Peter Straub Edits "Poe's Children"

This is my Halloween treat, a choleric collection of ghoulishness from the likes of Peter Straub (editor), Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Joe Hill (or "Jr." as I like to call him), Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, etc... It's a creepin' on you!
What's truly scary is that somehow (inevitably?) I've become supervisor of the Library's Anime Club and as part of my duties I might be going to a nerd convention this weekend- wish this clueless Gaijin luck among the Otaku.

Reading Neal Stephenson's "Anathem"

Neal Stephenson is SO GODDAMNN INTELLIGENT! How does he lift his domic skull off the pillow in the morning? He probably uses a Newtonian Lever and the Fulcrum is Filigreed with Geodesic Theorems.
(I don't know what any of those words mean.)

The Ting Tings' "We Started Nothing"

Katie White from the Ting Tings could use a little bit of the punk snarl from Diane Lane's character in "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains", something to create some sort of meditated distance from all that dance-floor aggressiveness. As it is, "We Started Nothing" is too ingratiating, too catchy. Kind of reminds you of that girl with the torn Blondie T-shirt that would not respect your personal space at the club- at first you're really digging the situation, but then you realize you're going to be using a fine comb to pick the crabs off your pubes for a week.
Surely that happens to everyone at some point, right?

Daniel Silva's "Moscow Rules"

The Gabriel Allon series of thrillers are basically my source of International Paranoid Zionist News. I get my news through fiction. Moscow is going crazy, all those commies mutated to cappies with the consequent corruption, there's a lot of prostitution and drugs and vodka and nuclear weaponry laced with ecstasy and it's all going to be sold to the highest bidder. Yes. You can best visualize this Daniel Silva novel if you imagine world politics as a strip club, and the stripper looks like a missile and all the guys are throwing money at her to see who she'll be going with to the lap dance/full-on-warfare BOOM ROOM.
That's Russian politics now according to Silva. Politicians are pimps selling the old slut missiles to the highest bidders, not caring what the crazy Jihadist/John has planned for his perverted final night.
Smooth read, though, and the Mary Cassatt forgeries were adorable.

Lou Adler's "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains"

Turns out Diane Lane was sort of the Rachel Evan Wood of her time, which bodes well for Rachel, since Diane is the bestest actress with the worstest career but an Oscar nod in there. I loved this fierce little time capsule, it's kind of like "Thirteen" meets "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" meets "The Ramones". Isn't it sweet how we outgrew early '80s punk?

"We're the Stains, and we don't put out!"

The Pink Panther Collection

The Pink Panther stands for pretty much anything cool because he is not so much a character as he is a design- all you know is he's slick, tall, and surprisingly virile considering he's pink. Prep yourself with a martini glass and be surprised by the fact that he SPEAKS in a couple of early shorts (in a bemused-by-human-folly David Niven voice).

series of dreams

I had a tiny little dream just now: The CD that was suppposed to be in here

was actually in here, and viceversa...

And my meticulousness was offended in ways it wouldn't be in reality- but in dream land, it was quite a spin to my status quo, I almost fired the Orphan Girl that Catalogues My Cds in Exchange for Apple Cores: "You knew I didn't want that hussy Jenny Lewis anywhere near the Mississippi!"
But I let her go on cataloguing- she's an Orphan Girl! And she had made a pretty chandelier out of apple cores- you have to recognize the Horace Alger spirit when you see it.

John Sandford's "Phantom Prey"

In this one Lucas Davenport travels deeeep into the world of GOTHS with their WEIRD, MORBID OBSESSIONS WITH DEATH AND DARK BARS, OOOOH, SCARY, oooh, and the lingo: if you're a GOTH girl and skinny and wear black then you're known as a FAIRY, and then there is this thing called GOTHIC LOLITA where you pretend to be younger than you are and it's like....

...it's like Sandford not only didn't bother with researching whatever seedy demi-monde he imagines Goths live in, he didn't even muster the energy to Google or Wikipedia the word Goth. (He probably votes McCain too.) The idea for this novel surely came because he heard a neighbor complain at a dinner party about how someone else's grandson was all dark and "Goth", and he became abstracted during the dessert course.
I can almost see his thought process:
"*grumble grumble* Kids these days... BUT Goth! Catchy word! Weird fad! Maybe it's new, I'll blow the lid on it! Use in novel? "Goth"-black dresses- subculture that likes death. Probably rough sex. Good stuff. Writes itself. New best-seller? Of course. I did want to re-decorate the summer place."

I think I'm just jealous and bitter this week.

Goth Bless.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" Seasons 1 and 2

If Larry David were Irish or Kevin Smith funny they might have been the agents behind "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", a funny funny show which somehow I just became hip to, damn my Bouvieresque isolation from society and (more importantly) my lack of cable television. "Sunny" puts in a serious, winning bid to be FX's "Curb Your Enthusiasm"- while it's at it, it's just as funny as "The Office" and funnier than "30 Rock", although let's just say it's not as widely palatable as either of those shows. If you talk about this at the fabled watercooler, you're likely to look around and make sure the wrong person doesn't hear the jokes. (With show titles like "Charlie Gets An Abortion" and "The Gang Goes on Welfare", you can guess why.) Apparent real-life buddies Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day (along with balancing female specimen Kaitlin Olson) play this like it's "Cheers" mixed with "Taxi" mixed with "Seinfeld" mixed with a censor's dead body. It's those constant references to sitcom convention, though, that ground the show and make it more than dumb-ass raunchery.

ABOVE: "So no one told you life was gonna be this gay."

I was not, however, completely thrilled with the ratings-grabbing addition of Danny DeVito as a cursing, immoral patriarch. No matter how much fun it is to see him carouse with strippers, it felt like the show was aiming for more viewers- and so much of its charm consisted on giving off a "we don't care if you watch this shit" vibe.

Marc Schoelermann's "Pathology"

A serviceable enough Cinemax-style thriller about Evil Doctors Who Think They Are Gods And Kill People TM. It stars Milo Ventimiglia from "Heroes" (showing the wide range of his acting by getting naked and smoking crack); some dude I think I saw in a sitcom once; Alyssa Milano, (looking older than all her co-stars)...



...and some unjustly unkown hottie called Lauren Lee Smith that kind of reminds me of Dexter's sister but has been in a million bad shows, ("The L Word", "Mutant X") and looks like she won't turn any role down. BTW, this is hilarious but such is the soul killing world of showbusiness: before being involved in soft-core stuff about a Sexy Psychiatrist that Investigates Serial Killings TM, she was the titular girl in the ultra-family-friendly "Christy" series of movies.


ABOVE: The only non-pornographic picture of Lauren Lee Smith I could find.

Oh, I just read now she's on "CSI"! What did I tell you? No morals!

Anyway, as I was saying, this movie about Hot And Young Illegal Car Racers TM is surprisingly memorable.

"Dexter" Season 2

No slumping around here!

Whatever misgivings I might have had about where this show COULD go after that great first season disappeared as soon as our loveable psychopath (twinkingly cute Michael C. Hall) falsely confesses to a heroin addiction and meets a certain force of nature called LILA (a.k.a. "Miss Pardon My Tits"), a combination of hotness and insanity that, I have sadly learned, is not in entire discordance with the workings of reality.
The wonderful British actress Jaime Murray delivers- she plays the crazy hottie for a few chapters and takes the role beyond the line to psycho bitch without betraying the character's identity. Lila solved the main problem the writers had after season 1: Creating a believable, magnetic antagonist for Dexter. The even-eviler-twin route had already been visited, so succubus it had to be.

ABOVE: Jaime Murray as Lila. VERY HOT, in case you haven't decided.

The old plaque that horror and crime auteurs hang above their writing desks goes something like: "Be normal in life so you can be weird in your art." (Everyone loves to read about the confessions of serial killers as long as they feel comfortable that the book isn't printed on human flesh.) The moral secret of Dexter's contract with the viewer is that he is indeed VERY normal, far more so than the average sitcom male who dates and dumps women serially in half hour spans and lives life from mockery to mockery. By contrast, Dexter's personal life is of a monastic nature and far less corrupt than your average priest's. The show is quite aware that no matter how much we like his girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz) (and she IS very likable), it's hard to imagine her and Dexter doing much other than sharing doughnuts and tentatively holding hands. But it's our serial killer's quasi-chastity and allegedly faked devotion for Rita's children reminds us the show has a warm, fuzzy heart- aside from the ones ripped off its victim's chests.
Ok, Mister Dexter, I'm ready for Season 3.

I still can't believe that they killed---
Never mind, you'll see.

Ben Templesmith's "Wormwood" Volume 3: Calamari Rising

In Wormwood's Universe, not having tentacles is like not being on Facebook, a huge impediment to your social life. So anyway, Space Calamari invade, and much shooting and merriment ensue. And that's before we discover that every possible dimension has its version of Elvis and that they're all converging into a final Singular Super Elvis that will crotch-punch the Universe in the Eye.

Yes, Ben Templesmith is weird.

CRITERION: The Maysles' "Grey Gardens"/ "The Beales of Grey Gardens"

As shockingly invasive 30-some years later as it must have seemed upon its 1975 release, "Grey Gardens" is a sort of insane precursor to reality TV's most squalid moments. Chop-shot as though through a frightened schizoid gaze, it documents the madness-as-wisdom dellusions of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Bouvier, (Jackie O's aunt and first cousin, respectively), as they waltz and showtune their way through a crumbling mansion that must be on violation of every imaginable construction and health code. What hapenned to the Bouvier fortune- the net of their connections- what led these two women to this pitiful state of isolation and degradation? It doesn't quite matter. The insidious charm of the thing is that these women don't KNOW they're lonely homeless women- because they just HAPPEN to have a mansion- and because they're Bouviers, see? They may be belles of balls that no one in their right mind would ever attend, but they inspire a sort of campy, pitiful admiration.

James Lee Burke's "Heaven's Prisoners"

Remember that one time where James Bond was George Lazenby and he found true love and got married and it was T-Minus-Until-Wifey's-Tragic-Death? Domestication and horny men of action make no good mix, which is why when you read about James Lee Burke's Vietnam-Vet/Ex-Detective/Cajun-Man-of-Justice Dave Robicheaux sharing idyllic fishing moments with his much-younger (and impossibly-understanding) wife Annie, you know someone is going to be wearing a black armband sooner than later. In "Heaven's Prisoners", a small aircraft explodes mid-flight and lands on Dave's swamp, leaving him with a bunch of bodies to identify and a young immigrant girl to raise. (Well, the wife does the raising. Dave has got some investigatin' to do, pimps and dealers and cops to piss off. It's just how it goes.)
Burke's view of NOLA's racial schisms is joltingly old-fashioned, (the "Negroes" just love lazying around the river chewing on their illiteracy all day long. Who still uses the word Negroes unironically? Other than Burke?) He don't mean bad, though. Also, I have to say this book acquires levels of high emotional power and not just because of, er, what happens to Annie, (did I spoil that too?), but because of Dave's sweet relationship with Robin, part-time-hooker, full-time-addict- all-golden-heart. He, like, MAGICALLY GETS HER TO CLEAN UP HER ACT AND BECOME A HAPPY PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY! Oh, I didn't believe it either, but for the purposes of the book it makes dumb people like me believe in stuff like human kindness and the possibility for redemption and an unpolluted tomorrow and all that jolly crap.

TV On The Radio's "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes" (2004) and "Return to Cookie Mountain" (2006)

Getting ready to listen to the "Dear Science" tracks- reviewing the past, I recalled that way back when I randomly crashed Tunde Adebimpe's birthday party during their "DY, BB" tour. I was just telling someone: "I accidentally had birthday cake with the people from TV On The Radio!" Accidental Cool. Back then few people had any idea who they were. Not that TVOTR is ever doomed for extreme popularity. This is music for critics to enjoy, or for people who can make sense of words like "postfunktronica", or for David Bowie to endorse while secretly envying that he's probably not going to alchemize ANOTHER style of music, the way TVOTR might yet do.
Of course he's done his bit already.

David Wroblewski's "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"

It comes with the twin approval of Stephen King and Oprah, so you KNOW "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" if about ten times less good than they would have you believe.
(And how exactly does a "heretofore unknown writer" gets the likes of King and Richard Russo to deliver immense blurby praise on the back of the first edition of his debut novel? How exactly did these luminaries read the book BEFORE it was published? Who bribed whom at what point? Oh how little we know about the machineries of publishing hype!)
So like that Kurosawa movie from a few days back, "Edgar Sawtelle" is a "Hamlet" rip-off. I mean take-off. "Hamlet" with dogs. Or "Cujo" without the rabies. "Sawtelle" is Hamlet, instead of a King Edgar there's a Daddy Gar, instead of Queen Gertrude there's a Mommy Trudy, and instead of brother-killing Claudius, there's brother-killing Claude. Oh, OOOPS, did that spoil things, baby? It SAYS it's an American "Hamlet" right there on the back!
Mostly what will remain with you is the fictional race of super-genius dogs who communicate with young Edgar in an uncanny, but heartwarming manner. Yes, this "Great New American Classic" is firmly propelled by a "Marley and Me" type engine- "how my ultra-human dog taught me to enjoy life after loss." At 300 pages I might have loved it, but at double that it's too big and could have used plenty of grooming. The descriptions of all American landscapes are quite good, but I have a small tolerance for sections about trees- two or three are fine to get me in location, but not two or three hundred, I'm not a botanist.

Maybe I'm just jealous. Oprah, come on, throw me a stick. I'll fetch.

Richard LaGravenese's "P.S. I Love You."

You wouldn't dream of telling this to your sobbing date, but the inherent creepiness in the plot of "P.S. I Love You" cancels out whatever little chemistry can be extracted from Hilary Swank's romantic encounters with other human beings. (Have nothing against the Hil, she's cool enough when she's crossdressing or kickboxing or dying, but Meg Ryan she ain't.) Here she's happily married to a charming Irishman (Gerard Butler) who PROMPTLY DIES, and not content with letting his sweetheart grieve and heal, STARTS SENDING POSTCARDS FROM THE GRAVE, FOREVER TORMENTING HER SOUL!!! Sounds like J-Horror, but it's supposed to be CUTE!
Forget the morbid and concentrate on the gall of this arrogant prick. Typical card: "Hey, babe, I know how impossibly hard it is to go on living without me, but suicide isn't the answer! I know how tempting it must seem right about now, but I, who am not being condescending at all, will continue to control and rule your existence from the beyond and teach you how to face a world which, without me, might as well be meaningless."
(Here's my postcard to my grieving widow: "Please, sweetie, please PLEASE do not hit on anyone during the funeral- Wait at least a week?" But then again I'm not the freaking Phantom of the Opera.)


ABOVE: Awww, aren't they cute? If you're male, you better pretend they are- you want to get laid at the end of the night, don't you?

This movie is stuffed with more Irishness than a leprechaun gang-raped on St. Paddy's, and then there is what has to be one of the largest, most misused ensemble casts in romantic comedy history. Our gal Swank has an extended "friends and family" network (Lisa Kudrow, James Marsters (MY MAN SPIKE!!!), Gina Gershon, Kathy Bates, Harry Connick Jr. aaaaaaaand... YES... NELLIE MCKAY.) They all stand around looking like they share not a damn thing in common, say two or three lines each and remain woefully undeveloped. They're not there to even be sterotypes, but rather to provide that Oprah feel of "Sistah, you are NOT ALONE on what YOU'RE going through!"

But, but, but... and here's where all is forgiven: *sigh* My gal Nellie McKay is on this. Ok, so no stars are born. As a friend of mine put it: "If you didn't know who she is, you might think she was playing some sort of weirdo character. If you know who she is, you realize she's not PLAYING at ANYTHING."

ABOVE: She's way back by the door! Behind the real actresses! You see her?!?

Jon Favreau's "Iron Man"

The critic in me saw nothing wrong with this one, and after a while I stopped looking. On the superhero plane Tony Stark's conflict is supposed to be between the militaristic source of his wealth and the destruction it has caused. He makes amends for war with BETTER war but aims towards disarmament. This Iron Man is worried he has no heart, but of course it's there all along and it's what makes him frail.
There's a lot of Whizz-Bang-BOOM scenes with Big Robots, out there for anyone to enjoy. But the secret human clincher to this heavy metal business is very personal, and it's not about Tony vs. Obadiah Stone (Jeff Bridges, wonderfully menacing because he cares about his stock options) and it's not about Tony and Ms. Pepper Potts, (gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow, reaching into the man's heart with nursing concern). It's about Robert Downey Jr's embracing the role of a man who has a big talent and secrets and a life that has everything but is still hard to handle. What do you present to the public? They might find out on their own. What will they accept? What will they be repelled by? At the end of the day, Tony Stark does what superheroes with double identities have been avoiding for decades: he comes clean and tells the truth.

Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"

Harrison Ford's heart wasn't in it (his heart hasn't been in anything but carpentry for a long time). The David Koepp script was at best undistinguished. I'm starting to dislike Shia LaBeouf a little. Karen Allen seemed ripped out of a sad Lifetime movie about pancreas cancer. Even Cate Blanchett was Commily over the top.
But you know what? I'll STILL welcome Dr. Jones anyday.
And I got a little happy jolt when we see Indy's silouhette for the first time.
And when that final alien skull is placed I was at the edge of my seat.
And whenever my cynicism surfaced: "Come ON, no one would have survived THAT!" I caught myself and said: "Because anyone would have survived all the crap in the OTHER Indy movies?"

The problem here, and there is a bit of a problem even for a huge Indiana Jones fan such as myself, is that while the first three movies paid homage/ made fun of old pulpy serials, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" pays homage/makes fun of old Indiana Jones movies. Still, what doesn't work, you'll forgive, and what DOES work works beautifully, if you ask the eight year old boy within to sit by your side, and even though he's going to nod off during the frequent discussions of nonsensical "archaeological history"* and incredibly lame "puzzle solving"**, there is no way he's not going to jump on his seat during those awesometastic action scenes.


*Of course all the Indiana Jones movies were historically suspect, but they made you believe a little in the reality and significance of, respectively, the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple of Doom, and the Holy Grail. I didn't believe these aliens precisely because the movie spends SO MUCH TIME EXPLAINING THEM. That smacks of falsehood. The other movies just set it up: "The Ark of the Covenant. It's powerful. Kills people. What else do you need?"
** The puzzle solving in previous Indiana Jones movies was far-fetched too, but you still got a little frisson when Indy made leaps of logic: "The humble man... The humble man KNEELS BEFORE GOD! Oh, shit, DUCK!" What does this installment offer? I forget the exact details, but it's ridiculous- "Oh, we should go to the cradle- but a CRADLE is also an old word for a TOMB! Let's go to a TOMB!"

I still blame Koepp and the obvious gaggles of screenwriters (this soup has had a lot of chefs shedding hair on it). And of course I blame George Lucas.
I love Spielberg, though, I forgive him anything.

The Uninformed Pundit 6

Dear Imaginary Reader:
You know that ACORN organization that Sarah Palin keeps bringing up as some sort of socialistic voter scam and is accusing Obama of having ties and Obama is like: "I have no SIGNIFICANT ties to them"?
ACORN were the people I briefly worked with in New York- I was very uneasy in that place- I was feeling very very WRONG about the things my job was asking me to do. I saw through the whole fighting for the poor people etc etc etc- that's PART of what they do, but NOT the whole story at all- it's more like a side effect of their dealings. Without going into details let's just say I freaking went behind the curtain and the things I saw were quite quite not good and they really left with me a very disenchanted feeling that there's a lot of evil in the world and it's not like it's all coming from the crazy right wingers, but it's also from the crazy left wingers.
And I'm just here, twiddling my fingers and resigning uninformed punditry because I know know KNOW that nobody's going to save the world, but you, you go ahead and save your own world, and if WE- all of us- save our own little worlds, we should totally be all right, and you can tell you're all right when you can eat all the yummy ice cream you want.
Or so I've gleaned from studying Hume. *lalala* Politics are for people who like to tell other people what to do. When bullies grow up they need to get jobs. Politics. That's pretty much it. Laugh when people tell you about Obama's faith or McCain's faith. These aren't people of faith! Please! If they were, they would be preachers or priests or healing lepers in Molokai! A politician is someone whose ego drives them forward to: "I have to control the minds of as many people as possible so that they do my will. And part of that process is to project a persona that appeals to as many people as possible. And part of that process is being a very very good liar."
Politicians are bullying liars.
Hey, God bless them, bullying liars have to do something for a living!
Just know that kids in playgrounds grow up to do pretty much the same thing in a global scale.
I sat in my corner and played with my books and my toys and made up crazy stories about my Dear Imaginary Friends, (a Badger stolen from "The Wind in the Willows" and a "Harvey"-like- Rabbit.) Obama peddled candy and drugs to his buddies and put a big smile on their faces. I bet McCain directed toy armies and tried to take control over other kids's toys.
What were you doing in kindergarten? Running around trying to kiss girls or pulling at their pig tails? Showing boys your panties? Making fun of the kid with the weird leg-brace? (Maybe now you're a doctor) Whatever you did back then, I bet it's a lot like what you're doing now.

Check This Out.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

How about theeeese facts:

• Fact: Hansel Castro WAS an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN actually hired Hansel Castro as an organizer.
• Fact: Hansel Castro felt really REALLY REEEAAAALLYYY physically sick working for ACORN- but it taught him myriad of valuable life lessons- and it taught him that people should never ever do something that conflicts with their conscience. If your job makes you uneasy, you're not in the right place and you need to move on, no matter what anyone else says.

Ben Templesmith's "Wormwood" Volume 2: It Only Hurts When I Pee

It hurts when he pees because our anti-heroic, corpse-ruling worm has contracted the clap. Not from one of the strippers at the strip club covering the entrance to the Hellish Dimension, that would be too logical. Wormwood gets the clap because he's bitten by one of the leprous Leprechauns that live at the end of the piss-soaked rainbow, (ever wondered what light looks refracted through urine? That's Templesmith's color pattern!) And we're off to see see the Leprechaun Queen who turns out to be a very filthy monarch. She can cure Wormwood's clap! Along the way Wormwood must inhabit the corpse of a little girl (it makes him feel pretty, and it's a better fit than the Jesus-corpse). If it seems too much, that's allright because Phoebe the ex-stripper with the literally-killer-tats and Pendulum the robot-butler-without-bits are there to provide bemused asides a-plenty.
This is hilarious stuff. Gorgeously gross.

Jay Roach's "Recount"

This suspense-less HBO movie wisely pins itself on Kevin Spacey's unenthusiastic performance as a guy who's fighting for Gore's recount, and doesn't even like Gore that much. That tells it all. (I know! In retrospect, we're all like "anything but Bush"!)
Laura Dern is a gas as Katherine Harris, though.

It's not exactly pointless. It's nice to see this stuff is documented.

Scott McCloud's "Zot!"

Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" was enough of an inspiration in my life that I sort of stole his cartoon alter ego and used it as my Livejournal avatar. Time restraints are pretty much what keeps me from gushing about the collected "Zot!" (We can talk at length on it elsewhere, Dear Imaginary Reader, just prompt me!) It's clearly the work of a nascent artist with all the flaws that entails. Scotty is not the best "drawerer" out there- but he has ideas! IDEAS! And he works them out, a story at a time, and it's the not unpleasant sloping path to "Understanding Comics". A very enjoyable must.

Jeff Smith's "Shazam!"

Young Billy Batson's ability to become Captain Marvel by way of incantation (Shazam!) was the Comic's Industry desperate way of saying: "There, let's make that fourth wall tumble, you, the kid reader, can be the hero; that's what you were dreaming of all along, isn't it? Forget Superman and Batman- YOU are the Marvel." It worked for Fawcett's Comics (Captain Marvel was a bestseller in the 40s)- but kids eventually outgrew that inmediacy- ("We don't want it THAT easy; we can deal with irony and distance.") Shazam's popularity receded- the idea was too pure, too simple.

Well, there's a purity and simplicity in Jeff Smith's work that matches that subject brilliantly. (I'm a huge fan of "Bone", the cutest, epic-est cross between Walt Kelly and J.R.R. Tolkien, a wonder of charm and exquisite black and white lines.)

I really enjoyed his take on the story. Now there's a movie in the making. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is involved, I understand. Pooh.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer": The Quotable Slayer

Someone made my day by giving me this.


Of course this leaves out literally thousand of killer lines but, that's Buffy's legacy. 144 scripts packed with the wit. The big surprise in reading this is just how many great Buffy quotes I remember that aren't here at all, and how many of the ones here aren't even particularly salient, and also makes me realize how the actors made the lines SO much more alive.

There's no:

"Kiss Rocks?!? Why would anyone want to kiss rocks?!? Oh."

?

No

"...except for bunnies"
?

Oh, man, Buffy... How can one communicate the fact that a television show was a life giver and saver and healer? Frankly, if you give me to choose between the Bible and Buffy and tell me which item is best at being a coded mythological rulebook for life, I will much more happily expose my kids to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" than the Bible. We of the class of '99 learned how to survive from this. Thanks, Mr. Whedon.

Oh, and thanks, Wonderful Dear Imaginary Reader :-)

CRITERION: Akira Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well"

The reason why Kurosawa consistently trumps Ozu as Japan's greatest film director is that while Ozu made great Japanese movies, Kurosawa made great MOVIES, period- just amazing pieces that are the best cinematic refutal to racism or patriotism, (racism's equally ridiculous but somehow PRAISED twin.) When you watch a Kurosawa masterpiece, you may begin to approach it as though it were some sort of foreign film- but there's nothing foreign about it, it's as immediate as that guy who sneezed quite pungently next to you on the metro. (Sorry, public transportation is my personal nightmare.)
I always was bothered by that translated name, though. "The Bad Sleep Well"... Was this about a well, and if you feel asleep next to it, you would have nightmares? No, Kurosawa's movie is about corporate corruption, and it's so incredibly of the moment- all those headlines about Enron and Lehman and AIG flshed through the secondary screening room in my head. "TBSW" is reputedly a "Hamlet" re-telling, but I would demur: Kurosawa made some obvious and direct Shakespeare adaptations elsewhere, but the only honest Hamlet connection is that we have a son (Toshiro Mifune) avenging his father's death. The story has few other parallels, as opposed to, say, "The Lion King" or "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" which are admitted "Hamlet" adaptations. (The use of dramatic devices to bring out corruption?) Mostly what's resonant is that astounding feeling of connection with this American moment, when corporate greed whistles away from the scene of the crime with its suit showing not a wrinkle... and leaving someone else to take care of the bodies on its wake.

"Wormwood" Volume 1

Sunnydale's Hellmouth was located under the high school- that set the tone for "Buffy". The Hellmouth in Ben Templesmith's "Wormwood" is located under the strip club- and that sets the tone for this gross-out-funny gem.

CRITERION: Jean Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows"

Ignored on its 1969 French release, massively praised on its 2006 American re-release, made lots of top ten lists- "Army of Shadows" is Jean Pierre Melville's most personal movie (he was one of the estimated 600 members of the Resistance), the movie is a towering achievement blah blah blah...
I left my reverent analysis of this masterpiece on another laptop. I've started watching this four times and I can't make it past the twenty minute mark. To me it feels really slow and boring and uninvolving. I feel guilty, because this has been pretty much my reaction to all of Melville's movies I've seen, ("Bob Le Flambeur", "Le Samourai", "Le Cercle Rouge".) He makes me feel like I'm doing homework for a film degree I ain't never going to get.

Nicholas Stoller's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

They nicely circumvented my gag reflex by adding a last name to that hideous "VERB"-ing "NAME" thing, but I guess so did "Kissing Jessica Stein". "Chasing Amy" was great but who could hold back the flood of "Finding Fannie" or "Loving Lizzie" or "Serving Subpoena" or whatever... It was terrible for a while back there. To me, a movie's title is like its FACE, it shouldn't be something that admits it's replaceable, easily interchangeable. "The Godfather" would be a little less cool if it was called "Losing Don", wouldn't it?
If you've read my blog for any extended period of time you probably get that I'm pretty much the target demographic for the "Judd Apatow Movie Delivery System." TM
So of course I pretty much loved this movie- although it is played on a minor key. It's truly a pleasant sort of stay in Hawaii.
Aaaah, Jason Segel, having to choose between Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis. I feel you, my man, we've all been there.

"Avril Lavigne: The Best Damn Tour"

Avril's current motif is laughing "Hello-Kitty"-like skulls on pink.
Don't ask, won't tell.

Nu Balearica

Might as well plug this one too.

No, I haven't just been to Ibiza, and, no, of course I don't know what Balearica means, let alone where the Ol' Balearica went. But yes, this is some great collection of melodic, transporting space disco with great mixes by household names like Reverso 68 and A Mountain of One and Bogdan Irkuk- and I'm only being sarcastic about the "household names" part. Great "float away into alien dance halls" music.

Hercules and Love Affair

Is it homophobic of me that I find Antony's voice eerily beautiful, but with an emphasis on the EERIE? It's clear he's one of the most distinctive voices of our time. When was the last time we honestly singled out a great vocalist for fame? Not a good singer or entertainer but a great VOCALIST? And still there's something creeps me about him: there's such a jarring disconnect between that post-op haziness in his phrasing and his lumbering moo-moo weirdo look. On the other hand, hey, I'm all for supporting my LGBTCBGB's brothers and sisters and etcs: I bought "Hercules and Love Affair", didn't I? This record is gayer than The Castro in '78. That's cool, follow it up with Motorhead's Greatest Hits if you must, because this is one of the best dance-floor nostalgia feasts you'll find out there, holding back short of those excessive disco ideas that make sense when you're hopped up at a club but not so much in other environments. Someone in Olympus is cutting the rug to this.

Richard Price's "Lush Life"

What would James Wood say of Richard Price's "Lush Life", (if someone prevailed upon the critic to read this stuff?) It's certainly "a mere crime procedural" that sins by its belief that "life is truest" as it is lived by cops and criminals in DA STREETZ. But Price, the author of "Freedomland" and "Clockers" (he's also written for "The Wire") manages to put you so close to the scene you'll be checking the soles of your Converses for crack vials. He's universally praised for his sense of of dialogue, and here the CONVERSATION alone elevates this above the "cops running around asking questions" business. Price uses a (rather routine) shooting to cast a wider look at life on the Lower East Side- the ethnic uneasiness, the hipsters with their Ipod-clad-heads too far up their asses, and, crucially, its parade of waiters and bartenders who tell everyone they're really writers and artists... but everyone knows they're really waiters and bartenders.
A bit longer than it has to be, with some go-nowhere tendrils of plot hanging out, and with a crime that is closed from the start as far as us omniscient readers go, "Lush Life" shouldn't work as well as it does. Again, it's all about watching Price wring meaning and poetry out of people talking EXACTLY LIKE REAL PEOPLE TALK.

Laurel K. Hamilton's "Bloor Noir"

I'm giving up on this series. In my defense, it didn't take me all 16 Anita Blake "thrillers" to make that decision. I read the first five or six Supernatural-Janet Evanovich-type thrillers with my smiling tolerance for trash- and then the horrors of the ardeur kicked in. If you don't know, the books became vampire erotica- and not in that poetic Anne Rice guy, but in the bad web-forum way.
("And then the beautiful, sexy werepard's hardness entered me from behind and I smiled as my juices joined with his animalness".)
I've had to leap novels in threes or fours hoping there would be some release, that a werewolf would go too far and snap Anita's clit off and render the whole ardeur thing mute, that some of the "plot" would peek in between Anita's marathon (and yet unsexy) fuck sessions.
Not in "Blood Noir".

You know, when I bristled over the undeserving, disproportionate success of the "Twilight" series, I used to say: "At least the Anita Blake books had sex!" But I admit I was wrong. This isn't sex, it's BAD FURRY PORN, which some would consider a triple redundancy, but redundancy has never bothered Hamilton.

Garth Jenning's "Son of Rambow"

"Son of Rambow" has a sensibility that's one third "Napoleon Dynamite", one third "Be Kind Rewind", and one third "Stand By Me". That feeling of borrowed bits means that for every charming scene there are three others that belong elsewhere. It's hard to downright dislike the story of two fatherless boys.
One is a troublemaker neglected by his older bro, (Ed Westwick, "I'M CHUCK BASS!" from "Gossip Girl"). The other one is a dreamer out of "The Science of Sleep" whose wild soul is freed by a chance viewing of "First Blood"- see, that helps him escape from the sadness of living with a well meaning mother who has trapped him in a joyless sect called the Plymouth Brethren. Oh, and the kids learn aaaaaall about FRIENDSHIP as they come together through the joy of film making. (Jennings BELIEVES in the POWER of MOVIES so strongly that you feel as wary as if you were being preached to by those Plymouth Brethren).

Still, cute kids' movie, right? Why complain?
Well, too many things don't work. "Son of Rambow" is a kids' movie designed to please kids- not "kids" really, BOYS. But it's hard to imagine many kids making head nor tails of the religious criticism. Or parents approving of the character's language and smoking. Or anyone born after 1981 getting the period references- do kids even know what "Rambo" is these days? Let alone "Yentl"! Of course, if 1981 sounds close to your birthdate, and "A Flock of Seagulls" suggests something other than a Discovery show, you'll love some of the references, but then you're too old to be satisfied by how unresolved and sketchy the adult issues are: we see the mother's not altogether convincing decision to up and escape the sect from much the wrong end of the telescope.
And no matter how entertaining you find the VERY EXTRANEOUS subplot involving a French Exchange kid, it tags alongside the movie like a third unwanted leg. It's blatantly there to cater to a possible French audience (the film is a French co-production). Might have made for a cute little short, complete with punchline, but as it stands it is a hideous distraction, one more thing that might make Sylvester Stallone grimace in displeasure, like he's always doing.

The blind leading the blind

Advocates protest Jose Saramago's "Blindness"

This bit of All-American idiocy is too delicious to let slide.

The National Federation of the Blind are wagging their canes over the movie version of "Blindness", which "which will do substantial harm to the blind of America and the world. Blind people in this film are portrayed as incompetent, filthy, vicious, and depraved. They are unable to do even the simplest things like dressing, bathing, and finding the bathroom. The truth is that blind people regularly do all of the same things that sighted people do."

I'm not going to point out that they OBVIOUSLY haven't seen the movie, because that would just be fucking cruel of me.

But a mere look at any blurb will tell you that this movie is about what happens when everyone SUDDENLY goes blind. EVERYONE. YES, this would lead to global chaos! If you suddenly wake up blind you're not going to lean over for your see-eye dog and go about your business and write "I Just Called To Say I Love You": You're going to run out howling into the street bumping against a bunch of similarly frightened people in this sudden apocalypse. It's a HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION, a METAPHOR, and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE is going to think: "Geez, I guess the blind are evil zombies."

On the other hand, I now suspect the blind people involved with this bullshit protest are kind of morons. Way to start me a new stereotype!

Next on the List: The National Federation of the Blind bans the singing of "Amazing Grace", which equates "blindness" with "moral perdition".
If that's succesful, BU-BYE NEW TESTAMENT!!! What with Jesus' persistence on "making the blind see" which incorrectly supposes that being blind makes one separate from God and is an undesirable state. And that bigoted calumnious bit where Jesus says that "if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into a pit"! That pops up in not one, but TWO gospels, Matthew and Luke!
I can see the edict: "Blind people are quite capable of not falling into pits, Mister Christ! Grounds for crucifixion!"

And here I was going to protest the movie because Saramago is a big Commie and it looks lots crummier than the book, which is on my reading Q. Now I have to defend it. Irony.

ABOVE: She looks pretty happy for a differently sighted person.

David Schwimmer's "Run, Fat Boy, Run"

I wonder how I would fare if I joined a marathon.
Just now I had to run a mere three blocks in the rain, and when the paramedics resuscitated me, I noticed they had been laughing at me.



David Schwimmer's directorial debut, "Run, Fat Boy, Run" hits the scarce laughs it does hit by working within the tried and true (or the gross and Farrelly), which is a sort of letdown considering the script comes from "Stella" alumni Michael Ian Black and "Shaun of the Dead"'s Simon Pegg. There's some awkwardness in that half-Old, half-New World mesh. Pegg gives it a jolly ole try by playing the LIKABLE slacker who gets in shape and runs in a marathon in order to win back his WONDERFUL true love (Thandie Newton) and rescue her from the clutches of the UNBELIABLY ASSHOLEY new guy (Hank Azaria) and gain the respect of his ADORABLE little kid and...
WAKE UP!!!

James Wood's "How Fiction Works"

ABOVE: Way to go, James! I really didn't know you had it in you!

Don't look for any priceless advice to justify that Harold Bloomish blah title (How to Read and Why" much?). Look instead for the standard, belated crotch-licking of the canonical suspects. (Jah, we heard, Shakespeare and Tolstoy were pretty good).

*- Quite surprised, (but pleased) to see Roberto Bolano pop-up on the roster of "recent" worthies with Pynchon and Philip Roth and Cormac Carthy- and that for work that's barely a decade old and has only found English translation in the last two or three years.

*- Bemused by his damning praise of "these newfangled writers" like David Foster Wallace. "David Foster Wallace is very good at becoming the whole of boredom." MEOW, Mister Wood!!! Is that any way to talk of the dead?!?

*- Wood is a fierce defender of "The Novel", that endangered owl- but only if it's the spotted owl. Lesser sorts of owl, (you know, "genre pulp fiction") he'll gladly stuff and put as bookends in his mantlepiece.

*- That spotted owl is all about "character and subtlety in psychological depiction"- and if it happens to be ENTERTAINING, lock and load! Phrase to be much disagreed with: "The essential juvenility of plot". Also hated: his dismissal of John Le Carre as commercial realism, (by this he means his dismissal of FUN books). He throws him some withering comments like: "I mean Le Carre is pretty good, I guess considering his stories are about, you know, silly stuff like spies and mysteries." Also targeted: stories about cops- "When did it get so that cop stories are supposed to be the realest thing out there? If it's not about a professor of (Literature/ History/ Philosophy/ Linguistics) having sex with a (beautiful dumb nymphomaniac) student, is not REALLY real, is it?"

*- I love Philip Roth, I really do, but I'll admit his mysoginy, (as displayed in a "superb passage from 'Sabbath's Theater') is getting harder and harder for me to overlook. No matter what he tries, women are only there to give men blowjobs or headaches.

Vadim Perelman's "The Life Before Her Eyes"

I could watch for hours while Evan Rachel Wood clips her toe nails and if she classifies the detritus from shorter to tallest that's fine by me. "The Life Before Her Eyes" is a beautifully shot and observed story about a young woman's decision during a Columbine-like event and its possible repercussions. And if it was viciously received by critics who misunderstood it and audiences who ignored it, that's totally understandable. This movie just comes with a problem: it doesn't please anyone. It doesn't work as a M. Night Shyamalan "gotcha" twist ending, although it has that, because it's not about THAT. It doesn't work as a cathartic melodrama for Columbine survivors, even though it could, because it's not about THAT. It sure doesn't work as view at "what disturbed teens are up to"- 'cause it's not about THAT either.
It doesn't work as any of those things because it's not commited to genre. I'm not sure if that's brave or foolish. But it's not a bad movie. It's just a movie that's not really going to please anyone. It's based on a novel, and readers are much more willing to submit to meta-possibilities than movie audiences.

Sloan's "Never Hear the End of It" (late 2006-2007))

Canada's Sloan has never attained the American reputation they deserve. They were a revelation to me as recently as two years ago when I first heard their 30-song, White-Albumish "Never Hear the End of It". My three thoughts were: "Nice to see the Beatles finally made peace", followed by: "Wait, no, no, I heard something about one of them getting shot by Jodie Foster and another one being expressly lifted off this realm by Vishnu, so that can't be them," FOLLOWED by: "Whoever they are, this is the best band no one's ever mentioned in my presence."
But for one reason or another I hadn't latched on to this mammoth power-pop epic again until very recently, and even with all its hark-back rock poses, the quality of the stand-outs is unimpeachable: "Who Taught You to Live Like That", "Ana Lucia", "Fading to Obscurity", "Everybody Wants You". It's a little daunting in its variety, but the experiments are too brief to annoy, which is more than I can say of some of Lennon's *cough cough* "classic noise-collages".
You know, the ones that came packaged with acid stamps because there was no other way to sit through them.

ABOVE: WT-- is that Anthony Rapp from "Rent" back there?