Reviews

A short review of Windows 8: 7 out of 10 tiny Bill Gates

I took advantage of the $15 upgrade for Windows 8 back in October thinking it was cheap enough that if I had any regrets I could just go back to Windows 7 and write off the experience as the equivalent of a lunch in a new restaurant I’d not go back to.

Some four months later I’m willing to say the restaurant wasn’t too bad but the presentation of the menu and dessert could use a little work.

The good things about Windows 8:

  • I was able to upgrade my existing Windows 7 installation on my SSD quickly and without issue. The whole thing was up and running in less than half an hour.
  • It works fast and has been extremely stable.
  • Task Manager is vastly improved and startup items are now easily accessible instead of being tucked away in msconfig.exe.
  • Some of the Metro* apps are decent, like the PDF reader and weather. Live tiles can be handy especially if you spend a lot of time on the Start screen (or pin apps — see the ‘bad things’ section below for more).
  • Windows Defender now does everything MS Security Essentials did, so there’s integrated anti-virus right from the start.
  • The right-click in the bottom-left corner is handy for accessing items like Control Panel, Device Manager and an admin command prompt.
  • The desktop is pretty much the same as the one we know and love in Win7 but with lots of small refinements in dialogs for common tasks like copying files.
  • The flat UI is kind of nice in how it gets out of the way.

The bad things about Windows 8:

  • Some things don’t seem to work right. I never get notified for Windows Updates, despite having set it up to alert me, so I have to look for them myself, even if they are critical security fixes.
  • File History, which backs up user data, will appear in Action Center when the drive needs to be reconnected but Action Center never makes itself visible, even when it has multiple alerts.
  • Discoverability is poor. You get shown a few gestures while the OS is installing but after that you are left to bumble around trying to figure out how to access features. A lot of it is not intuitive (try snapping two apps onto the same screen without reading how to do it first–assuming you even knew it was possible to begin with). Much of the potential of Windows 8 is hidden away and items can be difficult to find even if you know they exist.
  • The Start screen is okay as a replacement for the Start menu but it’s limited in odd ways, probably as a compromise for working with tablets. Re-ordering tiles is possible but not very flexible and tiles only come in two sizes. The All Apps view is a cluttered mess with no easy way to modify it.
  • Customization in general is poor. A lot of the UI design is ‘like it or lump it’.
  • I miss the dedicated links to Documents, Pictures, etc. that appeared in the Start menu. In terms of actual clicks it’s still the same but having to go to a different screen feels more cumbersome. You can bring these dedicated folders up by starting File Explorer but it still feels inelegant. I’d at least like to pin shortcuts to these folders on the taskbar but it can only be done on the Start screen. Boo.
  • You get one choice for window titles: black. If you don’t like it, too bad. If you selected a dark border color for your windows, it’s even worse, as those window titles will now be illegible. I’m not sure why this can’t be customized.
  • Most of the included apps (mail, photos, etc.) are half-baked and feature-poor.
  • The store (equivalent to Google Play or Apple’s App Store) has a fairly small selection and is missing some fairly big name apps. On a desktop machine this isn’t as big a deal because if you want Facebook, you can just hit the website. On a tablet this is more of an issue.

I spend nearly all of my time in the desktop away from the Metro* interface (apart from starting programs and occasionally checking the weather or something) and here the experience is so similar to Windows 7 but with (mostly) improvements I don’t regret making the switch to Windows 8. On the other hand if I was forced back to using Windows 7 it wouldn’t feel like a significant downgrade, either, nothing like going back to, say, Windows XP or even Vista.

Microsoft needs to provide a better experience on the Metro* side of things for (desktop) PC users, though. I doubt we’ll see much of that coming for Windows 8 but I am curious to see how Windows 9 will evolve. I suspect it will either better integrate the disparate Metro and desktop elements or further move away from the desktop in favor of a more touch-based experience.

In all I rate Windows 8  a score of 7 out of 10 tiny Bill Gates.

 

* it’s not officially called Metro anymore but much like Kleenex, that battle has been lost.

Four VQFF reviews

Last week I went to four films at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and as one might expect, it was a mixed bag (or fruit basket, if you prefer). Below are my reviews.

Ciao

Here’s the description from the VQFF website: “When Jeff’s lifelong best friend Mark dies, he is left in charge of handling Mark’s possessions and tying up loose ends. Through a trail of Mark’s email correspondence, Jeff learns of Mark’s secret online romance with Andrea, a handsome Italian who is scheduled to visit the United States and meet Mark for the first time. With the trip already booked, Andrea decides to come anyway and learn more about his recently departed friend. In the midst of grieving, these two strangers share a single night of intimate conversation, good old American country music and sexual tension that leads to perhaps what is the most tender (yet still steamy) brief encounter ever portrayed in queer cinema.”

And my take: The premise is interesting but the execution is thwarted by stiff acting and a script filled with wooden dialogue and lots of not much happening. There are three main characters: Jeff, his adopted Asian sister and Andrea, the man from Italy. Jeff is an earnest but bland character and Adam Neal Smith’s portrayal isn’t bad per se, he just shows no real emotion until the very end and I suppose it’s meant to be seen as a cathartic release but it falls flat instead. Alessandro Calza fares better, perhaps because he can hide behind the facade of a character handling a non-native language. The sister has some amusing lines but again the acting feels rather wooden. As the tone is consistent across all actors, I wonder if it may have been an issue with the director’s handling of them.

Another negative was not that the film was low budget but that it didn’t acknowledge that and work within its limitations. There is a scene with Jeff and Andrea driving to the cemetery and apparently the production could not afford to have the car towed on a trailer. Instead the camera is placed in the backseat. While Calza is seen in profile while chatting, Smith never looks anywhere except at the road — which is understandable because he is actually driving — but as a result you never see his face for the entire scene. Why not shoot the scene with them walking in the cemetery instead or somehow frame it so you could properly see the actors? There were also a series of long framed shots or tracking shots of the city skyline at night that didn’t serve any purpose but to pad out the film’s length.

Perhaps the highlight of the film came during that “brief encounter”. When Jeff and Andrea started kissing some guy in the audience began applauding loudly, as if this heralded a great moment in gay cinema or something. Definitely the best laugh in the movie. 🙂

The Coast is Queer

“This year’s local shorts program could have been renamed The Coast is Brave and Outrageous due to the bold and shameless stories, like lisa g’s look at women in Riverview Mental Hospital in the 1940s and Clark Nikolai’s exploration of foreskin ‘docking’.”

My take: This is a collection of 13 shorts. I’ll highlight the ones I found most memorable (for better or for worse). Asylum is a surprisingly sympathetic look at the long-closed Riverview mental facility narrated by a former staff member, ending with a “twist” as a lesbian inmate checks out with one of the female staff, a rather surprising event during the 1940s. Another tale set in the 1940s (1948) is Caught, a silent look at two high school students — one a member of the drama club, the other a Bible group — whose innocent sleepover ends up being not so innocent. This is a wistful and well-shot drama, combining moments of comedy with the crushing pain of a love — and life — denied. Withchrave struck me as a pointless visual exercise, showing “witches” in various states of dress and undress cavorting, smoking and doing “witchy” stuff. Did I need to see a full frontal shot of a nude woman peeing? No, I didn’t. But hey, one more thing to scratch off the list of “things I never planned on seeing but saw anyway”. I guess this film was meant to evoke a feeling of sensuality or something so it’s perhaps not surprising that it didn’t click with me.

Galactic Docking Company was a rather randy but very funny short that combined stock NASA footage (mainly from Mission Control) with dockings involving rockets and love rockets, if you know what I mean. The combination of music and perfectly timed editing showing the reactions of the various NASA engineers made this a bawdy ol’ good time. Swans was essentially penis worship set to music that I found uninteresting despite being a personal fan of the subject. The lowlight of the collection was Cindy Doll. Before the shorts began, a number of directors spoke about their films and the director of Cindy Doll warned that her piece tackled a taboo subject and it might offend or make people uncomfortable. She invited people to discuss the film with her afterward. I correctly pegged it as a take on child abuse before it started. The film consisted of the director naked in a bathtub with the titular Cindy Doll. As the horrors of child abuse were depicted with the doll being stripped and spanked among other things, loud, discordant noises would occasionally blare out for some kind of effect (maybe this was the uncomfortable part the director referenced, as my ears were not experiencing what I would call pleasure). The director would regularly begin pleasuring herself with the doll, looking up at the camera with (guilty?) eyes. Um, symbolism! Maybe. The whole thing came off as self-indulgent twaddle. The only part that offended me was knowing I’d not get back the time I’d spent watching it. Here’s my advice: If you were abused as a child, see a therapist, don’t make a short film about it.

I’ll end with the highlight of the show, Coffee. This was one of the few professionally-shot pieces (several were done specifically for a Super 8 competition or by high school students as part of an anti-homophobia campaign — and those were well-done for what they were). The premise is simple — a lesbian and gay friend are having coffee at a cafe and it quickly becomes apparent that the woman’s recent failed relationship has pushed her off the deep end, as she has become obsessed with Kate Walsh from “Grey’s Anatomy”. The writing is sharp and funny and the two actors deliver their lines with expert timing. It was inspiring enough to make me want to finish “The Famous Polka”. It’s one of 10 different vignettes culled from a longer piece and can be viewed here. Highly recommended.

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People

“Film theorists claim that the zombie genre is a form of social commentary, relevant to our consumerist and apathetic present times. If so, then what comment does Bruce LaBruce make with his gay zombie flick? Attack the heteronormative establishment? Fuck your brains out (then eat them)? Whatever social messages might be gleaned from LaBruce’s work, the Canadian director brings us a perverse and satirical cinematic original.

Otto is a young neo-Goth loner and pretty hot for a dead guy. Wandering the streets of Berlin, Otto stumbles upon a casting call for a zombie film. After seeing his half-hearted audition, radical lesbian filmmaker Medea Yarn not only becomes convinced that Otto will be the next big underground movie star, but forces the lead actor, Fritz, to take Otto home with him. While Medea and Fritz struggle to finish their film, Otto searches for the human beneath the zombie.”

This was both a send-up and an affectionate (?) homage to zombie movies, gay porn and pretentious art films. Shot in Germany with a local cast, Otto features plenty of gore (mostly disembowelment and entrails, as one would expect in a zombie film), fleeting but explicit sex scenes and at times a hilarious take on the self-styled film auteur personified by Medea as she works to finish her underfunded “masterpiece”, “Up With Dead People”, a film chronicling the rise of gay zombies. Into this comes Otto, who fails to convince the director that he is in fact an actual zombie but gets cast in the lead role, anyway.

The film starts rather slowly and for the first 20 minutes or so felt more like a clumsy homage to art films than anything else but when the various characters intersect it pulls together and the rest of the ride is pretty enjoyable. There’s a graphic scene of zombie penetration that will likely put you off your lunch for a week or so and a sex orgy that is the film-within-a-film’s conclusion also has some very naughty bits that, while enticing, seemed gratuitous in the given context. I found the ending a bit confusing as it strongly suggests Otto is no longer a zombie, then seems to revert him back to a more undead state. As expected, the film’s ending is not exactly happy but appropriate. The actress that played Medea was probably my favorite, if only because she was so appropriately over-the-top with her views on the terrible capitalist society she is part of. She also gives a small girl eating chocolate the what-for in what may have been the film’s funniest moment.

Boycrazy

“Everywhere I go there’s a guy to catch my eye. It makes me kinda crazy, like I’m back in junior high.” Is Corey—the dreamy lead in Boycrazy—singing your song? If so, there are plenty of guys to catch your eye in this lineup of men’s short films.

Serving up the first piece of eye candy is Zak, an underappreciated topless waiter in Dinx. Filmmaker Michael Mew treats us to some homegrown guys, co-starring local drag diva Symone, in his new science fiction romance Q-Case. A chorus line of “show bears” dances in King County. And the quirky musical Boycrazy explores the pros and cons of single life.”

As noted above, this was four short films. Dinx features a cute and short protagonist who seems to suffer a dimensional rift that takes him back to his childhood while still dressed as a topless waiter. Much like that character, this film was cute and short, amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny. Q-Case is a parody of the X-Files with a definite queer twist. Perhaps not surprisingly, the central premise centers around anal probes. This was a solid effort, although the acting of several of the characters was leaning more toward the amateur side. The love interest of the alien/clone handled his part well and reacted perfectly to his precious shoe collection getting vaporized. I admit I also enjoyed the idea of the Mulder character getting a giant black drag queen as his temporary partner and voice of reason. King County is a series of scenes centering around a theater group auditioning actors for movies turned into stage musicals. Among some of the entries: Mommie Dearest, Fame (with bears) and most hilariously, a musical version of Top Gun featuring “butch lesbians” that has Maverick and Goose (or was it Ice?) singing and dancing on the flight deck. The actress playing Maverick looked similar enough to Tom Cruise to be somewhat disturbing. The final and longest piece was Boycrazy, featuring James May, an actor who could be Neil Patrick Harris’s younger brother. This is a musical about dating and relationships (online and otherwise) and is done in a style very similar to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The singing is uniformly excellent and the dance numbers, though not flashy, are energetic, as is the film as a whole. I really enjoyed this funny and sometimes insightful look at the trials and tribulations of men dating men — and not just because I have gone through some of my own recently (none set to music, alas).

Short story reviews

I like short stories.

Among my many books, you’ll find a pile of short story collections and anthologies. I’ve just added two more today–Flights Volume 2 and 20th Century Ghosts, a collection from Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. Because I suck at recalling details of short stories later on (I’m good with the broad strokes but always amazed by people who can recall the most subtle of storytelling nuances years later) I thought I’d start offering mini-reviews of short stories as I read them.

The current collection I’m working through is called Dark Delicacies. It is modestly sub-titled “Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers.”

Ray Bradbury, “The Reincarnate”. I actually read this story months ago and don’t recall the details (see what I mean?) but leafing through it quickly, it’s written in second person, so everything is about you. You talk to her, you go there, you do this. I have never liked the second person POV for fiction, it just rings wrong, as if the story is being dictated instead of simply unfolding for you. Sorry, Ray!

Lisa Morton, “Black Mill Cove”. A straightforward suspense tale in which a man and wife go camping and have an argument. The man heads off to the cove in the title to catch some abalone, hoping a full haul will help patch things over with his wife. As he threads his way into the difficult-to-reach tide pools, he comes across what he thinks are the remains of a shark attack. It turns out to be more sinister than that and he faces a life or death struggle before the twist ending. No spoilers here but suffice to say this is a nicely presented tale o’ terror.

Whitley Strieber, “Kaddash”. A heavy-handed satire that imagines an alternate America after “Obliteration Day” in which a nuclear attack strikes Washington, leading the country to a full conversion into a Christian theocracy. The main character is a warden at a Texas prison who oversees executions of secular humanists and other troublemakers. This is completely over-the-top stuff and is presented as such knowingly, contrasting the ultra-religious fervor of the populace against the banalities of everyday life–shopping at Walmart, rooting for the high school football team. It’s a serviceable piece but I felt it could have been funnier and still made its point. Still, it had Fox paying $11 million to broadcast executions, so there’s that.

Robert Steven Rhine, “The Seer”. This is a classic Twlight Zone tale, complete with twist ending in which a man can foresee the (inevitably) terrible ways people will die, including his own. The story is sad and funny and there is some suspense in seeing whether the protagonist can cheat his own fate.

D. Lynn Smith, “The Fall”. A story told in the present tense about a boy and his family who are apparently being attacked or hunted by demon-like creatures that can assume human form. This one felt a bit rote to me and features people behaving in ways that serve the plot but are not necessarily believable–a big pet peeve of mine. The ending is especially unsatisfying as the boy simply does not act in a way that has been credibly built up prior.

F. Paul Wilson, “Part of the Game”. An extremely racist cop threatens to bring down a horde of detectives on the illicit activites in Chinatown unless he gets a 50% cut of the illegal gambling revenue. “The Mandarin”, through the haltingly-spoken English of his representative, rejects the threat and the cop finds himself sleeping with a very poisonous–and pregnant–millipede. As the poison begins working through his system, the cop finds himself indeed “part of the game.” The ending is nicely satisfying, though I felt the racism was depicted in a cartoonish manner that was unnecessary.

Roberta Lannes, “The Bandit of Sanity”. I didn’t care for the title of the story, since the presumed “bandit” doesn’t really come off like one. A well-heeled psychiatrist begins to show symptoms of what he first thinks is some kind of mental disorder, possibly even multiple personalities, leading to a Jekyll and Hyde-like life. As he realizes an old case has literally come back to haunt him, the story works toward a reasonably predictable conclusion. This is not really a bad thing, as it works. My biggest complaint is how brand names are thrown around like excerpts from a James Patterson novel, as if we need them as reminders of how successful the guy is. Yes, he has Donghia chair. Oh, look, he’s sitting in his Donghia chair again and has Hugo Boss slacks. WE GET IT.

Brian Lumley, “My Thing Friday”. The lone survivor of a spaceship crash discovers he is on a planet inhabited by a group of interlinked and intelligent species he comes to call The Pinks. Some are winged, some are quadrapeds, some are biped and more humanoid. They have a great reverence toward the dead and the survivor’s journal chronicles his efforts to understand them, in particular, one that seems to follow him around as he ekes out a living on this strange world. Things turn stranger indeed as he better understands The Pinks. I quite liked this one. Told in the first person, Lumley captures a whimsical tone that remains believable, right to the disturbing finale.

Nancy Holder, “Out Twelve-Steppin’, Summer of AA”. A pair of middle-aged rock stars who happen to be cannibals try to “go straight” by attending AA. Despite the premise, it’s not quite as funny as it sounds and the ending is a bit left field. Still, a breezy read.