If there's a particular subject of interest, click one of the tags below and you'll get a list of relevant, irrelevant, and sometimes irreverent postings.

Simon Pegg Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson), and Edgar Wright are touring New York, Los Angeles, Comic-Con International in San Diego and Austin, Texas to promote the American release of Spaced on DVD.

Starts in NY on July 21.

Don't worry, I am going to finish up the Q&A for Reader Appreciation Week tomorrow. I just got hit with a bunch of stuff today.



To wit:

• The CE manuscript for DRAGON STRIKE landed on the condo doorstep with a thud. I'll be quiet for a few days while I'm working on that.


• I saw FALL WITH HONOR on shelf at my local Borders. They're about 11 days early, but what the heck. At least I'm in the "New Fiction" section, face-out. I bought a copy, as I always do the first place I see one of my titles. It's now a hoary old tradition with me. By the way, the cover art really pops. The colors come through much more vividly than with RESOLVE or EXILE, which had sort of a wash over them.


• Our local independent bookstore in Oak Park, "The Book Table" appears to be thriving. They've just doubled their space, increased their rare and first edition books section, and added all kinds of shelving and tables and whatnot. And all they sell is books. There's not a cafe, no DVD section -- I mean, I don't think those are bad things, it's just nice to see someone selling nuttin' but books not just getting by but expanding. They mostly sell discount and remainders, but I believe that's how Barnes & Noble got its start.


• I heard from an exec at Audible today. Apparently the thing with audiobooks now is to have a little 2-3 minute author intro. So I guess I'll be logging studio time, driving some sound engineer nuts with my wheedling, nasal voice.


• I've been into O. Henry lately. Ever read The Ransom of Red Chief? It was the basis for the DeVito/Midler/Rheinhold 80s classic Ruthless People.


• Chats returns home tomorrow. Yippee!

I've recently watched the Rifftrax for Alien (Kevin and Bill w/o Mike) and X Files: Fight the Future with Bill and Mary Jo Pehl. Well, technically they're "Rifftrax Presents" because there's no Mike Nelson, but honestly these are perfectly fine riffs even without him.

I was most worried about Alien, because it is a very good movie. Kevin and Bill still found plenty to say, and it was amusing. I'm sure I'll be able to watch it again without the riffing playing in my head.

The X-Files riff was just wonderful. I really wish they'd bring Mary Jo on more, especially for fem-centric movies. She does her own brand of "evil snark with a smile" that's hard to describe but drier and decidedly different from the guys, who tend (like me) to go for the crude and raucous -- though she did pretty well with the alley peeing. And she worked in some good celeb snark. She really lives up to the Alice Roosevelt Longworth ethic of "If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."

Well done, "Rifftrax Presents." More Mary Jo!

Printers row panel went well. We only had about ten people in the audience, but I'm very grateful to those of you who did show.

I finally got around to seeing Diary of the Dead last night.

( Cut for very spoilery stuff. I'm just assuming that most Romero fans have seen it by now and I'm bringing up the rear. )

If you'll indulge me in a little hometown cultural cheerleading, I want to recommend the Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago album put out by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's label.

It's an album with a pretty potent combination: the CSO combined with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble.

Yo-Yo fans will enjoy the lead-off on the album, Bloch's Schelomo, Hebraic Rhapsody for Solo Cello and Large Orchestra.

That's followed by Sharav's Legend of Herlen which features some music from Mongolia, including leather-lunged Khongorzul Ganbaatar (how's that for a name?) doing some "long singing." Interesting, but not my favorite part of the album. I kept being reminded of Patton Oswalt's bit on bad NPR music and "scream singing" (it starts at about 6:45 here, very funny) though obviously she's more melodious than Patton.

Next is the money shot of the album and the whole reason you should buy it if this sort of thing's your bag, baby. Harrison's Pipa Concerto featuring Chinese prodigy Wu Man. Harrison (a composer who specialized in fusions of Western and Eastern instruments) wrote this, his last big work, for Wu Man in 1997. She can make the pipa, an ancient Chinese lute, sound like a balalaika or a Japanese o-koto (one of those floor-standing harps) depending on what the piece requires. Awesome. It's amazing how natural the pipa sounds backed up by a full symphony, the CSO complements Man perfectly.

Oh, and in the liner notes, the picture of Wu Man is just her with the pipa. She's not in fuck-me pumps and clubwear, riding it like a sex toy. Thank you, CSO. Bond, please take note.

The album finishes up with Prokofiev's Scythian Suite, one of his (justifiably, IMO) lesser-known pieces. Though if you listen closely to "The Enemy God and the Dance of the Black Spirits" you'll hear something that sounds an awful lot like the theme to Jaws acting as a base rhythm. Naughty naughty, Mr. Williams.

Pulp and Paperback con also has a DVD dealer who always has an interesting assortment, and I finally got my hands on the German WW2 propaganda film Titanic. It was rife with historical inaccuracies (I'm a 2nd rate Titanic buff) but it didn't stop it from being a gripping and well-done film.

( Cut for my commentary plus some screen caps of the Teutonic tit parade )

You know, an interesting question came up at the Oddcon Midnight Horror panel (I believe from rarelylynne). She basically said that she liked horror, but didn't like blood and violence and torture and all that -- I think that was the gist of it. She called it "horror for chickenshits" and wanted suggestions and she never got her answer.

It's kind of stuck with me ever since, though, because you certainly don't need blood to have effective horror. And no, I'm not being hypocritical just because I like giallo. Some of my favorite horror movies don't have gore in them, like:

The Wicker Man (if you're confused about which version I'm referring to -- hang your head in shame)
Rosemary's Baby - Roman Polanski's best movie, IMO. Though I also love The Ninth Gate, another "almost" bloodless horror movie, though there's a smattering of violence.
Cat People (Val Lewton version) -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this movie featured the first ever "jump" scene, where a sudden mix of sound and action startles the audience.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (hard to find but worth the search)
Last Man On Earth (I hated this as a teen, expecting more Omega Man type action, but it's really grown on me over the years)
The Shining (Kubrick) -- okay, some blood at the end. And an elevator full of it, now that I think about it. But it's mostly bloodless. Mostly.

The Stepford Wives is bloodless as well, but it's more horror-comedy along the lines of Shaun of the Dead.

Horror's a funny thing. It's like porn, you can spend thousands of words arguing the definition or watch for two minutes and tell. It's much more a feeling than a specific effect like a knife plunging into someone -- reading or watching in dread fascination, wishing you could get away but unable to because you're too involved in the fate of the characters. Just where suspense ends and horror begins makes for a fine argument, but I'd say with suspense the emphasis is more on the build-up (think Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train with Robert Walker stalking Farley Granger's ex at the amusement park) and with horror it's more about the moment of horrifying revelation and the catharsis you get from that.

I wish I was better at it.

Like anything else, quality horror is pretty tough to find. Any other "bloodless horror" favorites out there for Lynne?

I picked up another good "writing movie" at Borders yesterday, the old George Pal The Time Machine. George Pal made some fine SF in his day.

Sure, it's one of those movies that's a lot better when you're twelve. It's easy to make fun of the "well, I'm sure relieved the blond white people won" ending (novel? What novel?), but I think it has its moments. Taylor's rant while the Eloi were eating kind of reminded me of Dr. Gull's cursing the English office workers in Moore's From Hell (I think he calls them cockatoos or something, anyway, it's a pretty amazing sequence) when he spiritually went a hundred years in the future. And as for all the Troy Donahue blond hair and tan skin, well, The Time Machine was made in an age of Gidget and Where the Boys Are, after all, as the first TV generation grew up. One generation of filmakers regretting another more vacuous one?

And if the scene where the one Eloi dude learns to fight back against the Morlocks wasn't aped when George McFly hit Biff in Back To The Future, I don't know a homage when I see it. Good God, The Time Machine was like 25 years old when they made Back To The Future, and now that movie's passing the quarter century mark soon. I'm old.

Hard to believe Yvette Mimieux was never on Star Trek. She seems just the type of "innocent alien civilization girl" to be dressed up in a revealing minismock and lose her virginity to Kirk. There's a great score with more than a hint of sadness. And you're bound to walk out of it talking about which three books you would take to rebuild civilization. There are worse ways to end a movie. Nowadays you'd be lucky to get Keanu and Owen arguing over which three mp3s they'd need to party to.

Some cool supplements on the DVD with a mini-doco featuring and aged Rod Taylor, if you're that geeky. The even do a sort of epilogue with the Time Traveler and Filby (Alan "Wilbur!" Young).

Toshiba called it quits in the hi-def format war this week. Blu-ray wins.

The technologically superior format won for once. Color me shocked.

So now I've been through three major home-entertainment format wars. VHS vs. Beta (yes, I'm that old), Laserdisc vs. VHS (which was really more of a long-running skirmish) and now Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. DVD vs. VHS was never really a format war, since the technology was so manifestly better, plus it was a lot cheaper for manufacturers to produce DVDs. I'm not sure DVD vs DIVX was much of a battle either, though I recall reading the arguments in my early internet days. Some may remember it as being more of a thang than I.

Does this mean you should run right out and get a Blu-ray player?

Nah. There are probably a few hiccups to work out in the technology (every Blu-ray title I've bought comes with an "update your firmware!" warning). The title selection isn't really there yet and they're still a little expensive, to my mind. Yes, I bought one, but I've always been an early adopter. I own only a dozen Blu-rays. They don't have enough backlist titles that really demand hi-def for me to buy many. When stuff like LOTR, Star Wars, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Gone With The Wind and Ben Hur hit Blu-ray, my collection will increase.

Besides, we're approaching (if we're not there already) the point where you'll want to just rent the movie to a drive. I've watched HD movies through my XBOX. The studios want it that way anyway, since it makes them nuts that when you buy a movie you pay the same price whether you watch it once or fifty times. They want you paying for each and every view. Which might be to your advantage anyway. I own lots of DVDs I've only watched once.

You might want to consider, if you have a substantial DVD collection and a hi-def monitor, getting an upconverting player (yes, HD TVs have upscaling technology, but quality varies quite a bit). I own the OPPO, as the technology is muchly the same as Denon at about half the price. Upconversion is greatly dependent on the quality of the source DVD; it can look fantastic or awful depending on the mastering job the manufacturer did with the DVD in the first place.

Can you tell the difference between an upconvert and a Blu-ray? Yes, but -- and it's a really big "but" (I cannot lie, whether the other brothers deny it or not is their business) -- it depends on how demanding you are as a video connoisseur, what kind of screen you have, where you sit, and so on (a handy site for setting up your home theater to THX standards can be found here). For all I know your couch is located where your eye can't even distinguish the difference between DVD and hi-def.

Geeky digression over.

Last year I talked cuddle-up music. This year I'm going to cover movies.

After intensive consultation with my video library and a glass of Scotch, I selected ten great movies for you and whoever it is you love to pop in and get carried away by the kisses and the schmaltz. Yeah, they're all kind of chick-flicks, but it's only one day a year, fellas.

( Read more... )

You know, I'm as sick as the next guy, probably a good deal sicker, but those DEXTER banner adds with the guy fiddling with a dead hand are really revolting. Not that the show is something I'd turn to for entertainment anyway, but still.

A couple people asked me what I thought of Brightman's latest, as I mentioned it as a toss-off in my last JUGS post.

Meh. It's ho-hum. Decent enough stuff to have playing in the background while you're doing something that requires concentration. Strikes me as good music to have cramps to as it's uncomfortable and emotionally diffused. I don't know if Classical crossover is really her thing, at least as realized by Frank Petersen. Sarah, please get a new composer to idolize you as his muse. Alan Menken might like a September thrill. Do it for the fans.

My favorite thing about the purchase is all the album art of Sarah in faerie attire running around through what looks like the ruins of Osgiliath. There's a little booklet filled with it. At least somebody creative knew what they were doing.

Another big problem is that Sarah never cranks it to 11. None of the songs seemed to much challenge her.

Tracks of note:

Gothica Promising orchestral opening that feeds into Fleurs Du Mal but Sarah's lost in the overproduced Mannheim Steamroller-style orchestra and chorus.

Canto Della Terra (duet with Andrea Bocelli) - he overwhelms Sarah, if you ask me. It's sort of like if King and I wrote a novel, taking turns on the chapters. The total effect wouldn't be "wow, what a great read" it would be "jeez, Knight sucks."

I Will Be With You (Where the Lost Ones Go) (duet with Paul Stanley) - best matched of the duets, but it's more pop that classical crossover.

Sarai Qui (duet with Alessandro Safina) - Glurge. I'd rather listen to Pearl Forrester and Brain Guy sing "When Loving Lovers Love," as it's a good deal more heartfelt. Sarah and Alessandro sound like they're on opposite sides of the room hatin' on each other and flipping each other off.

Storia D'Amore Nice, not brilliant, but quite nice. At least it's worth listening to repeatedly.

Running - This one had the potential to make the whole album worthwhile, as it starts out rather Copelandish and she gets into some complex, interesting singing that was sort of a cross between an Irish ballad and Gospel. But then it morphs into an Abba rock opera in the middle, which only works if you've got a blue, bubble-headed alien funkin' it up on an orbital cruise ship, if you ask me. Two minutes of that and it morphs back into what could have been a great song. Made E.E. Knight want to choke a bitch.

Oh, there's a "hidden" fourteenth track, an instrumental piece that would be great background music for the Master Chief taking down a Scarab in HALO 3, but I couldn't detect the presence of Sarah, unless she was playing one of the instruments.

BTW, it's a little more enjoyable on the second listen because of lowered expectations.

Two of my favorite brains. One of my favorite movies. Next Tuesday can't come soon enough.

( Read more... )

Well, the DVD for The Invasion hits today. No original director's cut or deleted scenes or anything. Damn.

I said it before and I'll say it again. I thought it was quite a good movie until it turned into a stupid zombie chase. There's nothing wrong with a good zombie chase, but not when it's grafted on to a paranoid thriller in the last fifteen minutes -- and the brain-liquifying ending is probably the dumbest thing I've seen since Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes.

And I'm not crazy for liking much of it, the gal at DVD Verdict agrees with me.

I've serched in vain for a description of the original ending, but all I found was this on IMDB:

Some people at test screenings talked about an unhappy ending in which Nicole and the kid escape. The screens goes black and then we see a TV broadcast from the city they just escaped. In the broadcast, you see different people, adults and children begging their relatives & friends to return because they love them. The last person seen is Daniel Craig who begs Nicole and the kid to come back. Apparently, the government was able to isolate the city but doesn't know what to do about it.

I might have a new favorite character (hopefully he'll be recurring, that is -- and for you trivia buffs my previous favorite was Patton Oswalt's Dungeonmaster) on Reno 911!. Diedrich Bader as Reality TV Bounty Hunter "Tommy Hawk."

Looking like something out of The Road Warrior meets Die Hard, "The Hawk" has his own little conversion-van A-team of a porny-looking girlfriend (I didn't mean to say that so it sounded a Bad Thing), his armorer, his stylist, and a TV crew. Several catch phrases and product placements were worked into his segment -- which were basically genius, as you'd expect of Diedrich Bader.

Oh, and he carries a crossbow. A crossbow.

He encountered the RCSD deputies a couple of times, and when they saw themselves on TV Junior said "I didn't think it was possible for someone to make us look worse" (they're also jealous of all his redos).

Nobody does white-trash glitz like Diedrich Bader. They've got a video clip at at the Comedy Central Site, just scroll down the video archive for "Tommy Hawk."

Glad to see Reno 911! coming back strong after an iffy first episode this season.

Are they going to keep making Alien vs. Predator movies until they've sucked every drop of love I have for the separate originals out of my soul? You're Abbot & Costelloing the franchises right down to the level of the proverbial snake's ass in a wagon rut. I beg you Hollywood, stop. The home video residuals aren't worth it.

Are all the other scripts you're getting that bad that money is best spent on AvP?