Movie Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Allow me to first say that, this movie is billed as an adult fantasy (no, not that kind of fantasy!) and has garnered many awards as an independent film as a fantastical achievement in both special effects and imagination.

I saw it a few nights ago with a friend after debating what to see. We ended up settling on Pan's Labyrinth because he really wanted to see it. I might be one of the few, but I have to say, I didn't really like it. It's too violent, too gory and too depressing and I found very little in the story that redeemed it. It felt more like a horror movie thinly disguised as a fantasy due to all the stuff that was happening, ie the shootings, the torture. Also found it didn't spend enough time in the actual fantasy stuff that would have been used to lighten things up. I thought the faun, while he was supposed to be one of the friendly characters in her fantasy, ended up even being threatening at times. Felt like one suckerpunch after another.

Sadly, I cannot recommend it. Let this serve as a warning to those who want to go see it. The trailer is very misleading in leading people to think that this has a lot of fantasy in it, which is really the opposite. It's almost as though the fantasy aspect of it was an afterthought. And after walking out of the theatre, my friend told me he knew it would be violent and gory due to the director's previous works. Had I known this, I wouldn't have went to see it.

Retro Reading - The Dueling Machine

So, I finish this stack of old books with one called The Dueling Machine by Ben Bova. Ben Bova had become one of my favourite authors after having read Mars by him, and so when I was picking out these old books, it was a delight to see a Ben Bova book.

I never know how these books will turn out. A lot of them can be really awful, while there can also be some real gems, and I'm glad to say that this is definitely a gem and Ben Bova's writing didn't disappoint.

The setting takes place in a world that feel have pretty much solved the conflict of mankind by allowing people to step into these booths and settle grudges by creating scenarios, much like those in a Holodeck. The catch is that there isn't supposed to be any harm to the people involved in these scenarios, so when someone dies after coming out of it, and another one going into a coma, the inventor of the dueling machine gets called to the planet where this occured to find the reasons why it did. The result is quite a story as we later find out that it's all due to a plot from an enemy planet to try to take over the entire sector after having found some of the flaws of the machine. Sure, it sounds like standard Sci-fi fare, but it really is quite remarkably written in that you really get involved in the story wondering what will happen next. Its probably not considered a classic by authority figures, but I sure consider it a classic in my collection. Sometimes the older books tend to have the best writing and can actually be called literature. A lot of newer would always like to be considered that, but it isn't always the case.