C. G. Gross

Culture shock, April 30 2004

This one is sort of a forced hybrid-- a stereotyped sci-fi space crew (mostly without names, as I recall) dealing with an alien civilization based on lies and linguistic distortions. Who says that aliens have to be immediately understandable? What would have happened if some spacefaring race were to have plopped down in the middle of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia? That's the situation our protaganists are faced with; they don't even know what the aliens are normally like, let alone what they're like under the situation in which they find them.

The story is told in a very straightforward manner, leaving the readers to draw their own moral conclusions; something that Lem does very well… Read more

What's wrong?, Oct 31 2003

It's strange that a film dealing with a bleak, dehumanized future turned out to be so human! THX-1138 starts out with what appears to be a Buck Rogers trailer, but it's re-dubbed in such a way that the announcer is talking about "Buck Rogers in the 20th Cen-tu-reee!" There is a great deal of ironic humor and deadpan comedy in the film, and it would be difficult to appreciate "THX-1138" without understanding that. This is a film in the vein of "Catch-22", "M.A.S.H.", and "Slaughterhouse-Five". In fact, in some ways "THX-1138" bears some similarities in its absurd humor with "Apocalypse Now", which George Lucas helped to write and almost directed.

THX-1138 (Robert Duvall), a good citizen in… Read more

Tales From A Parallel Universe, Oct 11 2003

Poor Einar the Lonely (another of Guy Maddin's hapless heroes) has fallen a victim to the disfiguring pestilence that has been dropping from a great height onto the Canadian/Icelandic community of Gimli, Manitoba. He drags himself to the Gimli Hospital, a strange place where puppet shows are used in place of anaesthetic and the 13-year-old nurses ignore Einar in favor of Gunnar. Gunnar is the occupant of the bed next to Einar's; Einar's initial jealousy turns to friendship... but as the two men begin to exchange confidences, a secret comes out that makes them deadly enemies.

Although the story is set in "a Gimli we no longer know", there really is such a place as Gimli, and there is a… Read more