Giulio Leoni, The Third Heaven (2004).

Good Reads meta-data is 321 pages, rated 2.82 by 800 litizens.

Genre: Krimi; Species: Historical period.

DNA: Italian; Florentine.

Verdict:  Nicely done.

Tagline:  Hell is right here, right now. 

June in the year of 1300, Durante Alighieri, who prefers to be known as Dante, is one of the six Priors who serve a two-month term of office, rather like a city council with executive powers.  He is pleased with this preferment until the chief of the guard, whom he regards as a dolt (and who regards him as a puffed up popinjay) asks him to attend a crime scene in a long-abandoned church.  As he picks his way through the rubble in the city streets left by the latest battle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante ponders on the cesspool that Florence is sliding into.  

At the church he finds a talented mosaic artist who has been murdered and mutilated.  He is tempted to let the Guard deal with the crime the way he usually does: arrest the nearest beggar and torture him into confessing: Case closed. Policing has never changed it seems. But there are intellectual puzzles in this case and Dante pursues them.

Then there is a strange conclave in a sleazy tavern of men who claim to be founding a studium in Florence, that is, a university.  Dante seeks their company and this accomplished poet is most welcome, but….  Is all as it seems? Or is it not.  Place your bets!

It is a time when failed crusades to the holy land have undermined many verities. Moreover, anyone who has been to the East is tainted. There is a prologue that provides that orientation.  

Then there are rumours that an heir to the Holy Roman emperor yet lives and that makes the ever so corrupt Pope worry.  Such an heir might threaten the Pope’s hold on the throne.  His reputation for incompetence was only bested by his reputation for greed, gluttony, and rapine.  Now who does that remind me of?  

Having only recently listened to Dante’s Inferno on my foot patrols I noticed many incidents in this novel that recall passages in it.  According to our author then, Dante found much of Hell on the streets and byways of Florence. Nicely done that. These references are codified in an afterword I discovered when I got there.   

I also savoured the portrayal of the other priors, who like the prestige of the assignment, but are loath to do any of the work that is supposed to go with it. I could not help but recall all those university colleagues who festooned their CVs with every committee assignment they ever had, and laboured to avoid doing any of the committee’s work, mainly by never attending meetings.

Alien Weekend (2024)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1h and 34m, rated 5.4 by 184 cineastes. 

Genre: SyFY; Species: Shaggy Dog.  

DNA: TarHeels (NZ Sons)

Verdict: Homage to Paul (2011).

Tagline: ‘Yes, Ma’am…Sheriff!’

Four women in their early twenties have a girls’ night out that turns out to be (inter)stellar when Dave crashes to Earth. Oops! 

Budget zero and imagination galore combine in a diverting 90 minutes.  Followed by Zombie Repellent (2025), runtime 1h 17m, rated 4.7 by 258 spoilsports. George Romero move over. It’s a cackle! 

Chamber Music dramedy!

Fullt hús (2024) Grand Finale

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 24m, rated 6.5 by 177 cineastes.  

Genre: Comedy.

DNA: Iceland.

Verdict: Four hoots and one holler!

Tagline: Yin and Yang.

Reykjavík’s only chamber orchestra is going down the fiscal drain.  Its last diehard six members often outnumber the paying customers in the decaying concert hall it owns.  In addition to the musicians there is a stage manager cum electrician-handyman and a makeup artist who also does the tea and sweeps up. These eight depend on an Arts Council grant to keep up the façade of the theatre and the orchestra, but….  Yes the budget cutters are at it again. Around the world they have learned that cutting education and arts is easy and has little political blowback.  

The orchestra’s leader does not take no for an answer but that is still the answer.  No more Icy krónas are coming from the 400,000 taxlings who prefer rugby.  Accordingly, it is almost too good to be true when the one and only world-famous cellist born of Iceland announces in Tokyo that he is leaving the world stage to return home. Instantly Leader makes full frontal contact and they agree to a gala return performance.    

Yep, if it seems almost too good to be true, then in cinema it surely and certainly is. This cellist’s music is yang but he is yin: He makes beautiful music and is a scumbag.  Oh well, the show must go on, and the locals grin and bare it, literally in some cases.  All of that was predictable, but then….the unpredictable starts happening and goes on.  Delicious irony ensues when the puppeteer arrives with her staple gun. See it to believe it. Laughter follows. Much.

Not sure what to make of the implicit message though.  Does the music critic labour under cultural cringe so that nothing local can be good?  If an audience expects beautiful music then is that what it hears? Was the orchestra that good all along? Or did the challenge of working with a totemic figure bring out the best in them, and unite them (in crime)?  Also unresolved was the raised eyebrow of the chief of police.  

P.S. Stay in your seat for the coda!  

***

We saw it at the Scandinavian film festival aptly called ‘Go North’ in Leichhardt at the very comfortable Palace cinema. It started on time, the preliminary adverts were not nearly as numbing as they usually are at the Dendy Newtown nor were there any Hollywood kapow previews, and it ended without a fuss.  These facts contrast with the experience to the Czech and Slovak film Festival screening we attended a few months ago at the Dendy that started very late, featured the worst of Val Morgan advertising (!) followed by trailers galore, and had a long tail-end.  On the other hand the Czech and Slovak session seemed more a community event while the Scandinavian one felt like an advertising campaign.

C(atherine) L Moore and Henry Kuttner, Earth’s Last Citadel (1 January 1943). 

Good Reads meta-data is 146 pages, rated 3.11 by 193 litizens

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Kept me guessing.

Tagline: ‘Gulp!’

The briefings for the 1942 Operation Torch included everything but an encounter with an alien or a trip in its craft (forward a billion years or so in time).  Two Allied agents on a secret mission behind enemy lines in Tunisia meet two Germans on a similar quest but before they can kill each other and be done with it by page 10, there is that presence against which they, hesitantly combine forces.

It is the usual suspects in this motley crew, a Scots scientist, an upper-lip-stiffed Brit, a crazed Nasty, and a mercenary woman.  When they emerge from the craft they find a strange old world, and the strangeness is very well portrayed, as is the porcelain living doll they find there.  

Adventures follow. What they needed was Captain Future and the three Future Men (tricky though because none of the latter trio is a man).

Turns out ’47’ was the right answer. ‘729’ was a close second.

Kuttner and Moore

Both the aberrant strangeness of the alien and the old world are the best parts of the book.  I found it intriguing and diverting for a few hours. Though there were two women – one wily and one porcelain – in the story, both are ciphers, and disappear in the last two acts.  

The date 1 January refers to the publication of the first episode in a serial form of the novel only a few months after Operation Torch. 

Harry Martinson, Aniara (1956).

Genre: Sy Fy: Species: Epic poem; subspecies: Blank verse. 

Good Reads meta-data is 157 pages, rated 3.85 by 3001 litizens. 

DNA: Sweden.

Verdict: 47.  

Tagline: Helvetet är andra människor.  (Hell is other people.)

This epic poem is the basis of an opera, and four films. Whew!  When the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 this volume was named as the second most important book published in Swedish. Double whew! The only Nobel Prize for SyFy, apart from those in economics.

What’s the story then?

Aniara, a routine shuttle carrying 8,000 people, lifts off for Mars from a despoiled Earth.  (‘I told you so,’ said Greta, again.) It is a three-week flight aboard this Volvo ferry with its casino, IKEA shopping maze, theatres, and other mod cons with 2000 rooms, each with an en suite bathroom(?).  Millions have taken this ride before.  But hardly has this one left Earth orbit for the jaunt when the unimaginative writer’s friend, a meteor shower, strikes.  The contractor who built Aniara did not anticipate such an occurrence and the ship is damaged. Like the mighty KM Bismarck, the Aniara’s rudder is mangled and the craft cannot be steered.  Instead it is thrown well off course toward the light-centuries distant Lyra constellation.

Pippi Longstocking, Max von Sydow’s knight, Inspector Beck, Björn Börg, Olof Palmé, Greta (not you know whom) Garbo, and other Swedish stereotypes are on board. The crew attempts repairs without success; nor is there is any emergency road service from Volvo for Aniara.  These 8000 are now condemned to live out their lives, as are their descendants, within this metallic shell on the way to Lyra where they will never arrive (because the ship itself will wither en route into a Marie Celeste hulk).  What meaning is there in this existential crisis?  See above.

(Was this the basis for StarLost in 1973.  Hope not. But it is a trope in a lot of SyFy before and after 1956 – the ark as coffin.)

In addition to all the other short term diversions the ferry has Mima with its minder.  What is Mima?  Mima is an AI as conceived in 1956. It is referred to in the same casual I might refer to my iMac, and so I can only guess what it is.  Mima is there to inform, entertain, educate, and pacify passengers during the short trip to Mars. It has a repository of tapes, both video and audio, but it also receives and intercepts transmissions from the ether, including from Earth. Intended to function mostly as a diversion for three weeks at a time, when left on continuously for the years of this journey it becomes increasingly self-conscious, and it is aware of the situation. It is sentient enough to realise the hopeless situation even as it itself wears out, those flash drives and circuit boards are not immortal, and Mima is sentient enough to feel dread of the darkness to come.  The minder became the central character in the two film versions I have seen.  

So for the first few months or even years Mima keeps up a happy face, but like Grock the clown Mima grows melancholy as it ages and becomes decrepit. The CDs wear out from repeated spins.  It receives incomprehensible transmissions, perhaps from alien beings. It loses contact with dying Earth long before all that.  

(Note to self: turn off Dexter, iMac, before it becomes sentient.)

Mima mirrors the hopes of the passengers and as this robot loses hope, so do they, or vice versa.  On board the population re-enacts much of the stupidity of life on Earth. There is wasteful use of resources that seem to be infinite on the Aniara.  Salvation cults come and go. Orange demigods strut and fret. First there is unlimited orgy followed by celibacy. Human sacrifice was a short-lived fad. (Get it?) Through it all the Aniara drifts on.  

***

Harry Martinson

It is partly a take on a common Cold War setting of mixed group of survivors of a nuclear war, having to deal with each other. e.g., Five (1951), Day the World Ended (1955), On the Beach (1959), This is not a Test (1962), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), and many more.  This trope has since been done to death and well past that in the Post-Apocalyptic genre that has exploded in recent times.  But in this case not one of the passengers is a distinctive personalities. 

Oh hum…zzz.

Sto let tomu vperyod (2024) Guest from the Future 

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2h and 21m, rated 6.0 by 1,300 cineastes.  

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Russia.

Verdict: Meh. 

Tagline: CGIs UFC it out.  

Whatever the original idea was it is buried under the CGI slugfest.  The players are appealing in different ways, but, of course, and once again, Alexander Petrov steals the show as a drooling madman. 

Big budget cinematography and CGI gets attention which then wanes as the story dissipates.  Though many will find a welcome confirmation that the high school physics teacher of infamy was an alien all along! I know I did.  

Atta girl!

Worm Radio (2020)  

IMDb mea-data is 15m rated 6.7 by 11 cineastes.

Genre: SyFy; Species: DUST.

DNA: USA.

Verdict: Atta girl. 

Tagline: She won’t quit. 

A charming short in which a very determined tweenager makes it happen.  

An object lesson in making something out of nothing. One writer/director and one player plus an ramshackle station wagon and a barn make the magic happen.    

Involuntary Witness (2002) by Gianrico Carofiglio

Good Reads meta-data is 274 pages, rated 3.90 by 7130 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Italy

Verdict: Nolo contendere.

Tagline:  Proving what might not have happened. (Yeah, not punchy.) 

When a young boy is found dead near a beach resort one of the usual suspects is arrested and fitted to the crime. Being a Senegalese peddler, the racial stereotypes in the court of public opinion have him convicted before the handcuffs go on.

Hero reluctantly gets involuntarily involved and slowly picks apart the circumstantial case against Peddler.  There is much insider detail about the judiciary, the judicial system, and policing in Bari, way down south.  The telling is smooth and packed with asides into the humanity of all involved, though mostly that of the lawyer, though not of the police officers who do have a cardboard quality.  

The main events are in the court room where Hero casts doubt on the certainties of the prosecution. The means by which that is done is fascinating, a seminar in defence by obfuscation.  There is a very great deal of talk. One defence summation is timed at more than two-hours.  Could the judges, let alone a jury, cope with that much exposition?  (Many social-psychology experiments conclude that a person’s attention span is no more than 20 minutes at a time.) They must have been made of stern stuff and elastic bladders because I am sure students could not withstand a 2 1/2 passive lecture. 

Along the way we learn much about the lawyer, his life, his loves, his habits, his car…[TMI].  On the other hand we learn only a little about the Senegalese peddler, apart from the facts that he is a legal immigrant, multi-lingual, and – spoiler – maybe innocent of the alleged crime.  That is another thing we do not learn, who committed the crime, how, and why. This story does not follow that Perry Mason trope, that the best way to prove a client innocent is to find the guilty party.  

I said ‘maybe’ above because I was not quite sure what I was supposed to think. Nor was I sure whether the police officers’ superficial effort was (1) to calm public opinion with a quick arrest or (2) if they really believed he was guilty, but (3) were too lazy to make a proper investigation, (4) because his being black was sufficient for conviction.  Whoops there I go again tying myself into knots over nothing. 

Also under the heading of unknown is what lawyer had to say to his ex-wife that was so important.  OK, may I blinked.  

Gianrico Carofiglio

This is the first in a series by the author, a retired judge who managed a number of mafia trials, and lived to write these tales unlike some others.  Both are major achievements.  

Holy cow! Yep.

Holy Moses (2018)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 15m, rated 5.7 by 182 cineastes.  

Genre: Unknown.

DNA: Northern Ireland / West Texas!

Verdict: Intriguing!

Tagline: Holy cow!

An Irish nun confesses her original sin, and then goes to work in a snowy field with a calf, which promptly vanishes. Poof! Cut away twenty-five years later to the desiccated scrubland of West Texas to see  there, in an empty roadside diner, a short-order cook cleaning a stove who hears a thump behind him, and turns to see…[hint, not a customer for an early coffee.]

But wait there is more after he telephones the sheriff and wanders around in a daze.  

The film is two halves joined by the calf, well that is the continuity.  I found it mysterious and compelling, perhaps, due to the urgency of the players, but there was no resolution. It seems from the IMDb there has been no further development, so having set it up, the producers didn’t know what to do with it, or could not swing the finance to do what they had in mind. Tant pis.  

Oh, did I mention the burning bush?  Or the man in the dog collar?

L’ultimo sole della notte (2017)

L’ultimo sole della notte (2017) The Last Sun of the Night.

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 42m, rated 6.6 by 52 cineastes.

Genre: SyFy.

DNA: Italian.

Verdict: S-l-o-w.  V-e-r-y.

Tagline: oh hum.

In the near future a glum young man with designer fuzz goes about his dreary business in a barren cityscape. His blank look never changes. Italy is under siege both within as well as from without.  He lives alone in Safe Zone 13 (his wife is in Brazil on business and can’t return because of the crises) and we see only two other residents and hear references to a few more unseen.

We learn this much by flashbacks that are poorly sign posted and confusing as the characters wear the same clothes and look the same in the flashback past as the current present. Don’t film school schools teach techniques to signal this distinction?  

No, I never did understand the title. What some of it did was to bring to mind the last days of Salò Republic late 1944 or the Hot Autumn of the so-called Red Brigades of 1969.

Oh, and I would hardly call it SyFy but the IMDb does.  It is a fiction set in an alternative present.