Primeval

Primeval was that movie – you remember the trailer – that made you think it was about this super scary serial killer who had killed thousands of people. Then you find out it is about a great big man-eating crocodile. Really, it’s not that bad. Definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact I was pleasantly surprised.

In Primeval, Dominic Purcell is a fancy pants journalist who doesn’t want to trek down to Africa like his boss is telling him to do. He has better things to do. But he goes, and takes Orlando Jones and Brooke Langton with him. They are on the “story of the century” to find, and with the help of a Steve Irwin type, trap the man-eating crocodile. Well, you know what happens next right – you’ve seen Anaconda? (Oh well, okay. Maybe that was just me…) Surprise – instead, there is an even bigger story – one about the evil warlord who wants to kill the group because of some pesky eye-opening footage. Off they go to avoid the croc and the warlord. Maybe they will make it, maybe not.

You know, even though the story was silly, the croc was silly, and the characters are kind of silly, I couldn’t help but get into the movie. Maybe it was just me. I do have a thing for gigantic attacking animal movies. Plus it is loosely based on a true story I believe, with the croc being part of the story. He gets so big and hungry for man flesh because of the warlord dumping copious amounts of bodies into the river where he lived. Kind of icky, when you think about it.

 
I don’t know if I can really recommend this one. It was no Anaconda. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even an Anaconda: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. But I enjoyed it on a purely half-watching, easy Saturday afternoon sort of way.

Rating: 3 Purrs for a croc named Gustave.

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

I picked up Natsuo Kirino’s Out on a whim, mostly based on the cover and because it was on the end cap at Barnes & Noble. I loved Out. It was bloody, feminist, thrilling, tightly woven. When I saw that Natsuo Kirino had a new book out, I could barely wait for it to hit paperback (which I didn’t, I waited for it to hit my Quality Paperback Book Club). I was worried it wouldn’t be as good, but I was wrong. Grotesque was different, but still excellent.

Grotesque is a dark, brooding novel, much like Out, in which Kirino continues to peel back the dark corners of modern Japan and the everyday darkness women there face. Her characters, though, face the world in such colorful ways – like slicing up abusive husbands in showers. This time around, Kirino tells the story of two women in their 30s who have been killed almost a year apart in the same way. Yuriko and Kazue knew each other a long time ago, and now both turn tricks (one for fun and one to make the rent).  It may seem like the only things these two women might have in common is their professions and their deaths, but really what ties them together is the narrator – a nameless woman who happens to be the older sister of one and the former classmate of the other who tells the tale is an almost monotone and yet self-protective way.

The narrator slowly tells the histories of these two women, telling her own arrogant, desperately clinging story as well. Yuriko is beautiful; in fact, she is pretty much doomed by her looks, as she soon decides it is the only way to make her way in the world. Kazue, on the other hand, is awkward and unpopular, constantly trying to rise and yet getting nowhere.  The narrator is miserable and spiteful of everyone from the beginning.  These girls grow up in a world where survival of the fittest is evident in every move they make.  In this world, conformity is king; there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place. Yuriko is too beautiful. Kazue’s drive for success and popularity is too evident to be accepted.  They really have no chance – and in the end find freedom in their grotesque and monstrous selves.  To become free – to sell themselves as prostitutes - allows them a freedom most in Japanese society can’t find. In the end, that freedom gives them the chance to be murdered by a foreigner and be envied by the narrator, who wallows in her bitterness and hatred.

It’s a powerful indictment of the world Natuso Kirino lives in, and a very powerful voice to be heard. I think Kirino is an amazing writer. You can enjoy her work on a purely superficial level, reveling in the grotesque and disturbingly bloody images she creates, or you can look and see her deeper message. Either way, it’s a deeply disturbing and yet truly enjoyable read.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs – just what I was looking for – a truly disconcerting and liberating book. It would be 5 Purrs but it wasn’t quite as good as Out.

One Missed Call (Remake)

I loved the original One Missed Call. Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors, but his American remake is nothing like the original - at least in tone, scares, or quality. I almost bought this movie and boy, am I glad I didn’t.

In One Missed Call, people are haunted by a phantom ringtone. They get calls to their voicemail saying One Missed Call, with this weird ring tone, and they hear their own deaths. Shannyn Sossoman is Beth – the heroine. Her friends are the ones who keep dying off with the weird phone messages. She hooks up with Ed Burns (but doesn’t “hook” up with him) to solve the mystery.

I usually don’t mind American remakes of Asian horror all that much. I really liked The Grudge and The Grudge 2. Dark Water was okay. The Ring was freaking scary as hell. I almost climbed right the hell out of my seat when Samara came crawling out of that TV (I saw that movie as a team-building event for work. How cool is that?!). One Missed Call just left me cold. I don’t care of you practically remake the movie, shot for shot, it has to be scary, and this version just plain wasn’t. The motive was trite, and followed pretty much the same plot and scares as the original. At least with the original, you had some good scares and the actors had some chemistry. This version had none of either. I hate to say that too, cause I like Ed Burns and Shannyn Sossoman.

I read in the IMDB trivia for this movie and saw that the director Eric Valette told the actors and crew to not watch the original (and he didn’t either). Somehow, that explains so much.

Rating: 4 Hisses – this should have been scary scary scary. Instead I was bored out of my mind.

Coupling

Steve: You bring these things into our homes. They sit on our chairs. They watch our televisions. Now, I just need to know, on behalf of all men everywhere, I just need to ask, please... What are they for? I mean, look at them! Look at the chubby little bastards! Just sitting around everywhere! What are they, pets for chairs? 

[to shop assistants] 

Steve: Come on, you sell them. What are they for? 

Junior Shop Assistant: Well... 

Senior Shop Assistant: You sit on them. 

Steve: Ah! Ha ha ha! You see, that's where you're wrong! Nobody sits on them. Okay, watch this. Here's the cushion. I'm putting it on the sofa. Now watch me. I'm stting down. And what do I do on my final approach? I - oh! - move the cushion! You see? It's not involved! It's not part of the whole sitting process. It just lies there. It's fat litter! It's a sofa parasite!

I watched Coupling at first under duress. We have these friends who said, oh, you’ll love it. It’s hilarious. I thought, isn’t it a British “Friends”? The first episode didn’t impress me much, but I kept watching, and I ended up laughing my ass off for 3 seasons.

Coupling is all about a group of 6 friends. You have Steve & Susan, who start dating at the beginning of Season 1. They bring along their friends Patrick (who used to date Susan and is a real ladies’ man), Sally (Susan’s best friend who is completely obsessed with getting old), Jane (Steve’s ex who just can’t believe that Steve broke up with her), and Jeffrey (Steve’s best friend who is completely inane when it comes to the opposite sex). The show follows their swapping and pairings and dates and constant talks about sex. It’s really quite funny.

The best parts of the show, to me, are the all of a sudden rants that Steve ends up having. He bottles things up and then BAM - enter the sofa cushion conversation that I quoted above. That’s the episode that had me in tears, literally laughing and bawling because I have had that conversation with Pandabob, only he never involved Daleks. That’s the episode that now has my parents watching Coupling too. I was watching it on my laptop one night up at the condo in Red River and they couldn't figure out why I was laughing so damn hard.

Coupling is definitely not a British Friends. In fact, I never liked Friends. Coupling is funny in the way Friends should have been. My only caveat is that Season 3 isn’t as funny – Jeffrey leaves the show and is replaced by Oliver, who is just as hapless but somehow not as funny. Jeffery just gets himself into these situations that are just so hapless and impossible. 

Rating: 4 Purrs – Coupling isn’t Black Books (which I will HEART forever because of ‘Popsicle! Popsicle!”) but it’s pretty damn funny.

Killer on the Road by James Ellroy

I love James Ellroy. The man has such a twisted brain and such a way with words. His books always bring out the dirtiness in the places the sun shines the brightest, and this book, Killer on the Road is no exception.

The Killer on the Road is Martin Plunkett. He’s a super smart guy with no soul, a guy who discovers his true vocation as a murderer in the occasionally sunny town of San Francisco. He relishes his ability to commit the perfect murders, and spends the next decade traveling across the states wrecking havoc until he finds a true soul mate, which proves to be his undoing.

Ellroy uses first person narrator here and uses it to show you just how twisted this Martin Plunkett is. It’s very effective. Plunkett grows up, refining his technique to the tune of the Manson murders and sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. His mind is terrible, and it’s even more eerie if you have read Ellroy’s autobiography of sorts, My Dark Places. Plunkett’s beginnings remind me much of Ellroy’s own. (Not that I think Ellroy is a serial killer or anything, just that he obviously knows a thing or two about breaking and entering.)

I think Killer on the Road is second in my list of favorite Ellroy books, following closely behind The Black Dahlia. It’s just so evil.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs for just being you, Mr. Ellroy. No one writes quite like you do.

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

I love birthdays. It's like Christmas for my book and DVD libraries.

• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
• Falling Man by Don DeLillo
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

Die! Monster! Die!

“Father has never allowed me to go on the heath.”

I love old horror movies from the 1960’s based on H.P. Lovecraft. They are always so cheesy. Die! Monster! Die! Is based on “The Colour Out of Space,” and has all the things you would expect from a British horror movie of the time. There’s a spooky old mansion that no one from the town wants to go (I almost had visions of The Haunting, with “no one will come at night, in the dark, “ etc.) and that houses a family with a somewhat sinister back story. There are oversized, forced perspective shots of “alien” things, plus glowing “radiation” rocks, and there’s the plucky heroine and her creepy parents – but this time you get a bonus. It’s Boris Karloff.

Die! Monster! Die! was a lot of fun. It’s silly, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. A young American man, Stephen, travels to his fiancée’s English estate. There’s trouble there – her father has found a meteorite that ends up mutating the animals and plants on the estate. When the meteorite begins changing the family members, Stephen must get Leticia away to safety, and her father must fight his demons. Who will survive?

Like I said before, Die! Monster! Die! was so much fun. Boris Karloff really hams it up – glowering from his wheelchair, eyebrows wiggling. Really, he makes the movie, along with the overly gigantic animals and plants. If you like those Hammer films and the like, you’d probably like this one.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a fun, silly Lovecraft movie complemented by Boris Karloff brows

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl

I heard so much about Special Topics in Calamity Physics before I bought it that I had very high expectations. There was so much buzz about this book that it could have been disastrous, but really it was a pretty good book. It had its moments of feeling a little too gimmicky, but overall it was a good story with entertaining characters and a nice mystery to boot.

In Special Topics in Calamity Physics, you meet Blue Van Meer, very studious and very smart daughter of a self-absorbed scholar. Blue and her dad travel from college town to college town, her father working his way through girlfriends and Blue working her way through schools. Eventually they end up in Stockton, North Carolina at the very preppy St. Gallway school where Blue becomes entangled in a mystery, in a small group of the “elite” students, and in her first true romance. Blue’s experiences with this group of kids, the “Blue Bloods,” and their mentor, Hannah Schneider, the electric and odd film teacher, change her forever. Blue’s relationships with these new people divert her from fawning over her father, but also bring her deep into a mystery – why do they even involve her at all, why is Hannah so interested in her, and who is the man who drowns in Hannah’s pool? Blue and to some degree, the BlueBloods, try to decipher the truth behind Hannah, and eventually behind Hannah’s death.

The shtick here is that Blue Van Meer is writing this story as a report in one of her college classes, and thus annotates it madly with references to books real and imagined, includes drawings, and even has a final exam at the end. Blue writes this way, mostly due to her father telling her once to “exquisitely” annotate her works. It can be fun to follow along with the literary and pop culture references she includes, but if you don’t like footnotes and that sort of thing, just stay away.  Occasionally, Pessl uses these affectations to hide the fact that some of her secondary characters are thinly written as well. It occasionally leaves you wanting more meat and less fluff.

Overall, I can see why the book got such good reviews – the idea, the gimmick are fresh and those literary types love to be able to laugh and think – ha I got that lit geek reference (I’ll admit it, I did it once or twice myself. ) It’s a fun read, and Blue Van Meer is a character that sticks with you for a while.  It’s a very good first novel, and I hope Pessl continues to grow and write even more.

Rating: 4 Purrs for some truly creative and bittersweet moments and some fairly memorable train wrecks as the Blue Bloods.