Sunday, January 21, 2007

 

ODDS AND ENDS


With every "Best Of the Year" list I seem to put out, there are always things I forget, and this year was no different. When you see lots of movies during the course of a year, and listen to tons of albums, it is easy for some to fall between the cracks. But I wanted to give a few movies and cd's their due.


MOVIES


I forgot about Timur Bekmambetov's film NIGHT WATCH. I'm not sure if it would have made my top 10 list, but it was worth mentioning. A vampire film from Russia, NIGHT WATCH benfitted from its Moscow location, and the story of the forces of night and day at perpetual war was an interesting one. While it didn't seem totally original, NIGHT WATCH was one of those rare films that seemed derivative of other sources (in this case, movies like The Matrix, Blade and Underworld) and yet it transcended these movies, and gave us something a little more satisfying. That doesn't happen every day. And I'm definitely looking forward to the second film in the trilogy, DAY WATCH.


I also recently saw a few movies on DVD that came out in 2006.


First up is Richard Linklater's animated film A SCANNER DARKLY, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick. The story, with Keanu Reeves as an undercover cop in a future full of paranoia, and the populace's almost epidemic addiction to a new drug called Substance D, might just be the best adaptation of a Dick novel yet. The strange "rotoscoping" style of animation – where the actors are filmed for a normal movie first and then animation is put on over the real actors – also seems to lend itself to the distorted world that it portrays. With exceptional acting by Reeves (who knew he's excell as a cartoon character?), Robert Downey Jr. (a really good actor and an ironically perfect choice for a film about addiction), Woody Harrelson and Winony Ryder. I don't know why I missed this one in theaters, but I'm sure if would have made my top 10 list if I'd seen it in 2006.


SLITHER – A horror-comedy from James Gunn, featuring Michael Rooker (who I'll always remember from the horror masterpiece, Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer) as a local bully who pokes at a meteor (shades of The Blob) and get turned into a walking monster/human hybrid who continues to mutate, and infect the rest of the town, as the movie goes on. With Nathan Fillion (Firefly) as the Sheriff and Eliabeth Banks as Rooker's wife. This movie was a lot more fun than I expected, and I really liked it a lot.


And finally, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. This one has been getting praise from critics for months and might just get a few Oscar nominations if the buzz is right (we'll find out soon enough). It's about a dysfunctional family who hit the road to get little Olive (Abigail Breslin) to the Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pageant in time. The cast includes Greg Kinnear as the father, a failed motivational speaker; Toni Colette as the put-upon mom; Steve Carell as her brother, a gay suicidal Proust scholar; Paul Dano as a moody teenager who has taken a vow of silence; and the great Alan Arkin as a grandpa who snorts heroin and says inappopriate things whenever he opens his mouth. Well, I know this movie is the critics' darling and it seems to have become quite a sleeper hit from word of mouth, but I was left feeling very ambiguous about it. The cast was good, the story was okay, but I just didn't care all that much about it. Little Miss Sunshine failed to charm me, and I really don't get why people love this movie so much. Oh well, there's always one or two every year whose appeal I just don't understand. While this made many critics' favorite movies lists of 2006, it wouldn't even come anywhere near mine.


MUSIC


For some reason I always miss a few albums when I do my top 10 list. And this year was no exception. The ones I should have also mentioned included:


MASTODON – BLOOD MOUNTAIN – an up-and-coming metal band who's been getting a lot of praise lately, and deservedly so. Their new one wouldn't have cracked my top 10, but they definitely deserve a mention here.


KILLING JOKE – HOSANNAS FROM THE BASEMENT OF HELL. This one might have made my top 10 if I'd remembered it. I've loved Killing Joke since their first, self-titled album back in the late 70s. And I thought they hit a real peak with their PANDEMONIUM album. The new one has a more "raw" sound, as the band kind of returns to its roots. What I've heard I've really liked, but the truth is, I haven't listened to this album as much as I should have. I need to correct that.


MINISTRY – RIO GRANDE BLOOD. A hard-driving political album by one of my favorite bands. Somehow this one fell through the cracks too, but it shouldn't have.


SPARKS – HELLO YOUNG LOVERS. This one would have ranked high on my list if I'd remembered it. I'd heard of the Sparks for a long time (they were part of the whole new wave scene in the 70s), but for some reason I hadn't really heard much of their stuff. I picked up their new one HELLO YOUNG LOVERS totally on a whim, and was amazed by it. This is a very eclectic album, covering a variety of styles, including a very operatic kind of sound. Easily the most adventurous album I'd heard all year, this is one of those bands that have actually gotten better with age. It was because of this that I checked out some of their earlier albums. But if you're going to check this band out, HELLO YOUNG LOVERS deserves a listen. Easily one of the best cd's of 2006, whether or not I mentioned them last time.


TELEVISION


In my next entry, I'll give everyone an update on how the second season of MASTERS OF HORROR is going. But in the meantime, I wanted to mention a new show that I've been really enjoying lately.


FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS seems to be the TV critics' favorite new show of the season (after HEROES) and I avoided it for a long time. Based on the movie of the same name, it's about a high school football team in Texas, and since I'm not really one for sports, it certainly didn't sound like something I'd take to. But it got so much acclaim (and so many people trying to save it from getting canceled), that I thought I'd watch it once and see if it was any good.


Well, all I can say is, I'm still watching every week. This one has got compelling characters and great writing. And it just goes to show you, any storyline can be good if you've got talented people behind it. Sure there's football in it, but it doesn't dominate the story, and there's a good chance it's going to hook you, like it did me.


Otherwise, I'm looking forward to the returns of PRISON BREAK and HEROES this week. It'll be good to have them back from hiatus.


That's all for now. Until next time,


Infernally Yours,


LLS


 

PAN'S LABYRINTH


Well, I finally saw PAN'S LABYRINTH last weekend. I was planning to post something then, but never got around to it. Basically, this was one instance where the movie lived up to the hype.


I've been a fan of Guillermo Del Toro's for awhile now. I saw his first film CRONOS, when it came out in theaters in 1993, and really enjoyed it. His last Spanish-language film, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE (2001) was even better. But I haven't been as much of a fan of his American films. Mimic left me cold. Blade II wasn't much better. And Hellboy, a fun movie and easily the best of the Hollywood bunch, just didn't live up to the promise of his more personal films.


Well, PAN'S LABYRINTH is a return to form. Like DEVIL'S BACKBONE, it takes place at the time of the Spanish Civil War. Except now it's 1944 and the war is coming to an end, with the fascist forces of Franco having won. The story focuses on young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a girl who's father, a tailor, was killed in the war. She and her mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) go to stay at the home of her new stepfather, a captain in Franco's army. The stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) is a cold and violent man, who demands complete order around him and the only thing he seems to truly care about is the child that Ofelia's mother is carrying, which he is sure is a son.


While staying in the forboding compound, Ofelia becomes intrigued by a stone labyrinth on the grounds. A winged insect which transforms into a fairy guides her down through its maze and into an underground lair, where she meets a slightly disturbing-looking faun (Doug Jones).


The faun tells her that she is really a princess from another world, and that she has forgotten about this. He will be able to bring her home, but she must first do three tasks to prove she is who he believes her to be. This includes Ofelia having to go into the bowels of a great dying tree to save it from a giant frog-creature who is sucking the the life out of it. A second task involves getting a key from the lair of a monstrous child-eater who sits before an elaborate feast. The faun tells Orfelia not to eat anything from the table, but when a grape looks too tempting, she succumbs, waking the monster, and barely escpaing with her life.


Meanwhile, her stepfather is torturing rebels in the barn. And Ofelia's mother is getting more and more ill as her baby's birth draws near.


PAN'S LABYRINTH is one of those rare movies that mixes adult matters and the fantasies of children with ease. This movie has been compared to Victor Erice's 1973 classic SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, which also took place in 1940s Spain and dealt with a girl's fantasy world – she sees a showing of 1931's FRANKENSTEIN with Boris Karloff and believes that the monster is her imaginary friend. The comparison is apt. Both films balance the worlds of adults and children in an intelligent and powerful way. The two movies would make a great double feature.


I was surprised to find that, at the showing of Pan's Labyrinth I saw, in a fairly mainstream cinema complex, the movie was sold out, with people searching for seats at one point. This surprised me because Pan's Labyrinth is in Spanish with subtitles, and usually subtitled movies don't pull in such big audiences. I can only hope that Del Toro's film does very well as it opens in more and more theaters across the country.


I am not sure if this film counts for 2006 or 2007. Even though it did not open near me until 2007, I am sure it played somewhere in New York or L.A. in 2006 for Oscar consideration. If that is the case, then I think Pan might just be my favorite film of 2006. If not, then it is certainly one of my favorites so far for 2007.


This movie is the best thing Guillermo Del Toro has done so far.


I highly recommend it.


Sunday, January 07, 2007

 

IN MEMORIAM: ROBERT LONG


Back in college (Southampton College in Southampton, NY, which is sadly rumored to be closing down soon), I had a writing professor who became a friend. His name was Robert Long and he was a respected poet from East Hampton, New York. Over the years, we wrote to each other often, and even exchanged X-Mas cards and gifts. . For some reason, I didn't get a card from his this year, so I did a Google search, and found nothing. I figured he was out of the country or something. Sometimes he would travel, and we haven't talked as much the past couple of years. He had been hard at work on his first non-fiction book about the artists and writers who had lived in East Hampton over the years, called DE KOONING'S BICYCLE (from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux Publishers in 2005) and had gone on a few book tours since (sadly never anywhere near here), and I assumed he'd started work on its follow-up.


My wife Laura did yet another more extensive search and found this on the website for Canio's Bookstore in East Hampton:


*********


BOOK NOTES


In Memorium: Robert Long


October 15, 1954 - October 13, 2006


AUTHOR OF:


De Kooning's Bicycle (non-fiction), 2005


Blue (poems), 2000


What Happens (poems) 1988


What It Is (poems) 1981


Getting Out of Town (poems) 1978


AS EDITOR:


For David Ignatow: An Anthology (1994)


Long Island Poets (1986)


Beloved friend, poet, teacher, writer, editor


***Donations to the Robert Long Memorial Scholarship Fund can be sent c/o Canio's Books, 290 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY 11963***


www.caniosbooks.com


****


Seeing this really bothered me. He died just two days short of his 52nd birthday, so he wasn't an old man. In recent years he'd moved into the house he inherited from his grandmother in East Hampton, and the card and gifts I sent him this Christmas were not sent back. His email account is still open and taking mail. An initial Google.com search about him yeilded no news - no obituaries, no memorials. No word at his publisher's website or the newspaper where he used to work. He was a respected poet, writer and art critic, yet it's as if he vanished off the face of the earth with almost no trace.


Robert was a good friend who encouraged my writing in college and beyond, who became a source of advice and a confidante when I got older. He was a good and talented man who dug the music of Elvis Costello, the writing of the Beats and he had immense respect for writers like John Ashberry and David Ignatow, whom he knew personally. I'd send him the best albums (well, the ones I thought) of each year to him at Christmas time. He'd send me and Laura some jazz because I never knew enough about jazz but I loved it.


When he had a new poetry book out, he'd send me a copy. He even sent me a brand new hardcover of DE KOONING'S BICYCLE when it first came out. And I used to send him copies of magazines my stories would appear in, in turn. It was cool keeping up on each other's careers like that. We'd ever half-jokingly discussed the possibility of collaborating on something eventually. With his poetry background and mine in genre fiction (and a shared love of surrealism), I think we could have turned out something pretty unique.


As a long-time newspaper man, he was a big help when Laura and I were editing her father's memoir LUCK WAS A STRANGER and I had historical questions.


He'll be missed and I want to know more about his time on this earth.


Obviously I recommend the books he's left behind. His poetry was great stuff - but his books may be hard to find. Several of the early ones were chapbooks, but I recommend BLUE, his last book of poetry, because I particularly enjoyed that one.


And of course, DE KOONING'S BICYCLE, his history of the artists who had lived in Long Island over the years. His one big work. I'm glad he got to see it published during his lifetime. He was proud of that one.


You'll be missed, Robert. You were one of the good ones.


~LLS


1/7/07


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?