May. 7
2:59 PM
Non-Films of High Adventure Update. Gasp!
I realized that the only posts I've been making recently have been the Films of High Adventure series, and so today will be a real entry. Mostly about movies. But still! I will have some cool news before too long, and need to upload some recent hiking photos, but for now you get capsule reviews that I'll copy over to goodreads.
Oh, and I've registered for World Fantasy, so I'll definitely be there, and I'm also traveling back to Florida for a visit at the end of the month--I was planning on changing my tickets to go down early to volunteer for shore clean-up but the oil hasn't started washing up yet, just dead animals, so perhaps I'll stay longer than I intended if it arrives while we're there, or plan a second trip later in the summer strictly for clean-up. I logged a lot of hours on the Panhandle beaches growing up and the thought of the imminent devastation makes me queasy.
Right, as for what I'm reading at present: Amanda Downum's The Drowning City, Sedia's Running with the Pack antho that I'm in, and Laird Barron's Occultation. So far the preliminary vibe is awesome, awesome, and awesome, respectively, but more on those when I finish'em--I'm a notoriously slow reader but am trying to book it (ho ho!) through the latter two as they've just come out. As for what I've actually completed:
Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones--a postmodern, whip smart novel that manages to simultaneously be a homage to literally hundreds of horror films while still maintaining its own original, at times satirical, vibe. Styled as an annotated script for a trilogy of horror films (based on a doctor's true accounts, of course) the experience of reading Demon Theory is a unique one, and indispensable for horror movie aficionados who don't mind an experimental approach to fiction. Personally, I would have preferred footnotes to endnotes, but given the length and layers of some of said notes, I don't know if it would have worked.
The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll--reading this was a strange experience, as the more I read the less I enjoyed it. The bottom line is that I didn't care for the main character, and liked him less the more I read. It was capably written and had some neat turns of phrase but by the end I was forcing myself to go on.
The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay--the perfect tonic to restore me after The Wooden Sea, this is clever and fast and expertly written, with a likable lead to boot. Tremblay makes writing a complicated character look remarkably easy, and rather than going for any of the obvious gags that having a narcoleptic detective for a lead might inspire he crafts a nuanced and finally poignant novel that is much more than a simple mystery or noir pastiche. In an effort to read a little wider I've been trying to avoid reading more than one book by an individual author each year but I'm positivley slavering to pick up No Sleep Till Wonderland.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde--I don't really have any excuse for only recently having read this. A brilliant play when one is in the mood for Stoppard-smart silliness.
The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan--a trilogy opener that's main shortcoming is that it occasionally reads like a trilogy opener. That said, it's one hell of a trilogy opener, and I'm eager to see where Morgan takes his three leads next. In talking to others about Morgan's portrayal of Ringil, his gay lead, I found that some though Morgan treated Ringil's sexuality almost as an afterthought, but while it's true that this element almost impacts the plot more than the character the mroe I think about it the more inclined I am to think this was an intentional choice, especially given that Morgan has more or less described the project as an experiment. Which is to say, Ringil is written as he is because he's supposed to be the archetypal destined hero of epic fantasy in most every regard except that instead of bar maids he shacks up with stable boys. In any event, I feel that Morgan is doing cool work here, and the graphic sex has pissed off more than one homophobe on amazon, which makes me happy.
Those are the books, then, and rather than taking too much more time to round up all the movies I'll just cover a few quickly. With SPOILERS!
Defendor is a real-life-super-hero movie from Canada that stars Woody Harrelson as a mentally disabled would-be crime fighter. If you say I deserve what I get from that description than you're right. It gets points for treating Harrelson's character's disability tactfully, but loses them all and then some for quickly becoming a predictable, maudlin movie wherein everyone is so achingly sincere and heartfelt that any comedy or fun is drained away to nothing and you're left with the hooker-with-a-renewed-heart-of-gold-learning-life-lessons-from-a-retarded-Woody-Harrelson movie that nobody ever wanted. Unless, you know, you did want that movie, in which case Defendor is tailor made for your enjoyment. Could have been brilliant, too, which is probably why I was so disappointed.
The Nightmare on Elm Street remake wasn't as bad as some entries in that series, but then it could be perfectly terrible and still proudly boast the same. Jackie, that Bad News Bear done good, restores the menace that Freddy lost about halfway through the original movie, but is hamstrung by a crappy script and crappy performances from most everyone else in the movie. The filmmakers play with an interesting twist--that Freddy didn't actually commit any crimes but the kids made up stories about him and the parents believed them, killing Kruger instead of turning him over to the authorities--but that lasts all of five minutes before we're back to the plot of the original, only now with a kiddie porn dungeon. Indeed.
I finally got around to watching Iron Man and thought it was a lot of fun. Not sure about having the bad guys be mostly oh-so-wicked foreigners but then they were having their strings pulled by the Dude so it's ok. I guess? One of the better superhero movies of recent years, in any event.
The Collector, which I heard was a good horror film but turned out to be the nastiest torture porn I've seen in a long time. If you have the stomach for that sort of thing it was an exemplary entry in its niche, containing elaborate, vicious booby traps a plenty. Not for the squeamish.
Gentlemen Broncos was charming in a very stupid sort of way. Another teenage-weirdo-does-good number by the brothers who made Napoleon Dynamite, I suspect this will have a much smaller audience, though perhaps an even more rabid one. This one's about a young science fiction author who attends a writing camp where his literary hero (one of the guys from that Flight of the Conchords thing that people seem to like doing a pretty decent Tim Currry impression) turns out to be a dick. Quirkiness ensues, with Sam Rockwell showing up from time to time as the kid's literary creation, the Yeast Lord known as Bronco. I imagine a lot of people will really hate the hell out of this, but I think it's worth trying if only for the brilliant opening credit sequence.
Finally, I dug the indie space western The American Astronaut. Great dialogue and musical numbers, if one is into the slowburn weirdness of Jarmusch, for example, or some of Lynch's stuff. Very neat aesthetic to the film, which is admittedly dopey, and now I'm hankering to see the director and star's follow-up, Stingray Sam.
I still haven't gotten the chance to watch A Serious Man, I Sell the Dead, Moon, Fear(s) of the Dark, or a few others. Soon, soon...for now, anyone read or seen anything worth mentioning?