THIS MODERN NIGHTMARE

OSCAR THOUGHTS

Well, some people were saying this was a lackluster year for the Oscar nominations, but for me, this was one of the few years where I was rooting for two movies, and didn't care which one won, because they both kicked major ass.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN might just be the best thing Joel and Ethan Cohen have done so far (and yes, I realize they did FARGO (1996), which I also dug, and my other favorite film of their's is THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)). But these guys have been consistently interesting for decades now, since they first came out with BLOOD SIMPLE back in 1984, and NO COUNTRY might just be the darkest and bleakest thing they've done yet. And man do I love bleak movies. So I was majorly rooting for this one.

The other movie I had a hard-on for was THERE WILL BE BLOOD which I think is some kind of masterpiece. Paul Thomas Anderson (whose first big hit BOOGIE NIGHTS, from 1997, still makes me smile), has also made maybe the best movie of his career with this one, and a big reason is Daniel-Day Lewis, who doesn't so much act in the movie, as take on the personification of the sun, and the rest of the movie revolved around him. It's an "epic" in the best sense of the world, and Lewis is fuckin amazing.

So two great movies. Either one wins, I'm happy. So what were the results?

THERE WILL BE BLOOD took the Best Actor Award for Day-Lewis, which is only justice making itself known. But NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN swept most of the other big categories - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (for Javier Bardem, another force of nature like Lewis, who had to win, or else the cosmic axis would have shifted), and Best Adapted Screenplay. I was a little bit bummed that BLOOD didn't take Best Picture, but it was a minor twinge. NO COUNTRY deserves it just as much.

I thought JUNO would take a lot more awards, since it was such a crowd pleaser, but it just took Best Screenplay (which Diablo Cody deserved for coming out of nowhere and attracting so much attention for her script. Also, she's a former stripper. So I gotta root for her).

When I saw Viggo Mortensen in the audience (he was nominated for Best Actor for EASTERN PROMISES), I still felt that Cronenberg's movie had been ripped off and deserved more nominations. But like I said, the top two nomination getters this year were so damn good, that I can't complain.

The main shake-ups were in the actress categories. Marion Cotillard won Best Actress for playing Edith Piaf in LA VIE EN ROSE. Everyone thought it would be either Julie Christie playing an Alzheimer's victim in AWAY FROM HER, or that Ellen Page would come out of nowhere to take it for JUNO. Cotillard was a long shot and nobody saw it coming. I haven't seen the Piaf movie, but I want to now. And Tilda Swinton took Best Supporting Actress for MICHAEL CLAYTON, when everyone thought it would be either the great Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I'M NOT THERE, or that the sentimental favorite would be Rudy Dee in AMERICAN GANGSTER. I was shocked that Swinton won, but she's been doing such great work for so many years now, that I totally think she deserves it, too.

Not much else. Jon Stewart was a good host (he kept things bland for the most part, but affable. And you just know they'll probably ask him to come back).

Oh yeah, and the music numbers for Best Song sucked, except for song from ONCE, which actually won over all the crappy showtune stuff. I was shocked by that, too. Nice to see a real song win over all that overblown crap.

Those are my post-Oscars thoughts for this year. Time to go to bed.

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You might have seen this mentioned elsewhere, but Ben Chapman died this week. For those of you who don't know who he was - he was the guy in the rubber suit for the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON back in 1954. He played the Creature in all of the scenes on land. Olympic swimmer Ricou Browning did all the underwater scenes as the Creature. Since this was the last classic Universal movie monster (after the heyday of Frankenstein and Dracula), it's a sad moment for horror movie buffs. I hear Chapman was a really nice guy as well, and that he was very appreciative of his fans.

JIM BALLARD’S LAST DAYS

"A hard rain is falling on the suburban semi in Shepperton where JG Ballard has lived for half a century, imparting an eerie sheen to the ancient Ford Granada that lies beached at an odd angle in his drive.

Ballard is courteous and genial in a slightly donnish way. At 77, he takes his time assembling his thoughts, but they remain unflinching and provocative, expressed with the verbal tics of his colonial background. But time, the malleable stuff of his science fiction, is running out. After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006, he sat down at his electric typewriter – "The computer age came too late for me" – and rapidly wrote his autobiography. "
-The London Times, January 20, 2008

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One of my favorite writers of all time is J.G. Ballard. He was a prominent figure in the 1970s "New Wave" in science-fiction (along with people like Michael Moorcock, Norman Spinrad, Brian Aldiss and Harlan Ellison), but he was one of these guys who easily transcended boundaries like genre. He's written some amazing books, including HIGH-RISE, THE CRYSTAL WORLD, CONCRETE ISLAND and his masterpiece CRASH (which has nothing to do with the preachy film that won an Oscar a few years ago, but it was made into a film by director David Cronenberg in 1996), which told the story of a group of fetishists who tied sex and car crashes.

I just found out, from the London Times article quoted above, that he has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and has been hard at work on his autobiography as the clock ticks.

There's a certain group of writers who fucking changed the face of literature in the 60s and 70s, including William S. Burroughs (sure he was a Beat and became famous before the 60s, but he became a frigging icon then) and Hunter S. Thompson. Of this group, Ballard is one of the few voices still alive, and the news that he's dying really bothered me.

If you haven't checked out his books, then you owe it to yourself to seek them out. I'm not sure how many of his best novels are still in print, but HIGH-RISE and CRASH are especially cool. I haven't been reading much of his newer books of the past decade or so, but he is prolific and has been writing steadily since his heyday. And no doubt he'll write as much as he can between now and his last breath.

I'm not going to pretend Ballard ever goes on MySpace, or that he will ever read this, but Thank You, Mr. Ballard. Your work helped enrich my life.

(For the entire London Times article, go here.)

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The new anthology BANDERSNATCH featuring stories by my wife Laura Cooney ("Pink") and friends like Jack Haringa, ("A Perfect and Unmappable Grace") was reviewed on Fear Zone this week. If you'd like to read more about it, go to http://fearzone.com/blog/bandersnatch-review

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They recently showed the last new episode of the show FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS for awhile, due to the writer's strike. But word has it that it might have been the last episode of the show ever. It's been plagued with low ratings throughout its two seasons, despite tons of critical acclaim and a core audience of solid fans, and there's a chance NBC might put it to rest.

If you never watched it, you don't know how well-written and how wonderfully acted this show was. I hate fuckin football, and the show is about a high school football team and its coach in Texas, and yet I loved this show. The characters were so real and terrific. And it's a bummer to hear it might not be coming back.

Show creator Peter Berg (who also directed the movie the show is based on, from Buzz Bissinger's book), who is an actor as well as a director, had a role in the last episode, which was kind of fitting. And he should be commended for bringing a great, above-average show to network television. I hope there's still a chance FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS might get another chance. But if this is the end, then it was a good ride while it lasted. At least the show's on DVD if you want to see what all the hubbub was about.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

I just realized that I never posted a review of Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Not that my review will amount to a hill of beans. The movie has been getting plenty of attention, including a slew of Oscar nominations. But I just wanted to put in my two cents.

I'm actually a big fan of Anderson's films, especially BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997), the epic about the 70s porn industry that put him on the map (and showed us that Mark Walhberg could actually act!) and MAGNOLIA (1999), which was way too fuckin long, but which gave us one of the few great performances by Tom Cruise as a sleazy motivational speaker.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (based on the Upton Sinclair "Oil!") might just be Anderson's best film yet. It's the story of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), an oilman back in the days when oil was a new business. He travels around Texas, searching for black gold, and finding enough to set him up as a man of wealth and power. But he never stops looking. Oil is his Moby Dick and Planview is as obsessed as Ahab was.

There are other characters here, including Daniel's son H.W. (who he cherishes above anything else, even if he has to commit him to a mental hospital at one point), who had he had to raise himself as a widower, to twin brothers Paul and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, who was also the depressed teenager from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) . Eli is a preacher who cuts a shrewd deal with Daniel for a patch of oil-rich land, asking in return that Daniel build his church. He also pops up at other times throughout the film. The final confrontation between Daniel and Eli provides a powerful ending to the film.

As I said, there are other characters, but no one holds a candle to Day-Lewis, who is a human hurricane in this film - a force of nature - who holds sway like the God of Acting for over two hours. He is so amazing in the role, that he's fascinating to watch, even when he's not speaking.

Day-Lewis deserves every single award and nomination he's gotten for this role. THERE MIGHT BE BLOOD didn't make my top 10 list of 2007 movies, but then, I didn't see it until 2008, but it easily would have placed in the top 5.

If you want to see a terrific performance by one of the best actors we've got, then seek it out.

ALL KINDS OF WEIRD SHIT

Here's what's been going on lately.

I've been having a ton of articles posted on Fear Zone lately, from DVD reviews to more installments of Cinema Knife Fight, to a tribute to comic book writer Steve Gerber. It's a great site and has new content every day of the week. So if you haven't checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?

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Went to vote on "Super Tuesday." Took me half an hour to walk to a school in the middle of nowhere, even though a library right near my house has voting booths. Why? Because that library isn't in my "district." I complained to city hall and they said it's out of their hands. So I walk half an hour in the rain to vote for people I really don't care about. Go figure. I wanted to vote for John Edwards, but since the guy dropped out, I voted for Obama instead. Hillary took the state. So I walked all the way there and back for nothing.

Then I went and dumped a big black garbage bag in the dumpster behind my house. Ten minutes later I went outside and some guy was running down the driveway of my apartment building carrying a big black garbage bag, and he ran across the street. There have been guys digging in our dumpster before. We live in a big apartment building. I once saw an old Chinese guy actually get inside the dumpster and root around one Sunday afternoon. Was the black garbage bag that guy took off with my garbage? I don't know. I was too tired to go look, and I probably wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. But this is weird shit. And it just goes to show you should have a shredder in your house for any personal mail. Never know who the fuck's going to steal your trash.

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I have to go to sleep every night this month at 10pm (except weekends) because I have to get 8 hours sleep a night at the insistence of my sleep doctor. He wants to see if my getting 8 hours every night will help my fatigue. This means I have like 2 hours a day to myself now. Enough time to eat, watch an hour of television and go to sleep. What a life.

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I have plots for three different novels revolving in my head. I've written opening chapters for each one, and they've been percolating in my mind for awhile now. It feels like all three want to come out at once. We'll see what happens. Either none of them will become actual books, or one will, or all three will. Will they come out all at once, or one at a time? Or will they stay in my head forever and refuse to come out at all? Curiouser and curiouser.

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I'm reading Warren Ellis's first prose novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, finally. I've been a fan of Ellis's since he first started writing for Marvel Comics with a title called HELLSTORM (the adventures of Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, no less). While he was writing Hellstorm, his fellow Englishman and buddy Garth Ennis was writing HELLBLAZER for DC (the adventures of John Constantine). They both went on to much bigger things and became major names in the comic biz (Ennis went on to write my favorite comic book series ever, PREACHER). They both kick lots of ass.

After having lots of "graphic novels" out, Ellis has finally written a regular novel. And it is fucking amazing. I have like 50 pages to go and I've been devouring this thing like a sashimi dinner. I don't want it to end. If you haven't read this yet, go get a copy now.

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Until next time.

Infernally Yours,

~LLS

MORE GERBER NEWS

I wrote an obituary/tribute to Steve Gerber (who I mentioned in an earlier blog entry). It was posted earlier this week on Fear Zone. If you want to check it out, or if you just want to know more about Steve Gerber, just go to: http://fearzone.com/blog/mr-gerber

Brian Keene recently listed a bunch of quotes on his blog from heavy-hitters in the comics industry who actually knew Steve Gerber, remembering the guy on the occasion of his death. Among the quotes is one from my tribute article. It's pretty cool to have a quote in there among so many giants of the field.

It still sucks that Gerber's gone.

GERBER

So I was going to write a post about Roy Scheider dying. You probably know him from a little movie called JAWS (1975)and a ton of other flicks. I also thought he was great in a flick called ALL THE JAZZ (1979) by the only guy who knew how to make musicals that wouldn't make you cringe, the amazing Bob Fosse (Fosse also directed the biopic LENNY about Lenny Bruce). ALL THAT JAZZ was pretty much Fosse getting very personal about his life. Scheider played him perfectly.

I was going to just do a post about Scheider. Then I found out that Steve Gerber died, and frankly, everything else pales in comparison.

Who was Steve Gerber? He wrote comic books.

Back in the 1970s when I first started buying comics regularly, picking up GIANT SIZE MAN-THING Number One, I was hooked on Gerber's writing immediately. There was no one else like him. He could write serious horror (Man-Thing), ballsy satire (Howard the Duck), and just plane weird shit (Void Indigo, Foolkiller). I still cringe when I think of what Hollywood did to Howard the Duck. They took out all the satire and razor-sharp wit and churned out some cinema abortion that bore no likeness to Gerber's character. I remember when I saw the movie in the theater, my first thought afterward was "Poor Steve."

This guy might have written those "goofy funny books" but he left a big impression on me.

A friend of mine who's also into comics gave me the news. Then I went to Brian Keene's blog immediately, because I know Gerber had as big an impact on him as he did on me. And yep, Keene was way ahead of me. Already had some words posted in memorium of Mr. G.

Keene actually got to meet him once. I was always jealous of that.

As Keene said in his own blog, Gerber was to 70s comics as Alan Moore was to the 80s (and it's not that far-fetched, they both made their names writing about swamp monsters) and Garth Ennis (and Warren Ellis) was to the 90s. These are major fuckin players in the comcis world.

Good-bye, Steve. I never met you. But you touched my life just the same.

If you want to read more, go to his blog. His friend Mark Evanier announces the bad news: http://www.stevegerber.com/sgblog/