Book Illustratin'

After two weeks of incessant posting, I thought I'd give you an illustration interlude. As the actual writing part of my book winds down (yes, I'm still entering in those changes -- got hung up on a problematic scene but I think I fixed it today), I've been thinking more and more about illustrating it. The idea of big, full-page pen and ink drawings isn't appealing to me (way too much work), but I like the idea of little drawings that could appear on the first page of each chapter, just above the big number. In addition to the painted, full-page illustrations in King's "The Gunslinger", the artist, Michael Whelan, also drew these great, ultra-detailed little drawings that kind of gave the story an added layer of richness. That's kind of my template.

The above is an unfinished sketch (the two trees that frame the scene ought to be black, for instance), but if I did a finished version of this, I'd put it at the beginning of Chapter One. The drawing shows the unfriendly emissary of the gated community, Richard Junger (in his black Mercedes) parked at the end of the paved road watching the hero drive up the dirt road. Anyway, it's a first draft.

The Blazing Beacon of Truth That is the Inanities Has Shown "24" the Error of Its Ways. Also More "1/2 Hour News Hour" Badness For Your Amusement

Good news for "24" fans. After what was, for me, nearly a whole week of being conflicted about watching the show because of this afore-blogged about "New Yorker" article, Howard Gordon, one of the executive producers of the show, said yesterday that they'll be dialing back on the torture in the remaining shows. Go here for the story. Though Gordon says they're decreasing the amount of torture on the show because it was getting to be "trite" and NOT because of any human rights concerns, I'm just glad they got the message, even if it wasn't Surnow. I'm sure he's up in his office shaking his head at the "liberal media" and the "PC gestapo" everytime he thinks about what they've made him do, but I think the slight shift in the show's content is good for the culture and good for Fox's bottom-line because now liberals can watch the show guilt-free again. Of course the bad news is that they've already shot 16 of the 24 episodes -- all of them no doubt chock full of torture and thinly veiled Republican dogma -- so this new anti-torture directive will effect only the final eight. Good enough, says me.

Also, the new Surnow-produced Fox "comedy" show, "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" premieres tonight on Fox News. If that first clip wasn't enough to convince you that ultra right-wingers are incapable of writing and/or performing comedy, this clip ought to do the trick. No doubt, the two "stars" in this clip agreed to do it because they're close personal friends with Surnow. In a way, this clip makes the New Yorker article come alive by showing concretely the extent of Surnow's connections with these sort of people. In terms of comedy, this clip's even more cringe-worthy. The laugh track makes me depressed -- they don't even want to fool you into thinking actual people are in the studio laughing it up at this dreck. It's as if they know their audience won't know the difference. Yeesh.

Anyway, enjoy the awfulness, and enjoy your weekend.

JJ Abrams Nabs "Dark Tower" to Direct? Also: TVM's Website and Rogan V. Mencia: Plagiarism Smackdown!

I read a depressing and widely-reported rumor the other day on Aintitcoolnews.com (who was in turn reporting it from IGN.com). It's just a rumor at this stage, but it isn't exactly without credence. The rumor is that JJ Abrams of "Lost" and "Mission Impossible 3" fame, has been tapped to direct Stephen King's 7-volume epic "The Dark Tower". For anyone who has affection for Roland Deschain and this weird sci-fi/western amalgam and looked forward to one day seeing it on the big screen, this is bad news.

The background on this (which I think Aintitcool's Quint talks about in the item) is that King and the writers of "Lost" had a symposium of some kind recently where the empaneled JJ Abrams talked about how much they loved King, and the also empaneled King talked about how much he liked "Lost". Strangely, one of King's primary reasons for enjoying the show (which he talks about in his Entertainment Weekly column) is probably the main reason I think the show's lost a lot of steam: King likes that the "Lost" writers don't know where the show's headed. I imagine this is so because that's how he writes (with at least one exception) and thinks it's the best way to go with novel-writing. So anyway, on-stage and off, Abrams goes on and on to King about the "Dark Tower" and how much he'd love to adapt it and King offers it to him.

I hope it's not true, but if it is, this is why it's depressing: JJ Abrams.

King's a great writer, but he doesn't seem to have a clear idea of what is good and what is bad when when it comes to adaptations of his own work. How else can you explain how he keeps giving Mick Garris his novels to adapt even though Garris has screwed them up abysmally time and time again? How else can you explain why King believes the ABC mini-series version of "The Shining" is superior to Kubrick's? Granted, some of that has to be authorial myopia that comes from being so close to one's own work, but whatever the case, King isn't the best judge of who best to bring his stories to screen. So by choosing JJ Abrams, and this is what's galling, he's decided to reward mediocrity and buckets of flattery by giving JJ, the son of a well-connected TV producer, his magnum opus to adapt as he sees fit. Given both King's and Abrams's long-standing relationship with ABC, my guess is they'll go this route and ABC will be accommodating with millions of dollars to each. Abrams has just one feature under his belt, ("MI:3", a big-budget franchise movie that, despite a 100 million dollar budget, managed to feel like TV), and now he just gets this?

Anyway, I know this is all way geeky and I seem pissed all out of proportion to this story's actual importance, but I really like "The Dark Tower", a story a lot of talented filmmakers would all kill their grandmothers to make, but somehow Abrams gets to be the guy? I'm not saying that there is no possibility that Abrams could make this into a worthwhile film, but why take the chance as the odds are against him? There are a lot of A-1 directors out there sitting on the bench who'd make something worthwhile out of this stuff if they got a chance at the plate, but . . . all right. I'm done talking about it.

In other news, I stumbled over an old high-school classmate's website the other day. Trevor Van Meter was a year ahead of me at Sanderson, and back then he was (and is now) a really talented visual artist. My junior year, he painted a giant, muscly Spartan (he was our school's mascot) on the wall of the gymnasium that was about 20 feet high and ten across and looked not at all like a high-school student's effort at large-scale painting. Anyway, he's good and in the intervening 12 years, he's gotten into professional illustration. Here's a link to his site. Though I like his style of illustration and T-shirt design, I'd really like to see what he's been drawing in a more naturalistic, pencil on paper kind of style. Anyway, popular illustration-themed blog, "Drawn!" like his stuff, too, and has linked to Van Meter here, and here.

Finally, this: Joe Rogan (of "Fear Factor") and Carlos Mencia (of "Mind of Mencia") don't like each other. Rogan has taken it upon himself to end the practice of comics stealing material from other comics. He says, and I paraphrase, "If this kind of thing happens in the recording industry, it's all over the news. If it happens in comedy, no one cares." He cares. Carlos Mencia (along with Dane Cook) are notorious in the comic community as joke-stealers. At a recent show, Mencia called Rogan (who sounds like he was in the audience heckling) up on stage to put the matter to rest. This is what happened. (It's a 10-minute clip and features loads of cursing, in case you're at work). I'm not really a fan of either of these guys, but their on-stage fracas is fascinating.

I'm not sure what it is, but I think the sub-culture of comedians is characterized primarily by stunted emotional development. The conversation they have on-stage resembles more a back-of-the-classroom argument in a 10th-grade remedial English class than it does two ostensibly grown men trying to make their case in front of a worked-up audience. Anyway, it's interesting.

More tomorrow.

Maybe the Very Very Old Will Find it Funny?

Okay, yes, I'm flogging the Joel Surnow thing to death a little, but this was too good not to mention.

In Monday's post, I mentioned the new show that "24" executive producer Joel Surnow was producing for Fox News. Entitled "The 1/2 Hour News Hour", it's supposed to be the conservative answer to "The Daily Show". What I didn't know when I mentioned that was just how soon we'd get a taste of the show. A clip leaked onto YouTube today. To be completely honest, I was a little worried I'd think the show was funny. Like I'd have to eat crow and tip my hat that they'd done the impossible, that is make jokes with a conservative slant funny. But now that I've seen the clip, I can rest assured no such crow eating will ever take place. I'd say this qualifies as Exhibit 2,348B proving conservatives aren't funny.

Watch. Believe.

"Hannibal Rising" to "Nashville"

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I saw "Hannibal Rising" on Sunday night. Not too good as you might have guessed. I knew going in that the reviews had been nearly universal in their antipathy towards the film, but I went hoping to see if there was even a little flash of the Lectery goodness I love so much. No such luck. The guy who plays Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) has this terrible, Eurotrashy accent which, even if there'd been any good lines for him to deliver, would have mangled them. Worse, he's got this Crispin-Glovery joker-mask for a face. Not a trace of Hopkins in either appearance or demeanor, and not even an interesting new take on the character to make up for it. Some of the movie's difficulty lay in casting Noel but I think Harris's novel is central to the film's failure. True, the Lecter character never needed fleshing out -- I think he was just fine as Harris left him at the end of "Silence": enigmatic and unpredictable -- but much about the backstory Harris gives Hannibal is just disappointing. The reason he eats people is because starving opportunists ate his sister when he was a kid? And he's a Lithuanian whose father's named Count Lecter? You almost think Harris thought about the whole thing for a second, called it good and went ahead, thinking all the while to the 5 million dollar check he'd soon deposit. I wished he'd paused for a few minutes and thought a little harder. Would have made a better book and possibly a better movie and he would have gotten the same cash. Anyway, neither was good enough to devote more ink to than just that.

Also, I watched "Nashville" finally. I thought it was dull, overlong, and self-indulgently meandering. It feels like a movie that's so of that particular moment that if you weren't in any way present for that moment, the film has no impact. I totally concede that I may just be an uncultured goof but, so far, after having watched two of his "classic" films, "M.A.S.H." and now "Nashville", the critical glow that surrounds Altman still mystifies me. Maybe "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" will be the one that redeems him for me. I saw the first few minutes of that movie and it looked great. Here's hoping.

[Ed. note: The kid's name isn't Gaspar Noel as I originally wrote, but Gaspard Ulliel. Just lazy.]

Et Tu, "24"?

Hi, everybody! Hope everyone enjoyed their weekends. My 30th birthday weekend went just great, thanks to everyone who wrote or called to say Happy Birthday. I really appreciated it. Anyway my folks took me and whole gang out Saturday night to watch me gorge myself on sushi in a frigid Atlanta restaurant. We all had a good time so thanks to my muzzuh and fazzuh for that. The next day, Peggy's folks took the wife and I to a barbecue joint called Smokey Bones and presented me with, among other things, "Gears of War" as well as a customizable face plate for the 360. I got home and promptly printed out this drawing of Blinky and made it my new faceplate. Looks pretty cool, I think. Then we went to see "Hannibal Returns", but that's for another post.

Okay, onto the topic at hand, namely "24". This show, of which I am a fan, airs on Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox. The show, not surprisingly, skews right. Previously, in interviews with the press, the writers have been careful to assure viewers that the writing staff has its share of conservatives and liberals and no one ideology dominates the room, but it's still pretty obvious the right-wingers have more sway. I also know there's a fair amount of hypocrisy on my part for enjoying the many many scenes of torture depicted on the show, while at the same time deeply opposed to the practice in real life, but so far it hasn't swayed me from watching. I started watching this current season of "24" reasonably comfortable with these contradictions.

This article from The New Yorker, however, has got me thinking in a different way. Is it possible that "24" is normalizing the idea of an America that tortures where, just a few years ago (pre-Bush the Younger) it was a point of moral pride that Americans did not torture? Could my support of the show be perpetuating the myth that torture is effective and something that self-sacrificing patriots do to extract information? As the article reveals conclusively and horrifyingly, Joel Surnow (pictured), who is the executive producer of the show, is a self-described "right-wing whacko" who likes and agrees with Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Lynne Cheney (whose a "big fan"), the President, Karl Rove, the Vice President, Joe McCarthy, and a host of other Republican low-lights. They seem to like him back. After reading the article, my kneejerk reaction is that I want to scrub all the seasons of "24" from my brain and curse it from the rooftops so loathsome and antithetical to my belief system is Surnow and his ilk.

That being said, I am a little hesitant to embrace the implications of this article whole-heartedly because the argument is, at heart, "don't put this on TV because look what it's making people do". Which is one of my least favorite arguments. Don't let them make violent video games because look at all the people it made my little Timmy kill. Don't let them put those curse-word lyrics on that CD because look what it's making my little Timmy say. The links between consuming those media and then perpetrating crimes is, to my mind, essentially zero.

On the other hand, the link between six years of a popular show like "24" in which nearly every other episode features a scene depicting extreme torture, and six years of an administration working non-stop to legalize torture for use by the U.S. military, maybe isn't so tenuous. According to the article, U.S. military brass had a pow-wow with the show's writers asking them to tone down the torture and find ways to make it more realistic because it was giving the military interrogators the wrong idea about how torture really works. That's a big deal. (Surnow did not, by the way, attend that pow-wow. He had a "meeting", supposedly with Roger Ailes. Shudder.) When Jack Bauer himself, Kiefer Sutherland was presented by this delegation evidence of the show's unintended consequences, he got worried because he's anti-torture himself. (As for Joe McCarthy-apologist Surnow? Not worried a bit.) (By the way, the writers agreed to change nothing.)

As the article references, many a rightist pundit has held up the popularity of "24" as a kind of unofficial referendum on where Americans are on torture, and in their eyes, the big numbers for the show mean America's pretty much for it. Now if it were just the radio fascists like Hannity, Limbaugh and Ingraham who were trying to equate "24"'s popularity with a silent majority concensus on torture, than I don't think it would be an issue. Ninety-five percent of what they say is bullshit anyway. But when the "Torture-is-AOK" crew at the Bush White House (like Cheney, Gonzales, Bush,) start using the show to push their pro-torture agendas, I start to get a little more than just queasy about tuning in myself every Monday night. It feels like if I watch "24", then the Bush White House wins.

Also, I don't want anything to do with enriching this Surnow character. In addition to the right-skewing "24", he's going to executive produce the new Fox News "comedy" show designed to be the answer to "The Daily Show", which sort of offends me on a visceral level. As if these Bush White House apologists could make something legitimately funny. This from the network that brought Dennis Miller onto "Hannity and Colmes" for a few minutes of stand-up every week. I caught a minute of that. Wow. Even the crickets withheld their chirping. (The fact is conservatism is inherently unfunny. It's something they have to learn to deal with. They get to be the unapologetic macho alpha-male assholes, and we get to be funny.)

Anyway, "24" airs tonight. "Two hours of Bauer" as they're saying. Ordinarily, I'd be hyped for this, but now all this Surnow stuff. . . I don't want to be led around by the nose by the New Yorker like a good liberal, either, but it gives me serious pause. I don't know.

Anyway, if you're a fan of the show like I am, I strongly reccomend this disquieting article. Let me know what you think.

This Post is Brought to You Today by Procrastination

And just like that it's Friday. My first week in I don't know how long of five posts in five days. Hope to keep it up.

In book news, I've got today and tomorrow (before Sunday and big 30) to take my paper edits of the "polished draft" (which I finished with a couple days ago so, in essence, the book is done), into the "Final" Word document. I'm on page 261 of 490, just came across a page covered with strike-throughs and add-ons, and I thought, "I'd rather put up a blog than get into this right now." This is classic procrastinator's thinking, but I'm a slave to it. Entering changes into a Word document is about as tedious as it gets, but book ain't really done 'till I do it.

Anyway, saw this on Drudge, got kinda T.O'd about it (you can imagine me saying that in the voice of Kip from "Napoleon Dynamite"), and I thought I'd share. The general manager of Cartoon Network was forced to resign over that bullshit Boston "terrorism" scare a week or so back. The one with the battery-operated Lite Brite boxes featuring the big Mooninite from Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Here's a link to his announcement letter. How terrible is that? You have a very cool job, you authorize a hip, viral kind of marketing campaign to get the word out about your product, and then some retards in Boston cause a panic over Lite Brites, and because the political climate is such that there's nothing funny about terrorism, even when there's none in sight, heads have to roll, but none of them can belong to Boston city officials. Ridiculous. I hope the guy lands on his feet. It's one thing to have to quit or resign because of an honest-to-God screw up, but to lose your job over something like this? Having to listen to SOBs lie about what happened, and call it a "hoax", when it was nothing of the sort? Kinda hard to take.

Anyway, blogger and nouveau-Kiwi Mike Moran has a good post up about the original incident from a diehard Beantown resident's point of view. He knows these people. You can check it out here.

All right, that's it for me. Have a good weekend.

Anna Nicole Smith Died Today

Which was, to me, a shock. I think it's a sad story, but I'm also kind of relieved that this particular train wreck's been cleared off the tracks.

Anywho!

Yesterday I wrote up a passel of brief and inane movie reviews. Well, there's no reason books should escape my jaundiced eye. I read "Hannibal Rising" last week. It's not a complete failure -- it is well-written in places -- but overall the book's a wasted exercise that only further demystifies one of the great literary boogeymen of the modern era. Oh, well. When there's money to be made, considerations like that tend to fall by the wayside. Thomas Harris made a deal with his publisher to write two books for some eight-figure deal. He novelized, apparently, the screenplay he wrote for Dino DeLaurentiis and the result is "Hannibal Rising". Meh. Mostly I was reading for some pithy Lecterisms or to rubberneck as Hannibal dispatched some guys using novel and grotesque methods. Not much of either here. He's young and not quite so worldly in this book (which follows him from the age of 10 to 18), so his pithy factor is lessened considerably. At the end of WWII, bad Lithuanians eat his sister. He suppresses the memory and doesn't utter a word for years. Years later, he's adopted by his uncle, Robert Lecter (which strikes me as hilarious that Hannibal Lecter would have an uncle named Robert -- so very close to Bobby Lecter) and taken to Paris. Anyway, Hannibal falls in love with his stepmother, most of whose family died in Hiroshima. She takes Hannibal under her wing and slowly gets him to talk again by showing him the art of calligraphy and flower arranging. Slowly, he learns to live again! Yaaay! One day someone insults his stepmother and Hannibal goes batshit. The first inkling we have that the boy's not all right. By and by the memory of what was done to his sister returns to him. More importantly, the memory of who did it returns as well. The rest of the story concerns Hannibal's hunting these men down (most of whom are rich war profiteers living in Paris), and avoiding capture by a Parisian detective named Popil, who also happens to love Hannibal's stepmother. It's all very humdrum and disappointing.

One thing did bother me. At the end of the book (and presumably the film in case anyone's planning to see it SPOILER), Hannibal's case is championed by the Communist French. Because he killed war criminals who'd eaten his sister, most regular French who read about his story in the newspaper are inclined to wonder what the big deal is, and why not let him go? So essentially that happens and he's transferred under some kind of plea agreement to Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. What bothered me is this: if Hannibal was the focus of a major story in France, under his own name no less, why did it require the unique brain of profiler genius Will Graham to figure out Lecter might be at it again when he was caught for his later crimes? A modicum of research would have revealed that part of Lecter's history. If he'd killed before in a serial kind of way, how big a stretch is it to think he might have started up again? Anyway, it's a major inconsistency, I think, and a stupid lapse on the part of an otherwise excellent writer.

This novel had an especially sour effect on me because I'd just reread "Silence of the Lambs" before digging into this one. If you haven't yet read "Silence", you ought to run out to the library or bookstore and pick it up. Take you a day or two to get through. In addition to being one of the best thrillers ever written, Harris throws these literary razor-sharp character observations into the mix almost off-handedly. Here's one I thought was perfectly done. This from the end of a scene in which Clarice has gone in to see Dr. Frederick Chilton (the head of the asylum) about another interview with Lecter. Chilton's making a fuss about not being more involved.

"I'm acting on my instructions, Dr. Chilton. I have the U.S. Attorney's right number here. Now please, either discuss it with him or let me do my job."
"I'm not a turnkey here, Miss Starling. I don't come running down here at night just to let people in and out. I had a ticket to Holiday on Ice."
He realized he'd said a ticket. In that instant Starling saw his life, and he knew it.
She saw his bleak refrigerator, the crumbs on the TV tray where he ate alone, the still piles his things stayed in for months until he moved them -- she felt the ache of his whole yellow-smiling Sen-Sen lonesome life -- and switchblade-quick she knew not to spare him, not to talk on or look away. She stared into his face, and with the smallest tilt of her head, she gave him her good looks and bored her knowledge in, speared him with it, knowing he couldn't stand for the conversation to go on.
He sent her with an orderly named Alonzo.

Isn't that frickin' good?

Anyway, back to work.

"Penn and Teller's Bullshit!", "Soylent Green", "Last King of Scotland", "The Hunting of the President", and "Babel". Your Wednesday Motherlode

I'm trying to be good about blogging this week, so here's your Wednesday dose. Yes, I know. Lucky you. How's about some movie and DVD reviews? Yaaay! Opinions!

1.) Penn and Teller's Bullshit! I watched the first disc of the first season of this Showtime show (which I believe is in its fourth season these days), and I liked it. Starting out they don't really get into the more controversial Libertarian-oriented viewpoints that I'm told they delve into in later episodes, so thus far I'm with them. This round they lay into TV mediums (at the time they made the episodes John Edward's Crossing Over show was still a big deal on syndicated TV), UFO enthusiasts, products designed to make your babies smarter (a la Baby Genius), and quacky holistic medicine like healing therapies involving magnets and something to do with the feet called reflexology. Nothing too objectionable so far. These people are almost indisputably selling crap to gullible types. Straw men are easy to knock down, and they do so with great joy and it's not bad as TV. The only complaint I had was that Penn and Teller went out of their way to make fools out of regular folks, who seemed like hapless and entirely sympathetic targets. I hope they tone this down in future episodes. Discs two and three came in the mail today, so I'm hoping I'll see something I can call bullshit on Penn and Teller for. We'll see.

2.) Soylent Green. Why? I don't know. I just got a hankering to see this movie. I knew the punchline to the movie -- "Soylent Green is people!" -- but it didn't have any resonance for me because I'd never seen the movie. Well, now I have. Just as goofy as you'd want. Set in 2022 in New York City, whose population has ballooned to 40 million residents (overpopulation was a real fear back then), Charlton Heston's working on a case that will eventually lead him to the truth behind a popular foodstuff fed to the masses called Soylent Green. If you know the ending (and now you do), there is almost zero reason to see this thing. Though if you want to see Chuck Heston run around with an inexplicable and very fey bandanna tied around his neck (could Heston have been trying to disguise a developing wattle even back then?), check it out. Weird trivia: this was, I believe, Edward G. Robinson's last movie. Also: Joseph Cotten of "Citizen Kane" fame plays a brief role in this.

3.) Last King of Scotland. This was well done, and a pleasant surprise. Often with these high-minded movies that come out in the final months of the year, specifically the ones touting a very strong lead performance, you can be forgiven for expecting little more than one hammy actor acting it up for the Academy, often to the detriment of the film. This was a complete film, though, and though Forrest Whitaker's brilliant in it, the scenes that don't happen to feature him are never dull. Definitely worth seeing, particularly as Whitaker seems an early lock for Best Actor. Also: the penultimate scene in the duty-free shop will make you think back to the dinner scene in "Hannibal" as a model of taste and restraint. Good stuff.

4.) The Hunting of the President. As documentaries go, this one was not at all good. Though I agreed with its central premise, namely that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was the end result of a large-scale and well-financed Republican effort to bring him down, aided in part by a complicit media hungry for sex scandals, the filmmakers (which include Clinton friend and TV producer Harry Thomason) have no gift for linear non-fiction storytelling. What should have been a compelling and galling expose on a dark chapter in American history was just a tired rehashing and summarizing of stuff folks already knew. The absence of any dissenting voices, or any assenting voices from the other side of the aisle, was conspicuous and made the film less persuasive. Ken Starr comes off as a real honest-to-God sonofabitch though, (not that we didn't already know that), but what I didn't know was how Susan MacDougal was treated after she refused to testify for Starr. For the crime of failing to cooperate with the Independent Counsel's office, she was fitted with a red dress in prison. In her particular prison, inmates wearing red dresses were mothers who'd killed their children. The other inmates hated these prisoners, and Susan got the same treatment as the child killers. That'll teach you not to make up stuff for Ken Starr! In transfers from one prison to another, she was put into a cage in the center of the bus, women in the front half and men in the back half. While she was in that prison bus-cage, all manner of abuse was thrown her way. I won't say here what the worst of it was (in case some of you are eating), but I will say this: think Multiple Miggs. Yeah. Gross. Best part of the DVD was the half hour clip of Clinton himself speaking after the film's premiere. Remember smart presidents? Anyway.

5.) Babel. A real disappointment for me. I tried to write a post about this movie the night I saw it, but I couldn't figure out how to write about it and make any kind of sense. It seems almost to defy criticism because it's made so well. Technically, the movie's top notch. Even aesthetically it's hard to take issue with. I feel a little bit like I've been to Japan and Morocco now, so vibrantly were those locales presented. But something about the film seemed to me ... wait for it... disingenuous. As soon as I saw the famous freeway sign (or the sign was pointed out to me -- I missed it when it appeared) that shows a family running across the freeway in which the word above the pictogram was changed from "WARNING" to "WANTED", I felt the filmmakers were less interested in telling a serious and realistic story than they were in pushing a specific agenda. Agendas are certainly fine in movies, especially (for me) liberal agendas, but I think the immigration situation in this country is bad enough without the director going out of his way to make stuff up. I thought torturing the tow-headed white children by having them nearly die of exposure in the desert so as to give the gringitos a taste of what it's like for Mexicans coming across the border was over the top and obvious. I thought Cate Blanchett's ultimate fate and that of the children didn't at all jibe with the overall tone of the film, and where they ended up at the end of the film felt unearned to me. The movie was sad and bleak and angry but not much else. A real slog.

All right, er'rybody. Enjoy your Wednesday evenings.

Astronauts Can Be Crazy Too

How freaking bizarre is this? Up till now, I'd always thought of astronauts in the modern shuttle-era as Mathletes so crazily unflappable and cut off from their primal emotions (all the better to remain robotic in the event of a correctable in-flight crisis) that they only marginally resembled real human beings. A lady named Lisa Marie Nowak threw all that out the window.

As deeply in the thrall of jealousy as any guest on Jerry Springer, she drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, foregoing bathroom breaks by wearing an adult diaper, to confront another woman, Colleen Shipman, whom Nowak perceived to be a rival for the affections of another astronaut named William Oefelein. This from the MSNBC report:

Dressed in a wig and a trench coat, she waited for Shipman’s plane to land and then boarded the same airport shuttle bus Shipman took to get to her car, police said. Shipman told police she noticed someone following her, hurried inside the car and locked the doors, according to the arrest affidavit. Nowak rapped on the window, tried to open the car door and asked for a ride. Shipman refused but rolled down the car window a few inches when Nowak started crying, the statement said. Nowak then sprayed a chemical into Shipman’s car, the affidavit said. Shipman drove to the parking lot booth and police were called.

Orlando police are charging her with attempted murder, which does seem excessive. Though Nowak's claim that she didn't want to hurt Shipman is suspect -- she was carrying a steel-mallet, a knife and a bunch of plastic bags after all -- all she really did was pepper spray a woman in her car. I don't know much about the law, but it seems like you should only be able to prosecute for crimes someone actually committed, not ones they may or may not have wanted to commit. Otherwise it gets into weird "Minority Report" territory. Anyway, the fact that Nowak was so not crazy as of 6 months ago, my guess is she had some kind of psychotic break and she'll do just fine pleading Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.

Something funny: On ABC World News Tonight, Bill Weir, (who some of you Los Angelenos might remember as the guy who used to do sports for the ABC affiliate out there a few years back and who now subs as a co-host for Good Morning America and, I guess, some actual reporting on the nightly newscast) said in this evening's report about the Nowak case, "It appears unlikely that she'll be on-board for her scheduled space flight this June." Hmmm. You think?

Finally, I'm a gon' opine on the Super Bowl. I thought the first half was interesting, the second half was a showcase for the Bears massive choke (I put the bulk of the blame on QB Grossman). Prince and the producers of the Halftime Show deserve accolades as they set a new standard for all future halftime shows, and my favorite commercial was the Letterman promo co-starring Oprah, and my favorite straight commercial was the Emerald Nuts commerical starring Robert Goulet as a mischievious office vandal. The most unfunny commercial: the one featuring at the end a bunch of jungle-ized office types running off the edge of a cliff. Very realistic, very off-putting. That is all.

"Pan's Labyrinth": Bad? Really? But First, Andy Dick Self-Destructs

Okay. Got some video goodness for you. (The picture link doesn't actually work, by the way -- just click on this here hotlink coming up). It's a video of Andy Dick getting kicked off the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Wow. As you'll see, he's sitting on the couch with second guest Ivanka Trump. Kimmel asks her if she has a boyfriend. Dick, sauced, says, "You're looking at him." Then he says, his voice slurred, "I need a fucking sugarmama." Then a bit of glitter catches his eye and he starts to rub her leg. Kimmel reaches over Ivanka to take Andy's hand off. Everyone gets over that, but when he does it again, Kimmel and an old security dude come in and take Andy away. Andy looks up at them and says, laughingly, "Am I out?" He doesn't look altogether sure if he's really going out or not. He is. I saw Andy Dick on Letterman a while back and his theme of the night was "getting back to sobriety". Letterman, I thought, was very condescending in that dickish way of his that he doesn't indulge as often as he used to, but Andy was a sport and it looked like he was serious about cleaning up. As his Kimmel appearance makes clear, sobriety didn't work out. Anyway, fun video.

Well, I've been seeing a few movies during this mini-book-finishing hiatus. I am very nearly done with the revisions on el novelo and will very soon be entering the changes into the Word file. Done by Sunday. Done by Sunday. Done by Sunday. It will happen.

Anyway. I saw Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" over the weekend and, surprisingly, I was underwhelmed. Really disappointed actually. A whole cadre of respected genre artists like Stephen King, Frank Darabont, Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman all saw "Pan's" together sometime last year and heralded the movie as a masterwork and a film of genius and all of that. One of those guys saying that stuff, sure, a grain of salt, but all of them? So when I ambled into the theater Friday night, I was not expecting anything but filmic goodness. There was not a whole lot of that.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. A little girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her mother settle into a garrison in the countryside run by Ofelia's new stepfather, Captain Vidal (played with gusto by Sergi Lopez). Vidal's hunting the Communist rebels who are hiding out in the hills near the garrison. Vidal's a mean vicious guy with no redeeming qualities. No human traits. He'd kick a puppy with as much fervor as he'd kick an elderly woman in a wheelchair. We get hints that it has to do with his dad. Whatever. We first get a taste of his sadism when he kills a guy by slamming the bottom edge of a whiskey bottle into his face over and over. Guillermo, who seems to love that stuff, shows it in loving detail. Oh, Guillermo. If it seems like I'm talking a lot about Capitan Vidal, it's because Guillermo does, too. Vidal's gruesome, Mengele-style hijinx occupy most of the film's attention, which kind of sucks all the air out of the rest of the movie, the rest of the movie concerning Ofelia's being visited by fairies who say she's the long lost princess of the Underworld, reincarted in another body. One night she descends a spiral staircase at the end of an old labyrinth near the garrison. Pan comes to her (or, just a faun as it's called in the original Spanish title, "The Labyrinth of the Faun") and tells her that if she completes three tasks then she may reclaim her rightful place on her Princess throne in the Underworld. This sort of thing is the meat and potatoes of children's stories. Harry Potter's not just an unloved adoptee, for example, but the greatest wizard of all time. Eragon's not just a peasant -- whatever. He rides dragons or something. Anyway, the point is that this movie looks like it's suitable for kids, but it is not for kids, which is part of the reason why the movie's frustrating for me.

The movie's built like a fable -- simple. A child could watch it and not miss much. That's not to say an adult can't enjoy a movie structured as a fable, but it's not the preferred storytelling mode for those in the 12 and up demographic. But when a guy who gets way off on gory horror gets a hold of a children's fable, and doesn't think to hold back on the gratuitous gore effects for this new audience, the question comes up pretty fast: who the hell is this movie for? As an adult, stories of children completing three tasks (one of which is to feed a big toad under a tree magic stones) is kind of boring for me. I'm starting to think, "Oh, that's why I'm nodding off. This really is for kids." Then comes the face smashing via the whiskey bottle. I'm not nodding off anymore. I'm looking for my cell phone so I can call my mommy. Fricking gross. Now I'm thinking, "Not only is this not for kids, I don't think it's for me either." It only gets worse from there. But strong storytelling can often overpower objections to artless tone shifts. If only we had any here.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is not a weak story exactly -- perhaps told a different way it'd make a fine film or young adult novel. But Guillermo (who also wrote it) gets lazy a few times, and the characters do stupid shit that make you throw your hands up and quit rooting for them. [SPOILER AHEAD.] For example, before Ofelia begins her second task, Pan tells her explicitly not to eat anything off of a big banquet table she'll encounter while doing the second task. Pan tells her doing so could kill her. Ofelia finds the table, sees the creepy eyeless monster at the head of the table who sits motionless, not seeing her. She does the task and then, you guessed it, eats something off the table. A grape, no less. No reason other than she was hungry. Lazy, Guillermo. Lazy. Again, if this is a kid's movie, you can get away with this kind of unjustified BS, but Guillermo's aiming for an arty prestige movie so this unmotivated character action doesn't cut the mustard. Maybe the cheese. [SPOILER DONE.]

At that point I essentially gave up on the movie. The ending did what good stories are supposed to do, namely tie up loose ends, and it does that, but -- well, I don't want to give that away at least. So, in the end, I don't know what all those writers and filmmakers were thinking. When "Pan's Labyrinth" comes out on DVD, check it out, see what you think. Maybe I'm way off.

A Lamentable Oscar Oversight, Political Vids Designed to Amuse and Enlighten, and a Urine-Gargling Deer Video

Oscar nominations are in as of yesterday morning. Overall, the choices were predictable and honored those studios who no doubt mounted rigorous campaigns for their favored films. "Departed", probably the best film of 2006, was appropriately honored, I thought. Picture, Director, Screenplay. I really liked seeing Wahlberg get a Supporting Actor nomination. The lines written for him were genius, and he delivered them perfectly. (Isn't it weird that Marky Mark and the lead in "Fear" is now an Oscar nominee?) My one major problem with the nominations this year was this: "Borat" got a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay while "Prestige" (and countless other deserving scripts, I'm sure) was ignored in that category. If the Academy doesn't think Christopher Nolan and his brother wrote one of the best adapted scripts of the year, fine -- no one would ever accuse them of having exceptional taste -- but to honor "Borat" with a nomination? A movie that was a collection of clever bits Cohen improved his way through, all of which is hung on a weak Borat-Has-To-Marry-Pam-Anderson plotline? Not to defame a movie I thought was pretty funny, but Best Adapted Screenplay? I'm guessing Academy members (or is it just Writers' Guild members who do the screenplay noms? Shawn?) just wanted to see what funny things Cohen will say if he goes up and gets the award. And for that reason, I bet there's a good chance he'll get it.

Also, some fantastic political video clips this week. Here's one of Wolf Blitzer interviewing Darth Cheney. This thing is guaranteed to make you squirm. Okay, maybe not Heath. What's especially good about the clip comes at the end when Wolf starts asking Darth about the fact his lesbian daughter's having a child with another woman. in response, Cheney levels Wolf with his Lidless Eye of Sauron and Wolf withers beneath its unclean glare. He stammers and stutters and retreats. If I didn't hate Cheney with a purple passion, I'd almost have to hand it to him for so completely discombobulating a member of the press, especially the usually unflappable Blitzer. I think Wolf's problem was trying to join two completely different sentiments, one being a phony journo congratulations on Cheney's new granddaughter, and the other being a tough (and legitimate) question regarding the Vice President's hypocrisy on the subject of gay rights. It was too difficult a transition to make for ole Wolf, though I commend him for making the attempt. It must have something to do with the Cheneys. Uberbitch Lynne Cheney also gave Wolf hell, though she had even less reason to be so than her husband. Anyway, this is what happens when you deal with a politician who's cranky by nature and is entirely unconcerned with their political future. Disdain for the press times a hundred.

And here's Chuck Hagel making an impassioned speech about the war. Nary a thing he says in this clip is untrue, and he says it well. You should check it out -- it's just good.

Also, Obama calls out FoxNews for its completely lame-ass smear job it did on him last week. Some right-wing website publishes a completely uncorroborated report that Obama had attended a madrassah when he was a small child. FoxNews, because they are in no way a legitimate news organization, aired the story on the air without any independent sourcing of their own, and now a lot of regular folks believe that at some point in Obama's life, he was Muslim. Truth is neither his white Kansan mother or his secular Kenyan father (who he saw once his whole life) was a Muslim and he is and has been for some time, a Christian. Also, a madrassah is essentially Muslim grad school, so Obama being in one at the age of 8 or so, is ludicrous on its face, But the damage is done and Obama called them out in this letter, by name. And the thing is FoxNews's position is indefensible, so if they're smart they'll just take it. Which means they probably won't.

And just to round off all this political stuff with some uplifting news, here's a link to a Rolling Stone article that talks about the still-possible Gore run. James Carville thinks he'd be damn formidable and would be absolutely shocked if he didn't run. I hope I hope I hope. The wife hopes, too. Even more than me, if that's possible.

Well, the wife's back from India and she saw a whole lot of it. I don't want to attempt a rough transcript of what she told me, but I'll say that based on her first-person account, my opinion of India, already low, has hit absolute bottom-of-the-Marianas-Trench levels. Talk about a country fatally hamstrung by a religion-inspired c'est la vie outlook on its dire national problems. 60% of Indians live in filthy slums. 20% are homeless. When asked about the trenchant poverty, the other 20% of middle-class and outright rich Indians tell you the desperately poor are "content" in their slums or begging on the streets. No problems here! What's to fix? Anyway, I'm going on and on and I didn't even go. She took lots of excellent and well-framed digital photographs during her travels, and also, incidentally, a video clip. I'll just put the link here. Who knew Indian stags were such horny freaks? Anyway, good times -- take a look.

And finally, one space or two? Up until this past week I didn't know ANYONE was using a single space between sentences, but I now realize I, in fact, am the only one still using two spaces. Is it really just me? How widespread is this one-space epidemic?

Aaaaand I'm out.

"Godfather" Makes Demands on My Time, "Rome", and Some Deeply Inane Ramblings on the Field of Democratic Contenders

Hey dudes and dudettes. I know -- I've been sucking it as a blogger lately what with my rambling and infrequent postings. Here's what I've got working against me. I'm going to be 30 in less than a month, and my current plan to stave off the crushing depression that may or may not accompany that landmark birthday is to have my goddamn novel done and done. I'm on page 293 of a polishing line-edit on my 497-page tome you're all no doubt tired of hearing about, and I want to get that done before the 11th. Now here's the other thing I've had working both against this admirable goal and bloggin' this week. I've been sick.

The illness goes by the name of "The Godfather" for the XBox 360, and man have I been suffering. Stumble out of bed at noon because I stayed up till 3 the night before playing "Godfather", fix a shitty lunch of a turkey and cheese sandwich with a tasteless stack of pretzels to go with it, all washed down with some DC (Diet Coke for the uninitiated), and I set all that bizness on the coffee table and pick up the beautiful white 360 controller and get things rolling. "The Godfather" game, which is not a new title and was just modded out for the 360, is damn playable. Addictive even. When I was playing it, I didn't even want to be playing it, but I felt compelled. If I extort just one more business, I thought, the whole game will be different. One more hit for Don Corleone and I'll get a promotion to Underboss. I played it a lot. There's a helpful/depressing play-counter that comes up each time you save the game that lets you know EXACTLY how long you've been playing. I think by the time I beat the game by becoming Don of New York, I'd put in a full day's worth. The big 24. One of the fun things (more fun when you first start playing) is that you can design a character that looks like you. Well, pretty close. My guy looked more like Ben Affleck than me, (they didn't have a setting for my particular hairline, which would have really sold it), but it was close enough to be funny. When my brother came by to play (he bought the game for the PS2 a few days later such is its addictive quality), we designed a character that looked like him, down to what he was wearing, which was a total white guy-looking yellow button-up shirt. Watching a bearded, yellow shirt-wearing Patrick run around Little Italy extorting small business owners was hilarious. Anyway, I packed it back up in its GameFly mailing sleeve and mailed that mutha off. My fever has broken. I am free.

In other news, the wife gets back tomorrow from India. She's on her way to France right now if she's not already there. From gay Paree straight to the equally sophisticated environs of Hotlanta. It'll be good to have her back.

I've been watching the first season of "Rome" on DVD. I forgot how many of those first epsiodes I'd already seen. As a result, the first disk was just a rehash so I was kinda sorta looking forward to the second disk but, wouldn't you know it, the disk is scratched and wouldn't play any of the three episodes in their entirety. I think I'm done with "Rome" now. Not just because I can't actually watch the 3rd 4th and 5th episodes, but also because I don't really care what happens to these characters. When wifey first told me they were doing the show a bunch of years ago (I think at the time Warner Bros. had something to do with it), I was excited about it. It sounded like an exploration of the politics of ancient Rome, which sounded to me like a great idea. In actuality, however, the show they finally came up with feels like a fairly disinterested summarizing of great swaths of Roman history populated with generally unlikable characters. What fun. Also, the show depicts Rome at its height to be not as grandiose as it seemed in movies like "Gladiator", but more rundown and sparsely populated. Weeds spring up from the cobblestones, and the like. It's an expensive show from all accounts, but the sets look like sets and the extras look and act like extras. It isn't a convincing or terribly compelling portrait of that time. So I wash my hands of it. Thought you'd all like to know about that.

Mmm, politics. Both Hillary and Obama jumped into the presidential race this week. I feel like we just finished with the Bush/Kerry election, now we're doing it again? Hillary's not a completely unappealing candidate, but she's positioning herself too strenuously for the general election. If she gets the nomination it will be with the same feeling of weary resignation with which the Dems nominated John Kerry for President. No one was terribly excited about Kerry (my un-excitement culminated with his speech at the Democratic National Convention when he saluted the audience and said, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty", at which point he snapped off the salute. How could anyone not be unexcited after that?), and no one seems excited about Hillary. (Though the idea of getting Bill back in the White House has its charm). People are enthusiastic about Obama because he's an appealing candidate, nevermind what he thinks. Unlike Hillary he can speak well and doesn't always come off like he's making political calculations everytime he opens his mouth. His candor on "Meet the Press" last year when Russert pressed him on a possible run was refreshing, and immediately set him apart. But what does he think? Yes, he was against the war back when it counted, but he wasn't in the Senate then to actually cast a vote like all those other poor saps. So far as I know, that's the only positions he has. When asked about the other issues that generally divide the electorate, his stock answer is to speak extemporaneously about coming together and unity. I like unity as much as the next guy, but the fact is as an electorate we're divided right down the middle. Sooner or later, he's going to piss off somebody when he takes a position on an issue. Whether it's the liberals (whom Hillary's pissed off with her so-far unregretted vote for the war), or the conservatives remains to be seen, but right now all of this early excitement seems way premature. Besides, I'm still holding out for Gore. I know. Fat chance, and getting fatter all the time. Still I hope.

Anyway, if you got all the way through that congrats. Enjoy your Sunday.

A Rambling MLK Day Post

I'm watching the Golden Globes. Warren Beatty just got off the stage after a rambling, un-written speech for his Lifetime Achievement Award. Now Speilberg's up to give the best director award. Two noms for Clint. Yawn. C'mon, Marty. Marty... yeah. He got it. I hope this presages his getting it next month.

Anyway. So Matt Drudge. Son of a bitch. I don't know if any of you happened to catch the top headline on his page yesterday, but he gave away the end to tonight's ending of "24", which was, and I'm going to give it away here [SPOILER!]: the detonation of a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles. I don't know how surprised I would have been to have watched that ending because Drudge told me all about it last night. But I bet it might have been an effective and shocking TV moment. Anyway, like I said, what a son of a bitch. I even wrote him an email. I was completely polite within, no profanity or threats, but I'm sure it'll go right into the hate mail trash file. Bastard.

Also. My Crown Vic. The wheel the car thieves smashed has been acting up of late. Whenever I engage the brake actually. I took it to Brake-O and they wouldn't touch it because they didn't have the hubcap key. The tire guys who put new tires on my car last year didn't need it. The people who fixed my car after the theft asked for it, but then figured it out without my help. These guys: no dice. So now, before I can have my brakes fixed, I'll either have to order a hubcap key or take it to a Ford dealership where they'll happily charge me 200% over what anyone else would charge. Anyway, that's what I was dealing with today -- thought I'd whine in print.

Finally. I saw "Children of Men" on Friday night, but before I get to that, what is going on with admission prices? What is it in Los Angeles these days? $13? Is the ArcLight at $20 yet? My shitty AMC is charging $9.25 for an evening show. Matinees end at 4PM. It used to be 5. Anywho. "Children of Men". Frickin' great and damn harrowing. Cuaron did an amazing job and everyone should see this one, even if it is $9.25.

Brian Says "Read 'The Road'"

I finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" this afternoon. Nevermind the terrible cover, the book's amazing. There are no chapter breaks, only double spaces between sections. The prose is stark -- in most cases McCarthy's sentences make Hemingway's writing look wordy and overcooked. My intention was to pick up the book from time to time but it didn't work out like that. I got 70 pages in yesterday and then sped through the rest today. Yes, the story's setting is unceasingly bleak, but it feels important; elemental. McCarthy assigns no character names to his two main characters, referring to them only as "the man" and "the boy". This minimalism, combined with a litany of stripped down sentences appearing to give little more than the basic facts of the story, gives the impression that "The Road" isn't just a story, but one of The Stories.

The man and the boy, a father and son, walk down a road pushing a shopping cart filled with their belongings. A nuclear war years ago killed off most everyone else. Nuclear winter obscures the sun and food exists only as what the first wave of scroungers. Though they're mostly on their own, the biggest threat to their existence, aside from starvation, are other people, many of whom have been driven to cannibalism by the scarcity of food. Harrowing throughout, but damn riveting. Not a moment of this book seemed off-key to me, but many parts were illuminating and nightmarish at the same time. I thought at various times while reading the book, "Would people really do that to one another?, but then again, of course they would. When a Mahdi army soldier in Iraq boasts to a reporter a month ago about how he uses a drill on the skulls of his live victims, how can a sane person underestimate the depravity humans are capable of? This is how the end of the world could very well look and its sobering and moving. The ending of the book is brilliantly done and makes perfectly clear from a technical standpoint why the crushing despair that preceded it was necessary. Emotionally, the ending's a wrecking ball. Anyway, it's damn good stuff and I reccomend it.

In somewhat related news, tonight Bush gave his speech trying to justify sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. Did anyone else watch this? Was it just me or did it seem like he was bringing his Texas ranch-hand accent down a few notches to make himself seem like less of an asshole? Anyone think it'll work?

Herein I Rehash Yet Another Lecter Movie. This Time It's "Red Dragon"

Watched "Red Dragon" tonight, just like I threatened I was going to do yesterday. I saw it in theaters years back and liked it, though with misgivings, mostly about Norton's age and Hopkin's spare tire that no amount of strenuous girdling can disguise. I don't feel much like writing coherently tonight, so I'll just write my thoughts up in list form.

What I Liked:
1) The conversation Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton have right before Graham puts two and two together and realizes Lecter's the killer. It's fascinating to see in that brief conversation how Hopkins' Lecter would have acted in polite company. In "Silence" Hannibal can say whatever he pleases. He can be rude without fear of consequence. In this brief scene we see him in his human clothes and Hopkins makes some great choices, or so they say in actorly parlance. Sure, Hopkins is too portly and too old to be entirely believable this go-round, but he's damn good so he makes some good stuff from what he has to work with. (Did you know that it was Hopkins' performance in "Elephant Man" that inspired Demme to consider him for the role of Lecter? Pretty interesting.)

2.) Ralph Fiennes performance. I thought he was brilliant when I first saw the movie and I was struck once more by how effortlessly he shifts from terrifying to vulnerable, all without ever appearing to overact or ham it up. Is Fiennes like the new Jeff Bridges? In that he's the guy who's one of the best actors working but always manages to so lose himself in each role that you forget about the actor on-screen? I don't know. Fiennes is always good. From "The Constant Gardener" to "Harry Potter", dude does it all.

3.) Some of Ratner's choices are actually good. I like that he used the same style of titles as they did in "Silence" to signal a locale change. Also there a few scenes in flourescently-lit police-building milieus that look so much like scenes in "Silence" that you might be fooled into thinking Tak himself had shot them. I also like that the actor who played Dr. Chilton in "Silence" is back, though I wish Scott Glenn had reprised his role as Crawford. Harris's Jack Crawford character has been portrayed in three movies by three different guys but only once did they get the casting right. Harvey Keitel? Really?

4.) Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance. To me it's kind of lazy and you almost get the sense that Hoffman doesn't actually like the character he's playing (which is not to say he doesn't enjoy doing the role, only that he doesn't in any way sympathize with the character), but it works and it's funny. When Hoffman's leaving the office after conducting a fake interview with Edward Norton, he says, "Nice working with you," and then, softly, "...chumps." Hilarious. I'd forgotten that line.

5.) Ted Tally's script. Guy knows how to put a screenplay together. He handles the false ending beautifully.

Things I didn't Like:
1) The movie's set in the 80s, about the time that Harris's novel came out, but Ratner never really seems to go for it. Yeah you see the old 80s Crown Vics driving around, but what about the ridiculous 80s haircuts? Edward Norton's bleached-by-the-sun do looks pretty goofy, but not particularly 80s. Thinking back I am remembering certain aspects of it that were blatantly 80s (Frank Whaley's Member's Only jacket for instance), but no would ever mistake this movie for a period movie, which I think was a missed oppurtunity.

2.) Edward Norton's performance. He did an interview with The Onion's AV Club (which I think is still up -- here's a link), where he talked about giving restrained performances, probably speaking specifically about his work in "The Illusionist". I didn't have a problem with him hanging back in that film, but in "Red Dragon", I think he takes the restraint too far, particularly at the end. When he realizes that Dolarhyde has come to his Florida home and may or may not have his son, his eyes don't really change. They convey no emotion. He doesn't appear scared. I'm not sure I wanted to see wide, terrified eyes, but I would have liked some indication that he was really scared, or freaked out in some way. He's so emotionally withdrawn in that scene it's as if Ratner shot a run through of the sequence and just kept it in the movie. Part of what was so brilliant about Jodie Foster's performance in "Silence" was what she did in the green glow of Buffalo Bill's night-vision goggles. You could see how terrified she was in that scene, and, at least for me, her stark terror heightened my involvement in the film. By contrast, when Norton opens the door and finds Dollarhyde with a mirror shard to his son's throat, his choice is to look disappointed rather than panic-y or even hyper-intense. There was an air of unreality about it that I think was half Norton's fault and half Ratner's fault for not caring enough to get the best performance.

Overall, though, I have to say "Red Dragon"'s a pretty good movie. Still miles away from "Silence" and, to me, not quite as good as "Hannibal", but nothing to sneeze at. I can't reasonably say that Ratner had nothing to do with it being a good movie, but I do think having a good Harris novel and a good Tally adaptation of that novel helped steer Ratner away from his usual tendency which is to ... I don't know. Soldier through the boring directing part and look forward to the wrap party and skeezing on chicks or angling for his next gig?

Anyway. Also, Shawn asked if I was going to have any comment on the new Harris novel, "Hannibal Rising". Actually, I was avoiding this one because the reviews confirmed that it was exactly what it appeared to be: a cheap quickie book published to coincide with the quickie De Laurentiis film of the same name coming out in a month or so. The Times said he was obviously "bored" with Lecter and I didn't want to read a half-hearted Harris novel, much less a half-hearted Lecter novel. But then some horror writer/readers did some reviews, and though they didn't rave about the book, they said it was worthwhile for fans of his previous books. So, being one of those, I picked it up just a couple days ago. I'm planning to read it when I get through with McCarthy's "The Road", which I just started today.

Hey, you know what's a bad idea? Reading McCarthy and then reading one's own work. Whoo. That's a work stopper.

Anyway. I's is outs.

"Hannibal" and "M.A.S.H.": Dissected

While I'm printing my book out (which is taking forever -- who knew printing 497 pages could require such close supervision?), I thought I'd jump on here and offer some of my world-class opinions on some movies I saw recently on DVD.

1.) M.A.S.H. When my folks exclaimed in disbelief at dinner a couple weeks ago, "You haven't seen the original M.A.S.H.?", I decided to fill in that objectionable gap in my filmgoing career and put it in the queueueue on our Blockbuster NetFlix-ripoff. It came and, in the spirit of two dutiful film-studies freshman doing homework, my wife and I watched it. I give "M.A.S.H." props for realism and a feeling of showing how things were without trying to make the characters seem more likable or the tone-skewing gore less gory, and it has an episodic, I-Hate-Plot sort of feel which isn't always a bad thing. Overall, though, the film's wildly uneven and some of the comic set pieces have more in common with one of those straight-to-video National Lampoon movies than with movies currently recognized as comic masterpieces, like, say, "Dr. Strangelove". The football game that serves as the film's titular climax just seemed very weird to me. It was as though someone had cut and pasted an earlier draft of the big game from "The Longest Yard" (the remake, not the original) into the "M.A.S.H." script and everyone was too high to notice.

2.) "Hannibal". Of course I've seen this movie (3 times in theaters) but I had a hankering to watch it again because I'd been listening to Hans Zimmer's excellent and gloriously overblown score of late. I loved loved this movie when it first came out, and I really like Thomas Harris's novel of the same name (and I didn't even hate the book's end, the one that killed any chance Jodie Foster or Jonathan Demme might return to the franchise). Watching it again I found myself more unhappy this time than last that Anthony Hopkins couldn't be bothered to drop a few pounds before filming. Hannibal Lecter is the character he'll be remembered for; I find it a real letdown that Hopkins wasn't more committed to bringing Lecter back to life. It wasn't as if he'd have had to forego eclairs and barbecue chicken wings forever, just until "Hannibal" wrapped. I understand that in the 10 or more years that elapsed between Lecter's fedora-wearing island walk at the end of "Silence" and the moment when Pazzi shakes hands with Dr. Fell in "Hannibal", and people change in 10 years, even monsters. But still, it's hard to imagine the larger-than-life killing-and-eating-machine Lecter letting himself go to fat no matter how much he likes food. Might slow him down when he'd most need to be agile.

Aside from that though, some of the sequences that I thought worked like gangbusters back in '02 still work like gangbusters now. (Like every damn scene in Florence, particularly the hanging of Commendatore Pazzi). And the way Ridley Scott and the actors handled the Krendler brain-eating scene at the end perfectly captured how goddamn horrifying that scene was in the book. Seeing the film again made me want to not only reread the novel, but also to revisit the Ratner-directed "Red Dragon", which I thought was only so-so when I saw it in theaters, mostly on account of the miscasting of Edward Norton and the even more regrettable portliness of Anthony Hopkins in a film considering the fact it's set BEFORE "Silence of the Lambs". Maybe they can go back through "Red Dragon" and do to Hopkins's face (and gut) what Ratner did to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan's faces in "X-Men 3". That would be some Lucas-style meddling I'd be all for. Anyway I've got "Red Dragon" sitting here on my desk all ready to get its ass watched.

I feel like there were more movies I was going to talk about, but they've all gone out of my head. I sure haven't seen any in theaters lately. "For Your Consideration" was the last movie I saw, though I think "Children of Men" will be the next. Haven't read a non-rave for that movie.

Anyway, book's done printing. I'm out.

Frozen wastes. A spectral Lovecraftian sky. Bodies half-buried in the snow. All on the cover of a novel with the words "The Terror" written across its front. It was as if they'd designed this book with me in mind. With a Barnes & Noble's gift card in hand, I was helpless not to buy the damn thing. This is how you sell literary horror.

Anyway, just thought I'd share with you this melding of the perfect cover design with the perfect title. On to the enjoying of the weekend.

A Hook for a Book

On the 15th of last month, an anonymous literary agent by the name of Miss Snark began accepting 'hooks' from unpublished novels written by the readers of her blog. For the price of on the house, she would apply her agent-tastic market sensibilities to each and every hook (which could be no more than 250 words), and offer suggestions on how to punch it up and make it more hook-y. If she liked it, she'd ask for pages, which later on she'd also post up on her blog, and then critique those. Even if she loved the material, she wasn't offering representation -- the process was intended only as a service to her readers and to supply her book marketing seminars with teachable material. She's done this sort of thing before, previously with first pages and synopses, and she refers to the whole exercise as a "Crapometer", which kind of presupposes the entries will all be crap, though, as with most unpublished fiction, that's a pretty safe assumption.

After a bit of hemming and hawing (who me?), I decided to take part in Snark's Crapometer and, at about 3AM on the morning of the 16th, I submitted a hook for my novel, "Claudine". (The rules stated that she would only read entries submitted between 8PM on the 15th and 8AM on the 16th.) All in all she received 682 hooks, of which mine was #617. She got to mine on the 29th of last month. This is what I submitted and what she reviewed:

"Miller Sturtevant wants a new house. He’s a handsome and slightly geeky CEO on the verge of a record-breaking IPO and he wants to trade up. Problem is his wife’s fine where they are, and he’s developed an irrational fixation on a gated community called Canaan Cove that’s never once put a house on the market. When a pair of residents die in a suspicious explosion, the neighborhood quickly offers Miller the newly-vacant house.

The moving trucks aren’t gone a week before Miller realizes there’s something’s very strange about his new neighborhood. The weird guardhouse attendant who never takes a day (or night) off, the dog next door that hurls itself against its chain all night long without making a sound, and cryptic, half-whispered mentions of a “machine” all have Miller wondering what the hell his neighbors are really up to. When a violent encounter with Christopher Rounsaville, the crazed President of the Homeowner’s Association, ends in a broken nose and a not-so-veiled reference to Miller’s role in Rounsaville’s mysterious plan, Miller’s suddenly thinking of ways out of Canaan. He soon discovers, however, that his captors have thought of everything. They need him for something and they’re not taking their eyes off him for a second.

A handwritten note promising a chance for escape changes everything. Soon after, Miller is immersed into a world of cults, murderous zealots, ritualized violence, and alternate dimensions that will reveal the terrible path Miller must travel to finally escape from Canaan Cove."

That took a few hours and 6 or 7 drafts to get to and even now as I read it, I want to re-write it. Two-hundred and fifty words is plenty for a log-line, but to hook someone's interest, it doesn't feel like a lot to work with. You can click here to find out what Miss Snark had to say about my hook, and then, if you want, click the comments to see what some other Snark acolytes chimed in with. She wasn't too hooked as you can see, but I'd say her comment fell somewhere in the middle range out of the other 681 submissions. For some a simple "WTF!?" sufficed, while she told others to re-think their entire books. So I'm weirdly relieved not to have gotten that kind of reaction. Anyway, thought I'd post it up and give the uninitiated a taste of what I've been working on for way too long.

Have a good weekend, folks.

Alone and Drawing Boards in the New Year. Also: Saddam's Execution

Happy New Year!

Oh-seven has begun, and with its arrival has come the gift of paid labor, and the sorrow of spousal abandonment. Two days ago my wife left for India on her annual trip to places located outside this country. It's part of her business school curriculum, and because she's traveling with a bunch of other b-school students and teachers, I'm not too worried. She called last night for a minute or so from the airport in Mumbai to let me know all was well and that she was alive. In any event, she's left me to my own devices for three weeks. I'm sure it'll be fine for a while, but I figure by the end of the 3 weeks I'll be pretty well tired of life in Decatur with just me and the cat.

The paid labor I referred to is a new storyboard gig, this time for a commercial for a prescription canker sore medicine. The spot's pretty funny, or should be. If you see a burly guy in a pink body suit using a flamethrower on your TV screens some months from now, you'll know that's the spot I was talking about way back on January 4th. After it's aired, maybe I'll post up some of the boards.

In world news, the Iraqis -- or to be more specific the minions of Sunni cleric Moqtada al Sadr -- hanged Saddam Hussein just before the new year, and the cell phone-video taken of the scene has now been widely distributed on the internet. Yesterday Slate.com posted it up with a prominently featured link, complete with "Warning: Graphic" tag, seemingly daring users to click and watch the final seconds of Saddam. I already blabbed in this space about how I thought it was wrong to execute Saddam (or anyone actually), but I'd say the snippets I've seen from these ghastlty videos says much better than I can that no matter how you gussy it up, murder's still pretty much just murder. (For the record, I've seen the first video that was released which cuts off as the noose is being fitted around Hussein's neck; of the full snuff-film version, I've seen just the first few seconds). Most of the people complaining about the execution don't seem to be put-off he was executed, only put-off in regards to HOW he was executed. It was less a hanging and more a lynching, they say. For instance, Saddam was taunted by the Shiites who were killing him. They told him to "go to hell" among other things. They wore masks and shouted "Moqtada", referring to the powerful and thuggish Shia cleric who's often described as the real power in Iraq these days. Conspicuously, the Saddam death videos bear a close resemblance to the other snuff movies that have come out of the Arab world since 9/11. The beheading of Daniel Pearl, the beheading of Nick Berg, and other videos featuring masked men murduring helpless Westerners are all done in badly-lit rooms, and feature armed masked thugs and the defenseless victim awaiting their fate. All of them stomach-turning.

I suppose if everyone in the room with Saddam had been solemn and quiet throughout the execution, if someone had hoisted a few 10Ks into the corners to push back some of the dinginess, maybe there wouldn't be this outcry over the execution from the paid chatterers. But I doubt it. I don't think it's the insults or the dinginess or the haste with which the execution was carried out that's got people curiously upset. I think it's the video. For the first time that I can remember, the American people are seeing what an official execution of one of the bad guys looks like, and the fact that it's not all that different from the disgusting Nick Berg video is what's got people feeling bad and then feeling bad about feeling bad because of who's getting killed in an quasi-official way.

So I ask this: if capital punishment looks basically the same no matter what milieu it's placed in, might that suggest that the death we deal in this country -- brightly-lit, solemn and unmasked as it is -- has the same stink of murder to it as what was done to Saddam? Maybe I'm being optimistic, or maybe I'm overstating the level of outcry, but perhaps the nausea some folks feel over what was done to a mass-murderer like Saddam doesn't bode too well for capital punishment in the U.S. Then again, maybe I am being overly optimistic.

Anyway, enough of the high horse.