Under the Dome, the latest from Skeletor-impersonator Stephen King, hits stores next Tuesday, and Scribner Publishing has just released a trailer for the book. Tell me whether this looks like something from the Master of Horror or Pixar’s latest summer blockbuster, because seriously, I can’t tell.
I’ll admit that this one has me sitting on the fence. King’s writing has dropped off a bit over the years, but the book was inspired by another story he had written close to 30 years ago, so we’ll see. I DO however, have the book preordered. Right now, amazon is offering the book for only $9.00! That deal put me under the table. I couldn’t believe Amazon would offer the book for such a cheap price, and I can’t wait to sit in my domicile and start reading. Of course I’ll read in the dark by lamplight, because that’s the best way to read anything from Stephen. Some of his stuff is truly fit for a king, or King.
Even though I had heard nothing but good things about this movie, I was still asking myself, “How much could I possibly enjoy it?” Well, as it turns out, I could enjoy it quite a bit. And I did enjoy it…quite a bit.
Where the Wild Things Are is about a boy named Max. He’s lonely. His mom loves him deeply, but finds herself busy with work and trying to have a normal relationship with her boyfriend. Max’s sister is growing up and has less and less time for him. When his mom invites her boyfriend over for dinner one night, she and Max get into a fight. When she sends Max to his room, he runs away. Alone in the woods, he finds a rowboat and sails off. After being tossed through a storm, Max spots an island. He sees fires burning in the distance. This is where the wild things are (clever, yes?). After introducing himself, the wild things quickly make Max their king. Together, Max and the wild things set off on a wild adventure.
It’s taken more than twenty years for Where the Wild Things Are to make it from the page to the screen, and I think that in the end, it was better that way. Sure, Disney could have rolled it out as one of their yearly animated features they used to do back in the day, but it really wouldn’t have done the story justice. Director Spike Jonze has kind of brought about a perfect storm. The acting, the music, the visual effects. You watch the movie and ask yourself what they possibly could have done to make the movie better.
Max, played by the aptly named Max Records, shows that even at such a young age, he’s got real depth as an actor, as most of onscreen time is spent with a group of animatronic robots. He portrays the deep loneliness felt by children at that nebulous age before they lose their innocence without being obvious or overt about it. Because Max’s mother, her boyfriend, and his sister spend so little time onscreen, you’re constantly drawn back to his performance. I thought it was fun to try and place the film’s voice actors. The one who I was most impressed with was James Gandolfini, who made me forget that I had spent years watching him cheat, kill, and steal on The Sopranos.
One of the most amazing things about the movie was the costume and set design. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop provided the animatronic Wild Things, and they look absolutely incredible. Really, what you’ve seen in the commercials is only a glimpse. This is why I think that only now could the filmmakers do the story justice. Before, costumes like these would only have looked ridiculous. I can’t wait to watch the making-of features I’m sure the DVD will be full of. The film’s soundtrack, put together by singer/songwriter Karen O is the perfect mix of upbeat and thoughtful, and sets the tone of the movie perfectly.
Aside from everything else, what I liked most about this movie is how good it makes you feel. It’s completely free of all the sex, drugs, and violence we see in so much of our media today, and it just felt good to sit back and bask in it for an hour and forty minutes. When it’s over, you walk out of it feeling like you’ve taken something away with you. Although he initially leaves his family behind, Max’s time with the wild things teaches him how much he really needs them. It’s a lesson the movie teaches without feeling preachy.
Although this is a kids’ movie, you’ll want to be careful about which kids you take to see it. I was actually surprised at how scary some of the sequences could be. Just remember, forewarned is forearmed. Taken as a whole, Where the Wild Things Are is the sort of movie that only comes along once in a long time. It’s a spot-on portrayal of the frustration and wonder felt by children, and a touching story of the difference love can make in our lives. It’s a beautiful film that families are really going to enjoy.
Count Stephen Baxter as another of a very few authors who can write good hard-science fiction. But a word of caution to those who, so far, have only been wading in the Star Wars kiddie pool, this is hefty stuff. Baxter’s books are filled with big ideas, and his storylines are so sprawling that it can take some effort to keep them all straight.
Evolution begins 65 million years in the past, and follows the course of animal/human evolution 500 million years into the future. Through the eyes of a whole host of lifeforms, we’re given front row seats to the extinction of the dinosaurs. We see the first sapient hominids cross the ocean from Africa to the New World. We see the human race in its death throes, as civilization breaks down and humanity returns to the forests from which it came. We see the first Von Neumann probe waging war over resources on Mars. Throughout the book we keep asking, “Where do we go next?”
Baxter went to Cambridge and Southampton Universities, where he received degrees in mathematics and engineering. For several years he taught math and physics. Since 1987, he’s published a metric gaggle of novels, novellas, and short stories. Go ahead, check out the link. It’s a lot to wade through, but it’s all worth it.
If you’re in the market for a quick, flip-through-it-before-you-go-to-bed number, you should check out Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. It’s big, sprawling, hard science fiction. And at a brisk 576 pages, you’ll have it finished in a month or two.
While excavating the ruins of a million-year old civilization, archaeologist Daniel Sylveste discovers that the catastrophe which killed off the Amarantin may have been engineered to prevent an unstoppable threat from being set loose on the galaxy. Light years away, a ship crewed by the half-cyborg Ultras are seeking Sylveste in an attempt to save their captain, who’s been afflicted with a mysterious disease that infects both biological and technological lifeforms. What the Ultras don’t know is that one among them is an assassin who’s looking for Sylveste not to enlist his help, but to kill him. Exciting!
Before getting rich as a science fiction writer, Reynolds worked for the European Space Agency and his extensive knowledge of physics and astronomy fills his books from start to stop. It’s one of the biggest reasons I was turned on to his stuff. The Star Treks and the Fireflys are great, but if you’re looking for a more realistic approach to science fiction, Reynolds is the man. He’s heavy on plot but doesn’t scrimp on character, and his world-building had me spending my grandmother’s social security money at Barnes & Noble.
Revelation Space is heftier than a lot of the sci-fi out there, but the challenge is why we love to read, amirite? Unless the book’s about sexy vampires, in which case that’s why we love to read.
I’ve recently discovered this thing called “journalistic integrity.” The thing is, you’re supposed to tell people if the article you’re writing is in any way biased, or if you as a writer aren’t being 100% objective. It’s supposed to be wild. So let me start this thing by saying that I love James Ellroy, I love his books, I especially love the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy, and that my copy of Blood’s a Rover is an ARC that was sent to me by the publisher. With that in mind, I’ll try and present as fair and balanced a review as I can. Let the Great Experiment begin!
It’s been eight long years since The Cold Six Thousand was published. Plenty of time for us to get our hopes up, hopes that once the new book came out it would make our collective socks roll up and down. Rest assured that Ellroy’s brought his A game. His protagonists certainly haven’t lost any of their piss. Returning is ex-cop Wayne Tedrow Junior, who after the events of the last novel, has finally come into his own. Also returning is FBI man Dwight Holly, in hock and working for J. Edgar Hoover. Rounding out Ellroy’s trifecta is kid P.I. Donald “Crutch” Crutchfield, who’s forced his way into the life, and may not live long enough to regret it.
Blood’s a Rover continues the various and sundry plot lines from the previous books while setting up several new ones. The Mob is bilking Howard Hughes and using the cash to build casinos in the Dominican Republic. A declining J. Edgar Hoover continues his crusade against black America, this time setting his sights on the militant movement. And of course there’s Cuba, the monkey no one can seem to shake off their back.
If you were to describe the first two books in the trilogy as “sprawling,” you could describe the third as “personal.” In American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, Ellroy wrote what he writes best: hard-hitting badass noir. Only then he threw it up on a much grander stage. It reached across oceans and included everyone from the President of the United States to low-level gangsters. There’s no shortage of any of that in Rover — as Ellroy says, the book is filled with his trademark craaaaazy shit — but Ellroy does seem to have gone back to some of the more familiar ground he tread in his L.A. Quartet.
The book opens in Los Angeles, with an armored car heist and a load of stolen emeralds. It’s a setting and a crime that Ellroy is very much at home with. He also returns to one of his most prevalent themes: powerful women. This time it’s in the form of Joan Klein, the Red Goddess who quickly becomes the obsession of Ellroy’s protagonists. Actually, the female characters in Rover are the most powerful Ellroy has ever written. The power they hold over men isn’t just sexual, but real power.
I think that for Ellroy, writing Blood’s a Rover was extremely cathartic. Anyone who’s read his memoir, My Dark Places won’t be able to help but see Ellroy himself inside Donald Crutchfield. With that in mind, we see that it’s Ellroy himself who’s living, not what’s explicitly described in the books, but what those events are representative of. Destruction. The fascination with the darkness inside us all. Perhaps most importantly, the power that women have over the lives of men. This is why I would describe the book as personal. Crutchfield makes his bones after throwing in his lot in with Tedrow and Holly, but it’s Ellroy we see making that journey. The man who emerges on the other side is mature. He embraces, respects, and accepts the process that’s made him who he is. This gives us a new appreciation for the book’s title, which was taken from “Reveille,” a poem by A.E. Housman.
Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover; Breath’s a ware that will not keep. Up, lad; when the journey’s over There’ll be time enough for sleep.
I have to admit, when I first read Blood’s a Rover, I wasn’t sure what to think. It was only when I looked at it in the context of the entire trilogy that I realized what a powerful book it was. Ellroy’s characters are paying the price for their dark deeds, and that story provides the trilogy with a perfect third act. The author, through his characters speaks with a maturity and wisdom that until this point we have not seen in him. For years we’ve waited and Ellroy hasn’t disappointed. He’s finally delivered his masterpiece.
Blood’s a Rover will be released on September 22. You can preorder it now at amazon.com.
James Ellroy returns with the second chapter in his Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, this one picking up moments after 1995’s American Tabloid. This time around, Ellroy treats us to an even more diverse cast of characters who lie, cheat, maim, and shoot their way through history, and pray they’ll live through it all.
Six Thousand’s plot is just as far-reaching as its predecessor. You’ve got Ward Littell and Frenchman Pete trying to contain the fallout from the Kennedy hit before heading to Vegas to pave the way for Howard Hughes’ casino buyout. You’ve got the Vietnam War and the heroin trade. You’ve got J. Edgar Hoover trying to discredit Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. In the middle of all of this, we’re introduced to newcomer Wayne Tedrow Jr, a Nevada Mormon and one of the last good cops in the Las Vegas PD.
If you read American Tabloid and are wondering what to expect in Part 2, think “BIGGER.” In an interview with salon.com, Ellroy vowed that The Cold Six Thousand would be “denser, more complex, more multilayered, more multiplotted, richer, darker, more stylized, dare I say it, more profound.” And would you believe he pulled it off? You can’ be considered one of the world’s greatest living novelists without writing the books to back it up.
Not only are the characters and settings bigger, so are the stakes. In American Tabloid, the characters were, to a large degree, serving their own self-interests. This time, they’re searching for redemption. Ward Littell, as he secretly helps the civil rights leaders he’s been charged to discredit. Pete Bondurant, in the form of his wife, Barbara. The result is a book that, while grittier and more violent than its predecessor, is at the same time much more elegant and touching.
For those who couldn’t handle Ellroy’s clipped prose in American Tabloid, you’re not going to fare any better here. If anything, this book is tighter and more clipped than the last. My advice would be to stick with it. It has a way of sucking you into the narrative in a way other books can’t. For example…
He saw Pete. He seized up. He freaked. He dropped his dick pens. He bent loooow and scooped up. His pants ripped. Dig those plaid BVDs.
…
Pete aimed off the beam. Pete squeezed a shot. Jack’s head snapped. Jack’s teeth exploded. The silencer worked–sounds like a cough and a sneeze. Pete nailed Jack’s wig. Blood and synthetic hair/a cough and a sneeze.
For reasons I won’t go into here (buy the books already!), there’s a big yield sign at the end of Six Thousand. For better or worse, these characters are heading toward their end. Final word. This book is powerful. In many ways, it’s more powerful than American Tabloid. At times it’s tragic. At times it’s laugh-out-loud funny. There were times when I was so shocked by what had happened I had to put the book down. It’s rare thing and we don’t see it enough in modern literature. The Cold Six Thousand takes you from 0 to 60, and quick. Buy this book.
We’ll soon post our review of the third and final chapter in Ellroy’s trilogy, Blood’s a Rover. Until then, check out The Cold Six Thousand on amazon.
A question. Are reviewers bound by some code of ethics to be fair and balanced in the reviews they write? Are we expected to use make-no-sense, BS terms like “pulse-pounding,” and, “non-stop thrill ride?” Can we break it down and get real for a minute? I am absolutely stupid for this book. I’ve read it multiple times. I buy copies for my friends. Once, I bought a copy for a friend who told me he hadn’t started reading it yet because he was catching up on episodes of Gossip Girl. I took the book and beat him unconscious. I was in prison for eight months**. So yes, I like the book. But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. But if you haven’t started reading it yet because you’re catching up on episodes of Gossip Girl, please, keep it to yourself. My legal defense fund will thank you. But I digress…
“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets.”
Thus begins James Ellroy’s epic, fourteen-years-in-the-making Underworld U.S.A. trilogy. Ellroy, known as the Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction and arguably one of the world’s greatest living writers, had the idea after reading Libra, Don DeLillo’s fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. After reading it Ellroy told himself he would never be able to write anything comparable. Then the idea occurred to him to write a book that didn’t focus exclusively on the assassination. As he put it…
Wait a minute. I can write an epic in which the assassination is only one crime in a long series of crimes. I can write a novel of collusion about the unsung leg breakers of history. I can do a tabloid sewer crawl through the private nightmares of public policy.
Tabloid begins in 1958. You’ve got Kemper Boyd, an FBI agent recruited by J. Edgar Hoover to spy on the Kennedys, Ward J. Littel, Kemper’s protégé who’s got a bent for Robert Kennedy and the Mafia, and Big Pete Bondurant, bagman for Howard Hughes, shakedown artist, and all-around underworld handyman. Ellroy’s protagonists are backdropped by a large cast of characters, both real and fictional. You’ve got politicians, rouge CIA agents, mob bosses, assorted gangsters, crooked cops, Cuban refugees, and other various and sundry lowlifes. They take you on a rocket ride through RFK’s war on the mafia, the rise of Castro, the JFK election, the Bay of Pigs, and Dallas, 1963. It’s large-scale political noir, and Ellroy makes it completely his own.
I’m not completely sure exactly what it is that Ellroy taps into in order to write the way he does, but whatever it is, I really do wish I could cut it up and snort it. The prose, which Ellroy has made uniquely his own, is tight and telegraphic. You feel like the story is being painted in front of you. Ellroy’s characters never feel like throwaways. They all have their own distinct voice. And while it’s great fun to see how seamlessly Ellroy has inserted his characters into history, the best part is watching them interact with each other.
A short note about the violence. Holy hell, are these books violent! Tabloid was originally recommended to me by a friend after I told him, “I really liked Pulp Fiction. Recommend me something to read.” He told me about one particular scene in which Pete B. is asked to get rid of a Teamster who’d been caught snitching on Jimmy Hoffa. After he takes him out, Pete stuffs his mouth full of shotgun shells, duct-tapes it shut and lights him on fire. I stopped at Barnes & Nobel on the way home from work. As Mark Sanford might say, it was a love story. But yeah, these books are not for the faint-of-heart.
The word masterpiece gets thrown around a lot these days, but this is really what Ellroy has created here. American Tabloid is a rough story. It’s a dirty story. It’s distinctly American. Ellroy’s unsung leg breakers lie, cheat, kill, and rip their way through history. Dirty politics, greed, communist collusion, and unholy alliances have put them all on a collision course with November 22, 1963. You, the hapless reader, find yourself not able to look away. It’s paranoid. It’s obsessive. It draws you in. Answer its call. In the words of Ellroy, grab its greatness.
Stay tuned. We’ll soon be posting our reviews of books 2 and 3 in the trilogy, The Cold Six Thousand and the soon-to-be-released Blood’s a Rover. In the meantime, buy American Tabloid from amazon.com.
**I wasn’t really in prison. My lawyer got me off with community service.
It’s possible that you’re one of the five or six people who have heard absolutely nothing about this book, or ABC’s TV adaptation, which was just added to their 2009-2010 Thursday night lineup. Or maybe you have heard of the show, yet in the glitz and glam of modern-day television, did not realize that before TV, there was the book. In any case, you should waste more time online catching up on things like this.
Flashforward centers around a group of physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, who spend their days smashing subatomic particles together, in search of the elusive Higgs boson. Which, from my own studies in quantum physics is best described as a particle whichssmmmphmmmrmpph. Anyway, during one such experiment, every man, woman, and child on Earth blacks out, while their collective consciousness is thrown twenty one years in the future for a little over two minutes.
When everyone wakes up, they’re forced to deal with the mass chaos that follows having everyone in the world black. Planes, cars, and buses have crashed. People undergoing surgery are dead. Others have fallen off of roofs and down stairs. As those who survive come to terms with what’s happened, they slowly begin to piece together what they’ve seen. Some saw visions of their lives twenty one years hence, while others saw nothing. Were they sleeping? Were they dead? Slowly, a portrait of the future begins to emerge.
Robert J. Sawyer is one of a small group of authors who writes “hard” science fiction, or science fiction which puts a heavy emphasis on the science behind the fiction. That is to say, he is one of a small group who does it well. A few years back I read Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku. It’s a book about theoretical physics in terms a layman can understand. Most of what I remember is wondering what it would be like to travel back in time, to make sure my parents hooked up at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. My point is, if this crap is such a headache to understand, why do I want to spend more of my leisure time reading about it? Well, authors like Sawyer (also see Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds) are able to explain the science without overshadowing their stories or the characters in those stories.
While Flashforward lives safely within the limits of science fiction, there’s a lot of mystery, suspense, and philosophy here, too. Theo Procopides is one of the physicists who sees nothing during his blackout. After others tell him that they saw reports of his murder, Theo sets off on a quest to find out as much as he can about his future killer, and the circumstances surrounding his death. Will he succeed? Can he succeed? Is anyone capable of changing their future, or is free will merely an illusion? In the book, arguments are laid out for both, and they’re questions you’ll be asking yourself throughout.
The book gets high marks for a truly original story, and low marks for a somewhat anti-climactic ending, although the scientific a-ha! moments really suck you in. If you’re planning on watching the show this Fall, you’ll definitely want to check this one out. From what I’ve seen, there are major differences between the two, so you won’t be ruining anything for yourself.
I’ll tell you what we saw, ratings gold! Go out and buy a hat, then get ready to hold the f**k onto it, because this is the next big thing. Maybe you noticed these commercials during tonight’s episode of Lost.
ABC is doing some early promotion for a series that it hasn’t officially announced yet. It’s called Flash Forward, and is based on the novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer. Let’s check out zap2it for more info!
The show is based on Robert J. Sawyer’s novel and follows the fallout from a cataclysm in which the world’s entire population blacks out for just over two minutes. In addition to dealing with the chaos that ensues when everyone wakes up — everything from car crashes to people walking off rooftops — people soon come to realize that they all had a vision of their futures. The network says that those investigating the event will have only “a huge mosaic of people’s flash forwards” to go on.
ABC has already set up a website you might want to check out. It’s sure to be all the rage at your office’s water cooler in the coming weeks, with everybody talking about what they saw and such. Check out Wikipedia for more on the book.
The good folks at Knopf were generous enough to send this over.
For the uninitiated, or those who can’t read, that’s James Ellroy’s (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia) new book, Blood’s A Rover, which after many many years, will complete his Underworld USA trilogy. This summer, we’ll be reviewing all three books leading up to Rover’s release in September. Every time I crack open one of Ellroy’s books, I turn into a big slobbering idiot, so it’s really hard to articulate how excited I am to read this one.
The back cover is a letter from Ellroy to booksellers, written as only Ellroy can do it. You can read it for yourself below (click the picture for a bigger image).
If you’re in the market for a quick, flip-through-it-before-you-go-to-bed number, you should check out Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. It’s big, sprawling, hard science fiction. And at a brisk 576 pages, you’ll have it finished in a month or two.
I’ve recently discovered this thing called “journalistic integrity.” The thing is, you’re supposed to tell people if the article you’re writing is in any way biased, or if you as a writer aren’t being 100% objective. It’s supposed to be wild. So let me start this thing by saying that I love James Ellroy, I love his books, I especially love the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy, and that my copy of Blood’s a Rover is an ARC that was sent to me by the publisher. With that in mind, I’ll try and present as fair and balanced a review as I can. Let the Great Experiment begin!
James Ellroy returns with the second chapter in his Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, this one picking up moments after 1995’s American Tabloid. This time around, Ellroy treats us to an even more diverse cast of characters who lie, cheat, maim, and shoot their way through history, and pray they’ll live through it all.
It’s possible that you’re one of the five or six people who have heard absolutely nothing about this book, or ABC’s TV adaptation, which was just added to their 2009-2010 Thursday night lineup. Or maybe you have heard of the show, yet in the glitz and glam of modern-day television, did not realize that before TV, there was the book. In any case, you should waste more time online catching up on things like this. 
