I’ll be in and out (especially as I’m not staying on-site), but here’s where you can find me for sure:

- Friday, 5:30-7:00pm: Book Signing. Does what it says on the tin, only more illegibly and with a pen that will probably run out of ink halfway through.

- Friday, 9:00-11:00pm: Reception! Jackets will be worn, Shirley Temples will be consumed.

- Saturday, 6:30pm-10:00pm: The Nebula Reception, Banquet, and Awards. (This will be an exciting evening, though right now it’s looming largely as the cause of me cursing a blue streak at my carry-on, which can hold my regular clothing but is not prepared for a formal event and seems confused at what I’m asking it to carry.)

See you this weekend!

Nutshell: Edgar Allan Poe is struggling to maintain his literary reputation, to make ends meet, and to somehow secure a wife who wasn’t from his family tree. But he does still have fans – and one of them is determined to get rid of his writer’s block by committing a string of murders inspired by his stories. With the help of the determined Detective Fields, Poe will have to discover the identity of the murderer before his fiancee dies, even as he writes up his investigation for the paper at the killer’s behest, bringing him back into the public eye and giving him the story…OF A LIFETIME.

1. What could have happened: a gripping murder mystery that explores the dark side of the imagination, the responsibility of the artist for his work, tabloid culture, the quest for order against the creep of chaos, the power of love, the true nature of art, and the limits of obsession.

2. What actually happened: Awkward Choices Theatre, CGI fog, several hundred buckets of blood syrup, and a raccoon.

“Quoth the raven, Catchphrase about Spoilers!”

3. The most terrifying thing about The Raven is not any of the weirdly excessive gore or the bizarrely cobbled-together series of murders that pulls this fictional Edgar Allan Poe into the employ of the Baltimore Police Department in the last days of his life. It’s that you can see every way this might have worked out fine in a solid B-movie way, and yet it’s all there playing out in front of you and it’s just not working. You watch a scene of a gruff initial meeting between writer and cop and then they’re cohabiting and making declarations of Very Serious Life Intentions about catching killers and marrying the love of one’s life, and neither one of them seems to know what’s going on, and then suddenly they’re mostly-psychic Superpals Beyond the Grace, and for two hours this plays out, and I haven’t skipped any character beats about distrusting one another or them fighting and reconciling at a key moment or anything, this is just how it goes, with some exposition in the middle whenever they come across a crime. Those elements are there, and could have worked – everyone loves an odd couple solving a murder and having Very Serious Life Intentions, including this guy right here – but it just never comes together. This can be said for any element of the movie.

Above, two actors who can’t quite decide why they’re in the same frame.

4. Especially the murder mystery part of the movie, which is the sort of thing where you reach the big reveal and spend the entire villain monologue thinking, “So, at what point did the killer get that sailor naked so he could find the guy’s back tattoo, kill him, use the back tattoo as a marker of location, put him in a lady’s dress and a long blonde wig, then wall him up in the tunnels underneath Baltimore for Poe to find?” (Actual plot items.) It gets to the point that, if you are me, you tune out whenever the exposition starts and just admire the gorgeous file cabinets and card catalogs the set dressers gathered to decorate the precinct set. To keep people from thinking too much about the logistics, the moviemakers hurl CGI and/or syrup blood at everything they can find. If you ever thought, “This movie needs more close-ups of chopped-off tongues in boxes,” you are in for a treat! (If you have never thought that, that’s probably for the best.)

5. Luke Evans needs to fire his agent. This movie comes on the heels of Immortals and The Three Musketeers, in less than a calendar year (and new, horrifyingly hilarious rumors about Fast and the Furious 6). He does all that he can with this role, considering he has zero actual character and spends most of his time looking at things and saying, “The killer’s taunting us” as if the audience can’t tell from the bitch-ass notes the killer keeps leaving; with this and his best efforts in both of the messes above, Evans is really carving out a niche for himself in the Too Good For This category.

And he’s probably carving it out with his cheekbones, since if there is one thing this movie is pretty sure about, it’s that Luke Evans is handsome.

He’s so handsome that it worries him a little.

5a. It doesn’t seem to worry John Cusack, though, since he hardly seems to notice Luke Evans is in the movie. Or that he has a love interest. Or that he’s supposed to have some kind of inexorable fatalist arc that inflicts itself on a mercurial personality tortured by melancholy. There are moments where you think, “Yes, good, that’s well done!” But it’s strange to be able to watch an actor clock in for three lines and then wander away from his own performance, and the rest of his job is just staring at corpses and super-accidentally stumbling onto solutions for clues. (For a semi-detective, Poe is somehow less helpful to the general case than if he had never been informed of anything at all. He finally just gets to the bottom of it by publicly offering his life for his fiancee’s, and then going where the killer super-heavy-handedly hints he should go. Mystery! Thrilling!)

6. Poe has a comedy-relief raccoon. Its name is Karl. It eats a human heart; later, it helps firefighters. (Actual things that happen.)

7. Poe’s erstwhile fiancee, Emily, has visible chemise, and that is super exciting! She has one at all times, in fact, which is just marvelous, and it is located under her corset, which is even more marvelous, and when she comes to visit Poe and he begins to fiddle with her clothes, he only gets to one button on her bodice and the very top tie of the chemise in the ten-minute scene, and in terms of costuming that is all just right.

8. That is the most interesting thing about Emily, a character so dull that Karl the Raccoon gets more character beats than she does. Part of this is that Alice Eve has the emotional range of a waffle. Even when the script tries to give her something to do in a desperate bid to make you care, she’s such a nonentity that, if you are the people in the three rows ahead of me, you use her scenes to check your text messages in unison.

And that is a huge problem, because she’s so fucking fridged that I am surprised they did not actually invent the fridge just to shove her in it. She spends two thirds of the movie trapped in a coffin underground, screaming and/or quietly weeping, and once or twice trying to make an air hole . There’s an escape attempt that is vague as to whether it’s fact or fiction, though since it involves her punching her way out of the coffin and tearing it to shreds, we can sort of guess on which side of the line that falls. Her character is transparently invented just to give Poe some manpain leverage to rev up the plot at intervals, and it really shows, and I just can’t.

Who also can’t: Luke Evans.

9. In case you’re wondering, the villain is Ivan, the typesetter at the paper (you remember him) who’s Poe’s biggest fan and wants him to write more, so he kills a bunch of people and then also Poe, because nothing makes you write more like being dead. (Actual motivations.) Also Ivan wants to do the same thing to Jules Verne, which means going to Paris and killing more people in the manner of Verne’s work, which is funny because if this is really the game we’re playing, Ivan needed to start building his submarine a loooong time ago.

10. I don’t know what to do about this movie. It was undeniably bad – the killer’s plan reminds me of the first Sherlock Holmes movie, where Mark Strong has to hope that a gentleman in a light rain won’t have an umbrella or notice the smell of gasoline and immediately pull a gun as the solution to a problem so that the combustion will blow him up and then Mark Strong will look like a wizard and Parliament will be frightened into wanting more power, instead of just having a dinner party and asking, “Who wants more power?” The Raven is a lot like that. But you get the feeling that at one point, it really was better, and somehow in the meat grinder of moviemaking it got broken down and everything that was good about got leached away, until all you had left was a fridged fiancée and John Cusack uncertain whether he has to act yet and Luke Evans handing out his business card to anyone in his sight lines, and the fake-blood distributor paying bonuses to everyone. So at least some good came of the movie, I guess.

1. In a move I somehow managed to miss entirely, the TOC has been posted for Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells! My story, “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire),” does what it says on the tin, because it would pretty much have to. I’m really excited about this, and can’t wait to talk a little more about it as the release date nears.

2. I have two reprints coming out in anthologies this month: my space-diplomayc “Carthago Delenda Est,” which originally appeared in Federations, comes out this month in War and Space: Recent Combat. And “The Nearest Thing,” about your corporate AI R&D and you, comes out this month in the Year’s Best SF 17!

3. I’m also contributing a story to the hopeful first issue of Nightmare Magazine, a new John Joseph Adams venture currently Kickstarting. The first issue also promises stories from Sarah Langan, Laird Barron, and Jonathan Maberry, as various other subscriptiony goodies you can see by checking out the Kickstarter page! (My story will not be about a haunted house. Spoilers? Sure, spoilers.)

4. I will be at WisCon! I am taking a break from panels, however (I have serious stage fright, and this is my first year doing panels, and I have done enough of them to confirm that the nerves do not fade!). So, my schedule is just things like Saturday, 4PM: Ice Cream, and Sunday, 7AM: Walk to Lake, Make Side-Eye at Ducks. I look forward to seeing everyone (and side-eyeing ducks)!

The Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala is the magical event when the inner workings of the fashion world and the film world squeeze together tightly enough to make one night of glorious, spangly sausage.

This year a little scandalous to start with, given that the unspoken theme was apparently “Backhanded Compliment Retrospective”:

The spring 2012 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations. The exhibition, on view from May 10 through August 19, 2012 (preceded on May 7 by The Costume Institute Gala Benefit), explores the striking affinities between these two Italian designers from different eras.

With a sidebar exhibit of shade-throwing:

…Mrs. Prada confirmed that she admires the total curatorial independence of the museum to the extent that they almost did not take into consideration her vision.

[insert sassy/popcorn .gif of choice]

But shade or sun, the show must go on!

As the past has proved, the thing about the Met Gala that sets it apart from other red carpets is that its job is to stun. Other red carpets are easier to parse: at the Golden Globes and the Oscars, you’re supposed to dress to some combination of Glam, Elegant, Sexy, Dramatic, Old Hollywood, and Fresh. The overall effect is, they hope, either Pretty or Gorgeous. Sure, you have your Tilda Swintons and your Cate Blanchetts, but the phalanxes of stylists who gird themselves all year for Red Carpet Season know how that battle is fought, and what weapons to deploy.

The Met Institute Costume Gala, however, is where all those warriors of fashion turn their weapons on each other. But wow, did people take the Impossible part seriously. In a realm of Daring, Fab, Moment, and a bunch of other words that start to lose meaning after too many seasons of Project Runway gathering dust in our collective subconscious, this year was off-kilter. The 2012 trend of Full Baffle is going strong, and we’re going to have to wade through this together.

Let’s start with Michelle Dockery, in Red Carpet Mode.

Michelle Dockery, whose bone structure is highlighted above (and in every other picture of her), has in the past dressed herself, with mixed results. This is a huge step up (she looks as if she walked off the set of the shoot she did with Tom Hiddleston), though it’s more red-carpet than high-fashion. The corset, while a necessary element of interest, looks more like those blinds-sunglasses than ribs or rope coils or armor or a continuous zipper or whatever else it might have been meant to evoke. I dig the gloves, though.

And Laura Carmichael, illustrating Fashion Mode:

That’s a brocade coatdress with what appears to be pants underneath it. Points all around. And I actually love the too-big fit – there’s something very “Oh, this old thing?” about it, without being overtly boudoir. She has a frumpy rep, largely thanks to Edith Crawley Syndrome, but I can see what she was going for here.

And a lot of the essence of the Costume Institute is Going For It. Those who commit often come out better than those who tried half-measures, no matter what the concept is:

Lana Del Rey, who said, “So, maybe a metallic dress with a cape?”

Bianca Brandolini, who said, “A METALLIC DRESS WITH A CAPE.”

In fact, the cry of Metallic Dress was heard across this fashiony land! With mixed results.

Karolina Kurkova, who fearlessly tore the back of her own dress off to make a headband for Maximum Fashion!

Nina Dobrev, in a dress that probably looked amaaaazing going up the stairs.

And Camilla Belle, giving the camera her usual dead-eye, in a lovely dress that sort of exemplifies this year, where there were lots of lovely dresses that weren’t particularly Statements.

In fact, let’s just have lovely-dress division rundown. Nothing is wrong with these dresses, which are all lovely, and worn by actresses who are (or hope to become) red-carpet staples, and are not about to risk looking like fools, on this carpet or any other!

Amber Heard! Lovely cut. The ombre ribbons along the hem save the color, for me.

Amy Adams, looking as per usual! Her stylists have their orders, and I can promise you they are forbidden to suggest ANYTHING that could get her compared to a Muppet WHATSOEVER for at least five years.

Dianna Agron, in a very pretty dress that had me asking, “WHO is that with the monster bow in the back?” (We’ll get there.)

Jessica Biel, in a dress I like a lot more than I like Jessica Biel!

And Caroline Trentini and Jessica Stam, for whom Wearing Lovely Dresses is their entire profession, swoop in for a one-two punch and effortless division win! Cheating? Nope; all’s fair in love and the Met Costume Institute Gala.

However, it’s not as though going for Lovely will automatically work, either.

You might think January Jones’s dress looks a little bit like eyes. But when you see her chest details are lined with red, and look at that seaming down the front, you realize she’s actually, literally wearing a yellow squid-face dress, and that should be so, so much more awesome than this is. The lady beside her totally knows it, too; look at that face.

Dakota Fanning. I wish one of these carpet-stalking rogue stylists had run up to her and pinned her hair into a French roll or something; as it is, this outfit looks like a bridesmaid trying a dress on as a favor to a bride she’s starting to resent.

Amy Poehler, human foreshortening.

Lily Collins, 1972 Bride Barbie.

Jessica Chastain, desperately trying to make fetch happen.

Ginnifer Goodwin, who generally cannot dress herself, in a dress that almost works except for the halfhearted barnacles on top that appear to be strangling her.

Kristin Stewart, who wore this on a dare.

Emma Stone, who shouldn’t have.

Diane Kruger, in a dress that couldn’t be a more lovely color, with an effect that couldn’t be more The Beach Dresses of Ostrich Island.

In a normal year, Diane Kruger would be playing in the Pros division! But this year was all over the map, and she got left behind, amid some gutsy looks both good and ghastly. Shall we?

I don’t know if you know this, but Beyonce, whose job it is to be sexy, recently had a baby, and she wants you to know she is ready to go back to her job, but she didn’t have everyone’s addresses to send the notice to, so she just wore this.

And she was not alone in her physical/career transparency:

Rooney Mara, who looks like she can’t wait until the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo image push is over and she can go back to wearing dresses that cover all her parts at the same time. (I hear you, Mara; this “Welp, there goes my underskirt” trend does not thrill me, either.)

On the other hand, here’s Marion Cotillard, looking as if she couldn’t be happier about her imaginary underskirt! This is still not a trend that thrills me, but the balance of the simplicity on top and the sparkly volume and color on the bottom work better here, balancing the look and making the sheer skirt seem an intentional and integral component of the design.

Elizabeth Banks, wearing a dress in which no component seems to have been intentional whatsoever!

Kirsten Dunst, existing inside an item of clothing I decline to parse.

Florence Welch. Is this a fetching dress? Nope. But it’s her style, amplified, which is the idea of the Costume Institute Gala! Dress code: achieved.

Janelle Monae. Love it. She stands out in a subtle way, which is quite a trick on this particular evening.

Coco Rocha, in the evening’s other pantsuit. And you know, I recoiled from my screen when I saw this, but I saw this, and everyone else saw this, and many people who see only six photos of the whole evening will see this, and that is the point of this outfit in its entirety, so this is not an outfit so much as it is a seasoned vet who came to play hard, and thus how it actually looks doesn’t matter at all. (Which is good news, because it looks awful!)

Something about feathered dresses just makes me imagine the celebrity in question sitting in a Tudor kitchen frantically clawing at ravens and ostriches amid a hail of fluff. That said, if anyone could wear a dress of head-to-toe feathers and make it look effortlessly casual, it would be Cate Blanchett.

Carey Mulligan, looking both glamorous and comfortable in an amazing fish-scale sequin dress that has the distinct advantage of being both a great showpiece and suited to its wearer.

Mary Kate Olsen, who, Costume Institute Gala or not, has to be fucking with us.

And last but not least, the actress who comes out of nowhere every year for this shindig with all guns blazing, Christina Ricci, in The Bow Dress. Is the bow too long and wide for her build? Does that color wash her out? Is that cutout on her ribs really necessary? Does the neckline look ever so slightly like a cupcake wrapper? It matters not. She came here to kick fashion ass and walk through doors sideways, and she’s all out of doors.

The live feed was a beautiful piece of performance art, and gives you a sense of how far this Ouroboros goes, and hopefully is still working if you click on it now. Or, just get in line and start planning for next year; everybody else is!

You can check out even more pictures at FabSugar, from whence many of these pictures came.

* Going Rogue: At a key moment in battle when two Avengers are down for the count, somebody realizes that the X-Men totally hosed them by having a mutant on staff who could absorb anybody’s powers, say, hypothetically, at a key moment in battle when two Avengers are down for the count. They send elaborate corporate gift baskets to Rogue for two hours.**

* The Incredible Hulks: Eric Bana, Edward Norton, and Mark Ruffalo go into a room to determine who has the right to be the best Hulk. That room is an auditorium where they sit quietly as a film professor gives a presentation on comic-book icons as a springboard for comparative criticism. At the end, she gives her determination as to the best man for the job; that decision having been made, all three applaud politely and depart.

And for those who haven’t seen the film yet, it’s spoiler-free (aside from one very minor character spoiler in the first movie setup), because I haven’t seen the movie, either. (And honestly, I don’t plan to, at least until I can rent it at home, so this blog will remain Avengers-spoiler-free for basically the duration!)

I am very curious as to the sheer volume of corporate synergy that will be at work going forward, not just with the 800 spinoffs this movie directly generated, but all the work being done to reboot things within the Avengers canon. (I heard a rumor that they’re even redoing The Fantastic Four? I can’t quite bring myself to confirm it, but I hope whoever does has the guts to cast Chris Evans again, and no one in the Marvel film universe will ever notice it, ever, at all.)

** Some of the Avengers don’t know how they feel about adopting a mutant who can make them obsolete or comatose with a single touch, but are afraid to say anything for fear of seeming contrary; this will be the plot of the co-release spinoff-spinoff Avengers Dissemble.