From a Buick 8

I've gone through all the stages of Stephen King fandom. Reading books like The Shining and 'Salem's Lot and stories like "The Mist" were what got me hooked on horror in the first place. Then there came the time of discontent. This occurred contemporaneously with the publication of Gerald's Game and Delores Claiborne. These books were just not good, but even worse, I became convinced that the King had lost it. I still read him, but not with much enthusiasm.

Here is where I would ordinarily write"Until" and then relate the story of his great redemption and my re-entry into a glorious stage of admiration. Unfortunately, I can't. He did lose it. His books have come around some since then (Bag of Bones inspired me enough to take up writing), but they have not and will not reach the same heights that his early books did. In my mind, all reviews of his books have to maintain that frame of reference. That old standard can't be used, much as it would be unfair to compare Jonathan Franzen's work to Charles Dickens.

From a Buick 8 summoned these thoughts because it was a book I could imagine the old King making a tour de force. Instead, the new King created a serviceable read with some flashes of brilliance. As always, the characters are distinctive and fun to spend time with. I think that is King's greatest gift and what makes some of his books transcend genre-writing. Who can forget Jack Torrance in The Shining or Annie Wilkes in Misery? The book also had a lot more story than I thought it could have, given that it is mostly about a stationary car. I won't spoil anything, but there are some pretty chilling moments as he reveals exactly what that car really is.

The principal flaw of the story, and this can be gleaned from the book jacket, is that the story is told mostly in flashback form. This device eliminates most of the suspense from a lot of scenes that could have been real white-knucklers. I'm not sure that he could have fixed this, given some of the advantages the format provided, but it did tend to make the book a slog. An interesting slog, but a slog nonetheless.

Ultimately, I do recommend this book. It's not a page turner, but it's original. It helps that the characters are enjoyable, because you don't mind spending the extra time with them. Plus, I got a cool new (probably actually very old) saying out of it: "Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back."

Enjoy:

Are we alone?

That's the question posed by Iain Murray in this fascinating, if depressing, article. His discussion about the odds of there being many other potentially life-supporting planets out there seemed to me to overlook one interesting point. We have another planet in our own solar system that may have supported life at one time: Mars. I'm talking about single cell life, not Marvin the Martian, but the very fact of Mars' existence has to undermine an argument about how the odds are against there being other Earth-like planets out there. After all, the odds of there being two life-supporting planets in the same solar system can't be good. Am I missing something? It's at least something to think about.

Grindhouse Update

Kurt Russell will star in Quentin Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, according to this article. This is another one of those movies that I'll probably watch even though I have very little enthusiasm for doing so. At least Tarantino makes a reference to John Carpenter movies in the story. Still, it'd be a lot cooler if Sam Neill had some sort of involvement.

More Shyamalan

I think Roger Ebert's review of Lady in the Water is worth reading. He brings up some points that bothered me when I saw it, especially in regard to how claustrophobic the scenes were, in a bad way. There were so many strange cuts and camera angles that you could never figure out where anything was. I still don't know if Heep lived in an apartment or the little side building (this is not a spoiler).

Check the review out here.

UPDATE: As pointed out by the amusingly harsh commenter, the review I linked to is actually by Jim Emerson, who is the editor of RogerEbert.com. However, my emphasis was on the content of the review and not the identity of the reviewer, so I still think it's worth checking out.

Rock Star: Supernova, Random Thoughts

-The show got markedly better this week. I thought Phil raised his performance level dramatically. "White Rabbit" was a surprising choice, but it really rocked.

-Speaking of "White Rabbit," it was nice to see Newstead head-banging again. Metallica nostalgia. He's still kind of a dork in his judge-mode, but a likable one.

-With Phil rising up, there's still only three decent guys on the show, with Toby and Lukas rounding out that trio. Dilana is the only girl I could see being picked.

-Ryan's only good moment so far: the observation that Dana belongs on a "pop show." She could have been a contender on American Idol.

-Josh apparently has no familiarity with the song "Come As You Are" or the band "Nirvana."

-Zayra is ridiculously bad, despite the fawning over her this week.

-Jenny deserved to go after her butchery of "Drive," but Ryan and Dana shouldn't assume they're out of the woods either.

-When are they going to have a song heavier than the Nirvana and STP grunge anthems? It's hard to get "dirty" when you're singing "Let's Spend the Night Together." Although Lukas did a great job of staying away from a pop version of the song.

Lady in the Water -- A Review

I wanted to like this movie. Going to a movie knowing that it will be different (and not in the "This time the gay cowboys will be transgendered, and fighting the Nazis in space!" way) is exciting. And I like both suspense and fantasy movies. Yet, I still found myself coming down on the side of Scott Brown's "Suck Watch." "Lady" is just not a good movie, and it borders on very, very bad.

The plot, for all of the tortured descriptions I've read, is really quite simple. A fairy tale unfolds at an apartment complex in Philadelphia. That's pretty much it. The idea is actually kind of neat, but Mr. Shyamalan really doesn't come close to fulfilling its potential. First off is the problem of the names: "narf" and "scrunt." It's difficult to take something scary seriously when it's called a "scrunt." And "narf" kept reminding me of "Snarf" from the Thundercats. Snarf!

Also back in this movie for Bryce Dallas Howard's character is that archaic, contraction-less way of talking last seen in The Village. With all the "do nots," "will nots," and "scrunts," the dialogue is very distracting.

On the positive side, this felt like Mr. Shyamalan's quickest paced movie, and there was no twist to be disappointed by.

However, these positives are not enough to outweigh the above negatives combined with the myriad of other problems with the movie (poor casting in several roles, poorly timed jokes, ridiculous plot turns, etc.). It's too bad that this movie is probably going to flop -- I can't see word of mouth doing many favors for this one -- because I like Mr. Shyamalan's creativity. I think he needs to team up with someone (I'm available, ahem) who could act as a sound board and rework some of his ideas. As for Lady in the Water, I hear that Pirates of the Caribbean is pretty good.

Giant Yellow Jacket Nests

Check out the picture at this link. Intense.

Hat tip: The Corner.

Disturbed

Here's a cool little profile of Disturbed from this weekend's Detroit Free Press. They're co-headlining Ozzfest with System of a Down. With a picture!

Hostel

Frankly, I wasn't expecting much from Hostel, but I was pleasantly surprised. That's not to say it was a good movie -- as many others have commented, it takes far too long for the actual story to get going. Of course, I'm aware of the reason for including a multitude of nude young women other than to advance the plot.

Still, this movie had a lot to like about it. First, the main character, Paxton, was human enough to allow the viewer to actually care for him. Second, the gore was not as bad as I was expecting. Third, and finally, the last half hour or so of the movie really hummed along as a gripping suspense/thriller. I do think this movie is a lot better than many have given it credit for. I wouldn't watch it again, but it's pretty close to a movie like Saw II, and it's certainly better than Wolf Creek.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Night 1

Potential general spoilers in this post.

It was a mixed night for the premier of Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

"Battleground": The first half of the night started the series off with a bang (heh, heh). It was a really high quality show, and the performance from William Hurt was top notch. He was even more impressive given that he didn't speak during the whole episode. The story here was pretty simple, and it really didn't go for the big scare. The effect was more menace combined with dark humor. Given that, it will be interesting to see how the others play.

"Crouch End": This one did go for the big scare, or at least a series of little scares, and it fell flat on its face. Part of it was the effects. In fact, it was hard to believe this was part of the same series as "Battleground." For instance, the cat with the weird eye thing couldn't have looked any more fake. It was definitely an example of CGI being used where good old latex and fake blood would have worked just fine. Even aside from the effects, the story just didn't quite work. I liked it a little just because it was so weird, but it wasn't coherent enough to really entertain. I'm not entirely sure this is the fault of the TV version, though. I seem to remember having the same reaction when I read the short story.

Overall, though, this was still a very promising start to the series. I especially like the fact that they've brought good actors on board. Nothing ruins horror movies or TV more than poor acting. In that vein, next week will bring us another very solid actor: William H. Macy. I'm looking forward to that one.

Supernova Results

Because of a cold and the baseball All-Star Game, I ended up watching both the performances and the results last night. I would rate the singers as decent overall at this point. Barring drastic improvement, most of them have little realistic chance of actually being made the lead singer, including pretty much all the women aside from Dilana. Most of the men probably too. I could see Toby or Lukas winning from the guys. Phil might have half a chance if he could manage to look less awkward on stage.

The results were kind of amusing, in that we get to see Zayra and her mangled singing one more week. I can't blame them for sending Chris home, though. He did seem to lack something authentic, and in its place was something that made him unlikable. There's too many contestants left to predict who will go home next week, but I would have to imagine it would be one of the girls. It's been two weeks, and two guys have gone home. I guess the early favorite for next week's booby prize would be Zayra.

Lady in the Water

I've scored tickets to a pre-screening next Tuesday of the new M. Night Shyamalan movie.

I'm really hoping this one will be good, because it looks like it has a ton of potential. In spite of all the criticism of Mr. Shyamalan, I'm still a huge fan of his stories and the way he presents them on screen.

I'll put up a review that night.

"I never met, and hope I will never meet, such a monster"

So says a German scientist who studies "rogue waves," quoted in this fascinating article. I first wrote about this phenomenon here, recalling how unsettling it was to read about these monsters right before I went on my honeymoon cruise. According to the article, scientists have now come to accept rogue waves as a fact and have measured many exceeding 80 or 90 feet. Chilling fact: the 90 footers may be the small ones. Apparently the theoretical maximum scientists have calculated is 198 feet. That is taller than the Statue of Liberty. Yeah. The article mentions a seven story wave that plowed into a cruise ship off the coast of Georgia in 2005. No one was killed, fortunately, but some of the passengers, after surviving a wave that reached the tenth deck of their cruise ship, vowed that they would never sail again.

Would you?

Rock Star Results

Duran Duran, huh? I knew as soon as those four syllables left Matt's mouth that he was toast. Unless he was going to do an Orgy/Blue Monday version of the song, there was no way these guys were going to accept Duran Duran as being heavy. I mean, Newstead played bass for Metallica! Matt, that was an unforced error, buddy.

I actually think Chris is worse, and he probably won't last too much longer. His unwillingness to back down was admirable, to a degree, but he's just not very good.

Phil certainly deserved his spot in the bottom three, but his singing isn't quite as bad as Chris's. He really needs to work on his stage presence. A giant, somewhat dopey tree swaying around up there is not what the frontman for a heavy band should look like. He should find a way to look a little more menacing when he sings. The way he carries himself is something that can be changed, though, much moreso than Chris and his not singing well. So there's hope yet for ole stretch.

Promising start to the show overall.

Rock Star: Supernova

Good first episode. I've never been a big fan of INXS, so I didn't watch last year. But I like the potential for some good heavy rock from Supernova. Some of the song choices were pretty bizarre. Iris? Roxanne? Even if he hadn't butchered it, it was a stupid choice. What were they thinking? Far too many slow/weak song choices from the guys. I think that's part of the reason the girls looked so good in comparison.

Dilana rocks!

Fun with Lists

Here's a good one:

"11 Bad-Good Horror Movies You Need To See"

After a first look at the list, I thought I'd only seen The Evil Dead, but something about the "Braaaiinss" line from The Return of the Living Dead sounds familiar. I think that movie may be lurking somewhere in my past. Enjoy

Quentin Tarantino

I respect what the guy does and the passion he puts into his movies, and I am always at least interested to hear about whatever his new project might be.

That said, something about Tarantino really annoys me. I don't know if it's the forced "coolness" in all of his movies, that really annoying faux-badassness that all his characters have. Maybe it's that I can't get the name "O-Ren-Ish-ii," over-pronounciation and all, out of my head. It could be that Pulp Fiction was wildly overrated (it's an okay movie, but let's not get carried away: the garbled story-telling is only a clever way to mask the improbable coincidences that would look ridiculous if the story was told in the right order. It's not as manipulative as that bastard Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I hate passionately the more I think about it, but it's close. End run-on parenthetical).

I'm sure all of these things help, but really annoys me is his glee in the new Entertainment Weekly, paper version, about how the new direction of horror movies is toward ever more explicit violence. He's probably right, but I hate him for being happy about it. One of the best horror movies over the last couple of years was The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but Saw, which I did like, is being used as a teaching tool for horror-illiterate movie executives. It's shame.

Still, I'm kind of looking forward to Grind House.

PS -- Don't throw The Devil's Rejects in my face. That movie had far superior characters to almost any major studio-released horror flick.

2005 Stoker Awards

The list of winners is here. Embarrassingly, I've read almost none of the winners or losers (Hey, isn't everybody a winner?). Some horror guru, huh? I did find and enjoy Deep in the Darkness by Michael Laimo from last year's list, so maybe I'll try something here. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Darkness, Tell Us

Shortly after my hiking trip, I finished this, my first Richard Laymon book (The pictorial link is below). I had heard things about the amount of sex in his books, and Darkness certainly did not disappoint. For about the first half, that was about all that kept it going. In fact, there was so much sex, talk about sex, thinking about sex, and innuendo alluding to sex that I felt like I was reading a romance novel instead of a horror one. That was uncomfortable.

I kept at it, though. Mainly I perservered because of the writing and characters. Both were well done, and that was nice. I have found a lot of characters annoying in the books I've read lately, which is frustrating. Darkness avoided that, and it has a passable plot too. It was not really a scary book, but it had a few creepy moments. The real killer was the end.

I won't give it away here, but suffice it to say that if you get that far -- and I'm talking to the last twenty pages here -- you will enjoy one of the most jarring sequences of violence you'll read this year. As I've said before, I'm not into violence for violence's sake, but the dying that happens here is quite satisfying.

I don't know that I would whole-heartedly recommend the book, but know that if you stick with it you'll be rewarded. And the ride there ain't too bad. I'm sure I'll be picking up so more Laymon in the future.

Harry Potter News

According to this article, two characters die in the final Harry Potter novel. The article notes that Ms. Rowling was careful not to mention who the characters were. Not pointed out in the article is that she also does not say these are "main" characters were talking about. After all the deaths of Cho Chang and Dean Thomas wouldn't be quite as traumatic as Ron and Hermione taking the proverbial dirt nap, now would they?

In casing you're dying for it, you can sign up to be notified of when the seventh book is available for pre-order -- here. There's also some pre-reviews up by some serious Harry diehards.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

I like H. P. Lovecraft. I don't believe that I've read Beyond the Wall of Sleep, but it has an interesting premise. At an insane asylum in 1908, some warped doctors examine a mountain man (hillbilly, really) with a strange growth protruding from his back. Seems promising, eh?

Well, the movie stunk. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, given that it was a straight to video release. Still, it failed to meet even my meager expectations. So, take the word of the lady at the video store and avoid it heartily. I may dig up the short story, though.

I'm back

It's been a month-long hiatus, but I've returned from two vacations and am ready to post. There's a lot to comment on right now, so stay tuned for new posts.

One thing I've done in the past month or so is watch the entire first two seasons of Lost. Great show. Watching it feels a lot like watching a horror movie, especially in the flashbacks. There's always a sense that something bad is going to happen. The genius of the show is that you usually can't predict what it is. Plus, Desmond is awesome.

The Great Outdoors...

I will be camping soon, but definitely not at the Utah campground that is closed because of the plague.

That's right. The bubonic plague. I think we need to set up a cage match between the bubonic plague and the bird flu. My money's on the Black Death.

An American Haunting

In the midst of a seemingly decent horror movie season, we have An American Haunting coming out today. I'd say it looks pretty promising; it's got a good cast anyway. Since it's based on a true story, I'm sure it will draw some comparisons to The Amityville Horror. We'll see if that's good or bad, but I did think the Amityville remake was better than its press.

By the way, I saw Scary Movie 4 last Friday. Top notch comedy/satire. If you liked the third one, you'll like this one.

American Idol -- Love Songs

This show wasn't as brutal as I was worried it would be. Let's go through the contestants individually.

Katharine McPhee: The judges surprised me here. I thought she was very good, whereas they acted like she was some drunk warbling in a park. I suspect it's because I've never paid close attention to Whitney Houston's version of the song, which follows from my not liking Whitney Houston.

Elliott Yamin: Seems like a nice guy, and seemingly never sings poorly. How about picking a song I've actually heard? I get bored with him every time because I never know the song.

Kellie Pickler: I like Kellie, but she has sucked the last couple of weeks. She acts like she believes she's in over her head. I disagree with that and wish she would buck up. Her voice is fine in its country range, really no worse than Carrie Underwood's, and she has much more charisma than Carrie. I guess she needs more of Underwood's undertaker cold-bloodedness.

Paris Bennett: An absolutely brutal song choice, and she didn't sing it well. Her vocals were more mushy than Marlon Brando's in Apocalypse Now.

Taylor Hicks: I like Taylor a lot. If Chris doesn't win, I hope the soul patroller wins (even though I think "Soul Patrol" is woefully lame). To channel Randy, this week was just okay for me, though.

Chris Daughtry: I'm just glad he put on a solid performance and the judges loved him. Now he can move on from this dreck. He didn't sing either of my suggestions, which is unfortunate. Choosing Bryan Adams was more unfortunate, but he pulled it off okay. Still, I'll never like that song.

Who goes this week? I can honestly say I don't know, and I'm not going to look at DialIdol this week, because I like the surprise. If I had to bet, I would say Paris.

American Idol Results

Well, I was glad to see Ace go. No more "false"! My prediction is that Paris will be next. It's funny, I thought this was her best performance, second maybe to her song during the '50's week, but still she was in the bottom three. People just don't seem to like her. Could be the voice, I guess.

I swear they're testing my loyalty right now, though. The American Standards week frightened me, but it turned out great. Now, though, love songs? Blech. I don't see how this can be other than boring. Chris will have another test too, although I'm sure he'll do fine. I think they underrate his voice based on his preference to sing rock and yell. Of course, that preference is why I like him the best.

In the interest of humor, I have some Swiftian suggestions for Chris to sing for the love songs week. First, "This Love" by Pantera. "You keep this love, fist, scar, break." Mucho yelling here! Or how about "Devil's Plaything" by Danzig? "Love is a flame, a devil's thing." Nice. All right, I have a feeling he won't sing those even if he would go down in a tremendous blaze of metal glory. What about "I'd Do Anything for Love" by Meatloaf? That would be an ironic take on this bs week. Any of these might actually stave off sleep for a little while next Tuesday, but I'm not holding my breath.

Gyroball?

Here's an interesting article about a strange "new" pitch that the Japanese have supposedly developed. The article reads like an April Fool's joke, but I guess it's legit. It makes for some fascinating reading.

Wolf Creek -- Spoilers Included

You may have seen the previews running recently for Wolf Creek on dvd. The teasers make the movie sound novel: a serial killer who catches people, lets them go, and then hunts them down. It certainly sounded different enough to check out.

It was not. There was a serial killer, yes, but he didn't have some sort of "most dangerous game" set up. If anything, he was just careless enough to let escape some of the people he had captured. Sure, he seemed to be having fun while he was doing it, but, believe me, this guy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Advanced planning was in no way his forte.

On top of this disappointment was the fact that the rest of the movie wasn't any good either. Now, it may have been the forty-five minute lead up to something actually happening that put me in a bad mood, but that really is no excuse. Plus, once things do start to happen, they aren't good. The characters act in random and annoying ways. A pretty freaky setting is squandered. One of the girls screams so much that I wanted to join in, etc.

The best thing I can say about Wolf Creek is that it wasn't a total waste. The killer, a psycopath Mick Dundee, does have an interesting technique for immobilization he tries out on one of the girls, and the movie's ending is surprising enough (but not a twist; thank you at least for that) that it redeems somewhat the crap that came before it.

I'm not sure who, if anyone, I would actually recommend this movie to. I didn't hate it enough to suggest avoiding it entirely, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to give anyone the false impression that it's actually good. I guess if you like serial killers, have a fear of Australians, or just of getting waylaid in the country far from civilization, you might want to check out Wolf Creek. Otherwise, many other superior horror movies have come out lately.

Star Wars TV?

Apparently, there's going to be a Star Wars television series, starting around 2008. Baseball Crank, at the link, is critical, but the wikipedia description of the show sounds pretty cool, and is different from what the Crank imagines. I liked the Clone Wars cartoons, so I'm very interested in seeing if the tv show is any good.

The Red Church

I finished this one a couple of weeks ago, and to be honest I haven't been enthusiastic enough to write about it. I was looking forward to reading it, at least in part because of the similarity of its Appalachian setting to that of my book Ball Mountain. Unfortunately, it was very disappointing. Red Church wasn't bad, just extremely mediocre. The writing was decent, but most of the characters were pretty rough (I shuddered every time I started a chapter that had to do with Ma Bett). And the catch phrase "the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes" did absolutely nothing for me. What exactly does having livers for eyes look like? I have a hard time taking a monster with food products on its face seriously. The plot was okay, but it certainly didn't keep me on the edge of my seat. I've heard that Mr. Nicholson has improved since the Chuch, but this book will not make me run out to see.

Must Read

Here's a link to an intense and topical time travel story by Dan Simmons.

I don't say this often, but: Read it.

Can't Stand Ya!

Seinfeld lives on:

Teacher charged for giving student "wedgie"