Reviews Written By: A2EDZH51XHFA9Bprovided by Amazon.com |
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 | Underworld (Resident Evil #4) | |
 | "Series is really slipping here." | 2009-10-14 |
| S. D. Perry, Resident Evil: Underworld (Pocket, 1999)
Perry's fourth installment in the Resident Evil series is another original, rather than being a novelization of one of the video games in the series; I find myself liking the novelizations a bit more, now that I've read two of each. Maybe it's because I recognize the limitations imposed on a novelization by the underlying game, while the originals should have more room to spread out. Perry's originals refuse to do this in any way, marching in lockstep with the same basic ideas in the game; if the folks who make the Resident Evil games ever decided to do so, it would be very easy for them to code both Caliban Cove and Underworld into playable (and probably highly enjoyable) games. In this one, the surviving team members from the first three novels have all finally found one another, and are getting ready to meet up with the comrades of theirs who have already fled to Europe (most notably Chris Redfield). When they're on the plane, however, the enigmatic Trent appears and offers them a choice: keep on going to Europe, or turn around and head for Utah, where they have the chance to take down another lab as well as get hold of a codebook that will make their lives much easier when they get to Europe. Guess what they choose. The only character who really gets developed here is Trent, and most of what wee get about him is toward the end of the book, so this feels interchangeable with the other books; drop characters into setting and throw monsters and bad guys at them. This feeling is augmented by the fact that there are no new good guys for us to get to know, so Perry dispenses with character development altogether on our good guys; opportunities we might have had to get to know some of these characters better (or to explore the rapidly-developing relationship between Leon and Claire) are ignored. Has the same action-packed pace as the previous novels, but that's about all it has going for it. If you've come this far in the series, you're probably not going to stop now, but I'm almost not looking forward to book five. *** | ||
 | Vampire Effect | |
 | "Chop silly." | 2009-09-30 |
| Vampire Effect (Dante Lam and Donnie Yen, 2003)
Vampire Effect is known in its native country as The Twins Effect because it stars both singers from mediocre pop group The Twins. In fact, the entire cast (or most of it anyway) is made up of Asian pop singers. Even those who are actors. (The always-wonderful Anthony Wong, star of such over-the-top Asian classics as Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story, even fronted an indie rock band for a while in the nineties.) The acting is about as one would expect; imagine a big Hollywood production starring Hilary Duff, Toby Keith, the Spice Girls, Vanilla Ice, Ricky Martin, Britney Spears, and Mariah Carey. (Oh, wait...) The plot (which borrows heavily from Blade) involves a group of European vampires who are trying to off the five princes of the vampire royal family. They take out the fourth as we enter the picture. Immediately after, vampire hunter Reeve (pop singer Ekin Cheng, probably best known on this side of the pond for his appearances in a couple of Pang Brothers films) and his partner show up on the scene and take out a few of the Europeans, but Reeve's partner dies in the process. The coalition of vampire hunters (yeah, really) sends him a new partner, Gypsy (Gillian Chung, one half of the aforementioned Twins). Gypsy and Reeve hit it off nicely. Not so Gypsy and Reeve's sister Helen (Charlene Choi, the other Twin), who, upon first meeting, get into an elaborate fight over a stuffed bear. But that's beside the point. In any case, Helen dumped her boyfriend after catching him cheating on her, but while still at the restaurant, she meets Prince Kazaf (pop singer Edison Cheng, whom you saw briefly in The Dark Knight) and his bodyguard Prada (Wong). There's an instant attraction between the two, and Kazaf hesitantly begins courting Helen. Of course, he doesn't realize that Helen is the sister of one of the world's top vampire hunters--and Helen doesn't realize Kazaf is the last remaining prince... Standard, if amusing, chop-socky horror comedy, with lots of fighting and romantic subplots as predictable as they come. Still, Wong is always a treat, and you don't actually have to hear he Twins do any singing, so it's not a complete waste of time. If you like your horror movies with a lot of action, or your action movies with a supernatural bent, there are at least two dozen action-horror flicks from Hollywood that would be worse choices than this. ** | ||
 | Taran Wanderer | |
 | "Slips a bit from the first three." | 2009-09-30 |
| Lloyd Alexander, Taran Wanderer (Henry Holt, 1967)
Alexander's fourth journey into the world of Prydain is a very different beast from its predecessors; the darker turn taken very slightly in The Castle of Llyr is sharpened here, and much more to the forefront. In this one, Taran, who has always wondered about his parentage, leaves Caer Dallben on a quest to find out who he truly is. Only Gurgi goes with him, though the two do meet up with an old friend or two eventually. Taran learns where he may be able to find the answers he seeks, and sets off to do so, but finds himself entangled in a number of complications along the way that teach him valuable lessons about the meaning of life, and his place in it. It's good stuff, as usual, though the book eventually takes on an episodic feel that none of the others has; get into a situation, learn a lesson, get into another situation, etc. There's no overlap, which is kind of odd, and made like the book less than those that came before it; still, if you've journeyed this far with Taran and Gurgi, you certainly shouldn't stop now. *** ½ | ||
 | The Snowman | |
| "Pretty darned awesome." | 2009-09-15 |
| Raymond Briggs, The Snowman (Random House, 1978)
Briggs' wordless Frosty the Snowman homage/knockoff became an instant classic upon its release thirty years ago, and has since gone through countless printings in dozens of different editions, has been made into a video (though to be honest it loses a lot of its magic thanks to the narration), and has been read by millions of kids worldwide. It's also a mainstay on bookstore endcaps and library displays come wintertime. (I don't get it. We're all sick of snow in the winter. Put it up for July fourth!) The reason for this, of course, is that it has an unmistakable power. (This will be of no surprise to anyone familiar with Briggs' second-most-famous book, also turned into a film--When the Wind Blows.) There's an innocence in the simplicity and wonder of the story that's difficult to put into words. Which could very well be why Briggs used none here. If you've never experienced it, no matter your age, you owe it to yourself to discover The Snowman's magic. (And if you don't like it, how much of your time can thirty-two pages without words take up of your time? You've got nothing to lose here.) **** | ||
 | The Snowman | |
| "Pretty darned awesome." | 2009-09-15 |
| Raymond Briggs, The Snowman (Random House, 1978)
Briggs' wordless Frosty the Snowman homage/knockoff became an instant classic upon its release thirty years ago, and has since gone through countless printings in dozens of different editions, has been made into a video (though to be honest it loses a lot of its magic thanks to the narration), and has been read by millions of kids worldwide. It's also a mainstay on bookstore endcaps and library displays come wintertime. (I don't get it. We're all sick of snow in the winter. Put it up for July fourth!) The reason for this, of course, is that it has an unmistakable power. (This will be of no surprise to anyone familiar with Briggs' second-most-famous book, also turned into a film--When the Wind Blows.) There's an innocence in the simplicity and wonder of the story that's difficult to put into words. Which could very well be why Briggs used none here. If you've never experienced it, no matter your age, you owe it to yourself to discover The Snowman's magic. (And if you don't like it, how much of your time can thirty-two pages without words take up of your time? You've got nothing to lose here.) **** | ||
 | Sock Monkeys: 200 out of 1,863 | |
| "Bad monkey wammajamma." | 2009-09-15 |
| Arne Svenson and Ron Warren, Sock Monkeys (200 out of 1,863) (Ideal World, 2002)
Ron Warren collects sock monkeys. And like any obsessive collector, when he sinks his teeth into something, he does it right. At the time this book was printed seven years ago, Warren had collected 1,863 sock monkeys (and I've no doublt that number has grown in the half-again-as-long time he's had since to continue). Arne Svenson conceived of a project that would have him photographing the monkeys in classic portrait style, and every once in a while grabbing a famous person to tell a particular monkey's tale. It's a fun little conceit, and I have to say it works. Especially when the writers you tab are folks like Neil Gaiman, Penn and Teller (each get a separate monkey), Isaac Mizrachi, and others along those lines. The monkeys range from comforting to disturbing (and having Neil Gaiman or Penn Jillette writing about them will not help you overcome the latter by any means), but Svenson treats them all with equal dignity. Svenson's introduction makes it sound as if this is the first in a series that will eventually encompass all of Warren's collection; I sincerely hope that is the case, because this first book is pure gold for sock monkey fans. *** ½ | ||
 | Snowman | |
| "Pretty darned awesome." | 2009-09-15 |
| Raymond Briggs, The Snowman (Random House, 1978)
Briggs' wordless Frosty the Snowman homage/knockoff became an instant classic upon its release thirty years ago, and has since gone through countless printings in dozens of different editions, has been made into a video (though to be honest it loses a lot of its magic thanks to the narration), and has been read by millions of kids worldwide. It's also a mainstay on bookstore endcaps and library displays come wintertime. (I don't get it. We're all sick of snow in the winter. Put it up for July fourth!) The reason for this, of course, is that it has an unmistakable power. (This will be of no surprise to anyone familiar with Briggs' second-most-famous book, also turned into a film--When the Wind Blows.) There's an innocence in the simplicity and wonder of the story that's difficult to put into words. Which could very well be why Briggs used none here. If you've never experienced it, no matter your age, you owe it to yourself to discover The Snowman's magic. (And if you don't like it, how much of your time can thirty-two pages without words take up of your time? You've got nothing to lose here.) **** | ||
 | The Snowman (Nifty Lift-and-Look) | |
| "Pretty darned awesome." | 2009-09-15 |
| Raymond Briggs, The Snowman (Random House, 1978)
Briggs' wordless Frosty the Snowman homage/knockoff became an instant classic upon its release thirty years ago, and has since gone through countless printings in dozens of different editions, has been made into a video (though to be honest it loses a lot of its magic thanks to the narration), and has been read by millions of kids worldwide. It's also a mainstay on bookstore endcaps and library displays come wintertime. (I don't get it. We're all sick of snow in the winter. Put it up for July fourth!) The reason for this, of course, is that it has an unmistakable power. (This will be of no surprise to anyone familiar with Briggs' second-most-famous book, also turned into a film--When the Wind Blows.) There's an innocence in the simplicity and wonder of the story that's difficult to put into words. Which could very well be why Briggs used none here. If you've never experienced it, no matter your age, you owe it to yourself to discover The Snowman's magic. (And if you don't like it, how much of your time can thirty-two pages without words take up of your time? You've got nothing to lose here.) **** | ||
 | The Cure (Transmetropolitan, Vol. 9) | |
| "Absolute genius." | 2009-09-15 |
| Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan: One More Time (Vertigo, 2004)
There are times when One More Time just feels like it's tying up loose ends. There are times when One More Time is far less subtle than any of the volumes of Transmetropolitan that preceded it. And you know what? Neither of those things mattered to me, and that is about the highest praise I can give this final volume of Warren Ellis' watershed comic series. Ellis has created something of true brilliance with the series, something that manages to be socially conscious and hard-hitting while simultaneously being one of the funniest graphic novels ever to come down the pike, with phenomenal characters and very, very smart writing. If you've never experienced Transmetropolitan, do yourself a favor and pick up the first two books. It's fantastic. **** | ||
 | Royal Heist | |
| "Tough going at first, but improves in the second act" | 2009-09-10 |
| Lynda LaPlante, Royal Heist (Random House, 2004)
It took me about a year and a half to read Royal Heist. Not continuously, of course. I started it back in December of 2007, struggled through the first few chapters, and when it had to go back to the library, didn't renew it. Here comes 2009, and I'm going through my backlist cleaning it out, so I put the book on hold again and pick up where I left off. (I get questions about that sort of thing. Honestly, I don't find it any harder to do that after eighteen months than I do putting a book down at night and picking it up again the next morning. I don't know why.) I'm glad I did, because it does markedly improve once you're farther into it, but I came very close to abandoning it for good after the first seventy-five pages or so. Be warned. The novel concerns Edward de Jersey, formerly Eddie Jersey, a thief and con man during his younger years. With his friends James Driscoll and Tony Wilcox, he was part of a band of thieves known as the Three Musketeers, who after pulling off one of the biggest heists in British history, quit their lives of crime and went legitimate. Until, that is, all three invest in an internet startup run by someone even more fraudulent than they are. De Jersey, now a Thoroughbred owner with a horse who has a great deal of promise for next year's Derby, has no intentions of his ship going down, much less him going down with it. But the more he thinks about it, the more he has only one option: revive the Three Musketeers and pull off an even more audacious robbery, one that will return to them the hundreds of millions of pounds they lost. Once we get into the planning of the heist, the book picks up. We don't get there for quite a while, however, and the setup is interminable. What's more odd is that the book's three-act structure would dictate a similarly detailed description of the police investigation after the heist (which occurs in act 2, naturally), but that part of the book is skimped on, glossed over in comparison to the setup and the robbery itself. Where we get detailed characterizations of the players on the shadowy end of things, the cops are no more than cardboard cutouts, and wet ones at that. Readable, but not much else. ** ½ | ||
 | The Plague of the Zombies | |
| "Hammer's nadir?" | 2009-09-10 |
| The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling, 1966)
Oh, Hammer, how we love thee. I never really thought of Hammer as a British sixties version of Full Moon Productions, one of the eighties' and nineties' leading purveyors of straight-to-video low-budget horror trash, but The Plague of the Zombies provides solid evidence that that may well be a valid position. After all, they took John Gilling, whose previous horror work includes such minor gems as The Flesh and the Fiends (for Triad, a Hammer competitor) and the BAFTA-nominated The Scarlet Blade, paired him with screenwriter Peter Bryan (who'd written the script for the 1959 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles), and came up with this incomprehensible mess. Young, nubile Sylvia Forbes (The Wrong Box's Diane Clare) and her father Sir James (The Message's André Morrell) have come to a small village in the rural British countryside where something is very amiss; it seems twelve young men have died in the past twelve months. No one can make heads nor tails of the deaths, be it the police or the town doctor (England, My England's Brook Williams). And, um, zombies. Yeah. The title doesn't tell you what's going on here at all. (Actually, I'm rather thankful, because either I fell asleep at a few choice junctures here, or the plot simply makes no sense for roughly the middle hour of the film.) The Plague of the Zombies can be seen as something of a bridge in the world of zombie films; it manages to combine both the silly melodrama of earlier zombie flicks, where zombies were nothing more than servants, with the truly horrendous makeup of later zombie films, where the zombies were more menacing and at least partially self-directed. Yes, the cognitive disjunct in that sentence is intended; I'm hoping to give you an idea of what watching this movie felt like. I can see its importance in that, yes, it does serve as a kind of missing link between the White Zombie-style films and Night of the Living Dead et al., but it's an absolute chore to watch. It feels almost as if I were watching a version that got trimmed for television viewing, and instead of trying to preserve continuity, the editor had simply chosen bits to chop out at random. Pity, that, because the bits that remain show some decent acting and a fine sense of atmosphere. An overall disappointment, however. ** | ||
 | Royal Heist : A Novel (La Plante, Lynda) | |
| "Tough going at first, but improves in the second act" | 2009-09-10 |
| Lynda LaPlante, Royal Heist (Random House, 2004)
It took me about a year and a half to read Royal Heist. Not continuously, of course. I started it back in December of 2007, struggled through the first few chapters, and when it had to go back to the library, didn't renew it. Here comes 2009, and I'm going through my backlist cleaning it out, so I put the book on hold again and pick up where I left off. (I get questions about that sort of thing. Honestly, I don't find it any harder to do that after eighteen months than I do putting a book down at night and picking it up again the next morning. I don't know why.) I'm glad I did, because it does markedly improve once you're farther into it, but I came very close to abandoning it for good after the first seventy-five pages or so. Be warned. The novel concerns Edward de Jersey, formerly Eddie Jersey, a thief and con man during his younger years. With his friends James Driscoll and Tony Wilcox, he was part of a band of thieves known as the Three Musketeers, who after pulling off one of the biggest heists in British history, quit their lives of crime and went legitimate. Until, that is, all three invest in an internet startup run by someone even more fraudulent than they are. De Jersey, now a Thoroughbred owner with a horse who has a great deal of promise for next year's Derby, has no intentions of his ship going down, much less him going down with it. But the more he thinks about it, the more he has only one option: revive the Three Musketeers and pull off an even more audacious robbery, one that will return to them the hundreds of millions of pounds they lost. Once we get into the planning of the heist, the book picks up. We don't get there for quite a while, however, and the setup is interminable. What's more odd is that the book's three-act structure would dictate a similarly detailed description of the police investigation after the heist (which occurs in act 2, naturally), but that part of the book is skimped on, glossed over in comparison to the setup and the robbery itself. Where we get detailed characterizations of the players on the shadowy end of things, the cops are no more than cardboard cutouts, and wet ones at that. Readable, but not much else. ** ½ | ||
 | Doll People, The | |
| "Good, as Martin always is, but... creepy." | 2009-09-01 |
| Ann M. Martin, The Doll People (Hyperion, 2000)
Baby-Sitters' Club creator Ann M. Martin gives us a tale about living dolls (and an implication that many, if not most, dolls are alive) in The Doll People. While I am an unabashed fan of Martin's (the BSC books were guilty pleasures for me all through my days working in bookstores), and I devoured this the way I do any Martin book I happen across, I have to say that the idea of living dolls is just damn creepy. Did you ever see the Talky Tina episode of Twilight Zone with Telly Savalas, or Trilogy of Terror, with Karen Black and the crazy voodoo doll chasing her around. I could go on forever with examples (James Wan's underrated Dead Silence from a few years ago being the most recent example of the genre I can think of). Living dolls scare people. Martin's already got two strikes against her going into this thing. And then you hand us a plot where the dolls have to go looking for one of their number who has been lost for forty-five years? Maybe kids don't have this fear the same way adults do, but man, I guarantee you that if you're over eighteen you're going to have nightmares about this book. The Doll family have been living in the same house since the late nineteenth century, and have seen generations of humans. While the dolls are alive, they must pretend they're not when humans are around, at the risk of going into doll state (where they really are lifeless dolls) for twenty-four hours. There is, legendarily, something called permanent doll state as well (but Annabelle, our main character, doubts it really exists). The biggest event of their existences had been the disappearing of Aunt Sarah back in the fifties, but Aunt Sally was a restless soul, always sneaking out of the dollhouse to go study spiders. Sally's husband, Uncle Doll, wasn't thrilled with it, but like the rest of the Doll family, he was too scared of discovery (and permanent doll state) to do anything about it. That's also why no one else has left the house without being carried by one of the humans since Aunt Sarah went missing. Things start getting shaken up when Annabelle discovers Aunt Sarah's journal. Reading it makes her own sense of restlessness rear its ugly head. Then the Funcrafts, a new doll family, move in next door. They have a daughter, Tiffany, just about Annabelle's age, and the two of them get restless together. They decide to go find Aunt Sarah, much to the consternation of the Dolls, and most of the book details their adventures while doing so (as well as some amusing confrontations with the family cat). I had no idea, until looking up a few things just now, that this is actually the first book in a series. A whole series of books about dolls that get up and move around when humans aren't looking. Let that sink into your head for a while. I appreciate what Martin is trying to do here, and the book has all the hallmarks of Martin's writing, both good (excellent characterization) and bad (stock after-school-special plots), but I just can't get past the moving-doll thing. They kill you in your sleep, you know. *** | ||
 | The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time | |
| "The game's not the thing, for once." | 2009-09-01 |
| Michael Craig, The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time (Warner, 2005)
The interesting thing about The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King is that the actual poker game detailed, which went on and off over a period of years, is the least interesting thing about the book. It was limit hold'em, which is much more a game of playing your cards than is no-limit, and lends itself to far less variance. (While the dollar amounts thrown in the book may make that seem like a laughable statement, when it comes right down to it, a unit is a unit. Whether your big blinds are twenty cents or two hundred thousand dollars, a unit is still a unit.) Limit hold'em is normally a game for grinders, those of us who don't mind putting in the time to make one big bet per hour at the table. (That said, the poker books are wrong about that in at least one case; the lower the limits at which you play, the more big blinds you can make per hour, as long as your game is rock-solid. I rarely leave a fifty-cent/one-dollar game before doubling my buy-in, as long as I'm having a winning session. It rarely takes me more than an hour.)Andy Beal was not that guy, not by a longshot, and yet his chosen game was heads-up limit hold'em. Yes, he evened the odds a bit against the world's top hold'em players with his relentlessly aggressive play, but when all was said and done, aggression in a limit game is much less useful than aggression in a no-limit game, especially when each player has $5 million on the table. You push all-in with a stack like that in a cash game and very few players will call you with less than kings. In limit, all you can do is raise another big blind. Still, as I said, the game is far less interesting than the players, and in recognizing that fact, Michael Craig did himself, and those of us who like to read about poker, a great service. Andy Beal was (still is, probably) a banker with a taste for poker. He also had a taste for buying things no one else would buy just before they got really, really big, which made Andy Beal a very, very rich man. (Still does, probably.) When his business interests took him to Las Vegas, his taste for poker developed into something of an obsession, and having the game's best players at his beck and call prompted him to make a little side bet with himself: could he get good enough to play these folks at their own game? And how far would he have to raise the stakes before the pros were out of their comfort zone? By the time the game had concluded, most every major high-stakes player in Vegas, and a number from California, had gone up against Beal, including both Doyle and Todd Brunson, the late Chip Reese, Johnny Chan, Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest, Howard Lederer (the Professor of the title), John Hennigan, and a host of others you've heard of if you watch any televised poker whatsoever. Beal would do reasonably well, losing far less than anyone expected him to, then limp back to Texas, do some more research, play a lot more hands, and go back to Vegas armed even better than he was the time before. But, again, that's not what the book is about. It's about the backgrounds of the people who played in the game. It's about the economics of poker (taking shares, staking people, and all the stuff that no one ever talks about because, let's face it, that math you need for that ends up being more advanced than the math you use in calculating pot odds). It's about a rank amateur and his underdog dream. Good thing Andy Beal did not have an obsession with football. I'm sure the Denver Broncos, for example, would have wiped him out fast. But poker is a game where anyone with a good grasp of the rules, a decent amount of experience, and a dash or two of luck can sit down across a table from Barry Greenstein and end up with all his chips. It's not likely, but it can happen. That's a big part of what attracts us, the amateur contingent, to the game, and Michael Craig--being an amateur poker player himself--understands this and lets it shine through. To me, it's obvious that this is a book written by a poker player for other poker players. The fact that the public glommed onto it is icing on the cake. Fascinating, highly readable, and for a nonfiction book, incredibly well-paced. Even if you're not a fan of the sport, this one's worth a read. **** | ||
 | Meet Me in St. Louis | |
| "Every critic in the world seems to love this movie..." | 2009-08-28 |
| Meet Me in St. Louis (Vicente Minnelli, 1944)
I spent a good block of time in 2007 and 2008 compiling thousand-best lists found in books and on the Internet, either compilations (found in places like the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? website) or lists compiled by fans, critics, and the like, usually in book form (e.g. Jonathan Rosenbaum's thousand must-see films list, easily findable on the net, or the New York Times guide to the thousand best films, a book). I did a bunch of data mining with the compilation when I got done; ten lists gave me about thirty-eight hundred different movies, a great deal less than I expected. There's a lot of crossover. But that crossover is usually limited to two or three lists; when you start looking at films that appear on five or more lists, you get down to a very small selection of films. No single movie appears on all ten lists, which actually surprises me (for some reason, I had jotted down that there were two). Twenty-eight movies appear on nine of the ten lists; for trivia purposes, the odd man out in almost every case is the quirky, fun Halliwell list. But the twenty-eight in that nine-of-ten sublist are the cream of the crop. You've heard most of their names bandied about pretty much everywhere; The Maltese Falcon, Psycho, Last Tango in Paris, Rebel Without a Cause, that sort of thing. To my mind, there are only two outright surprises on the list (though I admit I paused for a moment at Hitchcock's Rebecca). One of them is Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. The other is Meet Me in St. Louis. One doesn't normally think of period musicals as being among the best films of all time, at least not those not written by Ridgers and Hammerstein. And yet there it is. It's currently ranked as the 220th greatest movie ever made at They Shoot Pictures (down from 201st this month; TSPDT is a dynamic list that compiles surveys from almost two thousand critics), and everyone from Halliwell to Rosenbaum, and almost everyone in between, considers it a must-see. Meet Me in St. Louis, set in the title city (mostly) during the winter before the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, is the story of a family: mom and dad, a son, four daughters, and a plucky housekeeper. Much of the picture centers on youngest daughter Tootie (adorable child star Margaret O'Brien, who's still going strong; as I write this, work is wrapping on her latest film, Frankenstein Rising), the real draw of the picture is Esther, the second-oldest daughter, played by Judy Garland. In any case, this is a character-driven picture for the most, part, so a plot synopsis is going to give much of the game away if I go anywhere substantive; it all starts off with Esther pining for the boy next door and oldest daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer) eagerly awaiting a call from New York City, during which she expects to be proposed to. Things all go haywire from there; misunderstandings, travails, and musical numbers abound as we head for the Christmas season. I remain unconvinced that anyone remembers the film for anything other than two things that are, at best, incidental to it; it is the film in which the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" made its debut (with somewhat different lyrics than we have today), and it's the film where Vicente Minnelli met his future wife, Judy Garland. When it comes right down to the film, it's really something of a plotless mess, though quite a gaudy and fine-looking one. Judy Garland could cover Tom Waits and make it sound torchy, so when you've got songs that were written to her strengths, they're pretty much guaranteed winners, and Margaret O'Brien shows why she was the main successor to Shirley Temple in the realm of ultra-cute perky kids. The movie is marred, however, by the incredible stupidity of a number of its characters, most of all Esther, who makes bad decision after bad decision in order to advance various plot points. It could be argued, of course, that this is a musical, and realism pretty much flies out the window when it comes to musicals. True, but that doesn't mean you can't have realistic characters making realistic choices when they're not breaking into spontaneous, highly-choreographed dance numbers. (Singin' in the Rain, anyone?) Dumb fun. I don't regret watching it, but it's not something I'll do again in the near future. ** ½ | ||
 | Route 666 | |
| "Beyond silly, but stupid fun." | 2009-08-28 |
| Route 666 (William Wesley, 2001)
Steven Williams is one of those actors who, in my opinion, always makes anything he's in just that much better. It must have been pretty tough to do with Route 666, which sports one of the downright silliest scripts to come down the pike in I don't know how long, but Cuban director Wesley (Scarecrows) obviously decided to try and save it by picking up the best cast he could for the small budget he must have had, and Williams shines here, as do a number of smaller players who are similarly fine. Too bad about everything else, though... Route 666 tells the tale of a bunch of Federal witness protection marshals, led by Secret Service agent Jack LaRoca (Lou Diamond Phillips), who hunt down a fugitive named Rabbit (Williams) and have to get him back to Los Angeles for a trial where he's agreed to testify against a mafia boss. They get lost on back roads, eventually ending up coming out on Route 66 where an old, condemned extension, Route 666, is supposed to go all the way to the California border. Despite rumors that the road is supposedly haunted by the ghosts of prisoners who died while working on the road, including LaRoca's father, LaRoca decides to take the road in order to save as much time as possible. The crew are pursued by both mafia hit men and a local corrupt sheriff and his deputies, but that's the least of their worries... A bad movie this is, truly, but it's saved from complete unwatchability by the performances of a number of the cast. Williams' rapidfire comic timing makes every scene he's in good, and Gary Farmer, in a small cameo, is as great as Gary Farmer is in everything. You should throw believability out the door once they get on the road (disappointing, as the first part of the movie showed real promise as an action thriller), but it's got enough going for it to make it worth watching once. You'll never want to do it again, but once. ** | ||
 | As I Lay Dying (Vintage International) | |
| "Dialect-heavy, but otherwise vintage Faulkner." | 2009-08-28 |
| William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (Vintage, 1930)
In the world of the classic American novel, and especially when you apply that term to the twentieth century, nobody did it better than William Faulkner. (I can hear the Hemingway fans getting their pitchforks and torches ready as I speak.) Faulkner's failing, if he had one, was that his novels were inconsistent; for every Absalom, Absalom! There's a Wild Palms, for every The Reivers a Mosquito. (Congratulations if you're one of the three or four people reading this who's even even heard of the two more obscure Faulkner novels mentioned.) Not to say The Wild Palms and Mosquito aren't good, of course, but they're not immortal. Some Faulkner novels have never gone out of print. As I Lay Dying, a staple on the reading lists of twentieth-century American lit classes across the country, is one of them. The story concerns a dirt-poor family in Faulkner's alternate-version Mississippi (I don't think they're actually from Yoknapatawpha County; it's mentioned at one point that Anse has to travel quite a ways to negotiate with the Snopes clan) whose grande dame, Addie Bundren, has recently died. Her husband Anse made a promise to her early in their marriage that he would bury her with her family in Jefferson, forty miles away from the family homestead. And thus it is that upon her death, Anse and the children--Cash, Jewel, Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman--find themselves facing hell and high water, literally, in an attempt to get Addie, stashed safely away in Cash's handmade coffin, to Jefferson for burial. Needless to say, they haven't done anything to embalm her, so as time goes on, not only are they poverty-stricken hicks trying to negotiate with more cosmopolitan townfolk, but they pick up a certain smell... While it's sometimes hard to think of great literature as comedy, I have always chosen to take As I Lay Dying as exactly that, however black the comedy may be, and however serious the themes Faulkner was working with. As usual, he tackled some doozies here (though to go into detail on some of them would be going way into spoiler territory). I'm sure I don't need to say that the writing here is top-notch (though Faulkner's dialect and creative spelling do get on my nerves once too often for comfort here), and I'm sure I don't need to go into long discussions of the various themes and how Faulkner approaches them; half the copies of this book you'll find will have extensive prefaces or afterwords by far more qualified people than I talking about such things. I do want to point out something I've never seen, though--there's been a lot of discussion about Vardaman, especially how old he actually is, and it seems to me that everyone's missing the most obvious answer. I thought Vardaman was in some way mentally challenged, which would pull all the contradictory aspects of the story very neatly into place (including the incredible unreliability of his narration in spots). This is in no way an uplifting book; don't give it a go when you're depressed. But it is grimly amusing, very much so in places, and like most Faulkner, it's well worth your time. If you somehow managed to get through your entire school career without ever reading Faulkner (didn't everyone have to read "A Rose for Emily"? I think it's in every short fiction anthology ever, right after "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"), pick this up. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. **** | ||
 | Torso | |
| "Run-of-the-mill giallo." | 2009-08-28 |
| Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973)
Pretty standard z-grade giallo in that it completely abandons any pretension at coherence and sits around coming up with inventive ways to kill people. Of course, there are directors who do this sort of thing wonderfully, but I'm still not convinced that Sergio Martino is one of them. In this case, it seems that a crazed killer is targeting art students at a prestigious Italian university. One student's father counsels her to get out of town and head for his country villa (conveniently located in the middle of nowhere) and take as many friends with her as she wants to. Setting up, of course, the classic, and somewhat boring, secluded-house-stalked-by-killer scenario. That said, while the ending is predictable (by Roger Ebert's rule of thumb in bad slasher films that the guy you least expect is inevitably the killer), Martino does take a few liberties with the time-tested formula, and so this isn't quite as bad a film as it could have been (and as many now-forgotten giallos are), but it's still trite and full of cliché. You can do a lot better. ** | ||
 | Dark Star | |
| "The brilliant little movie that started two very big careers." | 2009-08-28 |
| Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
By the time I first saw Dark Star, a decade after its release, I was already a firm John Carpenter fan. And, not surprisingly, I loved it. Years passed, and I wondered if my love for it had more to do with John Carpenter than the movie itself, so I went back and watched it again recently. No, it wasn't nostalgia or a blind adherence to John Carpenter (which I, like most folks, lost right after They Live, his last great film), it's just that Dark Star is a wonderful film that, like many great things, manages to both parodize and celebrate at the same time. The story concerns a bunch of guys in a spaceship far, far away from Earth. Their mission seems to be to go around blowing up unstable planets, for which they have a large supply of semi-intelligent bombs. They've been wandering the universe for twenty years with everything going along about as usual. But, of course, once the cameras start rolling, everything goes belly-up. The ship's mascot goes crazy, the wiring starts breaking down, mental instabilities in a few crewmembers come to a head. It's all played for laughs, and Carpenter turned the film's shoestring budget into a strength rather than a weakness by finding the most improbable things he could and utilizing them (the mascot, for example, is a spray-painted beach ball with attached claws). Needless to say, any seventies deep-space epic was bound to be compared to 2001, and Carpenter subverted the paradigm by making this, however loosely, a parody of that movie; in this case, rather than the intelligent machine deciding its human handlers were useless, the machine's intelligence comes mostly from programming, and it's up to the crew to bring it, as it were, to a HAL level of intellect. (The shortcomings of this approach should be obvious. They are also quite funny.) Not an easy thing to do when your crew are dysfunctional lunatics. The thing is, it all fails so miserably that in many ways it works. Whether Carpenter and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon (who also acts in the film) are diverting your attention cleverly from plot holes or whether the movie is smacking you in the face with them, they don't seem to matter a great deal here; it's a movie that was obviously made for the sake of making others laugh, and it succeeds. While not nearly on the par of Carpenter's greatest films, it is nevertheless an inspiring film for aspiring filmmakers wondering what they can do with no budget but a great deal of inspiration (and Dark Star should be a thousand times more inspiring than most indie genre flicks that have been released since), and an amusing one for the rest of us. Very well worth your time. **** | ||
 | Cerulean Sins | |
| "Series is struggling here, IMO..." | 2009-08-28 |
| Laurell K. Hamilton, Cerulean Sins (Berkley, 2003)
Wait, what? We're ten books into this series and Hamilton stops with the bar-name theme in her book titles? Yes, it's true, for the first time, she's named her book after something other than a bar, perhaps because the only one that features in the book is Circus of the Damned (which was, of course, already used). It could also be because, while she does get back into Anita's actual day job in this one (which begins with an appointment for a raising, and then a different actual raising), this is an even more soap-opera entry in the series than was Narcissus in Chains. Anita is still working, of course, and as I mentioned the book starts out with her having an appointment with an unsavory character (she thinks he may be a hitman) who wants to raise one of his ancestors to get some information about the family line. She then immediately heads out for another raising, to determine whether the deceased committed suicide for an insurance company. All of this is a mask, however, because it doesn't really get brought up again until the final few chapters. The bulk of the book concerns Musette's visit from France (and from Belle Morte); while it was set up in the previous book, Musette has broken with convention and arrived in town three months early. What's a girl and her vampire pals to do with someone who's obviously trying to unsettle them? I can only say pretty much what I said about the previous book in the series; it's still Laurell K. Hamilton, decently enough written to keep you turning the pages and, since you're already invested in the characters by this point, that should be enough to get you to read it. But for those who are interested more in the mystery angle of the series rather than the romance angle, this one will likely be a disappointment. And one other thing; why is it that detractors of the direction the series went during this period call it softcore? I've read less explicit porn. *** | ||
 | M. Hulot's Holiday - Criterion Collection | |
| "Couldn't get into it as much as I thought I should have." | 2009-08-28 |
| M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
Do I need to offer a plot summary here? For the two or three of you who may have never heard of M. Hulot, all I should have to say is this: he was the inspiration for the modern character Mr. Bean. You should now have a basic outline of M. Hulot's Holiday, the film in which director Jacques Tati introduced his much-beloved, long-running character to movie fans. The travails Tati ran into making the film are legendary, and I wonder off and on how much of that plays into so many critics calling it one of the thousand, and even the hundred, best movies ever made. I have to say, I don't buy it's just for the movie alone, which is nothing more than a series of sight gags strung together in what is less a plot than it is a slice-of-life kind of movie. And given the enduring popularity of the Three Stooges and other such things, I can see where that sort of thing would still be popular enough that the Brits could re-tool Hulot and come up with Bean. In the end, however, I would have been so much happier with it had it had more holding the sight gags together. It's the same way I felt about A Day at the Races, and to much the same end. *** | ||
 | Dark Star | |
| "The brilliant little movie that started two very big careers." | 2009-08-28 |
| Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
By the time I first saw Dark Star, a decade after its release, I was already a firm John Carpenter fan. And, not surprisingly, I loved it. Years passed, and I wondered if my love for it had more to do with John Carpenter than the movie itself, so I went back and watched it again recently. No, it wasn't nostalgia or a blind adherence to John Carpenter (which I, like most folks, lost right after They Live, his last great film), it's just that Dark Star is a wonderful film that, like many great things, manages to both parodize and celebrate at the same time. The story concerns a bunch of guys in a spaceship far, far away from Earth. Their mission seems to be to go around blowing up unstable planets, for which they have a large supply of semi-intelligent bombs. They've been wandering the universe for twenty years with everything going along about as usual. But, of course, once the cameras start rolling, everything goes belly-up. The ship's mascot goes crazy, the wiring starts breaking down, mental instabilities in a few crewmembers come to a head. It's all played for laughs, and Carpenter turned the film's shoestring budget into a strength rather than a weakness by finding the most improbable things he could and utilizing them (the mascot, for example, is a spray-painted beach ball with attached claws). Needless to say, any seventies deep-space epic was bound to be compared to 2001, and Carpenter subverted the paradigm by making this, however loosely, a parody of that movie; in this case, rather than the intelligent machine deciding its human handlers were useless, the machine's intelligence comes mostly from programming, and it's up to the crew to bring it, as it were, to a HAL level of intellect. (The shortcomings of this approach should be obvious. They are also quite funny.) Not an easy thing to do when your crew are dysfunctional lunatics. The thing is, it all fails so miserably that in many ways it works. Whether Carpenter and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon (who also acts in the film) are diverting your attention cleverly from plot holes or whether the movie is smacking you in the face with them, they don't seem to matter a great deal here; it's a movie that was obviously made for the sake of making others laugh, and it succeeds. While not nearly on the par of Carpenter's greatest films, it is nevertheless an inspiring film for aspiring filmmakers wondering what they can do with no budget but a great deal of inspiration (and Dark Star should be a thousand times more inspiring than most indie genre flicks that have been released since), and an amusing one for the rest of us. Very well worth your time. **** | ||
 | Cerulean Sins (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter (Paperback)) | |
| "Series is struggling here, IMO..." | 2009-08-28 |
| Laurell K. Hamilton, Cerulean Sins (Berkley, 2003)
Wait, what? We're ten books into this series and Hamilton stops with the bar-name theme in her book titles? Yes, it's true, for the first time, she's named her book after something other than a bar, perhaps because the only one that features in the book is Circus of the Damned (which was, of course, already used). It could also be because, while she does get back into Anita's actual day job in this one (which begins with an appointment for a raising, and then a different actual raising), this is an even more soap-opera entry in the series than was Narcissus in Chains. Anita is still working, of course, and as I mentioned the book starts out with her having an appointment with an unsavory character (she thinks he may be a hitman) who wants to raise one of his ancestors to get some information about the family line. She then immediately heads out for another raising, to determine whether the deceased committed suicide for an insurance company. All of this is a mask, however, because it doesn't really get brought up again until the final few chapters. The bulk of the book concerns Musette's visit from France (and from Belle Morte); while it was set up in the previous book, Musette has broken with convention and arrived in town three months early. What's a girl and her vampire pals to do with someone who's obviously trying to unsettle them? I can only say pretty much what I said about the previous book in the series; it's still Laurell K. Hamilton, decently enough written to keep you turning the pages and, since you're already invested in the characters by this point, that should be enough to get you to read it. But for those who are interested more in the mystery angle of the series rather than the romance angle, this one will likely be a disappointment. And one other thing; why is it that detractors of the direction the series went during this period call it softcore? I've read less explicit porn. *** | ||
 | The Fan | |
| "Unintentionally hilarious." | 2009-08-28 |
| The Fan (Edward Bianchi, 1981)
Over the last decade, Edward Bianchi has become one of television's go-to directors, helming episodes of such award-winning shows as Damages, Deadwood, and The Wire, among many others. You'd never have known it after his first film, The Fan, which received such a beating from the press, and bombed badly enough upon release, that he came close to never working in Hollywood again. (Before getting his start in TV directing in 1998, Bianchi directed only one more feature film, ten years after this. It, too, bombed.) But for some reason, while I never got to see it in its theatrical release, The Fan has been swimming around in the back of my head, reminding me now and then that it was something I really wanted to see when it came out. It finally surfaced in my head at the same time it popped up on cable, so I decided to give it a go. I have seen top-notch casts in bottom-notch movies before, so it wasn't a complete surprise, but it seemed as if so much more could have been done with this that I couldn't help but be disappointed. Plot: Lauren Bacall plays Sally Ross, an aging stage and screen star. Michael Biehn, in an early role, is Douglas Breen, her number one fan. He also happens to be a razor-wielding psycho. When Ross' secretary, Belle (Maureen Stapleton), cuts him off after his letters get more erratic, he decides to get her out of the way so the two of them can be together. And boy, what happens when he finds out she's got a new love interest... It occurred to me at one point while I was mulling this over that someone, while putting this together, must have intended it as a parody. There's no other reason I can imagine for some of the crazy casting choices that were made (not to mention the incredible musical-within-the-movie, which is jaw-droppingly sleazy; this only two years after All That Jazz wrote the textbook on musicals-in-movies). If it was in any way meant seriously, then the project has to be looked at as an abject, unintentionally hilarious failure; it's the seventies equivalent (Hollywood trying to do giallo) of recent Asian horror film remakes, and with much the same results. If you look at it as some sort of off-the-wall parody, however, a movie that should have been marketed as a black comedy, then a lot of the silliness can be explained away, and this becomes a much more enjoyable experience. That said, since there was not a single clue anywhere that the connections here actually meant for the movie to suck, I'm forced to go with the "serious" interpretation, and rate it accordingly. It's great for a few laughs, though. * ½ | ||
 | Mute Witness | |
| "Trying to post this one again..." | 2009-08-28 |
| Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1994)
Interesting little mystery/thriller from Waller (An American Werewolf in Paris), who in his second film crafted something that, while it's faded into obscurity (and wasn't all that well-known even when released) in the fifteen years since it came out, is still a worthwhile thrill ride that you should rediscover, if you like this type of thing. Mute Witness is the story of Billy Hughes (Russian actress Maria Zudina of Under Northern Lights), a mute makeup artist who communicates with her film crew through her sister Karen (TV actress Fay Ripley, last on the big screen in 2000's The Announcement). The two of them are working on a slasher film being made in Moscow. After a long day of filming, Billy has forgotten something on location. When she goes back to get it, she stumbles upon what looks like a snuff film being made by some of the nastier elements of the crew. They discover her spying and pursue her, but she gets away and comes back with the cops. The crew dismiss it as a good piece of special effects, and it seems everyone's willing to let the matter rest, but Billy suspects her life may be in danger. How to convince both the American portion of the crew and the police that there's a real problem here? Tense, well-done, and expertly shot, Mute Witness is a perfect film for when you're looking for a good thriller, and one you probably haven't seen before. It's also worth noting that this is the final feature in which Sir Alec Guinness appeared, though Waller shot the footage back in 1985 (for an earlier draft of the movie that was never completed). As with most mysteries of this stripe, there are a few places where it really stretches credibility, and some character decisions that can generously be described as idiotic, but by now we've come to expect that, and you can't count it too much against this. Worth seeking out. *** ½ | ||
 | Hard Rock Zombies | |
| "MOLTE ASCENDERE AMEN!" | 2009-08-28 |
| Hard Rock Zombies (Krishna Shah, 1985)
When I was but a wee media critic, there were three films, more than any others, that cemented my love of awful, awful movies. First, there was 1972's Beware! The Blob, directed by Larry Hagman (the recent DVD reissue trumpets it as "the film J.R. shot!"), one of the few movies I've seen over fifty times in my life. So many bad special effects all piled into one place, with so many quality seventies actors hamming it up. How can you not love it? Then came 1977's Shriek of the Mutilated, which I was lucky enough to catch on late-night TV one night when I was in seventh grade (1981? 82? don't know). I say "lucky" because it seems from the DVD that the master print of the film has become horribly degraded, so at least I had a chance to see it in all its original... okay, "splendor" is not the right word. It's an awful movie in every sense of the word, but for a movie I didn't see for over twenty years, between that one TV viewing and the release of the DVD, to have left that many indelible images on my mind, there had to have been something transcendent about it. And then there was Hard Rock Zombies, one of the mainstays of my high school years. I have no idea how many times I rented this from my local video store. All of my friends and I could quote from it at length. It's the kind of bad movie that you know is bad, but you just can't stop watching. I hadn't seen it since those days, but here's another case where a recent DVD release has reaffirmed my love for the awful. In fact, it's even better, in a horrible way, than I remembered it being from back in the day. The story concerns a band, led by charismatic (and insufferably-coifed) lead singer Jessie (Silent Rage frontman and Chippendales model E. J. Curcio, known these days as E. J. Curse), who are headed for the small town of Grand Guignol for a show. Grand Guignol is not your normal town, however. Serial killers, religious fanatics, evil dwarves, corrupt lawmen, and all other manner of weirdness live there. Aligned against them is one young girl, Cassie (Jennifer Coe, in her only feature film appearance), who finds the band the night before and warns them not to go to the town. Jessie runs into her again once the band gets to town, and the two of them fall in love. When the town turns against the band and murders them, is the power of love enough to bring them back from beyond the grave? Well, okay, no, but a song Jessie wrote from lyrics he found in an ancient book of the dead sure does. The band can get revenge from beyond the grave and still play the concert for the record promoter who's going to be in town! This movie is full of clichés, "hard rock" in the vein of John Waite, stupid plot branches that seem like they were last-minute additions (entirely possible; IMDB notes this was originally meant as a twenty-minute short), and really, really awful hair. It's the kind of movie that's so entirely bad that once you've started watching it, you simply can't look away, because you can't bear to not know how much worse this thing's going to get. And it seems to be the difference between your run-of-the-mill awful film and something like Hard Rock Zombies is that this movie never stops getting worse. When the big plot surprise happens about halfway through the movie, you have to wonder how they're going to get even stupider. But oh, my. Trust me on this. There is a brand of stupidity that is capable of marketing itself as genius. Or there is a brand of genius that expresses itself in ways that are, shall we say, differently abled. One way or the other, though, Hard Rock Zombies is a classic example of the genre. It's funny, it's awful, it's stupid, and it's absolutely must-see. **** ½ | ||
 | City of the Dead (Resident Evil #3) | |
| "Not bad." | 2009-08-28 |
| S. D. Perry, Resident Evil: City of the Dead (Pocket, 1999)
After a quick diversion into an original novel (Caliban Cove), Perry gets back to the actual game sequence with City of the Dead, a novelization of the game Resident Evil 2, which has always been my favorite of the series. We get a quick intro about the remaining S.T.A.R.S., including Jill Valentine (back from her adventures at Caliban Cove) and Chris Redfield, getting out of town while being hunted by the Umbrella Corporation, and then it's right into the game. Chris Redfield's sister, university student Claire Redfield, has come to Raccoon city looking for her missing brother, while Leon Kennedy, just hired by the Raccoon City Police Department, drives into town for his first day on the job. Both of them, when they get to town, find it oddly deserted. Until, that is, they run into the living dead. After running into one another, Leon tells Claire to meet him at the police station, most likely the safest place in town. "Safe", however, is a relative term, as the station is not only crawling with zombies (and other, nastier beasts), but inhabited by survivors who may be interested in things other than survival... What really interests me about this series, which is obviously intended for the YA audience, is that Perry is not at all afraid to tackle themes that might give adult novelists pause. (Telling you what they are would definitely be getting into spoiler territory, so I'll let you find out for yourself; let's just say that Alice Cooper would not feel out of place in Raccoon City, as envisioned by Stephani Perry.) I say "interests" rather than "impresses" because it feels a little unsettling, at least from the perspective of a forty-year-old reading these (I'm sure, had these been available when I was fifteen, I would have found them awesome. And not just because of the zombies). As well, Perry, prolific novelist that she is, is far more interested in telling a story than she is in working language, and so as far as the writing goes, what you have here is a pretty standard survival-horror novel, without a great deal to distinguish it from, say, Dan Brown with zombies. Before you say "well, that's normal", I'd like to point out that there have been literary zombie novels (or, at least, more literary than the rest of the canon); after all, a love of language can come through no matter what your genre. Heck, there's literary porn. Literary zombies should be a breeze. (If you don't believe me, check out the film Pontypool, which is that conceit taken to its most absurd, and wonderful, conclusion.) Still, if you're a fan of the game series, you're going to like the novelizations. *** | ||
 | Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plant and Feasibility Study | |
| "Solid, but introductory." | 2009-08-28 |
| Sharon Fullen, Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan and Feasibility Study (Atlantic, 2005)
I took much of the summer off from reading new books, instead concentrating on stuff that's been languishing on my backlist, books I started back in the mists of time, had to return to the library, and that subsequently got lost in the book-journal shuffle (or that I have to get through interlibrary loan now, as I switched library systems a couple of years back). Opening a Restaurant... is one of those; I started it way back in August of 2007, had to return it because someone else had a hold on it, and forgot to take it out again until last week. While the dream of actually opening a restaurant has fallen by the wayside (or at least been put on a very very backburner), I figured I'd finish the book anyway and report back. It's the curse of the obsessive reviewer. One of the great things about nonfiction is that in many cases you don't have to provide a summary; one look at the combined title and subtitle should tell you all you need to know. That's the case here, and Fullen does it short, sweet, and to the point, taking you step by step through the writing of a business plan and feasibility study, with little of the rah-rah-rah confidence-building stuff you find in so many more tiring books like this. The downside to that is that the book stays well within the norms, not mentioning any alternate suggestions for style or the like. That said, if you're looking to write a classic business plan to drum up money to open a restaurant, you'll want to read this unless you already know what you're doing. *** | ||
 | Mute Witness | |
| "Trying to post this one again..." | 2009-08-28 |
| Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1994)
Interesting little mystery/thriller from Waller (An American Werewolf in Paris), who in his second film crafted something that, while it's faded into obscurity (and wasn't all that well-known even when released) in the fifteen years since it came out, is still a worthwhile thrill ride that you should rediscover, if you like this type of thing. Mute Witness is the story of Billy Hughes (Russian actress Maria Zudina of Under Northern Lights), a mute makeup artist who communicates with her film crew through her sister Karen (TV actress Fay Ripley, last on the big screen in 2000's The Announcement). The two of them are working on a slasher film being made in Moscow. After a long day of filming, Billy has forgotten something on location. When she goes back to get it, she stumbles upon what looks like a snuff film being made by some of the nastier elements of the crew. They discover her spying and pursue her, but she gets away and comes back with the cops. The crew dismiss it as a good piece of special effects, and it seems everyone's willing to let the matter rest, but Billy suspects her life may be in danger. How to convince both the American portion of the crew and the police that there's a real problem here? Tense, well-done, and expertly shot, Mute Witness is a perfect film for when you're looking for a good thriller, and one you probably haven't seen before. It's also worth noting that this is the final feature in which Sir Alec Guinness appeared, though Waller shot the footage back in 1985 (for an earlier draft of the movie that was never completed). As with most mysteries of this stripe, there are a few places where it really stretches credibility, and some character decisions that can generously be described as idiotic, but by now we've come to expect that, and you can't count it too much against this. Worth seeking out. *** ½ | ||
 | Drawing Blood | |
| "Very pleasant surprise." | 2009-08-28 |
| Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood (Dell, 1993)
I've been a fan of Poppy Brite's novels ever since I read Exquisite Corpse back in 1997, but (and here I lose most of my cred with my goth friends), I've never been a fan of Steve and Ghost. It's a testament to Brite's characterization ability that my problem with them is a simple personality clash; they just never clicked with me. Because of it, however, I never did read Drawing Blood, a Missing Mile novel that, as it turns out, contains Steve and Ghost only by reference; this one sucked me in from the beginning. The book opens with underground comics artist Robert McGee and his family having their car break down in Missing Mile, North Carolina. McGee has found himself unable to draw, and it's making him edgy. So much so, in fact, that he kills his wife and one of his sons before committing suicide, leaving only his five-year-old son Trevor alive. Fast-forward to twenty years later, and Trevor, rootless, finally returns to Missing Mile to confront the demons of his past and to try and figure out why his father left him alive. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, computer hacker Zachary Bosch finds out some very nasty people have discovered his activities and are after him. He flees the city, ending up in (surprise!) Missing Mile. The two become fast friends, and then something more, but will Zach's influence help Trevor with combing to terms with the house, or the opposite? This is an early novel from Brite, and it does show in a few places; there are pieces here that seem disconnected from anything, character quirks that exist just for the sake of being character quirks (Zachary's penchant for eating hot peppers, for example) rather than being truly integrated into the characters. It's not a big thing, but it does jar now and again. As well, the subtlety that makes the Rickey and G-man novels so wonderful wasn't fully developed here. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it could be argued that horror novels are not subtle creatures by their very nature, but it felt a little rough around the edges to me. Still, I don't want to give the impression this is a bad book by any means; I burned through it in a couple of days, because it grabbed my attention and didn't let go. Worth your time. *** | ||
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