incorrect inquiries encouraged.

Voice is everything. Unimaginative reductivists argue that there are no original stories left to tell (which, as a writer, I do not believe), but it's the teller's interpretation which is unique and what makes those stories worth retelling. Within that half-falsity, what makes a Lemony Snicket book is his voice, the redundant, rephrasical, regretful narrator who paints his uncanny world in shades of woe & misfortune.

Second in Snicket's All The Wrong Questions series, When Did You See Her Last? finds our apprenticing secret society autobiographer cutting his teeth on a case of a kidnapped heiress, but in the ghost town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea all isn't as sadly simple as it seems.

Unlike Vonnegut (bleh!) or Robbins (meh!), it's Snicket who uses constantly deft verbal dexterity to reinforce character & narrative, as opposed to an author just showing off at the cost of those same storytelling factors he should be building. It's Lemony who's so wordsmith, and the grasp of language is what gives him an edge, showing that he has the mind enough to define his dilemmas even if he doesn't yet have a true handle on their motives or scope: "I was standing in front of a Dilemma. There are people in the world who care about automobiles, and there are people who couldn't care less, and there are people who are impressed by the Dilemma, and those people are everyone. The Dilemma is such a tremendous thing to look at that I stared at it for a good ten minutes before reminding myself that I should think of it as a clue to a mystery rather than as a wonder of modern engineering. It was one of the newer models, with a small, old-fashioned horn perched just outside of each front window, and a shiny crank on the side so you could roll down the roof if Stain'd-by-the-Sea ever offered pleasant weather, and it was the color of someone buying you an ice cream cone for no reason at all."

Also, Snicket delivers consistently great character names, like Ellington Feint, Moxie Mallahan, Dashiell Qwerty, aside from his own, reaching far outside the usual baby name books to make not just proper nouns but cultural associations.

While the pacing of this book is slightly faster with less lingering descriptions, we still get a few wonderfully hard nutshells via Snicket's implicative encapsulations: "The books and shelves seemed to be in the middle of an argument nobody was winning."

Art by still no-last-named Seth (but we now know he's Canadian, so that narrows it down[?]) trades its predominant blue for purple in the solid graphic style. Sort of warming up to its noir sensibilities by this second book.

[Yes, a fountain pen skyscraper featuring a keyhole breather nib!]

Presentations of vocabulary aside, there's a new device in this series: In the oblique references to other books which are never actually named, Snicket reveals not only literary suggestions, but his influences. Yet these references are also distractions from the real mystery ... if there actually is a real mystery. Kit Snicket, Lemony's sister, keeps getting mentioned as perilously on her own back in the city, and her's is the story untold, yet bookended by Seth's splash pages at the front and back of both installments so far. For those of you who have read A Series of Unfortunate Events, you know how things sort out for intrepid Kit, but we may get the chance to find out how she starts her journey there, and these hints could fill in her arc.

Snicket also waxes philosophical. Between the kids there's a commerce of help, knowledge, and trust. Snicket trades book recommendations for cab rides from a duo of young taxi drivers, the same for breakfasts from teen fry cook Jim Hix, ingenue fatale Ellington Feint trades assistance for Snicket's gallant but possibly misplaced help, reporter Moxie exchanges her local who's-who for Snicket's info toward her unpublished news stories. Snicket argues that all would be more egalitarian if seen through the leveling eyes of youth and run by children, that adults get compromised and give up, while children with their untarnished optimism do not: "'You said we could make our organization greater than ever, but only if we stopped listening to our instructors and found new ways to fix the world. It was quite the speech you gave, It almost got you thrown out for good.'" And with that suddenly Lemony may become responsible for an event that does change everything.

While not as fresh as Who Could That Be At This Hour?,  there are revelations and far-reaching implications that Snicket's liminal role as hesitant documentarian for ASOUE may be much more involved than we ever suspected. While Snicket's world's never played with the supernatural, one dares to think that with hidden cult-like fraternities, octopi, a strange idol, the decaying seaside town, and constant fear of the unknown, that something Lovecraftian might dare to rear its scaly head? We dare hope.

April 1st, 2014, sees the release of not a third installment, but a collection of mini-mysteries set in the ATWQ world, File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents.

[Or is it an April Fool's publishing joke? So suspect, Snicket!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

NBC's Dracula: Episode 3, Goblin Merchant Men.

The question we're faced with at this point is if we'd never seen, or read, or heard the Dracula story, would this show's writing stand on its own? Part of me thinks main players aren't developed or deep enough, but the other part doesn't care because like most viewers, I already can fill in the blanks. Yet the fact that we’re given pause to ask the question’s telling.

And biggest plot oversight episode three presents is why would The Order of the Dragon go through so much trouble to create a being that has supernatural strength & speed, far superior senses, and lives forever if he's just going to turn against them? Same with leaving Van Helsing alive after killing his family. Not as ruthless as a secret cabal that's endured for over a millenia should be. Rather careless, really. And it makes no clear sense other than to set up origins with matching revenge motives for our two antiheros. Writers, your red hands are caught in frame, unfortunately.

Conversely from those same writers, we've been gifted more interesting reimagings: The asylum is Dr. Murray's, Mina's father, not Dr. Seward's asylum, of which there is no Dr. Seward character to speak of. And the more I consider the likewise absence of Mr. Quincey Morris in this version, the more I wonder if making Dracula the Texan Alexander Grayson is kind of a Quincey analogue. Plus if there's no separate Morris, there's no Texan shoving a Bowie knife into Dracula’s chest at the end of the tale ... which means Dracula might yet win this time!

Jonathan Rhys Meyers apparently gets recast as Shirtless Joe, which gives the episode a whole lotta mancandy. Are the unnecessary tribal stripes bookending his elbow & upper sleeve dot patterns really JRM's ink? Either way, enjoy ladies.

Quite fun are the episode’s dominant Lucy & Mina montages & shared moments that sets them up as the best of besties. If (if, since we're not sticking to a direct novel adaptation) things go bad (good?) for Lucy in this telling, it'll hit that much harder. I call BS on the bohemian flaming sugar cube absinthe serving, but liked the tunnel vision and slo-mo dance scene with the twangy modern music, and Mina’s thick flowing curls as the green fairy has its way with her.

[Two orders of cheesecake, please.]

Laurent's secret sentencing by The Order of the Dragon could've been like the startling medieval punishment of the traitors in Anne Rice's Talamasca from Taltos, but the blocking on the gladius thrust was off, which undermined the execution for the viewer. As a partial consequence of this unbelievable element, when lover Daniel shoots himself and suicide note’s Grayson's involvement in both their deaths, we just don't care. We know Daniel's the least sucky fencer, and lost his true manlove, but whatevs. For want of the convincing Roman nail, this whole crux don't matter.

Thanks to clever Team Dracula for killing the seers! Not because they were any sort of threat, but because those two Grace Jones performance school dropouts couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, even making lousy corpses despite really great smashed face prosthesis. And seeing Van Helsing lay down the hammer shows what grim stuff he's made of.

Have discovered why my objection to the show’s oh-so-faux London holds water: It’s shot in Hungary. The studio fabricated street where Dracula picks up Mina, Harker’s new digs, and Mina resides, are all the same set, as carelessly revealed by a ground level 360-degree shot in the Mina & Jonathan let’s-get-married kiss. The directors save money but blow it by not taking the time to redress the set and use different camera setups to hide that fact. But the sweet thing about Hungary as a location is that I believe the cherry blossom tree courtyard is in Castle Corvin (yes, the same of Corvinus family fame from the medieval history involving Vlad Tepes, the Inconnu’s hidden home from VtM, and the Underworld franchise) which makes using this particular location seriously legendary and vampire epicentric.

American Grayson, just like the Transylvanian Count in some film versions, is the unacceptable outsider, intriguing to Victorian society as a curiosity, but never to be given full berth. Also stymied by this, our medically-minded Mina, who would become a female doctor in an age where most women only hope to marry successfully. Grayson’s foreign conventions (pretended & real) & technological progressiveness, challenges Victorian mores, just as Mina does, which in this version makes them a match to root even more for.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

a second marvel-ous norse saga.

Co-opted from Norse lore by writer Stan Lee & artist Jack Kirby in 1962, their comic book Thor was designed as an adversary for The Hulk, but in selecting such a richly backgrounded character their story's potential far outgrew a mere contest-of-strength rivalry with the moody green simpleton in purple stretch pants. And here we are, hundreds of issues and half a century later, treated to the doom-filled thunder of Marvel's second pantheon-based cinematic blockbuster "Thor: The Dark World".

With the withdrawal of Shakespearian first director Kenneth Branagh due to Disney's less-generous shooting timetable, the sequel's helmed by Alan Taylor (episodes of "Game of Thrones"/"Mad Men"/"The Sopranos"), but the main difference being instead of having hammerless Thor humbled among the down home people of enchanting small town New Mexico, we find ourselves on a eye-goggling tour of the multiverse with the fate of not just frost giant populated Jotunheim to consider, but all the Nine Worlds at stake from a long-thought dead re-awakened ancient enemy.

Best performance in the film goes to ... Iceland! Iceland's starkness & desolate beauty easily depicts another world (most recently done in "Prometheus"). From a Thor-centric standpoint, it's appropo to use the nation with the most Thor prefixed place names, and who therefore historically honoured Thor the most. Volcanic rock, ashen landscape, outcroppings sculpted from tectonic violence, dancing aurora borealis, and midnight sun, all work to distance the viewer from the idea of a soundstage or digital environment with Iceland's abundantly exotic amazingness.

Best cameo goes to ... London! (Sorry, loveable Stan Lee.) It's great to see Marvel leave Manhattan as its metropolis of choice and upscale to some well-known London location placement. St. Paul's Cathedral, The London Eye, Greenwich Naval College, Thames River, Charing Cross Station, The Gherkin, and more. Having heroes & villains duke it out to damage some of those precious sites gave "T:TDW" a risk & flinch factor that hits literature's most beloved home, and that's also effectively played for laughs without breaking the tension.

The multiversal itinerary continues with glimpses of some of the other Nine Worlds: a beginning action sequence in Vanaheim, a flashback to Svartalfheim, a later stop through Jotunheim, and alot more of the home of the gods, Asgard, the Realm Eternal. And it's all these settings that lend the film a grandeur & scope worthy of Jack Kirby's world-building legacy.

[Jane Foster, you big Midgardian tourist!]

With any smart sequel the good things are carried forward: knit-bundled intern Darcy Lewis' perfectly timed quips (oh-so-hawt Kat Dennings), awkwardly cute astrophysicist Jane Foster (originally a nurse), the gratuitous Chris Hemsworth beefcake moment, parascientific explications of mythology, trickster Loki trickin', oh-no-we-shouldn't-do-it Asgardian decisionmaking, Idris Elba (BBC's "Luther") as stalwart Heimdall, Odin's sweet massive golden throne Hlidskjalf, all reappear to give us the touchstones we've waited two years to see again.

The first film was rooted in a father-son-son story, because having your dad running the universe as ruler of the gods while you bide your time over millennia for his job is bound to make heirs competitive, but after the first flush of obvious anger is spent, the complexity borrowed from the original Eddaic characters comes into play in this second chapter. The story continues to explore fallout from the Thor/Loki brotherly dynamic explosion in "The Avengers" (an overly bombastic offering which should be edited down to the Thor/Loki bits [and the shawarma eating easter egg because who ever really bought such a poorly mismatched group as The Avengers getting stuck together]), and expands upon an idea that resembles "The Animatrix" (2003) short "Beyond".

Other changes include the role of dashing Fandral being recast from Josh Dallas to Zachary Levi due to Dallas' obligations to "Once Upon a Time", energy & modern-style projectile weapons getting put up against the Asgardians' melee ones, an odd underused cameo from character actress Alice Krige (The Borg Queen from "ST: First Contact") as healing goddess Eir, and also underused Tony Curran (Marcus Corvinus of "Underworld: Evolution") as Odin's father Bor.

By contrast Rene Russo as Frigga gets a much longer turn as more than a foil for Anthony Hopkins' Odin and delivers a divine performance.

"T:TDW" presents some of the most striking design work, most notably an illuminated book whose designs animate on the pages themselves (with "The Secret of Kells" style but cooler since it's on a live action prop, or bearing resemblance to the limited but potent storytelling technique in a Marvel motion comic, such as "Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers" [which is in itself a really, really awesome Loki setpiece story]).

[Or like The Diamond Age's "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"!]

And there's the floating Jelling knotwork chandeliers which rotate & glow in Asgard that were totally golden, beautiful, and made you wish you could decorate with them.

Hearkening back to some 1960s film intros & outros, there were gorgeously painted end credits, meant to remind us that all of this visual richness originally came from a tradition of 1960s illustration.

Best of all "T:TDW" continues to fill in Marvel's mythological blanks in the Asgardian storyline, while still leaving some open for a definite trilogy in the making. Hail to the Hammer for "Thor 3"!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

you aren't asking the right questions.

Pedantic. Indulgent. Self-referential.

And for those you who still think from the above I'm going to bash Lemony Snicket's latest series "All the Wrong Questions", think again. No, these are the exact qualities we've missed since the conclusion of "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" ended with its 13th (really 15th if we include the Autobiography & companion Beatrice Letters) book from 2006.

A very gradual first in a quartet prequel, our Mr. Snicket begins by relating his field apprenticeship at a mere 13 years old for an unnamed secret society and his subsequent unwilling involvement in a Maltese Falcon style noir. And since Who Could That Be At This Hour's a prequel, one doesn't have to have read ASOUE to join in on the mystery. As with most noir, we start with the water well above our heads in the deep end of the pool, everything being totally suspect as it most likely isn't what it seems, and you spend the time playing catch up and treading the rising level of danger along with our protagonist. Like ASOUE's 13 chapters per book, this volume ticks its tale off with that identical unlucky structure.

The same great voice & style of Mr Snicket, full of zingers & payoffs, plus the seemingly truthful obtuseness of the world and his stymied frustration at seeing it all too clearly while no one else around him does, contextualizes our baffled onrush into the maw of unseen dark doings. (Yes, my Gothics, this one's so for you.) It's the classic children's lit & young adult (which usually means "dumbed down mediocrity for the passably literate", but which instead here means "a gameful sophistication at play") backdrop trope of the incompetent adults versus the emotionally perceptive youths. That dichotomy isn't just used but made painfully self-aware in our narrator to win our empathy as readers, and recalls the ancient child in us all.

With great similes like "hands as soft as old lettuce" or "hair so black it made the night look pale", one imagines Snicket's pen dancing from line to skillful line in poetic gran jetes of associative thought.

A constant earmark of the ASOUE was presenting the vocab, and it's present here:

"'What does kowtowing mean?'

'To behave in an obsequious manner.'

'I could play this game all night, Mr. Snicket. What does obsequious mean?'"

Or, more reflexively:

"He's a terrible man. He's despicable. He's loathsome, a word here which means terrible and despicable."

(Lexical boomerang to yo' face!)

[Ooh, bats & hair ribbons! You know you like them!]

Brett Helquist's art is absent, instead using black & white solids paneled with blue by Seth (no last name? Tres mystérieux!). While Seth has great graphic design sensibilities that remind one of Jaime Hernandez' work, one misses the pairing with Helquist's more line driven tension, which takes some cues from Edward Gorey. But that's apples & oranges, fruits here which aren't really fruits but mild discomfort at an unanticipated change.

[Hemlock Tearoom! You kill me, Snicket! *drinkee drinkee* *erk!*]

The legitimate critique of Mr. Snicket's offerings is that the plot never wraps up completely, that even if we were asking all the right questions, he wouldn't provide all the answers, right or otherwise. We suspect that even he doesn't have them, that the voice and flavour of his characters and environs are more mood and anxiety driven than clearly causal or sensibly linear, and if the story's final destination were to deliver complete solutions those facts might ultimately undermine any emotional resolution the climax delivers. Still, that really does leave one wanting. (Yes, I wrote a more angsty than thankful letter to our author, a.k.a. Daniel Handler, enumerating my many inquiries when I'd finished the 2,000+ pages [!] of ASOUE, but maybe I wasn't asking the right questions ... .) Perhaps, like life, it isn't ever meant to give up all its infinite mysteries. (Or he's totally mucking about at our expense? 'Fess up, Snicket!)

[The second ATWQ installment, When Did You See Her Last?, came out October 2013, and I'm sticking it in my shopping cart right now.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.