Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers by Mary Roach

I wasn’t so sure I could believe the hype surrounding this book. I wondered how someone can write about what happens to cadavers when you donate them to science, make it funny, sometimes laugh out loud funny, and yet still be totally respectful of the dead. Somehow, Mary Roach is able to be all of that and more.

Stiff was hilarious. Mary Roach is matter of fact from the start, using her unique and funny voice to explain all the different ways your body can be used if you donate it to science. You might think your body would end up in some Gross Anatomy class, and it might, but there are plenty of other ways your cadaver can be used. Think car crash experiments. Think military gear tests, especially bombs and how they affect the body. Think practice sessions for plastic surgeons. Think the body farm, where forensic scientists see how well and how long, and generally how you decay. Before all of that though, she includes a chapter on the history of cadavers and medical science, including body snatchers and their place in this weird sphere.

Stiff seems like it might be just a wry take on what happens to you after you are dead, but really Roach includes an amazing amount of detail in such a small book. It can become a bit heavy, but just when you think you can’t take any more, Roach digresses into some odd fact or makes some kind of comment that makes you laugh. The important thing is, she never “speaks ill of the dead;” in fact, her tone can sometimes be almost reverent. She always makes sure you understand the purpose behind using the cadavers in experiments; she wants you to know what they want to learn, and how cadavers have played an unsung role in more than just medical history.

I really enjoyed this book. In fact, I think it’s probably one of my new favorites. It really is an amazing combination – funny, serious, informative. I'm definitely going to pick up Spook, her book on the afterlife, and Bonk, or everything you always wanted to know about sex.

Rating: 5 Purrs for someone who can write,

“It’s just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver. Get involved with science. Be an art exhibit. Become part of a tree. Some options for you to think about.
Death. It doesn’t have to be boring.”

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Part of my latest horde:

• The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke - I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell so we'll see how this one goes.
• Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston
• The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig
• The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey - Another Richard III mystery. 
• The Post-Birthday World: A Novel by Lionel Shriver
• The Nymphos of Rocky Flats: A Novel by Mario Acevedo - Vampires & nymphomaniacs. I couldn't pass it up. 
• My Lush Life by Douglas McEwan - Highly recommended by my wine bar guy. I had to pick this one up at Half Price. 
• The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor - I love Flannery O'Connor's short stories. 
• E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings - I've always liked e e cummings, but lately I have become borderline obsessed. 
• The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
• Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories by Roald Dahl
• Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America by Eric Nuzum - I loved his book  The Dead Travel Fast, so I thought I would check out his earlier book on music censorship.
  

Susie, do you know anything about... witches?

My copy of Mother of Tears just arrived at Pandabob's office. Oh how I wish I were over there so I could rip the package open and watch it *right the hell now.*

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann

Three Bags Full is another one of those books I would never have found had it not been for Quality Paperback Books (QPB). I joined the book club on a whim back in college and have consistently found books there that were in a word, awesome. I mean awesome in the true sense of the word, too, not the overused "awesome" people say today. Three Bags Full is just another in that long line of satisfying impulse purchases.

In this very amusingly titled book, the sheep of Glennkill have a problem. One morning they are out and about, grazing the fields like normal, and they find their beloved shepherd, George, dead with a spade through the heart. Of course, the sheep can't rely on the humans of the village to investigate the murder thoroughly. The sheep know someone in the village had to have a reason to want George dead...if only they can put it all together. Now it's up to Miss Maple (named not so much to mimic Miss Marple, but she is the cleverest sheep in Glennkill) and her fellow flock to uncover whodunit. After all, George was more than just a shepherd. He was their friend. He read stories to them. He promised to take them to Europe. They want "justice."

What I love most about this book is that, yes, it can seem like a silly premise. It is funny. But the sheep truly care for George. The author thinks enough of her characters to create individual personalities for each sheep or ram in the flock, weaving together true sheep characteristics with human so that each character is memorable, each provides a part to the greater good of the flock, and each in their own way helps solve the mystery. The flock's interpretations of strange words and the villagers' actions sometimes are way off base but sometimes they are terribly accurate. The author uses these funny, sweet, goofy sheep to point fingers at her human characters, uncovering the darkness within, but also uncovering what makes each of us human. It's very effective, amusing, and sad. The mystery is simple (no Agatha Christie Then There Were None here), but the journey is what makes this story so worthwhile.

The best scene - when the sheep try to communicate "whodunit" to the humans at the "Smartest Sheep in Glennkill" contest. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. Seriously. Pandabob didn't know what to do - he didn't know if he should pull the car over so I could breathe (I read this on the way back home from New Mexico).

I won't forget Miss Maple, Zora, the winter lamb, Mopple, and their friends for a very long time. I never thought I would read a book that had me rooting for the sheep, but this one did. It was a perfect vacation read - funny, engaging, bittersweet, and worth every page.

Rating: 4 1/2 stars - it meandered a bit here and there but otherwise it was perfect

Ah vacation...

Vacation - the days where you can read a million books, take a million pictures, relax...

Well, I didn't quite get a million books read, and maybe not a million pictures, but I did read a whole heck of a bunch (I was only gone a week or so) and took so many pictures it's going to take me weeks of cropping, etc., before I can get them all posted.

I took about twice as many books as I actually read on my trip last week, which is pretty normal. My goal was to take things I wanted to read, even if I had read them before many times. I took some new stuff too, but I took some old favorites to revisit because I can never seem to convince myself to re-read things when it's "regular" reading.

What I read while I was gone:

• Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs - I picked these up because I love Bones. While the characters in the book are quite different from the TV Show, I still enjoy the dual mystery and forensics detailed in this series. I didn't think this was nearly as good as some of the former entries in the Temperance Brennan series of books. Here Dr. Brennan is trying to take a vacation with the hunky cop from Canada, but instead she find a big cache of bones that might be bear and might have some human there too. The investigation, death threats, and gore ensues. There's a lot of detail about endangered species here and you can't help but think that it's a topic close to Ms. Reichs' heart. I'd recommend it if you like forensics and want a pretty detailed look at the science.
  
• The Dispatch by Bentley Little - I like Bentley Little. His books are like horror cotton candy. They are tasty, fun, easy to eat up, but sometimes they give you a stomach ache after. This one is a bout a guy who writes letters. The letters he writes end up making things happen, and someone notices and wants to use him for something not so ethical. It's not his best work. I'd recommend The Walking or The Collection (short stories) first.
• The Maul and The Pear Tree by P. D. James and T. A. Critchley - A non-fiction work about the Ratcliffe Highway murders that took place in the early/mid 1800's. The book was very thoroughly researched, but the story felt sort of dry. Not nearly as engrossing as P.D. James' mystery stories. It's nice on a completist's perspective to have read this too, but I think I'll stick to her fiction from now on.
• The Mummy : or Ramses the Damned by Anne Rice - I can't help it. I love this book. Always have, always will. Julie's dad dig's up Ramses' tomb, only to discover he's an immortal. An immortal who fell for Cleopatra. Chaos ensues. Romance blooms. Things blow up and people die. Seriously, it's not Pulitzer Prize material, but I love it anyway. It's my favorite Anne Rice book, ever.
• No Escape by Heather Lowell - It's a romance/thriller/mystery. I know. So sue me.
  
• Sunshine by Robin McKinley - Robin McKinley, one of my favorite authors of all time, writes a vampire novel. It's an interesting take - Rae, nicknamed Sunshine, likes to bake things. She's the Queen of Cinnamon rolls. She wants to just do that, but when some vampires kidnap her, she remembers what her Grandmother taught her - how to transmute objects. When she decides to save the life of Con, the vampire chained to the wall (she's supposed to be his lunch but he won't eat her), her life will never be the same. What I like about this book is that Con isn't a sympathetic, romantic vampire, at least not that much, and definitely not for most of the book. He's flawed, not really all that handsome, and Rae doesn't really find him attractive. In fact, she thinks something is very wrong with her for even helping him. I've read this before, and I picked it up again because of my sister-in-law getting me hooked on all of these Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels and those Twilight books. This one was much more complex and a completely different voice. I highly recommend it - and please Ms. McKinley, write the darn sequel.
  

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.  

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

I love birthdays. I spent the Amazon love from my brother and his girlfriend (who somehow got me shamefully addicted to these ridiculous vampire novels everyone has been raving about...seriously, I am embarrassed to say it. 

Books:

• Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
• Rising Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

DVDs:

• D.E.B.S. - Love this movie. It's so adorable, and it fosters my Jordana Brewster crush.
• Imagine Me & You - So sweet. Plus Piper Perabo and Lena Headly fall in love.
• Commando: Director's Cut - I love this movie. It's one of those that I watch every time it's on. I thought Alyssa Milano was so cool in this movie (I was also, maybe 11 when I first saw it.)

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Thanks to the pater and mater, I had a nice run at the used DVD store and Barnes & Noble for my birthday (it's Wednesday, if you are curious). Thanks to my brother and his girlfriend, I also have some Amazon love still to spend. 

DVDs

• Catch and Release  - Yes, I know it was silly and sappy and all that, but I just had to have it.
• Bats - Yes, that movie. My Dina Meyer crush knows no bounds.
• The Ruins Unrated - Loved the book, movie was alright
• Nightbreed - Gotta love Clive Barker
• The Shining (BluRay) - I absolutely love this movie. Now I can see it in super crisp definition.
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - As much as I fought it, I love Harry Potter.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Clash of the Titans - Ray Harryhausen - genius
• DOA: Dead or Alive - Chicks and karate. Need I say more.
• The Cave - Lena Headley. Piper Perabo. Slimy cave creatures. It's not The Descent, but it is too fun to pass up for 5 bucks.
• Vampires - James Woods is such a smart ass. Plus, my pal at work used to date Sheryl Lee's cousin. 
• The Tripper - Slasher killer in a Reagan Mask. Hee!
• Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - I dunno. I couldn't help it.
• A Clockwork Orange (BluRay) - Kubrick. BluRay. How could I not?
• Ghost World - Loved the comic. Loved the movie. Love Scar Jo.
• Mars Attacks! -  I don't know how I never got this on DVD. So funny.
• 30 Days of Night - So bleak. Danny Huston is pretty good, but mostly I just love vampire movies.
• Spaced: The Complete Series - I also love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Pandabob got this for me. 

Books

• The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore 
• Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan
• New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Catacombs

“My sister sent me a postcard. All it said was, "Come to Paris. It will be good for you." Forty-eight hours after I arrived, she and everyone I'd met were dead.”

Catacombs sounded a whole heck of a lot more interesting than it ended up being. The idea is this: young woman travels to Paris to visit her sister. The girl is a bit tense, not so comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings, while her sister is vivacious, carefree, and constantly on her sister’s case for being too “stiff.” So what happens? The crazy sister drags the wallflower sister out to a rave in the catacombs under Paris, after telling her, of course, all about the scary, mass murdering, crazy child of a satanic cult that stalks the underground tunnels, looking for hapless victims. What happens next – well, what do you expect? Pretty soon the tense sister is running around, lost, scared about of her mind that the satanic love child is after her.

I loved the idea of a horror movie in the catacombs. The whole idea of underground parties, miles and miles of underground tunnels and old stuff sounded like a wonderfully claustrophobic setting for a horror movie. It was a great idea – in fact, the setting was the best part of the movie. Everything else, well it was rubbish. But you know, I have to say what bothered me the most was Pink. Yes, I said Pink, the pink-haired, Let’s Get This Party Started singer with the crazy abs. Her music, not terribly bad – but her acting was awful. She plays the fun loving sister and has absolutely no chemistry with Shannyn Sossamon, who plays the other sister. She wooden, and in turn, Shannyn seems even more wooden and bland. Instead of being tense and spooky, it ends up just being painful. Oh yes, also, the whole trick ending is just ludicrous, really. We’ve seen it before and seen it much better.

If you can’t tell already, I was disappointed with Catacombs. So much potential and it ended up being just a horrible retread of Creep (which wasn’t awesome by any means, but it was much better than this. Plus Franka Potente – got to love her!)

Rating: 1 Hiss – stupid movie – made me all interested with your creepy catacombs and ending up being ludicrous Phooey on you

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Here's the latest haul from Half Price Books:

• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• The Night Country by Stewart O'Nan
• The Ring art by Misao Inagaki, original novel by Koji Suzuki
• Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
• Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
• Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman
• Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
• Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley
• The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Y The Last Man by Brian K Vaughn, Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan, Jr.

I picked up the first few trades of Y The Last Man because Whitney from Pop Candy (USA Today's pop culture blog) recommended it in a post about great comics to pick up and read. I read the first trade and then promptly put it down. I knew then that I couldn't read any more until Brian K Vaughn had decided to end the series. I knew I wouldn't be able to stop reading once I started, and you know, I was right. I picked up the last trade in the Y series a month or so ago, and then read them all as quickly as possible in two nights' sitting. I just couldn't stop, they were so good. 

In Y The Last Man, Yorick is just your average, out of work college graduate. Nobody special. He likes books (lit major, got to love it).He also happens to be the only surviving male on the planet after a plague wipes every other man or animal out that has the Y chromosome. Well, outside of Ampersand, the monkey he was training. For some reason he survived too. And now, Yorick and Ampersand join forces with Agent 355 (a government agent sworn to protect him) and Dr. Alison Mann (the woman who might have started the plague and hopefully can find a cure) to make it across country to Dr. Mann's lab to find out why Yorick survived.  It seems like it might be simple, except there are crazy ultra-feminists calling themselves Amazons running in packs across the country, and they want to see Yorick dead. The Israelis want him to help rebuild Mother Israel. The rest of the country can't believe he's anything but a myth. Yorick just wants to find his girlfriend, Beth, who happens to be trapped in the Australian Outback. Will he ever find Beth? Will Dr. Mann save the future of human kind? Will the world rebuild itself? Who started the plague?

The story really just pulls you along, but of course I really like armageddon, end of the world type stories. The Amazons drove me nuts, but you can imagine how society would fall apart when struck with something so random. (Now, I'm not saying the ladies can't take care of themselves. They most certainly can. It just shows you that it's not only the Y chromosomes of the species that can make you drink the Kool-Aid.) Yorick is a funny guy, and I love all of the literary references that end up in the different stories. The art in these comics is really lovely. 

Really, I can't recommend these enough. I loved them. Now I am just sad that it is over. The ending of the series was really the best way to end it, but now I am sad. I know Yorick's story had to end sometime, but I can't help but feel wistful. Phooey that it's over. Maybe Ex Machina (another Vaughan series) will fill the void. 

Devour

I picked up Devour because I can’t help but have a super crush on Jensen Ackles. He is from Texas after all. I am so very thankful he got his role on Supernatural so he can have better character to play, because Devour, well, it sucked.

In Devour, Jake Gray (my favorite snarky demon fighting brother, Jensen) keeps having these really nasty nightmares. He’s in the woods hunting something, or sees his friends covered in blood, things like that. His two best friends decide that for his birthday they will sign him up for this weird online game called the Pathway, cause, you know, all the kids are doing it. Soon, his dreams get worse, his friends are starting to go a little but nuts, and he starts losing them one by one. Soon Jake is investigating the game with the help of the new gal in town, thinking somehow it is responsible for what is happening to his friends. Is it connected with the Devil somehow, and how is Jake connected?

It could have been an okay movie, if they had just left out the stupid game, or if they were going to have the game be a major player, make it more interesting like say, Stay Alive. Maybe tried to, I dunno, not try to mix a bunch of different ideas together like they threw darts at a dartboard. Overall the acting wasn’t atrocious, you could tell the actors were trying to do something with the poorly written dialogue they were given. The atmosphere was decent at times, I always love a woodland setting.

I can’t really recommend Devour, even though Jensen is in it. Just rent or buy Supernatural and watch that instead. Trust me.

Rating: I can’t even give it a 3 Purrs for Jensen being in it. This one has to get a Hiss. I hate to do it, but there it is.

Duma Key by Stephen King

Once again, Stephen King wrote a book that kept me reading like mad, not wanting to put it down even to sleep. While I eagerly anticipate each new book of his, I also dread it, because I know I won’t wait for paperback and I won’t stop reading it until I am finished. Duma Key was no deviation from this pattern.

In Duma Key, we meet Edgar Freemantle, a very rich man, self-made of course, who has a horrific car wreck at one of his building sites. He loses an arm and bangs his skull up nicely, and he eventually claws his way back out to somewhat normal after a long bout of rehabilitation, despite the uncontrollable rages that cost him is wife of 20 years. His psychiatrist recommends that he have a change of scenery, so Edgar shops around and finds a house out on a very remote Florida Key, a very bright pink house that seems to call to him. (You know what that means…there’s going to be something creepy going on.) Once there, Edgar finds himself returning to his first love- art. He becomes obsessed and churns out pencil sketches, paintings all with a Dali-esque quality that haunt him in his dreams and earn him a following in the Florida Keys art community. Very quickly Edgar discovers that his art has a power to kill and to heal, and soon he discovers that there is something haunting Duma Key, something that wants to use his art to destroy his friends and family. Will Edgar save his family, or will the evil that lives in his paintings be freed?

I liked some parts of Duma Key very much, but others I felt were too much of a retread of places we have been before. Towards the end of the book, it roams at that point into Bag of Bones and Lisey’s Story territory with ghostie types and haunted houses. I like the supernatural mystery though, so it doesn’t bother me much, I just want to see something really fresh next time. What I liked? The fact that Edgar was a painter and I loved the images of his paintings and sketches that I conjured in my head. I also felt a real sense of building dread in this book, right up until the big climax and slowly whittling down the dénouement.

Overall, I am going to say Duma Key was a good Stephen King book, but it wasn’t great. I liked it, but I won’t read it year after year like The Stand.

Rating: 3 1/5 Purrs for making Raggedy Ann creep me the hell out

Shoot'em Up

“I’m a British nanny, and I'm dangerous.”

Never has a movie been so aptly named. Shoot’em Up is pretty much that – a shoot’em up game brought to the big screen. It’s really a very silly movie – I don’t know how they got Clive Owen and Monica Belluci to sign on for this flick.

One night, a down-on-his luck looking guy (Clive Owen) is just minding his own business when a very pregnant lady comes running by, followed by a guy with a gun very intent on whacking her. Cue the homeless looking guy ending up kicking ass and helping deliver the baby, but unfortunately, now he’s stuck with it and is on the run from the baddies. Luckily, he knows a lactating hooker (Monica Belluci), and soon they are all on the run. Why do these bad guys want the baby dead? What do heavy metal music, a gun factory, and politics have to do with it all?

Really, this movie is quite ridiculous. It feels very comic book and video game-ish, but not in a good way. It was better than Crank, by far, but just a tad too silly for my tastes. But since I love Clive Owen and Monica Belluci, I had to rent it. It was funny and it was bad. Sometimes that is a good combination but other times, it’s just plain not.

Rating: 3 Purrs, cause I just can’t give a hiss to a movie with Clive Owen and a lactating hooker called DQ (who ends up working at a sort of Dairy Queen) in it

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

On the Road is really my first real introduction to the Beats, other than some poetry reading here and there during college. It’s a shame to think I graduated from college with a degree in Literature without more of it under my belt, but you know how those classes go – and to be honest, I did tend to focus more on those women’s studies and contemporary lit classes than post war literature. On the Road wasn’t quite what I was expecting, and I read it mostly because Pandabob has delved into his Beat era interest and he handed it over to me.

In On the Road, Sal Paradise (or Jack Kerouac, since this is a thinly veiled autobiographical work) chronicles his travels back and forth across America and into Mexico after the war. His pal, Dean Moriarty, has inspired him to hit the road to expand his horizons. He takes you on the journey with him, but it’s a journey of the days where you drive cross-country, pick up hitchhikers or become one yourself. You live free, have very little if any money, and eat cheap sandwiches made from the bread and meat you snatch from the roadside gas stations while the owner isn’t looking. There is a naiveté about it, a gleeful freedom, an energy and drive that still captures the itchy feet anyone gets sometime in their lives – the desire to break off from the known and head out to somewhere, anywhere that is different to see what there is to see – to live abundantly and honestly and free in the world at large. There is all of that, but I also felt there was also an underlying unhappiness, a feeling of drifting, with few ties to anyone or anything.

I understand the place On The Road has in American literature. It’s an important work. It’s bohemian, it’s raw and full of honest, simple language, much like you would expect. I understand that it’s highly influential. I just had a very hard time getting past just how much of an asshole Dean Moriarty is. So even though I can respect the feel of the work, what Kerouac was doing, his purpose in writing it and the movement he spawned by doing so, I also want to reach into that damn book and slap that fool Moriarty around for being such a jerk. But you know, maybe that’s just me. Part of me wanted to get in the car right then and drive, and every time we get in the car and drive to New Mexico, maybe I'll carry some of that spirit with me. 

Rating: 4 Purrs for being a great work of art, and for Kerouac for being honest enough to show the warts on himself and the people he knew

Happy Birthday to Me

You have just got to love a horror movie that has Melissa Sue Anderson in it.  Who would believe that sweet little Mary from Little House on the Prairie would be in a slasher film, and a good slasher movie at that.

In Happy Birthday to Me, Ginny (Melissa Sue Anderson) attends the Crawford Academy, a college prep school, where she finally belongs to the clique of cool kids. As Ginny’s 18^th birthday approaches, her friends are disappearing one by one. Could it have something to do with the car accident she suffered a few years before?  What happens to Ginny during her blackouts?

This is a slasher worth watching. The Crawford Academy is a great setting for a horror flick, and although Ginny and her friends do lean into stereotypes, they are also not so stereotypical that they don’t have something to them. There are several memorable deaths, including my all time favorite – death by shish kabob. What other film can say they have a death by shish kabob? It’s so good, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone used it again, but this movie will always be my first. Also the icky brain surgery scenes from Ginny’s car accident are right up there with those Exorcist Regan in the MRI scenes. Ouch.

This is truly a great slasher. Sure, it’s got some problems, like why are teenagers at a prep school served alcohol at the local tavern? It really feels like it should have been a college movie - they all look like college kids anyway. But it’s got a good twist ending and good acting, plus plenty of icky deaths to round things out. I’ve seen this one several times and love it every time.

Rating: 5 Purrs for death by shish kabob, the red herrings, and an unexpected ending

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Love that spur of the moment trip to Barnes & Nobel, Titan Comics, and Best Buy:

• Day of the Animals
• HellBoy Director's Cut on BluRay
• Unbreakable on BluRay
• FABLES: The Good Prince Volume 10
• Y: The Last Man - Whys and Wherefores Volume 10
• Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
• The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (I gave in - color me embarrassed.)
• New England White by Stephen L. Carter
• In the Woods by Tana French
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (I loved In the Lake of the Woods but haven't read this one yet.)
• Tricked by Alex Robinson

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

New books n' stuff for my library:

• Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
• John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide by John Shaw
  
• The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2 by Scott Kelby
  
• Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Ten Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists by Richard T. Kelly
• Prom Night DVD- the original most awesome Jamie Lee Curtis version

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Triffids! Everyone’s favorite monster plant! I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid – and when I saw that John Wyndham’s book had been re-published, I snatched it right up in my grubby hands. I knew it was on several short lists of the best apocalyptic science fiction novels of all time, so naturally it had been on my short list for a long time.

In The Day of the Triffids, Bill Masen wakes up in the hospital after being stung by a Triffid. Bill made his living working with these strange plants that can uproot themselves and walk on three legs, kills or maim you with their poisonous sting, and possibly communicate with each other. Bill wakes up, his eyes bandaged from the attack, only to discover that the unusual meteor shower the night before has rendered most people on earth blind. He wanders through the city, watching things fall apart, people wandering aimlessly, only to find Josella, a sighted woman being held captive by a blind man. They join forces with a group of fellow survivors who plan to leave London before it becomes disease infested and ruined. Unfortunately things do not go as planned, and Josella and her new love are separated by a cog in the works – Coker. He’s kidnapped a few of the sighted survivors to help those in London left blind. More decay of civilization ensues, and Bill follows a quest to find Josella and escape to the countryside. The countryside is barely safer, as the Triffids have spread and have killed many of the humans left blind, as they are easy prey. The question is – will Bill ever find Josella again, and even if he does, will they be able to survive? Will the Triffids take over the planet?

While Wyndam’s novel suffers from the stereotypical male/female relationships of the time it was written, it is by no means as bad in that respect as Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. It is courageously dark, in fact, not hiding the fact that humanity would fall apart and into all sorts of chaos were something catastrophic to happen such as this. The ending of the novel seems bleak, not without hope, but there is a very tarnished silver lining to this tale.

I really liked this book – not only was it way more complex than the film I remember (naturally) but it had all of that spooky Cold War paranoia built-in. The characters were a little easy to mix up, especially the secondary characters, but it’s not terrible. Overall, I can see why some folks rank this as one of the best science fiction novels. It has all the elements of a good one – a nice plot, devastation of humanity and it’s will to survive, possible alien invasion or biological warfare, all that good stuff.

If you like science fiction, and don’t mind an oldie, check this one out.

Rating: 4 purrs for one of my new favorite science fiction novels, right up there with Ender’s Game

Horror Fest 2007: 8 Films to Die For

I really love the idea of a horror movie fest, after all what’s better than watching horror movies than watching hours and hours all in one day. (I love Friday the 13th, don’t you?) So last year and this year I have eagerly awaited the Films to Die For, and while last year I was a little disappointed with the films, this year I was really disappointed. I liked several last year – they weren’t very good but they were likable. This year it just felt like there wasn’t much to enjoy. Here are some thoughts on each, written in the order that I watched them.

Mulberry Street

I thought Mulberry Street was a decent beginner to the Films to Die for collection. It had a nice, small neighborhood feel that felt much what I think New York City would be like. In fact it reminded me a bit of CHUD, which another of those guilty pleasures of mine, and the filming in the real New York subway tunnels. There was plenty of gore, and while the rat people didn’t seem any different from say, the 28 Days Later infected, the slight twists of the story and some genuine scares made it worth watching. But honestly, bare bones, it really is a retread of 28 Days Later (which, yes, was a retread of a bunch of other movies).

Unearthed

Unearthed mostly felt like a big old waste of time. I really thought this one would be okay. After all Emmanuelle Vaugier is in it (CSI:NY, various straight to DVD films), and I like her style. But really, this movie about an archeological dig that unearths an alien like creature with a thirst for blood is missing a whole lot of something. Even Alien vs. Predator was better than this (Yes, I know it had a bigger budget, blah blah. Either way, it was a similar premise.) Unearthed’s new territory had more to do with casting a woman as sheriff and then having her be a raging alcoholic in need of redemption. Other than that it was a pretty plot-lacking rip off of Aliens or even the far superior Feast.

The Deaths of Ian Stone

I watched The Deaths of Ian Stone on my flight back to Dallas from San Francisco. It made the flight pass pretty quickly. I like Mike Vogel and Christina Cole (go Hex! – the British Sort of Buffy). Mike Vogel plays an all-American guy who has this problem- he keeps getting stalked and killed by weird looking creatures, and then waking up the next day in a new life to have it happen all over again. I liked this one a lot – the concept was cool – until the end. It got kind of goofy when you learn the “twist.”

Lake Dead

Lake Dead was just bad. Bad, bad, bad. Bad. I mean B.A.D.

Nightmare Man

Nightmare Man was also bad. Ellen has nightmares about a guy who looks like the new fertility mask she bought to help her conceive. On the way to the loony bin, Ellen is attacked and away she runs and ends up with a group hanging out at a house in the woods. From there the movie can’t decide if it’s funny or serious and it does neither well. It wasn’t as bad as Lake Dead, but when Pandabob came in from the GeekCave and said what the hell are you watching, well, I was embarrassed. It takes a lot for me to be embarrassed about watching a bad movie.

Borderland

Borderland was actually pretty good. Roughly based on a true story, Borderland finds 3 guys visiting a border town in Mexico for Spring Break. They are there to do what these guys usually do – drink-get high-have fun with the local girls. Everything was fine and dandy until they ran into the local human sacrifice cult. Man. This one had atmosphere, creepiness, and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) puts in a really icky and unexpected performance. Well worth the rental. The DVD includes an interesting documentary about the true story that inspired the film. That made the rental really worth it.

Tooth and Nail

This movie was also bad. Bad. Whoa buddy. The acting was awful, and the main heroine has no facial expressions whatsoever. Tooth and Nail is about our future – we run out of gas so the world goes to shit. Folks start being cannibals or hiding out from the cannibals. At the end, the heroine is supposed to go all Ripley on the bad guys but in fact just ends up looking like cardboard with tribal makeup. Note to self- when it’s time for me to beat up the bad guys, I’m going to make sure and don my “strong chick” leather vest. How she foils the bad guys makes no sense and I think it’s biologically impossible, but hey I’m a user interface designer – what do I know?

Crazy Eights

Crazy Eights should have been better with all of the bigger name stars in it – Dina Meyer, Traci Lords, Gabrielle Anwar, Frank Whaley, and George Newbern. The idea is good and the movie’s not bad either – it just felt like a whole heck of a lot was cut out. Six childhood friends reunite at a funeral and end up uncovering a secret that wants revenge and in the process end up at the weird psychiatric hospital where they all grew up. There are some serious plot holes here, but I love Dina Meyer so I’ll watch pretty much anything she’s been in, including that Wild Things sequel.

Maybe I just remember the previous years movies fondly, but this year’s horrorfest seemed lacking. Maybe next year it will be better.

Rating: Purrs and hisses all around

The Tripper

I had a friend recommend this movie to me – he’s even more of a movie geek than I am I believe, which is hard for me to admit, but since he actually watches a lot more “literary” films than I do, I’ll let him have the title for now. (Just kidding Matt.) The Tripper was just plain old fun – a goofball slash fest that had what I would think to be an Academy Award winning scene from Courtney Cox. What more could you ask for?

In The Tripper, a group of nouveau hippies hit the road to attend a music festival deep in the redwood forest. There’s Sam, the sweet girl who just got out of a bad relationship, Ivan, the druggie that might be her new boyfriend, and the rest of the drug addled crew as slasher fodder. They are ready to party, but the problem is there’s a guy out there with an affinity for Ronald Regan masks and sharp implements. He’s not happy that there are hippies in his woods. Not happy at all. Something to do with his childhood and a group of hippies chained to a tree. So he makes with the slash-slash and the chop-chop and the string the naked hippie guy up in a tree while the sheriff tries to shut down the love-in, the music producer tries to take off with the cash, and the locals stand by and laugh.

This movie, to me, sounded funnier than it actually was, but hey, I had pretty high expectations. I can’t help but hold up every “horror-comedy” up to Shaun of the Dead and compare them. There were real moments that were funny, but others felt forced. I love James King, what a beautiful woman, and hey I’m happy to see Lukas Haas and Balthazar Getty again, but really the true scene-stealer was Courtney Cox Arquette’s cameo. That was worth the rental right there. Overall, it’s a bit choppy (ha-ha) and almost too into the agenda, but hey, that cameo, man…

I’d say rent this is you like movies that poke fun at Republicans, or the idea of hippies at a music fest being sliced and diced by a guy in a Ronald Regan mask sounds funny to you. It is a laugh, if not heavy handed on the poking fun at times (hey what can I say, my parents are Republicans…I felt a little guilty laughing.)

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for the aptly named dogs and James King (love her), plus the “but I’m a Republican” joke – ha ha

Scotland, PA

“We're not bad people, Mac... just underachievers who have to make up for lost time.”

I heard about this movie a long time ago and it had been sitting in my NetFlix queue for a long time. I thought oooh, a MacBeth movie. Sounds interesting. And it was.
This retelling of MacBeth takes place in 1970’s Scotland, Pennsylvania, hence the name Scotland, PA. Joe McBeth and his wife Pat work in the local fast food joint. Pat’s convinced that Joe should be running the shop rather than bowing and scraping to the owner Duncan. She's sure that she could be doing a much better job of running the place. The oh so simple plan turns out to be a disaster, as you might expect from a Shakespearean tragedy. Things look bright for awhile, but you know how it goes – no water, no perfumes of Arabia can wash those hands clean, and boy do they know it.
The cast in this movie was amazing – James LeGros, Maura Tierney, Christopher Walken, and Amy Smart.  All sorts of indy verterans were in this one. The atmosphere was great and the 1970’s fast food resturant location was inspired. I mean, it it also a bit campy, but I think that was the point. I love Shakespeare, so I’m fine with extremely accurate, line by line interpretations, but this whole retelling has the comedy and tragedy all at the same time. I wouldn't consider it to be Oscar winning or anything like that, but it was a great rental. I’m ashamed that it sat so far down in my queue for so long.

Rating: 4 Purrs for campy, bell-bottomed French fried fun with tragedy and Christopher Walken to boot.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I picked up Sharp Objects because it sounded dark and spooky and a murder mystery to boot. It delivered on all of those counts, and then some. I tore through this book in just a few hours; I just couldn’t put it down.

In Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn tells the story of Camille Preaker, a Chicago journalist called back to her hometown to write a story about a murdered young girl.  Camille’s trip back to her hometown of Wind Gap, MO isn’t all wine and roses, in fact, her troubled childhood was enough to drive her to self-mutilate, carving words into her skin. Her highly dysfunctional family plays a key part of this novel, and to describe them in too much detail would take away a great deal of discovery. Camille’s mother is devoted to her youngest daughter, trapping the girl in a forever childhood. The father is barely there, bowing to the mother in all things. Camille isn’t so sure the police will solve the case; they think it’s a transient. Camille thinks it’s someone local. Who has killed to girls, and why? Will Camille find the truth?

Gillian Flynn does a great job building the suspense and slowly revealing the truth behind the mystery. The end is a double-whammy; you think you have it all figured out and then it’s something else, and then wham! It’s great and suitably disturbing all in one.  

This book was so much more than I expected. I thought I would find a decent mystery with a “cutter gimmick.”  Instead, I found a finely crafted mystery thriller way above the normal paperback thriller you take to the beach.

Rating: 5 Purrs for the creepiest mother since Joan Crawford

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

I just love Half-Price Books and their 20% off sale.

• The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
  
• Brimstone (Pendergast, Book 5) by Douglas Preston
  
• Dance of Death by Douglas Preston
  
• Dark Angels: A Novel by Karleen Koen
  
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan
  
• Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories by Charles Dickens
  
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  
• Still Life with Crows (Pendergast, Book 4) by Douglas Preston
  
• A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle
  
• Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg
  

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Here's a list of my latest trade additions from my favorite comic shop, Titan Comics. 

• Serenity: Those Left Behind by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad
• The Death of Superman
• We 3 by Grant Morrison
• Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond by Rhode Montijo
  

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

I've been quite the comic book geek lately. Here are some of my newest acquisitions:

• Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie - Redneck Bites the Dust by Scott Mills
• Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs Vol 1
• Doctor Who Classics
• Doctor Who
• Locke & Key by Joe Hill
• Serenity: Better Days
• The Dark Tower series
• Helen Killer Vol 1
• House of Mystery Vol 1
• Buffy Season 8
• I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space
• Buckaroo Banzai: Return of the Screw

Final Girl Film Club: The Devil's Daughter

You know, I went into The Devil's Daughter not expecting much. You know, 1970's TV Movie about devil worship and all that. Surely it won't be much of anything. Color me embarrassed - it was actually pretty good. It's on par with a long Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode (love those), and about half-way through, I said to myself, man this seems really familiar. I've actually seen it before, some time or another, probably when I was home sick from school and needed something to watch on TV.

In The Devil's Daughter, Diane Shaw returns home for her mother's funeral. She's never really known her mother, and at the gravesite, enter Shelley Winters. (Has she ever not been large and scary? Even in the Poseidon Adventure she was scary and she was supposed to be a nice character...) Lilith is a friend of dear old mom, and why don't you dear sweet girl come home and stay with me while you find a job and get settled? Of course, a nefarious plot must be afoot, and really, it's not too hard to figure out early on, but getting there is half the fun in this movie. 

Shelley Winters is more than enough of a reason to watch this movie - she's camp personified. She's like that crazy old lady that bakes you cookies all of the time that you just can't get rid of, and the cookies are missing the sugar but you don't have the heart to say anything. Her two neighbor friends are unsettling, like two overgrown idiot twins, even down to the same outfits. But the kicker comes at the end, in true, ta-da, movie of the week style. Again, it's not a shocker if you have seen any horror movies at all, but it's well done and like I said before. It's  just like ending up a Night Gallery episode, and my TIVO really knows just how much I love that show. 

Rating: 5 Purrs, cause you gotta love a movie that features an over-the-top painting of Satan that every character just pretends is perfectly natural for 3/4 of the movie, and of course, the mad, smiling face of Shelley Winters there at the end - now that's creepy

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Here are a few of the latest books I've added to my library:

• Tristessa by Jack Kerouac
• The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum
• Ghost by Alan Lightman
• Eat This, Not That by David Zinczenko

We've been slowly accumulating the Mystery Science Theater DVDs as well. Man, you gotta love those guys.

Sydney White

I rented Sydney White because I think Amanda Bynes is just adorable. What a Girl Wants was a  cute little movie and I liked She's the Man. Amanda Bynes makes the movies - she's cute, funny, not afraid to dress like a boy or fall down - very Lucille Ball. Sydney White was a disappointment, especially after seeing She's the Man, which was really very goofy and funny. 

Sydney White is a retelling of Snow White, with Amanda Bynes starting her first year of college and finding herself facing the "evil witch" aka head of the big time sorority and crushing on the handsome prince aka the fraternity boy next door. Sydney ends up at The Vortex becoming the "Snow White" and taking care of the resident outcasts (the seven dorks), and of course ends up making changes all over campus, true fairy tale style.

It's a cute idea, it just falls flat. I'm not sure if it's the directing, the script, the fact that Bynes seems almost manic in her humor, or that she seems a little too fake-baked to be appealing. I don't know, I just know that I was disappointed. (One thing that didn't disappoint me was the scene where Sydney is shaving her legs at the sink and one of her friendly dorks walks in. It's a shot of her oh-so-very long legs and wow. She's got legs and she knows how to use them. (Have I mentioned before that I am very much a leg person?) It feels slightly wrong to have that kind of reaction to someone 13 years or so my junior. It makes me feel like a dirty old lady, but seriously, she's become kind of a hottie. But I digress...)

Sydney White - it's not quite a fairy tale but you can't have everything I guess. 

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs - it would be more if the movie had seemed less forced and contrived. I can accept rom-coms to be that way but this seemed stilted rather than fantasy.

The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I first picked up a Preston and Child book because I really liked the movie Relic and I was curious about the source material. The book was substantially more robust, as you would expect, and different enough that the story was surprising. The Cabinet of Curiosities is the third story by Preston & Child to feature the mysterious Agent Pendergast and have a ton of interesting historical info on museums, natural history, and New York history.

In The Cabinet of Curiosities, construction workers at a new building site uncover a ghastly collection of bodies, all mutilated in the same fashion. Enter Agent Pendergast, the tall, pale agent involved with the earlier Relic and Reliquary novels who seems to be extra rich, full of endless facts, and borderline sexy (maybe that’s just me). Pendergast investigates with the help of Nora Kelly, an archeologist at the New York Museum of Natural History, much to the chagrin of her bosses and the building’s developer, who has the mayor pretty much in his pocket. Things heat up when the city is plagued by new killings that mimic the bodies found at the construction site, and Kelly’s boyfriend, William Smithback Jr., Times reporter, starts throwing out clues in the press. Is the serial killer just mimicking the19th century scientist who was looking for the secret to immortality or is the killer that same scientist become immortal.

I really liked the story here.  Why I like most about Preston’s & Child’s books (at least those that I have read) is the crazy amount of detail that is included about whatever the main storyline is – Relic and the whole DNA sequencing bit, this one with urban archeology.  The incredible detail about the museum and the mechanics of how it works is so interesting to my Art History, museum studies brain. Plus, I find the tall, pale, spooky Pendergast sexy in a weird sort of way. It’s probably the oversized brain he seems to have and his interest in the weird and spooky cases. It’s probably a hold over from my Spooky Mulder crush days. (Okay, so I still have a Spooky Mulder crush. I’ll admit it.) The story seems long at points but the tightly woven climax is page-turning.

What I didn’t like – Nora Kelly actually falling for the slime bag Smithback. I didn’t find much of value in his character but hey, maybe it’s my Pendergast crush talking.

Overall, if you like Michael Crichton books and his ability to turn future science into interesting stories, but like a little horror/sci-fi thrown in, you might check these guys out.

Rating: 4 Purrs, and not just because of Agent Pendergast

Death Sentence

"You go near my family, and I will cut out your goddamn guts like I did your fucking friend. Do you hear me?”

I was really surprised at how much I liked this movie. I had pretty low expectations going in – it’s a revenge flick so I didn’t expect much depth or much besides some gore and some angry scowls.  You know, some Charles Bronson blowing some guys away and maybe some Chuck Norris action here and there.  I was really surprised at how unexpected things were in this movie.

In Death Sentence, Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is a family man. Everything seems swell. He’s got a great wife, two great sons, a high paying job and a beautiful house. There’s some tension underneath the surface there though,…and after Nick Hume brush with the dark side of the city, all the underlying ugly comes out.  Nick and his star hockey player son are driving home after the game and have to stop for gas in a not so great part of town. You know, THAT part of town. The one that always shows up in these movies, the dark and not so safe looking one that you of course have to stop at because your car just happens to be out of gas right at that moment. Well, the bad guys come and kill the all-star favorite son, and when Nick hears that even though he can identify one of the doers, the guy won’t do much time.  Nick wants revenge, so a hunting he will go. The problem is, the gang doesn’t just sit back and take it, and that’s really when all hell breaks loose and things veer from what I think is the standard formula.

What did I like most about Death Sentence? Well, it was raw.  Nick Hume isn’t one of those Commando types that underneath his clean-cut exterior lies a ninja or a Army Ranger. No. Nick Hume is a normal family man. He may want revenge and he goes after it full force but he's not too slick about it.  His revenge is half dumb luck as it is  skill, in fact more dumb luck than anything.  The acting was spot on, with maybe the bad guys being a bit over the top, but that’s pretty normal. John Goodman's character was so evil – but went a long way to almost make you sympathetic towards the gang guy and his cohorts. There’s always a bigger fish in the pond.

I can’t really think of anything I disliked about Death Sentence. I was way better than I expected. It felt pretty tightly edited. Backstory was concise. The story was compelling and there was plenty of action and rough stuff.  I’m not sure I’ll buy this one cause I’m kind of  sad about the whole thing but I wish I had seen it in the theater. It would have been worth the full-on evening ticket price.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs for a near perfect revenge flick that doesn’t make you feel dirty like  some of those more grindhouse flicks can. I did think of something a little off – that guy's aim was pretty darn good for someone who had never shot a gun before. But hey – it’s Hollywood. Everyone hits targets right on in Hollywood.

The Executioner Always Chops Twice: Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold by Geoffrey Abbott

I picked this book up from my paperback book club and I think this might be the very first time I was disappointed. The Executioner Always Chops Twice seemed like it might be a quirky list of mishaps and goofs, but instead it was a pretty dry collection of whoopsies and gore.

Geoffrey Abbott knows his stuff  - he is a former Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London. The problem is he reports in such a way that it becomes almost tedious to finish them all. There’s a ton of stories in here (I think 80 to 90, somewhere in there), some illustrations to help with the imagination, and plenty of gore to aid in the nastiness. Not only are there amusing last words and whoops I missed your necks accidents, there are pretty detailed accounts of how executions are performed.  I think the real problem wasn’t a lack of interesting stories or last words, I think it’s that after 50 or so, it just gets to be a challenge to get through them all.

On an interesting side note, I had an up close look at a botched hanging last month when we stayed the night in a historic, haunted hotel in Clayton, New Mexico. The Eklund has photos of the whoopsie hanging of Black Jack Ketchum – you can see him caught, noose around his neck, on the platform, and beheaded because the noose was tied in one of the ways Mr. Abbott describes. It was a bit gruesome to see photos, but hey, I had to look.

I don’t know that I would recommend The Executioner Always Chops Twice to anyone looking for a laugh, but it can be darkly comedic for a while. It’s just that after about 30 examples, you get immune and it gets a bit depressing and then a bit boring.

Rating: 3 Purrs for lots of historical and background information but some hisses for needing some comic relief – off with its head with a flamingo croquet mallet

Aswang

Oh NetFlix, how you have betrayed me.  I took your recommendation. I trusted you. You said, Aswang, it was a big old too-do at Sundance some years back.  It caused a panic at the midnight showing. It's scary. Fie! Fie I say! I think maybe the panic it caused was people trying to leave because it was so damn boring.

In Aswang, Katrina is young, unmarried, and pregnant. She strikes a deal that looks pretty good on the surface – Peter Null is a rich man, and to keep his money he needs an heir. Problem is, his wife can’t have children. Solution- he hires Katrina to pretend she is his wife. Katrina’s problem is this – why is the family so damn creepy? Why is the housemaid giving her hard cider and getting her drunk? What about the weird dreams and the weird dried up baby cocoons in the trees surrounding the house?

What I could have liked about this movie was the idea behind it all. Aswang, Filipino vampires, would be scary, but not in this movie. Instead they creep around and have weird, phallic sucker tongues that get squished in windows. I mean, soul-sucking vampires that like to eat children. That’s scary. The problem is, none of it ends up being scary. The story is thin. The atmosphere is practically nil. The big twist, or the one thing I saw as possibly a twist was obvious from the beginning.  The acting is poor at best and laughable most of the time. 

I hate to be so negative about a horror movie. I mean, I LIKE bad horror movies. Usually there is something I can find that makes me laugh or spooks me or has some camp value that I'll remember fondly. But this, well, this one was bad with no camp value. Bad with no Manos, Hands of Fate value.  Bad and the cardinal sin of all movies - just plain boring.

Rating: 1 Hiss for nothing. I mean, I can’t think of anything here.

 

Capote in Kansas by Ande Parks, Chris Samnee

I picked up Capote in Kansas at APE (Alternative Press Expo) in San Francisco last year, mostly because I judged a book by its cover and because I really enjoyed In Cold Blood. I thought it was an extremely well written and engrossing true crime story. Plus, who doesn’t like that crazy Truman Capote? I was really pleased with what I ended up with.

Ande Parks infuses a lot of truth in his fictionalized tale, Capote in Kansas. Here he tells the story of how Truman Capote came to write In Cold Blood, the struggles he had fitting in with the local folks in Kansas, the emotional struggle he had trying to get a grasp on the tale, and how writing that book changed him. It’s a high-level view of course, but hey, it IS a graphic novel. I mean, I don’t expect a whole ton of depth here. There is even the ghost of Nancy Cutter, who helps Capote get that sense of humanity to infuse into his story and shows him the heart, so to speak.

Samnee’s bleak, angled black & white drawings do a nice job showcasing the town, the time period, the emotional struggle of Capote, even the confusion and despair in the atmosphere of the town.  It does get a bit difficult to keep track of who is who though.

I would never say Capote in Kansas would be a replacement for reading In Cold Blood, or even a deeper look into Capote and the desires that drove him to write his masterpiece, but if Capote or the Clutter family murders interest you, you’d probably find this graphic novel of interest.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for a nicely meshed piece of art and story that is able to include a “ghost girl” without seeming trite