U-Turn

I’d never seen U-Turn. I’d always heard it was the film where Stone really went off the rails (Is there a director this side of Argento to suffer a more powerful loss of mojo?) so I never bothered with it.

Much to my surprise I found this not to be the case. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why this movie is to put it politely an acquired taste. Its about as grotesque as films come. But Jesus man, it just moves.

Oliver Stone is now a filmmaker powerfully out of vogue. At least partially by his own fault. Stone’s spent the last ten years making some powerfully bad movies, whether they be the sad self mockery of Any Given Sunday, the muddled mess that was WTC (which to be fair had the misfortune to come right after United 93 made it a dinosaur), and lets not get started on whatever the fuck Alexander was. Even W. The least terrible movie of the past ten years fumbled because it split the difference between a Black Comedy and serious consideration of the Bush years and ended up making an unsatisfying version of both (Not that the Bush administration wasn’t a black comedy).

Still despite all of this I feel he’s undervalued. From Salvador to Nixon, he has an unbroken run of what to my mind at least are some pretty righteous films. Films like Nixon and JFK are overblown but they’re ambitious, and thrum with a real life. Talk Radio and Heaven On Earth are brute compact little punches of films. And even if his would be classics Born On The Fourth Of July, Wall Street and Platoon are both a bit long in tooth, they remain effective if clumsy films. Natural Born Killer’s remains an underrated film. Effective not because of its violence but what it says about or reaction and Appetite for violence. I’ll take it over Funny Games any day of the week.

Well add U-Turn to the list of winners. Like I said, on many levels U-Turn is a horrifying film. Revolting on an almost physical level. Its like the unholy love child between Jim Thompson and Ralph Steadman. Call it Peyote Noir.

The film starts as Penn cruises the American Southwest in a mustang convertible. On his way to give a payoff to the Gangster in Las Vegas who has been chopping off his fingers. His car breaks down and he makes the mistake of taking it to the worlds most repugnant car mechanic in the world, Billy Bob Thorton.

Thorton who you of course know as the world’s most covetous Tom Petty fan, is just jaw dropping ugly. Rotted Teeth, dirty glasses, hairy navel, caked in so much filth its tough to comprehende. And you better get used to it, as everyone in the film looks that way. Thorton next meets John Voight’s Blind Vietnam Vet Indian (thus fulfilling so many Stone fetishes at once, its shocking that the man’s head didn’t explode) and in case you where wondering, yes we do get many lingering, loving slow motion close-ups of his viscous saliva dribbling from his chin.

I never thought I’d write this but its almost a relief when J. Lo shows up, and there’s something on screen that doesn’t hurt to actually look at. She’s surprisingly entertaining making a good femme fatale, especially in the last reels.

But she’s married to Nick Nolte, who brings a new level of fucked up to the movie. Like an alcholic Jaudiced Bear shaking off the DTs, he looks like he’s spent every moment prior to the movie in a living hell. After beating the shit out of Penn he tries to hire him to kill his wife. After Penn loses the money he owes the gangsters in circumstances too good to spoil, the offer seems attractive.

U-Turn has one hell of a cast, not only Sean Penn, coyote lean and desperate, Nick Nolte, Voight (This is back when you said, “Oh Good John Voight is in this, not “Oh Shit John Voight is in this) Thorton. But Powers Boothe as the man whose either Penn’s guardian angel or his final doom, and a maniac Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix, who play people who apparently roll around all day playing as a psychotic Lil Abner and Daisy May (A swipe at Tarantino perhaps? Who signaled the end of Stone’s kind of ultra modernist filmmaking even before their epic clashes on NBK). Danes and Phoenix are both people who you don’t exactly think of comic genius (Danes is still very sad that Patsy Cline is dead), but both play their rolls to a hilt, Tex Avery Characters reanimated by Steadman.

U Turn proceeds not so much as a story but as a serious of hideous and unfortunate events. Sean Penn plays the kind of character who can’t even buy a beer without having it bite him right in the ass.

Look Stone haters will hate this film. Virtually everything that annoys people about this director, The Indian fetish, the differing film stock (Shot with a true Gonzo insanity by the great Robert Richardson), guttural sound design, and fierce schiziophenic excess, is not only present, but amplified to a sort of horrific overdrive in a way that not even the bat shit insane Doors and Alexander did.

Still I can’t help but find U-Turn a repellently facisnating. Its like something found under a rock. Maybe you should have better sense then to stare at it, but damn it its really something.

Murder By Decree

Sherlock Holmes ended up being one of the nicest surprises I had in the theater last year. Naturally I thought I’d check out some of the other Holmes films, even if I wasn’t particularly excited to revisit the Basil Rathbone versions. I saw Murder By Decree mentioned in a column and thought to check it out. After all Rex Reed called it the greatest Sherlock Holmes film of all time. And if you can’t trust Rex Reed who can you trust.

Bob Clark was one of those rewarding journeymen filmmakers whose career contains both modern classics (Christmas Story), genuinely subversive mainstream stuff (Death Dream) and some of the worst movies ever made (The Super Babies series). Though any attempt to do an auteurist study on Clark would most likely end in Lovecraftian like madness, he remains a vibrant interesting filmmaker. One who I’m always interested to watch, even as he like a filmmaking Forest Gump makes sure I never know what I’m going to get.

Murder By Death stands somewhere in the middle of the awesome/terrible Clark continuum. Though Clark has a great premise and cast, the film never fully capitalizes on either. Leaving a film that’s never quite as fun as it should be.

The premise is pretty gravy though. Featuring Sherlock Holmes pursuing Jack The Ripper. That’s the kind of premise that makes Anglophiles swoon for its sheer Wallace Beery wrestling pictures perfection. In an interesting twist the film finds the same solution to the crime as From Hell, with some of the same Masonic loir. Ironically you could argue that Murder By Decree makes the better adaption then the actual turgid film version of From Hell.

Adding to the pleasures of the film is the impeccable cast. Christopher Plummer as Holmes, James Mason as Watson, and Donald Sutherland as a weird ass psychic (it makes more sense in the movie). The veritable John Gielguld also makes the most of his role.

This is also where the first of the films problems comes in, Plummer makes a wily, lively, not to mention surprisingly soulful and haunted Holmes (I wouldn’t be surprised if Downey took a look at his performance in preparation for Holmes) though in the films strangest miss step, Mason , usually nothing less then a pleasure to watch, makes for a surprisingly Anemic Watson.

Still a film can’t be uneven without some truly great parts. And Clark puts together some great sequences, particularly a skin crawling one set in a Victorian Madhouse, one down on the London docks and a suitably exciting climax. Clark has always been a competent stylist too, and has many excellent shots in the film (Particularly the layers of shadow and windowpane that prevent us from clearly seeing Mary Kelly’s murder, but not from hearing it.)

Murder By Decree does the best with what it has. The sets are obviously reused, cheap, and sparsely populated (The budget was a mere 4 million). To the viewer used to the sumptuous design of modern day period pieces, Murder By Decree’s thrift store approach to the past and slow pace might be off putting.

But those with patience will find themselves rewarded with a well made, well acted, stylish little B picture. What more can you ask for?

(Your eyes do not deceive you, if you notice some changes down by my profile badge. Yes that’s my real picture down there, that’ll probably stay until I get bored of looking at it. But I’ve decided to retire [Here at least] the Evil Dead Junkie pseodymyn that I’ve written under for over ten years.

The reason is simple. Its just time. When I started using the pseudonym it was a lot more common to do so. Back in the early days of the internet it people like The Aborigines where afraid names and pictures would let the dark forces making the computer light up steal your soul.

So having just discovered the joy of Sam Raimi I came up with the EDJ handle. I carried the pseudonym into the forums. Which is where this blog eventually came out of so I brought it with me.

But I realized that I was just doing it by force of habit. Now that I have actual people reading the blog. And maybe have the faint delusion of it one day being taken some what seriously, and that’s easier to do when one is writing other their given name, rather then something cooked up by a fifteen year old cause it sounded awesome.

Still the name has been good to me, and I’m more then a little sorry to see it go. Fair well Evil Dead Junkie.

I’m Bryce Wilson. Nice to meet you.)

Away We Go

Is there a director more out of place then Sam Mendes? If he was making films in the studio era, his arch formalism, lush palette, and panache for melodrama, would have him remembered as a filmmaker on par with Minneli or Wyler. As is he’s dismissed as a pusher of middlebrow prestige films at best an overwrought hack at worst.

Now before we begin to pity Mendes too much let us remember that any life that includes frequent sex with Kate Winslet cannot by any stretch be called uncharmed. Still I can’t help but stubbornly like Mendes, and wish he got more credit.

More so then anything he’s ever made Away We Go feels like its reaching for that credit with the film nerds. Tired of Mendes making artfully constructed dramas? Fine here’s a semi improvisational comedy. You can practically hear him screaming off screen “LOOK ITS GOT NATURAL LIGHT AND EVERYTHING AND THERE’S NOT PROPER HEAD ROOM IN THE FRAME! WHAT MORE DO YOU BASTARDS WANT!!!” Short of making a James Bond film its hard to think of what more Mendes could have done to shake up his style (Oh shit). You can feel him nearly sob in relief on those rare occasions where he does get to compose a shot.

What Mendes really brings to Away We Go, is that great affect that happens when a forgien director makes a movie set in America. American directors tend to turn up their noses at flyover country, Forgein directors find a weird and wild beauty in it (Call it the Paris Texas effect). For much of its runtime Away We Go is just a literal pleasure to watch.

Away We Go, follows Burt and Verona, a longtime couple settling uneasy into their early thirties. Spurred by Verona’s pregnancy and Burt’s parents (A ditzy Jeff Daniels is particularly good here) absconding to Belgum (Where they always dreamed of going. in a perfect random touch.) the two embark on an impromptu road trip.

The trip begins with an encounter with the mind boggling venal old boss of Verona’s. Who introduces herself by calling her ten year old daughter a dyke and then describing her boobs as “An Old Man’s Nutsack” (the more gentle in spirit will be forgiven for reaching for their DVD remotes then and there). She’s joined by her husband, a superb Jim Gaffigan who in one jaw droppingly nihilistic moment starts listing off things that would be destroyed in a “Flood of Biblical Porportions” over dinner, apropos to nothing. It’s a sequence set in Suburbia so vicious, that makes Mende’s American Beauty look like something produced by the chamber of commerce.

And that’s the thing about Away We Go, it is at times a supremely ugly movie. I’d attribute this more to screenwriter Eggers then Mendes, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to watch. For the first hour of the movie nearly everyone they meet are at some level smug, shrill or otherwise reprehensible, and the exceptions to the rule (Verona’s sister) we hardly spend any time with. Its an odd question to ask but don’t they know any nice people? The film does eventually balance out but it hits you with a lot early. (To give credit where its due, Eggers proves himself an equal opportunity lambaster, he takes on the Bourgeoisie in no uncertain terms, but his take on Maggie Gylhenhaal’s [Delightfully obliviously passive aggressive] ultra “enlightened” professor is equally no holds barred).

Still what saves Away We Go, Is Krasinski and Rudolph. Neither are actors you can accuse of having a great deal of range, but both are intrisicably likable. And they make the central couple in Away We Go, true to life and worth caring about almost as a force of will.

Frozen

( This review has been reclaimed for glorious make benefit of Final Girl Film Club. The Greatest Of All Film Clubs)

I’ve been debating whether I should write up Frozen again now that it's getting a release (I covered the film briefly in my BNAT piece). To be quite frank I think it’s a movie that’ll work best when it takes an audience by surprise. It works because it's small, because it's intimate, because you’re not expecting much. This is exactly the kind of little movie that finds itself getting destroyed by a huge title wave of backlash by a bunch of backbiting fanboys pissed only because they didn’t get there first.

Then again, Frozen would have to be successful to get Backlash and if I can help make that happen by convincing even one person to go and see it then it's worth writing up. When a movie like Frozen does well; an intelligent well made piece of film craft, it's good not only for genre movies but for all of indie cinema as well. I don’t know if Frozen will do Paranormal Activity business, I do know that it’s a great little chiller and one of those rare and wonderful films where a director announces, “I’m capable of more then you thought”.

I was certainly surprised when I saw the movie at BNAT. When it was announced that the next movie was the new film by the director of Hatchet I think I might have audibly groaned. Let me be clear, I hate Hatchet. HAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTEEEEE Hatchet. It’s the kind of referential, self satisfied bullshit that’s strangling modern horror, since everyone who knows what’s worth a damn is too busy giving each other congratulatory hand jobs to actually make something worth watching.

The problem is so much of Frozen, works because you’re underestimating it. It’s able to take you by surprise. There was at least one instance, where something happened (which I will not spoil), I jumped, and then discounted it as a boo scare. After all that’s what the director of Hatchet does. Fucking Boo Scares. As I settled back in my seat, getting comfortable and giving Green a reluctant check in his column, the "boo scare" turned out to most definitely not be just a boo scare! It came back with a vengeance, and in a way that was somehow both elegant and gut churning. I kept waiting for Green to ruin it, to overreach and go for the gore shot. But he didn’t.

Frozen, tells the story of three college students who get stuck on a ski lift in a resort that is closing for the week. It's just the three of them, the chair, facing four days of the elements, and no hope of rescue. Gulp.

If the premise sounds far fetched to you, don’t worry, Green is ahead of you (One of the best things about the movie is how often this is true. I’m so used to directors just taking the audience's suspension of disbelief for granted that it's nice to have one who thought this through. Trust me if you have an objection, or are reading this going, “WELL WHY DIDN’T THEY JUST...? Green has thought of it.) weaving the details he needs to make it work into the story. By the time that chair lurches to a halt, their fate seems sickeningly plausible.

The most common criticism I’ve heard of Frozen is that the characters are not particularly deep. And while its true they’re three pretty callow young kids, they do all have their moments, and the situation they're in is just so pitiful that you can’t help but have some instinctive sympathy for them.

By the end of the film Frozen has become less a horror movie then a tale of horrific endurance.

But now here I am doing the movie a disservice, just like I promised not to. Go ahead an keep your doubts. But If there’s a theater playing Frozen near you tomorrow, see it. Keep an open mind and low expectations, and you might find yourself with one hell of a surprise.

The Big Lebowsi: Dude Unto Others As You Would Have Them Dude Unto You

The Fremont in San Luis Obispo is a great old theater. An art deco monstrosity built in the thirties, its one of the last surviving movie palaces. The place is huge, it seats over a thousand people. And last night all of them where filled. Unsuspecting patrons ended up being turned away. That evenings late show of Avatar ended up canceled for an overflow showing.

What kind of film can bring out such an audience on a Tuesday Night in a sleepy small town?

The Big Lebowski of course.

Welcome to THE cult film of the new generation.

Now noting that The Big Lebowski has a cult following is more or less the definition of old news. But everytime I encounter it, I can’t help but be impressed how ground level it is and how fucking huge. People outside were dressed up and quoting lines, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is the level of minutia the average Lebowski head has. Usually not seen outside of hardcore cinephiles, people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and the otherwise socially misaligned. People are not just dressed as the holy trinity of The Dude, Walter, and Donnie, but as the pin headed chorus girls from the film’s musical sequence and the red leotard clad nihlist. I think I even spot a Knox Harrington a character who appears in one scene in the movie and laughs abrasively through most of it. Who the fuck are these people? And Where Do they go when the movie's over?

The Big Lebowski isn’t a film it’s a virus. One that temporarily spreads cinephelia to the normals.

But why this film? I mean it’s a great film, unique in its structure, rich in detail, and drop dead hilarious. It’s a perfect distillation of the Coens, and never has the word “Meander” been meant in a more positive light.

But that doesn’t explain why it’s just so transmutable. It’s a film I’ve seen dozens of times, and never tire of rewatching. One that is indeed so richly laired that I literally notice something new every time I see it (last night’s new detail Donnie’s shirts never have his name on them). Its not just details, there are jokes planted like Under Sea mines, you sail over them a couple times and then on your seventeenth watch they just detonate (It took the big screen for me to appreciate the sublimely wasted expression on Uli’s face in the pool, and the starkness of the Knudson’s farm. Like If Diane Arbus took landscapes) If there’s an easier film to rewatch then The Big Lebowski I don’t know what it is.

I like to think that the reason for the films popularity, as well as its grace and ease, comes from the fact that the film plays like a giant cinematic Rorschach blot. What is The Big Lebowski? Its whatever you want it to be. If your sitting in the theater surrounded by a thousand screaming fans and you happen to be a little bit high, and you notice The Dude is holding a carton of half and half, and that sets you off wondering if the movie is just one big parable about The Dude as Jesus trying his best to keep Walter the vengeful and only partially rational Old Testament God in line, (And is there a better Satan/ Anti Christ combo then Jesus and Jackie Treehorn) the movie is down with that.

Or maybe its just a Chandler parody, or a just the ultimate stoner shaggy dog story. Maybe slackers and hipsters just like watching a movie whose message is basically, “Fuck It” Maybe there’s absolutely no greater meaning to the movie and its popularity. Maybe it’s just kind of amazing. Well shoot, as The Stranger says, “Now I’ve gone and lost my train of thought.”

But we do know The Dude is out there taking er easy for all us sinners. The Dude Abides, and maybe the reason the film gets such a passionate following, its just damn comforting knowing that he’s just a DVD or ticket stub away. See you all at the next screening.

“Shoosh, I hope he makes The Finals.”

Homicide/Memories Of A Murder

Sometimes movies just mash up against each other, casting unexpected light on different aspects of each other that never would have been caught unless it was being watched in tandem . Its one of the unexpected pleasures of being a film fan, and the thing is you can’t force it, you just have to wait for it and let it happen. I’ve had two such mash ups recently, the first being my batshit crazy New Orleans Double Feature, Bad Lieutenant Port Of Call New Orleans, and The Princess and The Frog, and now this when two movies I’ve been meaning to see for awhile happened to arrive from Netflix on the same day.

Homicide is a David Mamet movie which I have to admit I’d never even heard of until Criterion re-released it in late 2009. Mamet’s an interesting director for me to view as he’s someone I like without having any particular allegiance to. For every great propulsive piece of writing Mamet has delivered he’s got another that’s mannered to within an inch of its life.

Homicide opens with the startling image of a parade of black hooded gunmen making their way silently up the staircase. Mamet audaciously gives no sign that these people are Cops, and it takes us a moment to realize that they’re not a Nicrauaguan death squad. (Another nice touch that a man known for his gimmicky dialogue would allow the first five minutes of his movie to open in silence). The SWAT team breaks in only then identifying themselves as cops. One of the people they’re going to capture reaches for his gun, without hesitation they blow his brains out.

It’s a stark arresting opening, and the message is clear, the taking of one human life by another is something to be weighted. Homicide explores the action, with no partiality to legality or circumstance.

Or at least that seems to be what the movie will be about.

The target of the raid escapes, and Homicide starts in earnest, with the police chief dressing down a hall full of cops and eventually assigning two detectives played by Mantenga and William H. Macy to find the escaped drug dealer, and to bring him in alive to avoid charges of corruption. This scene is pure Mamet playing off several levels of power, racial tension, with his trademark ratatat dialogue, all while dumping about a boat load of exposition and laying the character groundwork and themes that’ll power the rest of the movie. Just as a piece of screencraft its beautiful.

It’s a great concept worthy of a first class policier but Homicide eventually brews into something darker, deeper and a lot stranger. Using the crime as a counter point, to the main action. It starts in the scene that immediately proceeds Mamet’s exposition hoedown, Mantenga prepares to chase the missing suspect, when two fellow cops bring in an obviously white collar man who has just murdered his wife and child with a deer rifle, “to keep them safe’. It too is quintessential Mamet, hardened professionals using Gallow’s humor to survive in the face of Human Ugliness that Mamet is so expert at drawing.

The movie gets to its main plot when Mantenga literally stumbles across what appears to be a hate crime, in which a Jewish shopkeeper in a black neighborhood has apparently been murdered for, “The fortune in her basement.” Mamet’s never exactly been one to worry about what’s PC, and he’s laid the groundwork for a great racial drama. But the movie dose have one major stumbling block which is the casting of Mamet Stalwart Joe Mantanga as the very Jewish cop at the center of the film. Which is sort of like casting Morgan Freeman as the Jewish cop at the center of the film. Now look, when you have an actor as outspoken about being Italian as Mantanga, someone who has in fact been president of The Italian American Anti Defamation League, it’s a mistake to cast him as something other then Italian. Mantanga’s a strong actor, and he does his best, he’s good enough actor to look pissed when someone calls him “Kike”. But with every scene that deals with him being Jewish, there’s the knowledge in the back of my mind that he’s about as Jewish as The Pope. As his struggle with his Jewish Identity basically takes up the entire second act of the film and most of the third. It’s problematic.

The film eventually weaves away from the title crime, as it gets involved in a conspiracy involving gun running and Israel.

All of Mamet’s films are of course about Con games but this is the first one where the film IS the con. It’s like the movie is holding two clenched fists infront of you. One’s a policier about the nature of death. The other is a thriller about Jewish identity. Which one is it? Because the movie is never both. Which is either it’s masterstroke or it’s fatal flaw. I’m still not sure which.

The film itself admits as much with the mundane ending it finally pulls out to solve the mystery. After all the Byzantine weaves its taken, a bit of Occam’s Razor comes in nicely.

The dichotomy that has always driven Mamet’s work is that he’s a misanthrope who strongly believes in honor and decency. There are few writers as skilled at summing up all that’s ugly about the human condition as Mamet, but that allows him to make big statements that others can’t.

At the end of the scene, I mentioned earlier with the killer who executed his wife and child, Mantenga and the murderer talk.

Murder: Thank you for your help. Maybe one day I could help you.

Mantenga: How the fuck could you help me?

Murder: How about the nature of Evil? Want to understand the nature of Evil?

Mantenga: Fuck no, if I did I’d be out of a job.

That’s Mantenga talking, but that’s Mamet as well.

I was one of the five people who didn’t like Bong’s film The Host (which had me up until its mean spirited out of nowhere ending). That’s the only reason I can think of that I’ve waited five years to finally see Memories Of A Murder. That was a mistake.

Memories Of A Murder is kind of tremendous. Based off of South Korea’s first serial killer, Memories Of A Murder is like Zodiac a procedural that mocks the very idea that procedure can figure out anything. It’s a murder mystery that mocks the very idea of solutions (It’s like Zodiac in a lot of other ways too. Since it predates that film by 5 years I would not be at all surprised to learn that Fincher watched this a couple of times before starting).

Memories Of A Murder opens with a Spielbergian idyll. Golden fields blowing gently in the wind, as children play and adults are caught in the rhythms of their day to day life. Two men ride out on a tractor the children chasing after them. It’s of course an illusion. The two men pull a woman’s naked insect covered body out of a drainage ditch. The children end up playing with her bloody clothes.

Just how unprepared the South Korean Police force is for such murderers ends up being one of the films most fascinating angles. In one of the film’s most stunning shots, a two minute long tracking shot, Inspector Park races around his disorganized crime scene as Children play around the corpse and a truck runs over footprints all the while screaming for a forensic team that never quite show up.

To say these cops our out of their depth would be an understatement. Its not that the killer is exceptionally clever, its that no one can quite wrap their head around the magnitude of what he’s doing. The best the cops can do is hassle old boyfriends, torture suspects, and beat up the retarded.

There are times when Memories Of A Murder approaches the level of a jet black comedy. The police work is so futile that its damn near absurdist. They have nothing better to do then to chase their latest dead end, then wait for it to rain again.

Things get complicated when a big city cop, arrives as back up for the case. Not that he does much good. He’s just as out of his depth as the others. But adds the another layer to the absurdist comedy as he stares in horror at his colleagues methods.

AgainLike Zodiac I was shocked at what a restrained film, Memories Of A Murder was. Korean films after all have a reputation for rubbing your nose in depravity and ultra violence. And while Memories Of A Murder certainly doesn’t sugar coat anything, there’s nothing here that I would venture to even call gratuitous. Most of the violence is kept just out of frame. Like the killer, the absence somehow makes it more disturbing.

Memories Of A Murder is world class filmmaking. Haunting is an overused adjective, but there’s something indenialble about Memories Of A Murder. It sticks to your ribs.

Stuff I've Been Reading January: Hail To The King Baby!

Bought

Steven King Companion
Mr. B Gone, Clive Barker
Jim Butcher Boxset (Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril)
Odd And The Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
The Chronicles Of Narnia And Philosphy
The Audacity To Win David Plouffe
Shelf Discovery , Lizzie Skurnick
The Emperor Of Ocean Park, Stephen Carter
New England White, Stephen KCarter
The Poet, Michael Connelly
The Black Echo, Michael Connelly
The Black Ice, Michael Connelly,
Harry Potter And Philosphy
Jack London In Paradise, Paul Mamount
The Portable Grindhouse
Literary Life Larry McMurtry
Twiterature
Mistwalker, Brad Sanderson

Read:

Under The Dome, Stephen King
The Shining, Stephen King
Horns, Joe Hill
The Stephen King Companion
Literary Life, Larry Mc Murtry
Missed Connections, Various
Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art Of The VHS Box, Jacquees Boyreau
Shelf Discovery, Lizzie Skurnick
Franny And Zooey, JD Salinger
The Black Echo, Michael Connelly
Mystic River, Dennis Lehane


Hey guys, know its been quite for the last couple of days. I’ve contracted a honey of a head cold that has made rational thought, much less the act of typing two words next to eachother in order to create a flow of them, difficult. But I’ve gotten over enough of it that I’m now able to prop myself in front of a computer and infect the rest of you with my delirium. Yay Progress.



I kicked it off with the copy of Under The Dome I got for Christmas. The hype for Under The Dome had been strong. I’ve heard it called King’s best in a decade in more then one place. And they’re right. And I say that as someone who has liked a whole lot of what King has done this decade. Sure there have been some missteps Dreamcatcher and From A Buick 8 where both pretty clearly the work of a man shaking off the cobwebs, the merits of the meta Dark Tower conclusion can be discussed until doomsday and The Colorado Kid and Just After Sunset both have the air of “Oh well why not”. But Cell was a piece of unmitigatedly nasty balls out horror of the type he hadn’t really done since The Dark Half and I found both Lisey’s Story and Duma Key to be richly rewarding, not to mention deeply sad, pieces of work. Among the best that King’s ever written.

But Under The Dome brings it all together. It’s a reminder of what King does best. Basically setting up a bad situation then finding ways to make it worse.

Under The Dome’s pretty irresistible premise follows a small town that suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a giant unseen force field. Things go from bad to shit storm in record time, as the town’s evil selectman ends up installing fascism as the defacto mode of government, and ends up setting his psychotic son and friends in charge of the new police recruits.

Arraigned against him are a few resisters led by a Iraqi war veteran. And for most of its surprisingly quick 1000+ pages we just kick back and watch everyone make the worst possible decisions at the worst possible times.

Don’t get me wrong now, if you’re a King Hater this will do nothing to change your mind. Just the opposite it finds all of King’s quirks out in full force. If you don’t like King’s voice, filled with running monologues, made up nonsense slang, and oft repeated Malapropisms, attempting to read Under The Dome might make you want to eat a bullet, Particularly some of the kid's dialogue which manages to combine several of King's Kingisms until they reach critical mass. I have to imagine they'd cause physical pain to King Haters.

But for those who know King’s gifts, his incisive character work (Prepare to meet the most likable Jesus Freak, Psychotic Meth Cook you can imagine), humor, and superb storytelling ability, Under The Dome is a delight. King’s skill with large casts hasn’t mouldered, and he skips nimbly from thread to thread somehow always keeping things clear.

My only problem is that I wished that King had hit the genre brakes for once in his career. The problem is that King at the end of the day is a genre writer (not a knock from my POV) and plays by genre rules. And at the end of the day he gives the book a genre ending and gives us an out. Now anyone who has read the book and it’s exceedingly grim ending, might wonder just what the hell I define as an out, but my feelings remain unchanged.

Had King left The Dome unexplained I think Under The Dome would stand next to Kafka and Golding. As is it falls a little short.




Without really meaning too I’ve ended up rereading King’s first three books for the first time since Adolescence. And have been gratified by how well they held up. Carrie remains a clumsy but ultimately powerful work, both for the rawness of its prose and the sad prescience of King’s vision. Salem’s Lot is a bit clumsier, but it showcases’s King’s laser like insight to small town life, and has some amazing scenes.

But The Shining? Well, I think The Shining might be a God damn masterpiece.

The problem with writing about The Shining is you can’t write about it without talking about Kubrick first. I wrote about my frustration with it early in this blogs life, but as an adaptation The Shining is piss poor. At best it uses the setting and some of the beats for Kubrick’s own obsessions, at worse it’s a willful misinterpretation of the work (You could say the same thing about Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, the difference being that while Burgess’s and Kubrick’s aims are quite different Kubrick at the very least replaced Burgess’s themes with some worth considering, which I don’t believe to be the case with The Shining.)

The Shining is a very human horror story. You know the bones of it if you’ve seen the movie, but you don’t know how much hope King gives to Torrance. Torrance is a good man, finally starting to move past the demons that have been haunting him for the past half decade. And every room in the hotel, every task, every spirit just opens those fresh cracks up a little wider, and when Jack Falls apart its truly a terrible thing to behold. The film takes the time and care to build up a loving family unit, then it rips it to shreds. The book climaxes in a grisly act of Fatherly love that never fails to stun me.

Kubrick gutted this all, of course with Jack acting crazy as a loon from the first frame, and Wendy and Danny never seeming two people who would have anything to say to one another.

The Shining is a very academic horror novel as well. In his under read study of lthe horror genre Danse Macarabe King suggests that the tension in most horror fiction comes from the struggle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which is often fueled by the characters own Narcissim.

Keeping this in mind The Shining is as much of an engine as the haunted hotel itself is supposed to be. The first conflict is easy enough to see, the way King’s novel pits the small nuclear Torrance family against the eternal omnisexual fuckfest that’s going on in the ballroom. But it’s the narcissism that really stokes the engine, with Jack’s doom being sealed by the simple fact that he can’t understand that its not him the hotel wants.

King’s writing a sequel to The Shining, before the reread I thought it was a ridiculous idea, now against all odds I’m sort of excited. I hope he finds it as rich ground to revisit as I did.



At our after Christmas sale I picked up an odd little Curio called The Stephen King Companion. As a biography its pretty worthless, but it does come with a bunch of neat pictures, reproductions of manuscripts, artwork, and foreign book covers. Not a bad buy for five bucks.



Finally on the last of The King matters, I got my greedy mitts on “Son Of King” Joe Hill’s book Horns, which comes out in just a few short weeks. Guys its fucking awesome. Go out and buy it. Like now.




I also picked up the second portion of Larry McMurtry’s Memoirs, Literary Life. This is despite being somewhat bamboozled by the first volume. When you pick up a book called Books, you might, not unfairly think that its about Books. But Books wasn’t about Books. It was about the selling of Books. Based on a few excerpts I read, I figured Literary Life would be more on topic.

Well fool me twice shame on me. Literary Life isn’t about McMurtry’s Literary Life its about all the stuff around his literary life. All the agents and classes and now forgotten rivals. Dear sweet Christ you’d hardly know the man wrote books.

To be fair Literary Life’s does have a few passages about you know literary life, and its more tolerable then Books if only because its less aggressively inside baseball and because McMurtry has never been anything less then an appealing meanderer.

Still I have no doubt that when Hollywood, McMurtry’s third volume comes out, it will be about Deluth.



I Saw You was a similarly enjoyable trifle. Though the premise a bunch of comics based around Missed Connections posts on Craiglist screams indie chic, it managaes nonetheless to overcome its feyness and showcase some genuinely affecting work.


And while we’re at Esoterica might as well bring up Portable Grindhouse. In case you haven’t heard Portable Grindhouse is a collection of old VHS box art and back covers. It’s kind of amazing. The lurid covers are reproduced in startling detail. Ironic that for a book celebrating one of the ugliest mediums in entertainment history Portable Grindhouse is a frankly beautiful to look at.



Shelf Discovery is a similar look back at a bygone era, this one by Lizzie Skurnick as she travels back to the classic world of YA fiction in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s a rewarding tour, that reminded myself on the details of several old favorites. Skurnick is an incisive insightful writer, if not one I would be exactly eager to take a long hot car ride with. But her apprasials of the likes of A Wrinkle In Time, Danny Champion Of The World, and Island Of The Blue Dolphins can’t help but hit a soft spot in my heart, as I imagine it will for anyone with a soft spot for said same books.



I picked up The Black Echo because I wasn’t sure how I could keep calling myself a crime fiction fan and ignore Michael Connelly. Connelly is one of those magical writers who manages to hover in a privileged nexus of Critical Respectability and Commercial Success.

He’s without a doubt the biggest crime writer of the day. I don’t really know why I was avoiding him. I guess I’d always just written him off as a member of the James Patterson school of dumbass gimmicks. But I kept hearing good things, so I decided to go ahead and buy the first Harry Bosch book, The Black Echo.

An once again (I had previously read Crime Beat a collection of his writing as a journalist) I have to wonder where all the fuss is coming from. I mean its not like its bad. There’s a lot good there, Bosch is an interesting enough character, the crime Connelly conceives of is pretty clever, he writes a good LA, there’s a twist at the end that I genuinely didn’t see coming. All in all it’s a decent well written policier. And yet I’m unmoved.

I don’t know, it’s not like I’m writing off Connelly, I’m planning on reading The Poet this month, and I already have to the second Harry Bosch book so I’m sure I’ll read that. But reading his stuff is like watching NYPD Blue when you have five full seasons of The Wire next to you. Sure NYPD Blue isn’t bad, but that’s the fucking Wire right there. What the fuck are you doing? Because while Connelly might not be down on the level of James Patterson and other assorted lazy ghost writing fucks. He’s not a Richard Price, Andrew Vachss, James Ellroy, David Peace, Richard Stark, Don Winslow…



Or a Dennis Lehane either. And Dennis Lehane kicks enough ass to make you scream, “DOOONKENNN DOONUTTTSS ARE FAAAACHINNGG OOSUME!” Seriously there are few writers I envy more then Lehane. Not only is he a great storyteller, with a keen sense of plot, character, and an unpredictable sense of humor. But line by line he’s just a fantastic writer, his prose slipping between effortlessly authentic vernacular and some truly beautiful work seemingly at will.

Assuming that you are one of the few who hasn’t been spoiled by Eastwood’s film (One of those annoying movies that’s simultaneously over and under rated, I’m not going to dive too deeply into the mystic. I’m just going to point out that it’s a dark hearted morality play that’s hypnotic to read And if you haven’t read it yet, go get it now.



I finished the month with some Salinger. I have been saving Franny and Zooey and Raise High The Roofbeams Carpenters for a rainy day and now have only Raise High The Roofbeams Carpenters remaining in my larder.

Franny and Zooey has all the attributes that Salinger’s critics find distasteful. It’s didactic, over detailed, and about nothing but the problems of over priveleged white people (gasp!).

All of these criticisms miss the point of Salinger. Salinger was the poet of unhappiness. And Unhappiness is universal.

Franny And Zooey is one of Salinger’s Glass novels, the family of ruined Geniuses who apparently took up the remainder of Salinger’s literary life. And of whom Updike once sublimely complained, that “Salinger loves them more then God does.” It’s a tough work to write about, as it not a lot happens in it.

It follows Franny, as she first undergoes a nervous breakdown and begins following a kind of Zen Buddism form of Christianity, and then has her older more cynical brother Zooey try to talk her out of her depression. It plays almost like the reverse of Catcher In The Rye, with the disillusioned older brother having to save the innocent sister, rather then vica-versa.

Like most of Salinger’s work it’s a melancholy fable. But one I cannot help but respond to. Salinger’s sadness is usually adolescent in nature, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. He brings up questions that we don’t think about anymore, not because we’ve found answers to them, but because we haven’t. Reading Salinger is always uneasy and intimate. I hope that Raise High The Roofbeam Carpenters doesn’t sit alone on the shelf for too much longer.