Best Books Of 2012

Inevitable Plug: Son Of Danse Macabre, Bryce Wilson: That’s right folks I wrote a book this year and I’m still not tired of talking about it. Well I might be tired of talking about it, but I’m not tired of asking you to buy it.

Son Of Danse Macabre, is my personal history of the horror genre in the last thirty years (with some trips further back in time for foundation laying).  I’ve been told by people I trust that it is readable. It’s 2.99 on the nook and kindle and every time some one gives it a shot, my Grinch heart grows three sizes that day.

Best Of Last Year: The Whore Of Akron, Scott Raab: Somehow I missed reading The Whore Of Akron until this year. Had I read it in time it would have been my favorite book of last year. Even if you don’t give two shits about American Basketball, The Whore Of Akron is an electrifying portrait of personal passion, despair, and what it means to be from somewhere. I felt every page in my gut. Thank you Scott Raab. Though the diaspora continues, one day we will have our victory. One day Cleveland Sports will be restored.

Dayenu.

Worst: Back To The Blood, Tom Wolfe: Tom Wolfe is dead. I have been waiting twelve years for the resurrection. I shant waste my time waiting any longer.

Most Disapointing: Kings Of Cool, Don Winslow: Coming from anybody else The Kings Of Cool would be perfectly acceptable, perhaps even good. But it’s not coming from anybody else, it’s coming from Don Winslow.

On one level I can’t really blame the guy, after all Universal was nice enough to buy a 50 million dollar marketing campaign for him, he’d be a fool not to take advantage of it. And Kings Of Cool has its moments, including a tormented monologue from one of the character's parents that almost makes it worth it. But no bright moment of passion, or turn of phrase can disguise the fact that Winslow’s heart just isn’t in it.  That from the first page to the last Kings Of Cool is a book that has no damn reason to exist.

It’s the first Don Winslow book to feel anything other than essential. And that just hurts.

Who Gives A Damn If It's YA: The Fault In Our Stars: Yes The Fault In Our Stars may be written for Young Adults but its more acerbic, truthful, beautifully written and real, than most of what passes for contempary adult literature these days. One of those invaluable books where you suddenly find that you're not thinking of the characters as characters at all.

So why is is ghettoized if I truly don't give a damn whether it's "adult literature" or not? Because I shamefully forgot about it while making my outline and I don't feel like kicking any of the below books off the list. The shame is my own though not the books. Make time for it. You'll be glad, you did.

10 & 9 Some Remarks,  Neal Stephenson, Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson: I have commented before that it scare the shit out of me that both Neal Stephenson and William Gibson consider the modern day a suitable place to set their fiction. Now it seems they no longer even consider the fiction part necessary.

Both Some Remarks and Distrust That Particular Flavor bear the finger prints of their respective creators, two of our most dependable outliers. With Some Remarks a bit woollier containing everthing from a most unexpected defense of Zack Snyder’s 300, to a brief history of Fiber Optics (as well as a history of the various battles between the two authors, plasma swords are involved.)  While Gibson is more precise and distant, trapping all his details in amber.

Both are  invaluable looks at the world from the pleasure of their cracked prism.

8. The Croning, Laird Barron: The jump from the short story to the novel is a tricky transition for any author, but particularly the horror author who is charged with transplanting his work from his genre’s natural habitat to much more inhospitable soil.

Fortunately with his first novel Laird Barron proves himself one of the authors capable of making the jump. Delivering a book with the same sense of shuddering decay that his best short work offers. Barron does, “cheat” a little bit, layering his book with short stories in the best Neil Gaiman puzzle box fashion. But as The Croning builds to its final awful whole, one cannot help but reflect that whatevee the format Barron is awful damn good.

7. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn: “I’d hate to take a bite of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

It is one thing to have a book be extraordinarily popular and critically acclaimed. It is another thing to have a book be extra ordinarily popular and acclaimed and also be really, really good.  Come on Gillian Flynn what are you trying to do? Break my spirit?

And make no mistake Gone Girl is really, really good. The prose is of a “Why do I bother” quality, combined with a twisted gift for plotting, and an acerbic misanthropic world view. Patricia Highsmith would spit with envy.

6. Sacre Blue, Chris Moore: Those expecting the usual Christopher Moore maniac farce might walk away from Sacre Blue a bit disappointed. Sure, there are the usual pleasures of Moore at full bear. The word play, the bad behavior, donkeys, decapitations (sorry accident, couldn’t be helped) the unusually kind heart and of course the sex. But it is an unusually somber Moore who shows up and delivers an unexpectedly weighty and moving consideration of the burdens and prices of producing art. (Imagining Moore peaking over my shoulder I can’t help but picture him saying,  “Yes and the dick jokes, don’t forget those. There are some good ones in there.”)

There are some good ones in there, but there’s also a true sense of melancholy. The price the muse demands can at times be even worse than syphilis (though she has a fondness for that one)  and Moore writes of it with sympathy, and a conviction that it is worth it. It’s also a book where you can read about Toulouse LauTrec battling an immortal cave man. So you know, good times.

5. Redshirts, John Scalzi: Like Sacre Blue Scalzi presents what only looks like a weightless farce. The idea is irresitable, a crew of expendable one shot characters realize the nature of their plight. But for all the genre callbacks and Cabin In The Woods style, post modern shenanigans, what really gives Redshirts its depth is the frank examination of what we give to the things we create and what they give back. There is an awful lot in its much maligned three part ending about the nature of storytelling. Many complained about the sudden swerve, but it changes Redshirts from something clever, but necessarily shallow, to a truly substantial work of fiction.

4. The Twelve, Justin Cronin: I have figured out that I should just stop trying to figure out what Justin Cronin is trying to do.

The Passage left me stumbling and grasping every hundred pages or so, and The Twelve follows neatly in its footsteps, ignoring the clear narrative set up of the closing pages of The Passage in favor of a story that finds its central characters stuck in inertia while the world ends around them.

But the pleasures of Cronin’s world and story are, well not secondary, but rather a support system for what Cronin is able to convey with them. Elsewhere I have ventured that if it is the purpose of literary fiction to break the icy seas within ourselves, then perhaps it is genre fictions job to simply make us a little braver. With his story of courage in the face of loss and oblivion, I believe Cronin has accomplished just that. Writing an unforgettable cast of characters who are defined by the fact that when given a second chance, a chance to be better than they are, they more often rise to the occasion than not. In the books key segement a character responds to an unanswerable question with the words, “I could have held his hand.”  The moment he gets the opportunity to do just that is the most moving I’ve come across in fiction in quite awhile.

And that is the reason that for all its dark imagery, and operatic bleakness Cronin’s devasted world is one of profound optimism. The Zero may seek to end all things, but he won’t do it without a fight.

3. Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon: What can be said of Chabon’s novel. It possesses the kind of messy exuberance that Wolfe once had, before he, you know, died. But there is a warmth here that Wolfe never had, even at his most admiring. Like the area it documents Telegraph Avenue has the sprawling messiness of life, in the way that Chabon’s slightly neat hermetic work never really had.  It suits him

2. Live By Night, Dennis Lehane: Or as I like to think of it, Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster. While Live By Night's predecessor, The Given Day somewhat buckled under the weight of its admirable literary aspirations,  Live By Night is a lean work of glorious pure pulp the type that Lehane hasn’t delivered since Sacred. Rough, propulsive, and with Lehane’s trade mark economical weighty prose Live By Night was a kick to my particular set of literary pleasure receptors, with a directness that almost seems unfair to the other books on the list. 

1. This Book Is Full Of Spiders, David Wong: There is no more dangerous activity than trying to catch lightning in a bottle a second time. And make no mistake, John Dies At The End was lightning in a bottle. Everything from its piecemeal creation, to its novella structure, conspired to make it something completely unexpected. On this level This Book Is Full Of Spiders faced a near impossible task. By its very definition the reader had expectations for it.

So all credit to Jason Pargin (ie David Wong) who managed to find the improbable juke. Delivering a novel deeper, richer, scarier, funnier and on every level better than John. The growth that Pargin shows between the two books is staggering. It’s not every book that can scare the shit out of you, make you laugh, consider how deeply fucked we as a species might be and leave the reader with a resilient kernel of optimism all the same; all in the space of five pages. In short This Book Is Full Of Spiders delivers everything I ask from literature and it does it again and again and again.

Never Again

The woman was looking at her smartphone as I rang her up. This always annoys me.

“There was a shooting.” She said.

That’s not something that has an easy response. I think a non committal grunt was the best I could manage.

“At a school. Children.” She continued. Then she took her bag and left. I called the next person in line.

It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth that my first response on hearing the news wasn’t shock, wasn’t sorrow, just a numb base level revulsion, a feeling that can best be summed up by the thought, “This again?”

It wasn’t until I was sitting home alone that the full weight of the horror hit me. Yes, this. Again.

Here’s an anecdote, I’ve actually been working on a book which features at its center a choreographed shooting in a public place, and when I started outlining the book at the beginning of the year I was worried about this plot point because I was afraid it wouldn’t be believable.

Normally I rip through my first drafts pretty quickly. But this one has taken me a while. Not because of any difficulties with the story. Indeed I see this plot clearer than I have perhaps seen any other. But every few months it happens again and afterwards its weeks before I can stand to touch the fucking thing. First Aurora, then the tragedy at the Sikh temple, a smattering of lesser shootings throughout the year, and now this, the final (God willing) ugly culmination of this nightmare of a year.

I can hope that this last indelible tragedy might finally break the stranglehold the right has had on any talk of gun control. But I don’t hold my breath. What I save my real hope for is that the horror is at least felt. Because if we get to the point where we are so deadened that, “This again?” is our instinctive response we are truly and utterly lost once and for all.

So what do we do when we are left with horror. Well I for one went here. I try not to let my left hand know what my right hand is doing when it comes to charity. But today I don’t mind sharing. If like me you’re getting so overwhelmed by the presence of evil in the world that you are sliding towards out and out bafflement, then do some good. Do a positive concrete act. Do what you can to ease a little suffering.

It may be corny, but as long as we have that impulse we still have a fighting chance. 

EDIT: If you're looking for something else concrete to do, might I suggest going here.

V/H/S

(Obligatory reminder that you can pick up Son Of Danse Macabre, my book on the last thirty years of horror on your Kindle or your Nook)

(Disclosure: A screener was provided for this review)

The buzz that V/H/S carried out of Sundance was almost uniformly positive. Nearly as uniform were the negative reviews that greeted the film during its theatrical release. This kind of whiplash of hype and anti hype is common, and in my experience one is hardly ever more reliable than the other. But as a result by the time I slipped V/H/S into my Blu Ray player I literally had no preconceptions on the film. Masterpiece or mess. Lady or the tiger.

As usual the truth is something in between. I happen to have a soft spot for anthology horror films. There is something about even the weakest of them that retains the warm feeling of being told a scary story. Though quality in V/H/S varies from segment to segment for my money the ones that hit do so well enough to make up for the weaker parts. And even the weakest sections are not without a couple of striking images and well executed beats.

V/H/S opens on a group of lowlifes who record their rampages of vandalism and sexual assault like a felonious version of CKY. Recruited to perform a burgularly, in order to search for a very specific V/H/S tape, the crew breaks into a creepy house where they find rows and rows of tapes each seeming to show something inexplicable and horrible.

Things get off to an appropriately E.C.ish start with "Amateur Night" which in which a group of horny frat guys out hunting for women learn the meaning of the term, “Sexual Predator”. While a bit broad, it also features a dark sense of humor and some makeup effects that are genuinely disquieting. "Second Honeymoon" is Ti West’s entry in game. The backlash against West is in full swing now, but I still stubbornly like him. Though I’d say "Second Honeymoon" is the weakest thing he’s done this side of Cabin Fever 2, that still puts him above most modern horror filmmakers simply because he bothers to establish the normal rhythms of life before he brings the discord of horror to them. Because of his patience horror in West’s films feels like a violation. And the only thing that keeps" Second Honeymoon" a notch below The Innkeepers and House Of The Devil is an unnecessary twist ending.

"Tuesday The 17^th" by Glenn McQuaid, is an interesting experiment, and the decision to render its killer as a mass of distortion is brilliant, unfortunately there ultimately doesn’t seem to be enough payoff to the story. Horror may not need an explanation, but it does need a punchline. "The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger" is probably the weakest segment of the film, I’m convinced that there are few things as bracingly uncinematic as Skype conversations, and the fact that it basically reverses "The Second Honeymoon" twist, that didn’t work all that well in the first place is problematic.

Things end with a bang though, with "10/31/98", a good ole fashioned haunted house movie that may not end up being truly frightening, but is an awful lot of fun.

All in all V/H/S is uneven, as any film that has six different directors is bound to be. But the moments that work outnumber those that don’t by a good 3 to one margin. It may not be a masterpiece, but I say bring on S-VHS.

Rise

I was all geared up to write about The Dark Knight Rises (short version very good, downright underrated even, but more the sequel to Batman Begins than The Dark Knight. Tom Hardy was a blast) when it came out last July, but then the terrible events in Aurora happened and I just couldn't quite bring myself to. And now that everyone has already weighed in, and delivered backlash, counter backlash and counter counter backlash, it feels a bit beside the point (well OK those who think that they're getting a straight up "the masses can't be trusted" message from the film just aren't paying attention).

So here instead is an article I did for inReads, where I write about five of my favorite Batman comics, as well as a few attempts at the character that downright screwed the pooch.

 If one wants to hear more of my Bat Musings, there's always the Actioncast I recorded immediately after seeing the film. As well as the one in which we cover the series in its entirity. But since you've already got the Actioncast bookmark you've heard those already. Right? Right.

On The Value Of Being Opaque (The Master, Holy Motors, and Cloud Atlas)

Just because my writing for the blog has been plummeting ever closer to the level of “shameful” for the last couple of months (To the four remaining folks whose Son Of Danse Macabre Reviews I have to write, I thank you for your patience, rest assured they are on the way) doesn’t mean that I haven’t been watching the films.

Indeed three seemingly unrelated films, The Master, Holy Motors, and Cloud Atlas. have been banging around inside my head since I saw them months ago, sparking against each other in all sorts of odd ways. And I think, the reactions and receptions from critics and the public to all three to all three, tells us a lot about where film is at the moment. Particularly in regard to the value of opacity.

Lets start with The Master. I’m not confident in my ability to even begin to unpack all the things that the film does right (though if you're interested in that I recommend reading Bill Ryan’s account, perhaps the sanest thing I’ve read on the film). What I want to point out is the baffled reactions of everyone from Roger Ebert on down, about the films lack of a "Deeper Meaning".

This is somewhat understandable, given that There Will Be Blood for all its tactile pleasures might as well have been entitled, Deeper Meaning: The Movie. But I simply think that with The Master it's just plain the wrong question to ask, this is a movie that is entirely, almost aggressively, surface. What is The Master About? It’s about putting you in the headspace of Freddie Quell, a personality in full fledged meltdown. It's as unpleasant a place to be be as any I’ve seen in a film. Anderson mercilessly puts you in this guys shoes, for an unsparing 144 min, and by the experience is nothing less than grueling. By the time you’ve finished you should be dangerously close to knowing what its like to be in the mind of someone who is taking mental and physical dysfunction about as far as he possibly can. Larger thematic concerns aren’t just secondary, they’re beside the point entirely. Everything you need to understand the film is right there on the surface.

Holy Motors on the other hand is a film that is utterly opaque. It is perhaps the first film that should have liner notes passed out with its tickets (Lets just say that one would do well to research director Leos Carax’s life before venturing in). Holy Motors tells the story of Mr. Oscar, a man who with the aid of a mysterious and mostly unseen organization stages pieces of, well lets just call it performance art, around a city. I've heard the film interpreted as everything as a meditation on the acting process, to a political essay. These are all very cute and reductive.

As for myself After a bit of research and a second viewing I think I have a better hold on what the movie is, "about" now, but I will not pretend that during my first viewing I had even the faintest notion of what was happening on a basic narrative level. (That being said, I’m pretty sure that Roger Ebert nailed the particulars of Mr. Oscar's peculiar occupation with his interpretation. Particularly given the film’s relationship to Tokyo! His explanation seems obvious to the point of bitter, face palming, frustration).

Does that make me a fraud? A poseur? Little more than Homer Simpson chuckling at the dancing Horse on Twin Peaks? Afraid to dislike the movie that all the cool kids are raving about? The thought has crossed my mind, but ultimately I don’t think so.

Even at my most baffled, my main emotion during Holy Motors was one of exhilaration. The sensation of seeing something new under the sun is the rarest a film fan can have and Holy Motors delivers it with every frame. It’s a film of contradictions, an elegy, if not a eulogy for cinema that opens up new possibilities for the form. As intensely intertextual as any film I have ever seen, that feels completely original. One of the great stylistic triumphs I’ve seen that manages to set itself in a recognizable world. It’s all as giddy, strange and inexplicable as well an orchestra full of accordions. And even if I had no idea what it all “means” the pure sensation of the thing is reward enough.

Which brings us to Cloud Atlas, a film that for all it’s supposed narrative opaqueness (bah!) is not merely more open about “What. It. All. Means.” than Holy Motors, but is so eager for you to know what it all means that it has several instructive montages on the subject, over which a voice over explains to the viewer What. It. All. Means. As the images reveal the truth (singular) of the lesson over the ages.

Of course I don’t think that Cloud Atlas’s thematic openness should count against it anymore than Holy Motors abtuseness about its message should count against it. Openess about theme is only a detriment if its clumsy and Cloud Atlas, despite what its harsher critics say, isn’t clumsy just earnest. Which is an entirely different thing.

Indeed perhaps the most rewarding thing about Wachowski’s career as a whole as it comes close to capping its second decade, is that for filmmakers who made their name for the post modern way they mashed up their influences, they have unexpectedly morphed into two of the most earnest filmmakers working today. There is a deep romanticism  underpinning The Matrix sequels (films I’ve long defended and am happy to begin to see finally get reevaluated) equal to the open, dorm room enthusiasm with which the Wachowski’s tackle the various philosophies that duel throughout the film. I may not defend Speed Racer as vigorously, nor do I love it half so much as its more fervent apologists, but I do have to admire it as a hot mess of a thing. And much of that is a result of how deeply felt and insistent its pro family message is.

In the end, the film I would liken Cloud Atlas to would be Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, a film that gets an A for effort, but will most reward the forgiving viewer willing to overlook some significant flaws. But like Watchmen, the fact that it is on screen in a recognizable format at all sort of trumps whatever issues one may have with it.

Cloud Atlas has much of the same sincerity to it, it's about as ironic as a Golden Retriever puppy. It’s a film about Lots Of Big Stuff, karma, power, freedom, love, our ability to choose and The Wachowski’s and Tywker don’t want you to miss a single moment of it. While Cloud Atlas has its problems, (it simplifies and subverts Mitchell’s text, the decision to drop the book’s structure is a mistake, and though the actors playing multiple roles throughout the area works aestetichally it confuses things on a narrative level, as they can either be separate souls experiencing their own karmic tragetories, or they can be the reincarnation of the same soul throughout the eras, but they cannot very well be both) this eagerness to share its enthusiasms is not one of them.

This Autumn and Winter have been one of the strongest in my time as a Moviegoer. What can I say? Thanks to films like these if Cinema is a corpse as Holy Motors suggests, it is an extremely lively one. 

Warning! Politics!

I don't usually get political on Things That Don't Suck, but there is one thing I must make clear.

If you lived through Bush V. Gore, and you're still giving those tired lines like "There's no real difference between the two parties," or  "Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy." You have express written permission to kiss my ass.

Thank you for your time.

Days Of Horror: A Tale Of Two Sisters

(This review request comes courtesy of Neil Fulwood of Agitation Of The Mind, who collaborated with me on Son Of Danse Macabre, providing an excellent essay on post 9/11 horror that now serves as an appendix in the book. You too can lock me in a house with my own darkest secrets by purchasing Son Of Danse Macabre on your Nook or Kindle, and sending the evidence to my email)

“Do you know what’s really scary? You want to forget something. Totally wipe it out of your mind. But you never can. It can’t go away, you see. And it follows you around like a ghost.”

Out of all the horror archetypes the ghost story is unquestionably the saddest. And it’s always struck me as curious at how unexploited this trait usually is. In literature and film the ghost is usually taken as an aggressive, frightening creature, a mobile mirror of our own mortality. By its very nature the ghost is a pathetic remnant, a literal shade of its former self.

Kim Ji-Woon’s, A Tale Of Two Sisters is among the saddest ghost stories ever filmed. If that is indeed what it is. With a few key exceptions the ghost at the center of the film (and just who is the ghost at the center of the film?) is not seen as an aggressive force as a mournful one. The stain of an event that cannot be erased, the result of an act of negligence that is almost unimaginably cruel.

A Tale Of Two Sisters opens with the titular pair coming to their family’s new home after one of the sisters has had a prolonged stay in an asylum. Things are odd at their new country home, their Father is remote and withdrawn, their step mother, if not wicked is at least overly ingratiating and while the estate itself at first seems down right idyllicly pastoral there is a presence in the house that both girls sense. You probably have at least some idea where this is going.

And indeed the biggest flaw of A Tale Of Two Sisters is how it holds together as a narrative. At its most convoluted A Tale Of Two Sisters resembles the serial killer movie that Donald Kaufman pitched in Adaptation. The tortuous plotting only some what ameliorated by the fact that Kim leaves certain things, if not ambiguous, than at least open to interpretation. (Though one interesting thing is that the one interpretation that is perhaps the most natural, that it is all in the protagonist’s mind, is also the only one that Ji-Woon explicitly rules out. In the films most famous scene, the most uncomfortable dinner party this side  of The Exterminating Angel, Ji-Woon brings in the only two characters in the film who are outside of the family seemingly for no other reason than to specifically invalidate this interpretation. It’s clear that there is at least some sort of supernatural presence in the film, to me the real question is how many.)

Where Ji-Woon truly excels is in the layer of dread he brings to the film, the heightened emotional intensity, and the aggression of its imagery. While the film is obviously Korean, it was made at the end cycle of The J-Horror boom, and seems to be at the very least commenting on the imagery found therein, faces of principles and spirits alike hidden by dank curtains of hair, unsettling artifacts, scenes punctuated by pregnant knowing silences. It’s all familiar but given an aggressive spin, as when the standard lank haired Japanese spirit approaches one of the sisters in her bed, a fairly typical set up though rarely this well done, then straddles and begins to menstruate over her. This before a hand bursts from a place that hands don’t usually burst from. It’s the type of scene that makes you go, “Oh yeah I’m watching a Korean new wave movie,” and A Tale Of Two Sisters has more than a few.

Though Chan Wook Park has established himself as the leading voice of the Korean New Wave, Kim Ji-Woon is probably my favorite. I still consider his Bittersweet Life to be one of the most underrated films of the movement, a hard as nails utterly gorgeous action film, and the greatness of his The Good, The Bad And The Weird, and I Saw The Devil hardly need to be rehashed here (though I will admit I have no idea what to make of his upcoming Arnold Schwarzennegger Verus Truckulese American Debut).

To me the exciting  about the film isn’t their unity but their diversity. Aside from a preternatural visual skill what links them is their willingness to juke formula, to take familiar forms and turn them on their head. Making them lively and dangerous. A Tale Of Two Sisters takes the ghost story, one as old as any (it has roots in a centuries old Korean folk tale) and twists it into something that feels poisonous and dangerous.  It is a film that feels haunted.