Recent Aquisitions to the Library

Spoils from my recent trip to Half-Price Books:

• Through a Glass Darkly - Karleen Koen
• The Assault on Reason - Al Gore
• Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire
• Ghostwalk - Rebecca Scott
• The Print - Ansel Adams
• Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
• The Bourne Ultimatum - Robert Ludlum
• Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
• Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
• Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
• Devices and Desires - P. D. James
• The Body Artist - Don DeLillo
• Practical Demonkeeping - Christopher Moore

I have finally gotten almost all of our books and graphic novels into my LibraryThing. What a very , very cool site. A link is there on the left of the page.

Marie Antoinette

I love Sophia Coppola's previous work. The Virgin Suicides was just beautiful and a near perfect interpretation of the lyrical novel. Lost in Translation was a vision of a story , making the viewer a part of a newly formed friendship in a strange place. Her visuals made Japan a postcard that I wanted to visit, even though I felt the alienation of the main characters. Marie Antoinette was a visual feast much like Sophia Coppola's other movies, but while I loved the movie, I didn’t get the charm and the haunting, staying power of her other films.

Coppola used Antonia Fraser’s biography of the fated queen, which I hread after seeing the film, but from what I understand it is a much more generous interpretation of Marie’s life than some might give. The story is well told, but focuses mostly on the young queen’s life and her early years at court before her first children were born. You feel the alienation and the confusion the young Dauphine feels when she first enters Versailles, and you fear the intricate court politics that she must maneuver to survive. You feel sorry for this girl who is married off for the good of her people and is under pressure from all around her to fulfill her conjugal duties when the Dauphin is indifferent and every move she makes is gossiped about and scrutinized. When you get to the later years of her life, Coppola moves quickly to the end, but you also see the point Fraser and in turn, Coppola is trying to make: Marie Antoinette was maligned by the public at large, and while her excesses were problematic, she also was only a small piece of the puzzle. While most would lay the blame for the revolution at her feet, you see here the more human side of the woman with ships in her hair.

The movie is a like a big piece of intricately frosted cake, and of course you get the heavy 80’s influence you tasted in the trailer. The costuming is beautiful, with no detail left undone. The colors of the costumes are bright pinks, blues, greens, and yellows that could be more frou-frou versions of the neon teens would wear in the height of the big hair era. Even the food follows this color scheme. I thought this fit rather well with Coppola's comparison of the court at Versailles and the opulence that was the Reagan years. The only thing that didn’t fit was some of the music. Coppalla used a mix of traditional and retro tunes that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. The music fit really well during some of the shopping and ball scenes but the one point I really felt didn’t work was the song used when Marie and her entourage return from a masked ball in Paris. It kicked you right out of the moment. Not only was the song jarring, but it was a bad song.

There are many reasons you should see this film, but I can’t recommend it to everyone. Sophia Coppola has so much talent you can’t help but feel she is genetically encoded with good film-making genes. This would be a near perfect movie if it weren’t for the poor use of music in some places. It was beautiful, the actors were good in their roles, and the supporting cast was outstanding. However, if you are looking for a perfect interpretation of history with the soundtrack to match, you won’t find it here. Instead you will find a bright, independent, and inventive telling of a widely misunderstood person in history. This version of Marie Antoinette has guts and feelings, she’s no cardboard cutout or dry, unidentifiable woman who recklessly and uncaringly sends her country into revolution. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it.

Rating: 4 ½ stars for such a beautiful feast for the eyes

Saw III

I saw the first Saw movie in the theater the same day I saw The Grudge. I liked The Grudge better, but I have still picked up the Saw sequels to watch because that puppet creeps me the hell out. The idea of Jigsaw keeps me coming back, even though the reality of Jigsaw never quite lives up to my ideal.

Saw III has Jigsaw being very ill, completely reliant on Amanda to carry out his evil plans. Problem is, it looks like Amanda is not quite right in the head, and she is completely devoted to Jigsaw. Their next victim is Lynn, a doctor who is required to keep Jigsaw alive, at least until their other victim, Jeff, has completed his game. Jeff has lost a son in a car accident, and Jigsaw has set up a special game for him. Will he make it through the game and learn the lesson Jigsaw has set up for him. Well, if you have seen any of the Saw movies, you should have a good idea of how this will go.

The Jigsaw traps are really, really icky this time around. I cringed several times during the presentation of the different levels of tests. There was plenty of gore, and really you can’t help but like a serial killer who makes people face their issues and come out the other end happier. But, just as usual, not everyone wants to learn a lesson, especially by a psycho that has you strung up on some sort of machine that will rip your ribs off.

As for characters, I like the more in depth character of Amanda. I have always like Shawnee Smith, ever since her role in The Blob. Jigsaw is a good character, as usual. I was disappointed to have Dina Meyer cut out so soon; I really think she should get more work. Angus McFadyen plays the grieving father well, with just the right amount of grief, anger, and need for vengeance.

I’d have to say Saw III was a pretty good movie, especially for a sequel. I even liked it a little more than the original, if just for the characters being a bit more sympathetic this time around. I’d say catch it if you like the franchise, and if you are a horror fan, you should at least see the original.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs, especially for that last sequence when you find out how all the bits fit together, and the last test for Jeff with the screws. Ouch.

Giallos: More Fun, More Kool-Aid

I simply cannot get enough of Giallo cinema. You would think that after watching as many as I have I would get tired of them, but somehow the flashy Italian fashions, the ultra-mod furniture, and the bright candy apple red fake blood just get me very time. Here are three Giallo films I watched recently. They aren’t Deep Red by any means (and really, how much really can be?), but they are good examples of the genre.

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave

In this Giallo, a wealthy lord is having trouble getting over his wife’s death. He is obsessed with her as much as he was when she was alive and he was worried she was cheating on him. He tours the local bars, finding red-haired women to come back to his castle and fool around, where he later tortures and kills them. Later, his doctor friend convinces him to marry again, this time to a blonde, hoping it will help heal his slowly rotting mind. Of course, due to the nature of the Giallo, it really doesn’t help at all. There’s the gloved killer murdering women in gruesome ways, the creepy castle, the crazed lord who may or may not be killing people, and of course the beautiful women getting sliced and diced. It’s one of the better Giallos out there, once you move past the masters of the genre, and it’s well worth checking out.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

Two sisters have a past, with a secret tragedy and a horrible fairy tale that haunted their child hood. Even to this day, they remember the tale of the “Sisters in Red,” two murderous sisters will return on April 6, 1972 and continue their lethal behavior. So when the day arrives, they aren’t terribly surprised to have people around them dying, and a young woman in a red cloak being present at the scene of the murders. This Giallo was almost as good as The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, in fact it makes a good double feature, and this once stars the very lovely Barbara Bouchet.

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail

This Giallo is heavy on the mystery – a very rich businessman dies in a plane explosion, and his unfaithful wife is the beneficiary of 1 million dollars. The insurance company wants to investigate before they actually pay out the weeping widow, so an investigator arrives on the scene to determine if the widow had anything to do with the murder. A mysterious black-gloved murderer steals the money and leaves a trail of bloody bodies in his wake.

If you are a Dario Argento or Mario Brava fan but are looking for something more, maybe you haven’t seen these. Check them out. If you want to know what Giallo is, I would start with some others, like Deep Red or The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and then, if you like those, move on to some of these Giallos.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs for nice Giallo cinema. Gotta love those titles and those very lovely pantsuits.

AfterDark Horrorfest

I ended up renting every film in the AfterDark Horrorfest series, and surprisingly enough I wasn’t all that disappointed in what I ended up seeing. Sure, they were pretty much direct to video, but each had good qualities. That may sounds like trying to hook someone up on a blind date with someone with a “great personality” but really, these each had bits that I liked, even though there were some I liked way more than others. I’ll talk about them here in the order of least to most liked.

Penny Dreadful – A young woman suffers from an extreme phobia. She cannot ride in a car because when she was younger she was involved in a horrible accident. Now her therapist thinks it would be a good idea to drive her in her car into the mountains to help her get over her fear. Of course the therapist picks up a stranger, and naturally, blood and gore happen. There isn’t much redeeming here at all – the acting, the effects, the whole plot. Nothing.

Wicked Little Things – A widow and her two daughters return to her husband’s old family home place out in mining country only to find out it is haunted by some very pissed off zombie children. Not much scary here just a lot of gore. The acting was sub-par.

The Hamiltons – This ended up being better than I expected. A young kid is full of angst about his family, troubled with how they behave. They murder, move a lot, chain young girls up in the basement. The acting was pretty sub par but the story ended up being pretty decent.

Unrest – A young woman starts her first weeks in medical school and right off she has issues with her cadaver for anatomy class. Is it her imagination? Is it real? Why are her classmates going crazy or turning up dead? I liked this one quite a bit, at least until it got all weird “ghosty” at the end. Otherwise, the creep factor was high and the acting was decent.

Dark Ride – This one is pretty straight up slasher. Some college friends are out on a trip for spring break, and on the way they come across a flier for the “Dark Ride.” The Dark Ride was closed several years ago because of a lunatic killing some twins while they were on the ride. Now, they have reopened the ride, and will the kids survive when they sneak in to stay the night? Overall the actors were decent, the scares okay. This one really scored higher on my list because the acting, sets, everything seemed to be a higher quality than the rest.

The Gravedancers – A guy passes away, and three of his closest childhood friends come to the funeral. They decide the only way to truly mourn their friend is to go out and have a good old-fashioned wake at his grave. This of course leads to nothing but trouble when the three friends discover they have desecrated the graves of some very unhappy ghosts. This one has pretty good acting as well, and it really held up until the end when the CGI kicked. Then it looked like a really bad B-Movie.

The Abandoned – A woman discovers she has inherited property in Russia from her birth mother who she never knew. She travels out to the isolated farmhouse only to find another man there who has claims to the property himself. Why does the farmhouse seem to be haunted? Why is she having visions? Why can’t she get off the island? This one was chocked full of atmosphere, creepy characters, and good acting. The end got pretty confusing but I enjoyed it none the less.

Reincarnation – Of course the Asian entry to the AfterDark fest would be my favorite. A young Japanese girl wins a part in a new horror film that is based on a true life killing spree of a professor at Tokyo University. The girl keeps seeing ghosts and once the filming moves to the actual hotel where the killings took place, things start to get really, really creepy. This one is sufficiently creepy and atmospheric, although it did get confusing at times.

Overall I wasn’t overly impressed with the AfterDark Horrorfest movies, but there were a few worthwhile moments in the bunch. I’d never actually purchase any of them on DVD, but renting them wasn’t so bad.

Rating: 4 Purrs overall

Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss

I picked up the first novel, Eccentric Circles, by Rebecca Lickiss because I loved her second work, Never After. It’s clearly a first novel, but the urban fairy tale is still a very fun read.

Piper inherits her grandmother’s cottage that just happens to have a very large garden in the back, a garden which she eventually finds out that leads to fairyland. Piper knows her family is a bit weird, but when she wakes up one morning and has a weird guy dressed like he was going to a Ren Faire in her kitchen, she’s not quite sure what’s going on. Aerlvarim, the freaky elf, isn’t sure that Grandmother Dickerson’s death was a natural one. Piper takes up the investigation, and in the process learns a bit of magic, meets some very interesting dwarves, fairies, and wizards, and discovers the writer inside of herself.

The characters are comical, and not a whole lot of development is built in to the story, but the story is certainly not entrenched in D&D style characters (you know, shazam, big muscles, silly backgrounds, and adventures). Lickiss doesn’t try to put in a bunch of flowery text to fill out her plot, so I have to give her credit for that.

It’s a very light reading, with a plot that borders on a Mary-Sue, but it is still a fun read. I’d say it was a good beach book or a good afternoon’s bit of reading. I am jealous of such a nice, cozy cottage with a stuffed full library. I must have a library in my next house, but maybe, well definitely, without all of the chintz.

Rating: 4 Purrs, for a fun story, a bit of sarcasm in Piper, and a spunky Grandma that reminds me of how my grandmothers used to be

Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

If you have read anything by me previously, or at least heard me talk about how The Stand is my favorite book ever, you will know that Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I love how he has many layers to his stories, horror and the unusual, people and how they relate, and places that are normal and yet, in the dark, scary. Lisey's Story is one of those stories, pure Stephen King at his best.

Lisey Landon is the widow of the famous Scott Landon, prize-winning author. Scott died two years before, and Lisey is just now going through his study and sorting through his papers. There are those who want the rumored lost stories that he wrote before he died, and Lisey finds out that some people are willing to do just about anything to get their hands on them. As Lisey sorts through his things, she is haunted by memories of their life together. She remembers a layer to their lives she had buried ”behind the purple.” She remembers this seemingly fantasy of Scott's, and in turn, she ends up traveling once again to Boo’ya Moon, a parallel universe of sorts where Scott would go when he was afraid or hurt, the place where he would go to find inspiration for his unusual stories. She must face Scott’s demons, sort through her past and her future, and come face to face with a crazed fan who won’t take no for an answer. She must have her own “blood bool” to cleanse herself and move forward into her own new future.

Stephen King has written something similar before in Bag of Bones, but this time he tells the story of loss and haunting from the widow’s perspective. The alternate universe and the horrors involved are only half the story. The best part of Lisey’s Story is the people and how they relate. On one hand you have Scott and Lisey Landon and the layers of communication and stories that make the ups and downs of a long, satisfying marriage. Stephen King captures how two people speak without words, how a couple has a private language of their own. Lisey’s relationships with her sisters are also a key part. Each sister is her own personality, and each is bound to the other eventually coming to the big confrontation with the wacko at the end.

You can’t help but feel that this is a deeply personal story for Stephen King, even though he states in the letter to his readers that Scott and Lisey are not Tabitha and himself. The characters are so real and the feelings portrayed so true that you can’t help but feel that he is pulling from real life, if not his own marriage then his own experiences and close observation. Overall it’s an excellent story, and while the scary parts aren’t the whole thing, they are terribly good on their own. The scary bits make the touching parts that much more perfect.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for the piebald thing, the sisters, and the ability to capture how two people in love can speak

300 by Frank Miller & 300: The Movie

Two great tastes that taste great together.

I adore Frank Miller. I adore Lena Headly and Gerard Butler. So naturally, I loved both 300 the book and the movie. To be honest, I had a hard time not cheering throughout the entire movie.

Frank Miller’s 300 is a pleasure to look at with the sepia tones and the splashes of red for emphasis. The characters are not well developed, but the story is a short one, so that didn’t disappoint me. It is a rousing story, one that makes you shout “Huzzah!” or “St. Crispin’s Day!”, whichever you prefer.

300: The Movie brings all that testosterone and vibrancy to the screen. What I liked about 300: just about everything. The actors were great; all good actors without huge names so you could really like them just as they are. Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, and while he looks a bit young, he is still terribly yummy in the role. You just can’t help but want to follow a guy like that into battle. Lena Headly is a wonderful Queen Gorgo, whose part is greatly enhanced from the graphic novel (Thank God!) She is beautiful and fierce, and terribly devoted to Sparta and her family. (I’ll admit to having a bit of a crush on her for a while, and I can’t wait to see her in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) The other soldiers were good background, with some of them providing some nice side stories. There were plenty of rousing speeches, but the best parts of the movie were the battle scenes. While I know the slow-motion camera action can get a bit overdone, I can’t help but love every little bit of it in 300.

There wasn’t much I didn’t like in 300. Xerxes and the baddie in Sparta were somewhat caricatures to the point where I almost expected the Sparta baddie to pull up his cape Dudley Do-right/Dastardly style, but the overwhelming spectacle of the movie made me forgive that. Plus, there was no NIN song in the movie, and I just loved it in the trailer.

I really felt the movie translated the graphic novel well, keeping the color palette, the feel, and even pulling exact panels for some shots. And that’s all I really expected out of it. It’s not quite as page to screen as Sin City, but it is pretty close in spots. Some might be turned off of it because of all of the testosterone and the battle rousing, but to me it was just what the graphic novel presented.

Rating: 5 Purrs for sheer Spartan perfection!