Argylle – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2024 film Argylle.

Story

At first, the story feels insultingly simple and a little over-the-top. Once the twists start coming in, the inconsistencies not only make sense but are quite clever. There’s a lot of little details sprinkled throughout that telegraph the twists but doesn’t feel cheap.

Score: 1

Characters

The problem with Matthew Vaughn, the director, is that his characters are very over-the-top and it often feels forced. I did like that the worlds of fiction and reality merged. The downside to it is that some character stories are obvious early on.

That being said, this movie is filled with actors who ooze charisma and at no point is watching them boring.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

Pure cheese that covers up a lot of world building and story. The dialogue sometimes feels like it’s there to be quippy, but it’s always doing three things at once and it’s frankly amazing.

Score: 1

Visuals and Music

This is a surreal action movie and no one does over-the-top action like Vaughn. It’s so pretty and ridiculous that you can only love or hate it.

The soundtrack is spectacular and the score does everything right.

Score: 1

Fun

Once I remembered what sort of movie I was watching, I greatly enjoyed it. Jen and my mother in-law loved it too. That ice skating scene was so much fun.

It’s fun and clever.

Score: 1

Overall

If you like your spy movies dark, gritty, and realistic, this isn’t for you. This is a big action homage to Romancing the Stone with all the twists, turns, and ridiculousness the director is known for.

Final Score: 4.5 Stars out of 5

Weird Coincidence or Did I Inspire a Name

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

Last night Jen and I were procrastinating and we searched for Everdome in Google. What came up was mostly Everdome.IO. It’s some sort of virtual reality world that’s connected to cryptocurrency. I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand what it is, but it’s pretty and uses Unreal Engine 5, which is amazing.

I didn’t think anything about it until Jen came across a Reddit post:

A screenshot from the site Reddit
The original post reads: A book written by Eric Desmarais, about Everdome which idea Rob took to create Hero and Everdome. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Éric-Desmarais-ebook/dp/B07W19ZHF8/ref=nodl_
The link leads to the Amazon.com link in spanish for my book Everdome.

There are two posts on reddit about the book inspiring someone called Rob.

When I looked into who created it, I found the CEO was called Robert Gryn. I looked into the site and it looks like it was launched in Fall 2021.

For context, my book came out in 2019. Now other than the name, the site and the book have nothing in common. The site is science-fiction and is 1 big dome while the book is fantasy and has multiple domes created when the planet exploded.

So I did what any cheeky author would do and I tweeted the following:

I was promptly followed by a fake account with the same name but nothing else has happened.

I find it wild that I might have influenced something so large. It’s really cool.

Then again it could be pure coincidence.

If it isn’t a coincidence, I’m more flattered than anything else. Titles and names are not copyrighted. If the site had taken plot or world building from the book that would be different, but just the name is fine. I could have trademarked it but it’s not worth the cost and effort at this point.

If you want to find out what the book is about, it’s available at all major bookstores and ebook retailers.

Everdome

Or get a signed copy on our store.

It’s a wild world.

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

Canadian publishing… WTF?

Hello My Imaginary friends,

Last Thursday I got an email from our wonderful publisher checking in to make sure everyone was okay after, “a tumultuous week for Canadian speculative fiction writers”.

I’m on parental leave and not as involved online as normal, also I’m kinda isolated from the larger writing community outside of events. I had no idea what was going on.

Holy Expletive did I wish I didn’t know after I read up on it. It made me sick and more than a little angry. Here’s a quick clean description from S. M. Carrière:

It began with accusations of non-payment and verbal attacks levelled against ChiZine Publishing by author Ed Kurtz.

Then things exploded.  Stories by others associated with the press, either having “worked” for (I put worked in quotation marks, because payment was not something they often did) or volunteered with them, and other authors expression concerns about behaviour and non-payment.  Some of it was truly sickening; verbal and emotional abuse that I found extraordinarily triggering. […]

Thoughts on a Bloody Mess – S. M. Carrière

If you really want to learn more you can check out this blog post by High Fever Books. It’s comprehensive and is still updating with information.

I’ve had very little dealings with ChiZine… Mostly the reading series that was run in Ottawa. The reading series in Ottawa was run by some fantastic people and I’m extremely happy that they don’t seem implicated in the terribleness.

When I first met the publishers, I thought they were the rockstars of publishing. They had edgy cool books, snarky attitudes, and a slight punk vibe. I pitched my first novel to them and was shocked that they liked the pitch.

Over the next two years, I periodically emailed about my submission, always getting emails about how busy they were. It was a stark contrast from Renaissance Press that actually published the novel. They apologized for taking too long (less then 3 months) and even walked me through what I should do to improve the novel.

I asked Sandra about the submission in person at the next years’ Can-Con and she replied curtly that, they’d get to it when they had a chance. From that moment on, she and Brett pretty much ignored me. I was on a panel at Limestone Expo and Sandra spent most of the time talking over me and interrupting the other panelists. I mostly tried to avoid them after that. I assumed it was me. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and can rub some the wrong way.

I don’t know all the details, but there are a lot of people speaking out about WAY worse things that ChiZine has been involved. It’s seriously disturbing how bad some of the stuff being discussed is.

In case it’s not clear. I believe and support those speaking out.

In times like these, I truly appreciate my publisher. Renaissance isn’t the biggest, nor is it the fastest growing, but damn do they take care of their authors. They have a careful, people-oriented approach to publishing that I greatly appreciate.

I have nothing new to add to the conversation, but I do want to repeat two important messages:

  1. Don’t punish the writers for their publisher.
  2. Don’t assume that everyone involved with ChiZine knew what happened or were involved. There are some genuinely lovely people who were involved with the company that might not have been involved in the horrible behaviour.

Be kind, my friends,

Éric