rest of the series was backstory to. Wild Seed is still my favorite but I can see why this spawned the rest of the series–political intrigue between powerful telepaths and their powerful enemies. Well worth a read!
