Reviews

Netflix review: ‘The Valhalla Murders’

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I must have enjoyed Netflix’s The Valhalla Murders, which I discussed last night in somewhat acerbic terms. It’s actually pretty good of its kind, though probably not a good choice for our audience here.

This Icelandic production centers on Kata, a Reykjavik police detective, played by Nina Dögg Fillipusdottir. She is, as will surprise nobody, a Plucky Single Mother. However, she does vary from the standard template by being a rather bad mother in important respects. She also has the expected conflicts with her superiors at work, but, less expectedly, her main oppressor is another woman. When a couple of people are found murdered with multiple knife wounds, her superiors don’t think she and her team are up to the challenge. Serial murders are pretty rare in Iceland. So they decide to call in an expert from Norway.

This expert is Arnar, played by Björn Thors. He’s actually a Reykjavik native, but he broke sharply with his family some time back and had no wish to return. He comes in with a bad attitude, and only gradually warms to the rest of the team.

Meanwhile, as further murders occur, a commonality is found – all the victims were involved with a group home for boys, The Valhalla Home, located out in a rural area. Nobody wants to talk about what went on there, either the kids, now grown up, nor the staff. And if anyone shows signs of talking, they tend to turn up dead.

What I liked: Winter in Scandinavia (not least in Iceland) works extremely well for a noir mood on screen, and this production takes good advantage of that. You’ll probably want to put a sweater on while you’re watching. The acting was pretty good, and I’m still not sure whether the English dialogue was spoken or dubbed. If it was dubbed, it was very well done. (If you turn on the subtitles, you may note that at least one character has an entirely different name on the subtitles than is spoken on screen. That’s one reason I suspect the subtitlers worked from an early production script, before certain changes were made.)

But there were plenty of annoyances here for traditionalists like me. One of my standard complaints about today’s entertainment is a new kind of Victorianism. Every story must teach a moral, acceptable to approved contemporary values. That’s why there are so many tropes in shows today – the Plucky Single Mother, the Sensitive Gay Friend, the Wise Muslim Who Forms the Moral Center of the Narrative.

Well, we’ve got the PSM. The sensitive gay isn’t all that friendly, though. And there’s not a Muslim in sight (they’re kind of scarce in Iceland). However, the conservative evangelical church that turns up in the story is (predictably) as legalistic and repressed as the strictest jihadist madrassah.

So, all in all, I found The Valhalla Murders technically well done, but not something I could recommend to our readers. Individuals among you might enjoy it, though. Cautions for language, violence, and a homosexual scene.

Uncategorized

Playing Board Games as a Kid

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I’ve always enjoyed table top games, and my family were not gamers. We played games occasionally, and I think I largely encouraged what we played.

I could be wrong. On vacations, my extended family played Canasta, Spades, and “The Dictionary Game” long before it ever was published as Balderdash. Perhaps my older siblings brought some board games into the house, because we had an old edition of Parcheesi and an art masterpiece game long before I was old enough to show interest in them. In the early years, I was interested in PayDay, a silly, pun-filled game about making it to the end of the month. (I think that’s where I learned of the classic book Running to the Outhouse, by Will E. Makit.)

We played harder games in a gifted program in which I was placed for grades 4-6, games like Avalon Hill’s TUF, a dice game that asked you to make the longest working equation you could from the roll you made. You always had an equals sign and some kind of math symbol with the numbers, maybe eight dice total. It was hard. Other games I remember were Word Power and The Stock Market Game. Avalon Hill made great games back in the day. I wasn’t good at Word Power btw.

One of the project choices in that class was to design a game. I think I worked up two of them, neither entirely successful. One was an adventure. I vaguely recall a board that resembled a Narnian map with a sea serpent in watery sections. There was some kind of Sasquatch and a UFO too. Players could move in any direction on the grid in search of treasure, which was hidden by someone controlling the enemies.

The thing I remember most about this is working with my dad on how to design the game pieces. He cut up a broom handle to make each piece. The rounded tip of the handle was the UFO. Dad made smoothly sanded player pieces in different colors. I don’t remember how we handled the two monsters. I think the other kids liked it. It didn’t totally work as a game, but it was good project.

As a teenager, I wanted to play more complicated games but didn’t have a regular group to do it with. My sister married a guy who played chess with us often and enjoyed large games like Kingmaker, with a four-hour play time that probably begins after you study the rulebook for an hour or so. Diplomacy was another one we started and never finished (six-hour play time?!). I wasn’t good at these games. How could I be without playing a single full game?

I think I did play a single game of Squad Leader. That’s the kind of game my best friend in high school enjoyed. Military tactics was one of his strengths, and this was a complicated game that could be expanded into many more tiers of complication. He destroyed me. And I enjoyed it, I think.

Winning is not the main thing in a game. I want to enjoy the challenge of it, even if I lose, which is certainly a strength, seeing that I have had only marginal success in my life. Enjoying the challenge with some good people makes for a fun evening.

If you can tolerate it, I’ll write more about games in upcoming posts.

Uncategorized

Icelandic ways

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More translation work today, and that’s always good news. I generally work with something playing on the TV in the background (for fear that the full force of my intellect, if applied to the text undiluted, might burn out my computer ). Today I’ve been watching something a friend recommended, an Icelandic mystery series on Netflix. It’s called The Valhalla Murders.

Since I never worked on this project, I can comment freely. I won’t describe it in detail tonight – it’s no formula-breaker. At the center, as has become almost mandatory these days, is a Plucky Single Mother. It ain’t entertainment in the 2020s, unless you’ve got a PSM in there. Also a local boy who moved to Norway because he has Issues, and is not happy to have been ordered home to help the Reykjavik police – who aren’t that happy to have him in the first place. Nor in the second place, because when he shows up he’s Intriguingly Rude to everybody.

But what surprised me was the subtitles. I always turn the subtitles on with streamed movies nowadays, because I’m old and sometimes dialogue gets garbled (don’t tell me I’m going deaf, you whippersnapper).  You don’t have to use subtitles to watch it yourself, mind you, because it seems to have been double-filmed – the actors are speaking English in the English version. (Though some of it looks like it was overdubbed. Not uncommon even in English-language productions.)

But here’s why I’m confused. What I’ve learned through being a script translator is that the people who write subtitles NEVER look at our translated production scripts. Because of this, the subtitles tend to vary quite a bit from what we wrote (translation is more subjective than I care to admit). They usually seem to have been produced through transcription by someone watching the film. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But in this production, the subtitles vary extremely from what’s being said by the actors. It looks very much as if the subtitles were produced by following a production script in English, like the ones I and my co-workers do. But that those scripts weren’t used for filming the English version.

Maybe they do things differently in Iceland.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Woman Who Died a Lot,’ by Jasper Fforde

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Happy Labor Day, folks. Hope you had a good one.

It has been my fate in life to be one of those people who often observe their fellow men enjoying things that they don’t understand at all. Parties. All sports. Reality shows. Cheese. I’ve learned perforce the truth that my disinterest in a thing is a vote neither for nor against it.

I’d heard high praise of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. So when I got a bargain offer on The Woman Who Died a Lot, a recent entry, I figured I’d give it a try.

There were a lot of fun elements in this book. I did laugh fairly often.

And yet, I didn’t fall in love with it.

Perhaps I should have started with an earlier volume.

Thursday Next, as many of you know, I’m sure, lives in an alternate universe which diverged from ours (apparently) some time in the 18th or 19th Centuries. They live under a world government (not a despotism – nice trick, that) and she works as a special agent dealing with literary crimes. She has the ability to “read herself” into another dimension where the books we read, and their characters, are real. The stories abound in literary jokes, absurdities, and paradoxes.

But in this book, Thursday has had her wings clipped. Middle-aged now, she has suffered a leg injury that makes it impossible for her to make the physical moves necessary to change dimensions. Also, her whole department has been abolished since the discovery that time travel is impossible, which entirely undoes all the science they’ve been operating on up to now. This has left her oldest son Friday with the ultimate career frustration – instead of becoming head of the division and a hero, he’s scheduled to commit murder and go to prison. Also, God has announced plans to smite the city of Swindon (which, as far as I can figure out, does London’s job in this universe) for its sins, and Thursday’s genius daughter Tuesday – 16 years old – is obsessively occupied in trying to work out an algorithm to prevent it. And Thursday is finding synthetic clones of herself running around stealing her identity – literally.

These are only a few of the points in the super-complex plot of The Woman Who Died a Lot. To be honest, I found it hard to keep up. I felt insecure as a reader, not sure of the rules (no doubt a consequence of jumping into the series toward the end).

Also, how shall I put it? I have an old guy’s response to religious flippancy. In this universe, Thursday’s brother Joffey has converted the whole world to Theism through logic, establishing one universal church, which everyone joined voluntarily. But God doesn’t seem pleased, and has begun smiting places – His reasons are never entirely explained. Joffey’s church has become something like a collective bargaining organization, with God playing adversary.

Complicating it even more, Joffey is homosexual. I might be tempted to think that that’s what made God mad, but I doubt that’s Fforde’s intention.

Anyway, I did chuckle often reading The Woman Who Died a Lot. But I feel no desire to repeat the experience. Since lots of people like these books, your mileage is likely to vary.

Music

‘Try to Remember’

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Above is a song for the new month — “Try to Remember,” from the musical, “The Fantasticks.” It’s been covered many, many times, but I chose this reunion performance by The Brothers Four (in spite of the fact that some of the old singers have trouble hitting some of the notes) because it’s my kind of music from Back In the Day, blast it.

I’ve never seen “The Fantasticks,” but I know it ran forever on Broadway, breaking records. And in my theater days, people used to joke about the “R*pe Ballet” scene, which was a hoot back then. Not so much anymore.

Anyway, I have lots of labor to do this Labor Day weekend, both volunteer and paid. And I’m feeling remarkably lazy. So you’ll have to be satisfied with what you get. Have a good Labor Day weekend, and happy September.

Religion

In the shadow of Babel

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The Tower of Babel, painting by Alexander Mikhalchyk. Wikimedia Commons.

“For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:35-36, ESV)

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening the mob with the news that grass is green.” G. K. Chesterton

I wonder if Chesterton guessed that it would take no more than a century for his prophecy to come true. Today we do live in a world where the most obvious and fundamental things are denounced as falsehoods. (I blame this to some extent on our system of postgraduate education, which requires graduate students to gin up ever more bizarre ideas on which to base their theses.) Today you can get in trouble – lose your job if not your liberty – for saying that boys and girls are different. That men can’t bear children. That babies in the womb are human beings. That race is not a moral category. That America was founded on principles of liberty. That it’s better to live in a liberal democracy than under a Communist despotism. Or an Islamic despotism, for that matter.

I’ve thought a lot about that Proverbs quote up at the top, over the years. The statement comes from Wisdom itself, personified as a woman, who is depicted standing at the crossroads, on the high places, calling out, imploring people to become wise. But they won’t. There are lots of things shinier and more interesting around, things easier to obtain and more fun than wisdom. But the warning comes at the end like a hammer blow – “all who hate me love death.”

And we do love death. Abortion is liberation, in our minds. Young people confused about their gender must be surgically rendered infertile without delay, before they can ever reproduce (abortion in advance). Suffering is not to be endured – better just to help people die peacefully. And the suffering doesn’t have to be that great. There are countries where you can request and receive euthanasia for mere depression. Who are we do judge?

I think there are two great evils in any society. One is poverty – a very great evil which must be fought by all moral means. But the other is prosperity. Prosperity allows us to build a shield – a wall – a screen – between ourselves and the rubs and nuisances of real life. The digital world gives us an unprecedented opportunity to create our own environments, safe and free from any pain we don’t bring into them.

It’s very much like porn. We focus in on an idealized image, and skip all the inconvenience and humbling and discipline of real relationships. We can fashion a world to our own tastes, a world where we need no patience, or hope, or charity.

And it’s killing us. As I contemplate the possible fall of my civilization, I do so with fear. I am old and not very strong, and vulnerable. But I know that the demolition of our Babel may be the only thing (if the Lord tarries) that saves future generations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bad Dog,’ by Alex Smith

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“Can you describe the two people for me?” Kett asked. “The man and the woman.”

“She was, like, a woman,” he said, concentrating so hard it looked like his head might pop clean off his shoulders. “He was more like, I don’t know, a fella.”

When I reviewed Alex Smith’s first DCI Robert Kett novel, Paper Girls, a few days back, I remarked that while many mystery writers these days go “extreme” with their stories in terms of action and the physical suffering of the protagonists, this book went extreme with the hero’s emotional suffering. Sent to Norfolk for a country break in the wake of the unsolved kidnapping of his wife, Robbie Kett gets involved in a local case. He’s supposed to be decompressing emotionally and spending time with his three little daughters, but he ends up helping to solve the kidnappings of three local girls.

I couldn’t describe the suffering in the second book, Bad Dog, as primarily emotional, though there’s plenty of that. This time out, Kett is still recovering from wounds received in the Paper Girls case, and he goes on to multiple further injuries in this one, enduring with increasingly implausible stoicism (which is not to say that he isn’t suffering inside too, because he definitely is).

A young couple are out walking in the forest when they are attacked by – something. The woman’s body (her husband disappears completely) has been torn up as if by a dog attack – but the teeth marks are human. The locals immediately attribute the killing to “Black Shuck,” a legendary monster said to be a ghostly black hound, kind of like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Kett’s suspicions incline more to some neighbors who seems to be running a dog-fighting ring. But the real solution will be more bizarre than anyone ever dreamed.

Which was kind of my problem with the book. Not only was extreme physical suffering added to Kett’s emotional challenges, but the crime itself kind of pushed the limits of plausibility for me – though maybe I’m just naïve.

However, the author threw in a tantalizing cliffhanger at the end, so I’ll have to get the next book.

I didn’t like Bad Dog as much as Paper Girls. But the characters are still good, and there are very funny moments. And some fair values. Cautions for language and grotesque violence.

Music, Uncategorized

‘The Way You Look Tonight’

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What shall we discuss when we wish to remain a-political, on a day that will live in infamy in the annals of our national decline?

Sometimes, when I’m awfully low, and the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking, “I’m not in graduate school anymore.”

Or words to that effect. Astaire and Rogers did it better, above.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A False Mirror,’ by Charles Todd

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It’s 1920. Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is dispatched to the town of Hampton Regis, to investigate the beating of Matthew Hamilton, a prominent local citizen, a diplomat who has retired to the seaside. Suspicion immediately falls on a young man named Stephen Mallory. Mallory was engaged to Hamilton’s young wife before the war, from which he returned with shell shock. He thinks he’s been discreet about keeping a watch on the Hamilton house, to spy on the woman he still loves, but you can’t keep secrets like that in a small town.

Inspector Rutledge is inclined to suspect Mallory too. He knew him personally in the war, and considered him a coward. But he knows – better than most – that such prejudices can disrupt your judgment. He has battle fatigue himself, manifested in the form of Hamish MacLeod, his best friend, who did not survive the war – due to Rutledge’s own actions – and who constitutes a continuous presence at his shoulder now, commenting on everything that goes on when he’s not accusing Rutledge.

When Mallory barricades himself in the Hamilton house, holding Mrs. Hamilton and her maid hostage, things look black for him. But Rutledge thinks there’s more to this business than is apparent, especially when Hamilton inexplicably disappears from his bed in the doctor’s house.

There was much to like in Charles Todd’s novel, False Mirror, but I have to confess I found it hard going. It seemed to me to move slowly, but what bothered me most was the downbeat atmosphere. The book was depressing. Especially for me, as I know something about accusatory voices from the past (don’t ask).

On the other hand, Christianity comes out looking very good in this book. Remarkably good by the standards of our time.

A look at Amazon reviews told me that this is in fact a flashback book, an origin story, in a very popular series, and other readers say this book’s atmosphere is not representative of the series. So I may try another Ian Rutledge book. I did like the Christian elements.

The Press

Will California Have Its First Black Governor?

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If [Larry] Elder were running as a Democrat, the press would be celebrating the possibility of California’s first black governor. Instead, we hear nothing about “shattering glass ceilings” or “diversifying” the ruling elite. The New York Times ran an entire front-page article on Elder’s candidacy without once mentioning that he was black. (The article did claim in passing that Elder was an affirmative-action admit to Brown University, an unthinkable charge regarding a black liberal.)

Larry Elder is a nationally syndicated talk show host and lawyer running to replace the current California governor, if voters approve the recall. Real Clear Politics has recall polling results stepping over the line toward approving a recall and Elder is clearly ahead of the many candidates vying for the governorship.

That has the heads of national media outlets spinning.

City Journal describes the issues and some of the media’s attempts to whitewash Elder as a white supremacist. Editor Heather Mac Donald notes how the press celebrates minority status with leftist candidates but have ignored it with Elder’s gubernatorial victory close at hand.