THE FULL LID
April Fools' Edition
2nd April 2021
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Hi everyone! Welcome to The Full Lid!
Welcome to the Carnival of Joyful Lies!
Allow me to explain. Yesterday was April Fools' Day and here at The Lid, we love a well executed joke. Not mean-spirited, not stupid (god I hope this is the year FIREFLY RETURN CONFIRMED doesn't show up) but a comedic lie executed with flair, with joie de vivre even.
So we're making it happen with this very-well-signposted-as-false special edition of The Full Lid:
- Three commissioned reviews of The Sequels Yet To Come with commissioned posters
- Signal Boosts of some close friends dreaming big, announcing their pie-in-the-sky projects
- Interstitials of some of the most wholesome 2021 April Fools' guffaws from across the internet
Only the WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME THIS WEEK is filled with the sweet nectar of truth, because I had a REALLY big week.
So! Welcome friends new and established to the Carnival of Joyful Lies! Welcome to the House of Fun! Welcome to our first ever April Fools' Day special!
Let's Contents!
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Contents
Pacific Rim: Eruption
Midnight Sun
Groundhog Day: Endgame
Where You Can Find Me This Week
Signal Boost
A Huge Thank You!
Signing Off / Playing Out
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- Duolingo Roll
"Language learning is hard, so we made it soft." I mean, I guess it was just a matter of time, really... Check out the complete range. ( With thanks to Margaret Dunlap for the contribution.)
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Pacific Rim: Eruption
by Margaret Dunlap
Alasdair: Hey Margaret, do you want to review a film for The Full Lid?
Me: Sure, what film?
Alasdair: Pacific Rim: Eruption.
Me: (…) I thought we were friends.
Alasdair: We are!
Me: Then why are you asking me to review Pacific Rim: Ejaculation?
Alasdair: I’m not! It’s Pacific Rim: Eruption.
Me: Wasn’t the last one Pacific Rim: Uprising?
Alasdair: (…) I see your point.
Me: I suppose we’re lucky it’s not Pacific Rim: Blue Balls.
Alasdair: Does this mean you won’t do it?
Me: What’s it about?
Alasdair: Jaegers vs. Mecha-Godzilla.
Me: (…) Is it okay if I root for Mecha-Godzilla?
Alasdair: Margaret. (Pause to look deeply into my face through a trans-Atlantic Zoom call) I would be disappointed if you didn’t.
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Honest Trailers review of Pacific Rim
You know. For context.
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It is summer of 1997. I have just finished my second year of college and am spending the break on campus working in the admissions office. Even when students are around, it’s very much a DIY social scene. Over the summer, it’s pretty well dead. So three friends and I have walked the two miles into the nearest town, where there is an old-fashioned single-screen movie house, to see Men in Black.
Among this group is my friend Louis, inventor of the sport of “dorm fishing,” which involves throwing a pack of ramen noodles tied to a long piece of bright red yarn into the path of people walking by his dorm room and taking a commemorative trophy photo with anyone who permits themselves to be reeled in. (See above in re: DIY social scene. We were all underage on a dry campus; we had to make our own fun.) Louis’ presence will be important later.
We enter the theater, claim seats in the front row of the balcony—pause so you can adjust your mental picture of the theater here, I told you it was old-fashioned—and as the lights go down, we settle in to enjoy the coming attractions. I'm sure there were several. I only remember one.
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This one:
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Now, imagine watching that glorious one minute and thirty-six seconds in the dark, sitting next to my friend Louis, who as the ceiling begins to shake over the heads of the hapless school children and their stultifying guide, begins to chant, low at first, but with gradually rising volume: “Godzilla... Godzilla... It's gotta be Godzilla... Come on Godzilla... Please, for the love of God, LET IT BE GODZILLA...” a chant which, when the word GODZILLA spells out across the screen, culminates in a thunderous '“YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”
As the audience either laughs or cranes their necks to see who the weirdos are so they can avoid us in the parking lot, Louis turns to the rest of us: “Sorry… I don’t know what came over me.”
I never saw Godzilla (1998) when it came out, but I remain convinced I had the best possible viewing experience. I’ve been partial to the old irradiated lizard ever since.
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Honest Trailers review of Pacific Rim: Uprising
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I know the first question many of you will have about the third installment of the Pacific Rim franchise will be: “Have they *finally* re-named that Jager that will not be called by name in this article because said name contains a slur offensive to the Roma community?”
My answer is: I’m not sure.
Universal steadfastly denies rumors that the contract which lured Guillermo del Toro back to the Pacific Rim films gave the director final cut and fifty percent of first dollar gross in exchange for working at DGA scale. They are even more vociferous in their denials that the contract contained a clause which read: “no one at any level of the studio will offer their notes or opinion unless specifically asked, and the director has no intention of asking.”
For months, the Internet has been awash in hot takes based on leaked scenes and the limited materials made available to the press. Most have been more strident variations on Wade Majors’ very diplomatic comment from a recent episode of Film Week: where he expressed concern that “Unchecked directorial latitude and resources have not always proved boons to creativity… or quality.”
And yeah, it's easy to dunk on a film in which the only words spoken in a recognizable human language are the screams of a frightened populace attempting to flee before the wrath of an oncoming kaiju/jaeger, but I believe del Toro’s choice to tell this third chapter of the Pacific Rim saga from the point of view of the kaiju is neither a cheap gimmick nor a cheerful fuck you to the Hollywood powers that be. By filming the story in the kaiju’s language, and then declining to provide subtitles, he forces the audience to slow down, concentrate, and pay attention.
The film opens with the kaiju in their own realm. Through truly masterful visual storytelling and a few key kaiju phrases, we learn that the kaiju enter our world not out of a desire for conquest or mindless bloodlust, but because their world is being rendered uninhabitable thanks to human electromagnetic pollution. The kaiju from previous films are their champions—tributes, if you will—genetically engineered by kaiju scientists to survive Earth’s hostile environment.
We further learn that Godzilla—who is clearly Godzilla, although that is not his name in the credits, which are printed in the same indecipherable kaiju script as every other text in the film—was the first to disappear through the rift, decades ago when it was accidentally opened by human underground nuclear testing. The implication is that this is the original Godzilla from the 1954 film, who at some point returned to the sea where he built himself a metal cave from shipwrecks and unexploded WWII ordnance to protect himself from the crushing pressures of the Pacific depths.
There he lived, like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (1992), until decades later more of his kind began to cross over. We get to experience key undersea moments of the first two films from Godzilla’s point of view. We watch helplessly along with him as more kaiju meet their deaths at the hands of giant robots. He tries to warn them; he tries to get them to turn back. Unheeded, he realizes the only way to stop the sacrifice of more kaiju is to put an end to the human menace once and for all.
In a beautiful sequence—possibly an homage to Iron Man (2008)—we watch Godzilla scavenge the ocean floor for the remains of defeated jaegers, using them to create an exoskeleton that is not a refuge, but a weapon.
When Godzilla emerges from the sea to destroy Tokyo one last time, it is a special effects bonanza replete with urban destruction and wanton civilian casualties on a scale that make Man of Steel (2013) look restrained.
Tokyo doesn't stand a chance.
However, as we come to realize in the film's denouement, neither does Mecha-Godzilla. Mission accomplished, he tries to bury himself in the rift and return home. But the nuclear reactors powering his suit have made him as toxic to his world as any human technology is. Like Moses, he has reached the promised land, but cannot enter it.
A film that might easily have been a cynical cash grab or self-indulgent exercise in directorial masturbation is revealed ultimately as a meditation on the costs of war. Godzilla has survived and triumphed, but only by becoming that which he has fought against for so long.
Humans, ant-like, will rebuild Tokyo once again. Already rumors are flying of a fourth Pacific Rim installment where Mecha-Godzilla, outcast from the kaiju, will reappear on the side of the jaegers.
It would be a neat piece of symmetry. The kind of twist that Hollywood likes to use to re-invigorate a series that might be getting a bit long on the tooth.
If he does, I will still be rooting for the kaiju.
Editor's note: Hope springs eternal, with Pacific Rim: Uprising director Steven DeKnight in favor of a del Toro return!
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- Lego SmartBricks
This year's winner of 'We Wish This Was Real'!
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Midnight Sun
by Kit Power
Editor's note: spoilers
In true James Bond fashion, I can’t tell you anything about how I came to obtain my copy of the new/old, never-published, stuck-in-a-legal-rights-purgatory Ian Fleming James Bond novel MIDNIGHT SUN. All I can tell you is that it’s genuine, and Alasdair, Marguerite and I have exorbitantly expensive legal advice we undertook before hitting publish on this review. For that reason, I’m incredibly grateful to The Full Lid for hosting this world exclusive, even if I suspect their motives at this stage are as much a combination of sunk cost fallacy and Stockholm syndrome as anything else.
And, oh, hell, one more time: sorry, both of you.
I’m pretty sure it was written somewhere between ‘54 to ‘56. It certainly bears the hallmarks of Fleming's pre-Thunderball imperial phase. We remain 3rd person close to Bond throughout the book, with none of the cutting away that became a feature of his post-movie work (sure, sure, From Russia With Love, but there it was the entire first third of the book, setting up the notion of Russia’s ‘Bond darkly’ figure, so, you know). And it’s a direct sequel to Moonraker, which was not something that happened anywhere else in the Bond cannon to anything like this degree.
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Moonraker (1979)
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Also, most of the novel is set in Iran, right in the middle of the 1953 Mordad coup d'état.
No, really.
On the one hand, it makes perfect sense. Bond is an assassin, whose job is ensuring the dirty work of the British empire is done abroad. And an experienced MI6 assassin serving in ‘53 would absolutely be cooperating with the CIA to ensure the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and the installation of a vicious military dictatorship led by the royal family. And it does lead to what is for my money Fleming’s finest chapter one cliff-hanger ever:
M: “There’s rumours of a KGB led insurgency happening in Iran. We need you over there, 007”.
Bond: “I see, sir. Think we’ve got a shot at stopping it?”
M: “I don’t want you to stop it, 007. I want you to make sure it happens.”
I mean. Yeah. Right?
On the other, slightly sweaty and trembling hand, bloody hell. Sure, these days, anyone with Google and five seconds of curiosity can find out the bald facts of the ‘53 coup, and the shameful, brazen actions of the US and UK state apparatus to preserve their oil interests in the region . But, assuming Fleming did write this in ‘54 or ‘55, he’s effectively inserting Bond into current affairs; and current affairs of the secret actions of his government’s intelligence agencies, at that.
Quite why and under what circumstance the story remained buried as long as it did is something we’ll have to wait for the lawyers to answer, if they ever do. But it’s pretty clear why MIDNIGHT SUN didn’t come out at the time. Given Fleming oft-stated and clearly sincere love of empire and country (‘We have to rule the world, or somebody even worse will do it’ may be a James Ellroy quote, but it’s one you feel sure Fleming would have wholeheartedly agreed with), he can’t have written this with any serious eye to publication.
Which rather begs the question, why did he write it? I have some theories, but nothing I feel confident enough about to share at this stage. |
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Thunderball (1965)
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Bond lands in Tehran (wearing his From Russia With Love shoes with knives in the heels, though I can’t imagine that’ll be significant) and somebody tries to kill him as he’s being driven back to the Embassy. Once there, he meets Captain Masters (firm, dry handshake held just a fraction too long, and annoyingly handsome, Mr. Fleming? Really??) and his ‘six’ contact, who is called, and I wish I was making this up, Jilly Golightly, and goddamnit, Fleming. Goddamn it.
Masters is taking his small team of men out to protect the Abadan refinery, as he’s finally found out that’s the intended Soviet target. He gives Bond a meeting point for a local crook who claims to know who killed the previous six agent at the embassy.
Bond goes to meet the contact as a mosque, during prayers. It’s a trap, there's a vicious unarmed fight, after which Bond, with prayers ending and with the fake uprising starting in the street, is left standing over a dead body while the worshipers return from prayers. He grabs a burka and escapes back to the Embassy in disguise.
I’ll give you a moment.
Back at the Embassy, external coms have been sabotaged, and Jilly is missing. She’s left a note, confirming her own suspicions about Masters and that she’s heading out to the refinery to learn more. Bond goes after them, is captured by Master’s men there (in part because of a truly hilarious language barrier issue) and is left strapped to a vent pipe to chargrill while the villains drive off with Jilly. Bond escapes via suspiciously sharp screw in the pipe, and, using a truck the villains left behind, pursues them to their camp. Under cover of night, he infiltrates the site, and is caught as he attempts to rescue Jilly.
Via the traditional villain monologue, Masters (an ideological convert to Marxism who believes in the inevitability of a global socialist regime) states his plan is to use the fake coup as cover to nuke the Abadan refinery. Using a Moonraker rocket, because Drax smuggled both the design, and enough of the entirely fictional metal Columbite out of England for the Soviets to do this. The use of a rocket that the world believes to be an exclusively British design will sow discord amongst the Soviet enemies, and the resultant economic collapse caused by the loss of oil will finally tip the balance of power in favour of The Glorious Revolution.
It’s quite a moment.
Oh, and the Moonraker rocket will be guided in by the radio devices hidden on the truck the villains left at the refinery.
Also quite a moment.
Then he tells Bond he’s going to torture Jilly to get info out of Bond, and lo, the Moments are coming thick and fast.
Jilly is dragged into the tent, apparently hysterical, collapses and Bond’s feet… then grabs the heel knife, kills her guard, kills Masters, frees Bond, and they drive away across the desert as the nuke explodes behind them - forming the Midnight Sun of the title - followed by a brief post mission sojourn in a hospital where she gloriously does not sleep with him, but instead gives him a cool ‘attaboy’ before riding off into a new assignment.
The end.
So, okay. We could talk about the casual awful racism towards Iranians which the book frankly oozes with, but I don’t have the heart for it; it’s Fleming, he’s a gross racist, and the book is grossly racist, and that’s really all there is to say about that. The villain is fascinating; the very embodiment of the anxiety of Empire; a mirror darkly, what-if-we’re-the-baddies creation not, like Drax, a Secret Nazi but the real ‘enemy within’. And related to the racism point, we could talk about the frankly lacklustre descriptions of Tehran, impressionistic and heavily sensory rather than visual; exemplified by the scene in the Burkha, where Bond, sight and hearing impaired, and encased in cloth, sweats and staggers through what is, to him, an alien landscape.
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From Russia With Love (1963)
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But I want to talk about Jilly Golightly.
Because she’s an actual effing hero.
Sure, she’s cut noticeably from the same cloth as Gala Brand, the policewoman from Moonraker; beautiful, tough English girl with a sensible head on her shoulders (and seriously, the way Fleming talks about Englishness like it’s a superpower is, frankly, hilarious); even down to the punchline of not shagging Bond at the end (and unlike Gala, not because she’s already ‘spoken for’ but because, well, basically, she’s too much of a badass).
But it’s the torture escape scene that really makes her unique in the Bond cannon.
Because when Master’s announced he was going to torture Jilly rather than Bond, I’ll be honest, I had to put the book down for a second and really take a breath. Because as much I’ve been flip about it, Fleming really was frighteningly misogynistic, and part of what’s so frightening about it, beyond just the vicious fact of it, is how his contemporary mass market success and positive press make it clear the degree to which it was a selling point, in the era in which he published.
And, I mean, yeah.
To be clear, I’m not saying you can't or should write about violence against women. I’ve done it myself, and it seems passingly unlikely I won’t do so again. Those of us who chose or are chosen by horror as a genre have a duty/disposition/compulsion to write about what scares us. Well, violence scares the piss out of me, and so does misogynistic violence, and I live in the world I live in, so, there we are.
But, at the risk of stating the screamingly obvious, I don't in any way enjoy it.
Fleming, on the other hand…
So you may well imagine my shock, even delight, at how the scene turned.
And Fleming sells it so hard. Bond is convinced they’ve ‘broken her’, and Fleming’s stomach churning lingering description of Bond’s appraisal of both her wounds and her hysteria is, well, stomach churning.
And then, she just saves the effing day.
Reader, I barked with delight. I may even have punched the air. I reread the crucial paragraph several times; ‘Her fingers, trembling, moved over the stitching at the heel of Bond’s shoes, and as they did so, she made eye contact. Suddenly, Bond saw. His heart leapt with savage joy.’
I mean, come on.
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Knife shoes!
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It’s bonkers. And the way Bond’s mental script flips, totally turns on a dime, from ‘broken hysterical wretch’ to (and I’m not making this up) ‘this magnificent girl’, is as impressive as it is awful. Impressive because it shows just how supple the misogynistic mindset is, how it can absorb whatever circumstance throws at it and keep on chugging along in the opposite direction without any acknowledgment that it’s changed direction at all, And awful, for, well, the exact same reason.
Fleming wrote a stand out heroine, an honest-to-goodness balls of steel woman MI6 agent who isn’t just the equal to Bond but fully saves his miserable life… and then, years later, went on to write The Spy Who Loved Me; and the internal contradiction, and the way his mind clearly just slides off of that contradiction with nary a peep of self awareness is just… breathtaking.
And look, don’t misunderstand me, this book, as incredible as it is in some ways, doesn’t overturn our fundamental understanding of Fleming, or his work. Sure, with modern eyes we can look at the plot and think how damning it is of a historical moment where the UK and US governments conspired to sew unrest and destruction in the Middle East to protect financial concerns (*looks to camera*) -- but that’s not the story Fleming thought he was telling. We can read it and think ‘holy shit, a woman saves Bond’s arse??’ but there’s nothing in the text to indicate either Bond or Fleming has the slightest inkling of the significance of the moment, and consequently, that significance is immediately measurably diminished.
But what it does do, in perhaps bolder type and more heavy underlined than even his previously known work does, is deliver a message that, I’d suggest, is as important as it’s ever been.
Writing is writers telling on themselves. And when someone commits to writing with this level of honesty, passion, obsession… well, The Truth Will Out, and the work is wiser than the man.
And right here in 2021, I gotta tell you, my good, kind gentle people: I’ll take my crumbs of comfort wherever I can find them.
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Kit Power lives in Milton Keynes and writes horror and dark crime fiction, with occasional forays into dystopian science fiction. His fiction work includes a novel, ‘GodBomb!’, and a novella collection ‘Breaking Point’, two short story collections (‘A Warning About Your Future Enslavement That You WIll Dismiss As A Collection Of Short Fiction And Essays By Kit Power’ and ‘Voices’) and novellas ‘The Finite’ and ‘A Song For The End’.
He also writes non-fiction, and has a limited hardback available on the subject of Ken Russell’s movie Tommy.
In his increasingly inaccurately labelled spare time, he podcasts - as one third of the apparently indescribable fortnightly Discord show Writeopolis (@Writeopolis), one half of What The Hell Is Wrong With Us? with George Daniel Lea, and a Patreon exclusive show on the Sherlock Holmes canon with the legendary Jack Graham. For weekly early access to his fiction, non-fiction, and podcasting work, visit www.patreon.com/kitpower.
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- Maneater: Truth Quest
Everyone's (well, my) favorite SharkPG is back! Maybe! That's the glorious thing about it! This is either perfect April Fools' Day fare or I GET TO BITE UFOS. EVERYBODY WINS!
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New reader? Looking for a back issue?
Buy me a coffee?
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Groundhog Day: Endgame
by Alex Acks
Editor's note: spoilers for Groundhog Day, Supernatural episodes in 2008, Star Trek: Discovery, Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, Day Break, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson, and Xena: Warrior Princess. Talk about sentences I never thought I'd type...
A movie billing itself as the most ambitious crossover event ever filmed has finally achieved that goal.
On its face, a film like Groundhog Day: Endgame should be too ridiculous to exist. Even beyond the plot, it's impossible to imagine the legal wrangling it took to bring these disparate properties together, let alone the number of intellectual property attorneys who probably lost their lives in the process. But what their sacrifice has produced is almost unimaginable, as impossible and ridiculous as what takes place onscreen. A production with a shockingly slim budget—$50 million, much of which undoubtedly went to the bigger names attached to the project—that's swinging at the box office with all the power of an effects-forward blockbuster with a budget seven times larger. An in-joke filled script that would have been laughed off of the internet fanfiction repository Archive of Our Own as being less believable and more obscure than a Pokemon AU of a Plantagenet RPF crossover with Due South that has somehow managed to capture not just laughter, but the hearts of audiences. And all with a run time that seems almost impossibly slim—106 minutes—for the amount of work the film is doing. There's no doubt other studios will be rushing to try to mimic the success of this darkest of dark horses, but it is impossible to imagine anyone copying what never, in a sane and rational world, should have been achievable in the first place.
But what's it about?
Groundhog Day: Endgame builds from the relatively simple but absolutely head-scratching concept that since the original 1993 Groundhog Day film (starring Bill Murray, who reprises his role as Phil Connor here), all films and television shows that have involved a time loop element are connected. And in fact, of all those diverse media properties, the only one that got close to understanding the true cause of the time loop was a 2008 episode of the show Supernatural (" Mystery Spot") that pinned responsibility on the god Loki, which in Supernatural was actually the angel Gabriel moonlighting as a pagan deity. Groundhog Day: Endgame assures you that no, this was the doing of the real god Loki (definitely not played by Tom Hiddleston in a wig just different enough to skirt Disney's legendarily trigger happy lawyers), who has been using these various time loop tricks to search out the humans capable of perceiving and surviving such temporal manipulations.
Humans for which Loki has a mission of the utmost importance.
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The cast is a wide-ranging group of characters who have been in some way involved in a time loop story before, a cast list far too long and diverse to be fully expanded here. The main players end up being the team of Hopper (Taye Diggs) from Day Break, Stamets (Anthony Rapp) from Star Trek: Discovery, Tree (Jessica Rothe) from Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U, Xena (Lucy Lawless) from Xena: Warrior Princess, and Tunde (Steven Silver) from The Obituary of Tunde Johnson. The properties represented there range from serious drama to horror to fantasy comedy, and the unlikely group is initially as puzzled as the audience as to why two badasses (Xena and Hopper) and one scientific genius (Stamets) have to team up with two canny but ultimately ordinary young people (Tree and Tunde). The ultimate answer is shockingly beautiful and heartfelt, and not something that should be spoiled by this review.
The mission itself, revealed in the first few minutes, takes the silliness of the concept and elevates it to the sublimely ridiculous with a pop culture joke that might be too much of a musical deep cut for anyone born after 1985 to truly appreciate. Loki sends his chosen time team back to 1967 to save a cake from being ruined in the rain—the very cake that's supposedly a metaphor for the end of a relationship in the song McArthur Park, rendered comedically real. And unsurprisingly for a film like this, there is an enemy force all too interested in seeing that the cake is lost. Most of the film is spent in dizzying time loops as the group iterates and executes a sort of anti-heist, only to realize in the end that the cake has indeed been a metaphor all along—a metaphorical weapon that the god of mischief has an interest in for reasons all his own. The finale has a "getting the team back together for one last job" energy that cannot be denied despite its short build up, in which the group sets out to ensure for the good of the multiverse that Loki will never have that recipe again.
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Supernatural -- "Mystery Spot"
Editor's note: It's a real place! I've been there!
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As someone who has always been partial to the silly mechanics of a good time loop episode, the appeal of this film should be obvious and immediate. I have little doubt that part of what allowed it to be made with a budget as low as that was the limited number of sets and locations that this kind of story naturally uses. But they use their locations with flare and creativity, and the main portion of the film that takes place in 1967 still has the absolute attention to detail that you'd expect from a serious costume drama. The action sequences are thoughtfully constructed, coherently shot, not overlong, and built to let Taye Diggs and Lucy Lawless (and ultimately Jessica Rothe as Tree becomes the protégé of Hopper and Xena) shine.
I'm not immune to the gleeful, malignant charm of Tom Hiddleston sharpening his teeth on the scenery and uttering with absolute conviction such lines as, "The cake… is not… a metaphor!" This might actually be one of the strongest performances Bill Murray has turned in, as an alcoholic divorcee who cannot bring himself to believe that the same shit could happen to the same guy twice until it's almost too late. Anthony Rapp uses every ounce of gravitas he's built over years of uttering scientifish Star Trek gibberish as if it makes any kind of sense when he believably delivers, "No, the cake really is a metaphor. A metaphorical weapon." And harder hearts than mine have been utterly ruined by queer representation not even a tenth as wholesome and heartfelt as Steven Silver's Tunde having a chance to connect with another gay man (Stamets) from a much more enlightened time—and I cannot even begin to cover the emotional meat of his interplay between him as a gay, Black man killed by police and Taye Diggs's Hopper, a Black man who is an LAPD detective.
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Xena: Warrior Princess -- "Been There, Done That"
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Can I explain how all of these disparate elements can possibly exist in the same film at the same time, let alone work? No, I cannot. Can I explain how the apparent mess I have described above became, in the movie theater, a truly transcendent experience of cinema that I am desperate to repeat? Outside of drugs in the popcorn, I've got nothing.
Groundhog Day: Endgame is one for the history books, a film that should never have been made, let alone one that should internally work. It will be forever remembered as an event that cannot possibly be repeated.
Five stars, and my all the gods have mercy on our souls.
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Alex Acks is an award-winning writer and sharp-dressed sir. Angry Robot Books published their novels HUNGER MAKES THE WOLF (winner of the 2017 Kitschies Golden Tentacle award) and BLOOD BINDS THE PACK. MURDER ON THE TITANIA AND OTHER STEAM-POWERED ADVENTURES was a 2019 finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and the sequel WIRELESS AND MORE STEAM-POWERED ADVENTURES is available from Queen of Swords Press. They’ve written for Six to Start’s Superhero Workout game and Zombies, Run!.
Alex lives in Denver (where they bicycle and twirl their ever-so-dapper mustache) with their two furry little bastards. Find them online at http://www.alexacks.com.
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- Pasión de las Pasiones!
Powered By The Apocalypse!
The joke here is not Pasión de las Pasiones because Brandon is putting together a fantastic real game with this premise that frankly fills us with joy. POWERED BY THE APOCALYPSE and D&D getting in the mix is where the joke hits. Although that being said, I'd play the heck out of a D&D telenovela...
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Signal Boost
Aprils Fools Edition
Editor's note: We asked a slew of folks to shoot their shot and give us an exciting announcement of their dream collaboration project. Commissioning editors and Netflix producers take note. Enjoy!!
Periodicals
- Comic creators Corey Brotherson and Sergio Calvet have conjured up a deal to bring Magic of Myths to Netflix. A multi-season animated adaptation of their critically acclaimed fantasy graphic novel series begins in March 2022.
- Fox Spirit Books is pleased to announce the launch of its quarterly magazine, 'For Fox Sake Read' featuring genre stories, reviews and interviews. The theme for its inaugural edition is 'Time is Meaningless'.
People, Places, Things
- Paul Weimer is pleased to announce he has accepted an offer from the ESO to participate in its "Big Scope, Little Scope" program to take astrophotography pictures from the grounds of the ESO La Silla facility in Chile starting April 2022.
- Fundación Leonora Carrington announces the forthcoming three-month residency of arcane artist K. A. Laity, who will compose a multimedia installation entitled ‘Leonora Weaves the Ether’ for the home of the late Anglo-Mexican surrealist. The residence, now a museum, will be open to the public for timed ticket access.
- In a recent interview, science fiction author Jake Bible has revealed that he is purchasing the now defunct MegaBots company, saying, "It has always been my dream to climb into one of those huge battle robots and pilot the shit out of it. Now I get to and I plan on punching everything in sight with those giant, metal fists!"
- Alexander J Newall, CEO and Creative Director Of Rusty Quill ltd. has announced that he will be the first voluntary test subject for their new Auteur program, a proprietary "full dive" human-computer interface technology that allows for direct transcription of brainwave patterns into fully realised digital scenarios. The experimental system is expected to revolutionise the entertainment industry and is scheduled for beta release later this year. When asked for a comment Alexander repeatedly stated: "I am all things and all things are me." To sign up for the beta be sure to visit RQVR for more information.
- It is with great sadness that we announce the continuation of writer and comedian Brock Wilbur. Media reports expected that this issue would be resolved at some point in late 2020, and yet it persists. We will provide updates once we have better news.
- Sarah Gailey has been offered the role of interspecies ambassador at the newly established Center For Fungus Diplomacy. The assignment, which is focused primarily on maintaining the relationship between mankind and the recently-discovered supermassive fungal network that maintains the structural integrity of the earth's crust, has a ten-year term. It is anticipated that at the end of this term, Gailey will have been inundated with spores. "I'll be more mushroom than person," Gailey noted in their official statement of acceptance, "and it will be the noblest transformation I could hope for."
- Chungus’s small but growing team of couturiers is somewhat startled to announce an exclusive collaboration with the ‘Starter Barter’ leavening exchange programme Movable Yeast, enabling sourdough samples to arrive at their new homes stylishly and impeccably dressed.
- David Steffen has launched the Stranger Than Fiction Travel Agency offering private expeditions to portal fantasy worlds. Trips have no out-of-pocket costs provided you complete at least one (1) world-saving quest on the other side.
- Premee Mohamed is pleased to announce she has bought a pub for the express purpose of renovating into a writers' retreat. As of July 2022, the newly renamed The Master and Margaritas will offer classes, workshops, quiet writing time, beer, and crisps.
- Andrew Reid’s new project, Too Many Secrets, is part near-future noir, part reverse escape room. You and four friends step into the roles of a hacker collective tasked with stealing the core chips of a quantum AI. An immersive, thrilling experience that will leave you wondering if what just happened was part of it, and are those police sirens?
Books! Books! Books!
- Nerds of a Feather co-editor Adri Joy has been working with the Lea River mer community to create London's first amphibious Little Free Library scheme. Visitors are encouraged to look out for bright, glittering boxes on the river bank. As a bonus, boxes are enchanted to transform all excess Dan Brown and Ian Rankin novels into titles from the 2020 IGNYTE Awards shortlist!
- Disney-Pixar has obtained the rights to Charlotte Bond's dark fairytale novel The Poisoned Crow. "They've promised to keep the sinister atmosphere and maintain the gore level, so I'm really excited to see what director Danny Boyle comes up with," Charlotte told us.
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Ocelot Books is delighted to announce the acquisition of I Am Guillermo Del Toro’s Left Leg: A Memoir by renowned psychopomp C.A. Yates, which is scheduled for a Spring 2023 release. Ms Yates is represented by Leonora Carrington of the White Rabbits Literary Agency.
- Mur Lafferty is happy to announce that she has received a major deal from Dial for her upcoming twelve book series The Adventures of Larry the Tapeworm.
- Phil Sloman, Laura Mauro and Kit Power, announce their latest project, The Secret Coffee Cream Lover Club, a collection of three novellas based on their love of the King of chocolates.
- So fun fact - apparently almost all the Robinettes in the US are related! Though two in particular - President Joe Biden and Mary Robinette Kowal -- are not. That has not kept them from a collaboration.
Games
- Dave Chapman, inspired by the success of #RPGaDAY, spreading positivity about tabletop RPGs in August, is happy to announce #RPGanHOUR, running all year! "I figured we needed extra positivity at the moment. I just need to come up with 8760 questions."
- Jacqueline Bryk and Ruffled Feathers LLC proudly present Excutient, a fully immersive week-long blockbuster apotheosis horror LARP set in Batsto Village, New Jersey.
- Eric Smith, Ty Schalter and Aidan Moher announce collaborative multimedia adaptation of classic Super NES game Chrono Trigger! Included among planned projects are a Hamilton-inspired musical, spoken word concept album, and 12 volume novelization released episodically via Moher’s newsletter, Astrolabe.
That's this week's special edition of Signal Boost!
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- Tavern Personals
Tired of relying on your local watering hole as a recruitment center for your next big job? StartPlaying.Games has the app for you!
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Where You Can Find Me This Week
Editor's note: This section was also originally planned as a comedic series of events, but then oh so very many real world events happened. And that's even without the boat.
Awards Season: Audioverse Win!
- I won an Audioverse Award! Specifically, "Performance of a Supporting Role in an Audio Play Production" for my work on The Magnus Archives as Peter Lukas! Massive congratulations to the other winners and to Audioverse for putting together such a comprehensive breakdown of their process. If you like podcasts, every single winning show is worth your time.
Twitch
CoNZealand Fringe
Podcast Land
- I was interviewed by the amazing Elena Fernández Collins over on AudioDramatic. This was SO much fun, and again, anyone with the slightest interesting in podcasts should be following them.
- The Magnus Archives may have ended but Rusty Quill's latest show, a Patreon exclusive mini-series called The Inexplicables, debuts today! It's crammed full of top notch talent, including a whole raft of TMA alums like Marguerite and myself.
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- CatsCast
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A Huge Thank You!
To everyone who donated in support of this special issue of The Full Lid. Thank to your generosity, we overfunded and were able to double the payment rates for all our contributors.
Got any feedback for us on this experiment? Let us know -- we're thinking about a repeat in October. |
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Artwork for this April Fools' edition of The Full Lid is by Ciaran 'Zalia' Roberts!
Ciaran Roberts lives in the not-so-wilds of Yorkshire with a very yappy dog. She works as a professional zombie wrangler/producer for a video game company, which is hilarious because she is deathly afraid of zombies. In her free time, she plays video games, embarks on various creative projects (look, she will totally finish a project eventually), and writes fiction. She also likes decorating cakes to look like things from whatever piece of media she’s into at the moment.
Follow her on Twitter @ZaliaChimera.
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Favorite Fools 2021 -- The Story Engine: Clown Nightmare expansions
We're 90% certain there are no more nightmare clowns. Because Story Engine have caught them all. You have, right? Right? Hello? (Distant circus music.) |
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Signing Off / Playing Out
Well THAT was a damn week. Thanks for reading, folks! And MASSIVE thanks to all our writers, artists and contributors. We were able to pay the folks we commissioned entirely because of your generosity.
TFL of the usual variety returns next week. Check out my Carrd for all the places you can find me, including the Team KennerStuart Instagram and the Twitters, currently explaining about the secret cabal dedicated group dedicated to running the world known as THE PENTAVERATE.
Editor's note: *siiiiiiiiiigh*
This work is produced for free. If you like what you read and have the means please consider dropping something in the tip jar. And thank you!
Playing us out this week are the amazing Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Or is it Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare? Either way it's a laugh, just like this?
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is a Full Lid.
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