==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Program note

Brian Eno segment on tech tv on Monday

11:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, January 05, 2004

Books read and completed in 2003

The Space Merchants - Frederick Pohl & C M Kornbluth
Collected Memoirs of Charles Willeford
Kingdom of Fear - Hunter S Thompson
The Big Clock - Kenneth Fearing
The Burnt Orange Heresy - Charles Willeford
Kafka Was the Rage - Anatole Broyard
Black Hornet - James Sallis
Jarhead - Anthony Swofford
The Monkey's Fist - William D Pease
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K Dick
Once Upon a Distant War - William Prochnau (r)
Altered Carbon - Richard K Morgan
The Edge of the Crazies - Jamie Harrison
Set This House in Order - Matt Ruff
Dhalgren - Samuel Delany
Local Color - Jamie Harrison
The Songs of the Kings - Barry Unsworth
The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder & the Mafia - Paul L Williams
Eye of the Cricket - James Sallis
The Drought - J G Ballard
The Last Good Kiss - James Crumley
The Machine in Ward 11 - Charles Willeford
An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence - Jamie Harrison
The Cat From Hué - John Laurence
A Drink Before the War - Dennis Lehane
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
The Wrong Case - James Crumley
Darkness, Take My Hand - Dennis Lehane
The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in Nebraska - John W DeCamp
Bluebottle - James Sallis
New Hope for the Dead - Charles Willeford
Blue Deer Thaw - Jamie Harrison
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life - Laurence Bergreen
Tourist Season - Carl Hiaasen (r)
Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Ron Gattlin
Cypress Grove - James Sallis
Black Dahlia Avenger - Steve Hodel
Box Office Poison - Alex Robinson
The Sorrow of War - Bao Ninh
The Wind From Nowhere - J G Ballard
The Man Who Was Thursday - G K Chesterton
As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel - Rudy Rucker
Cybill Disobedience - Cybill Shepherd

11:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Stupid anti-drug agit-prop file:

Stoner greeting cards [Undernews]

4:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Kinks' Ray Davies shot in the leg chasing down a purse snatcher in New Orleans

3:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sometime when I'm not at all depressed and up for some fine acting, I'll finally rent Boys Don't Cry -- and the new Charlize Theron film Monster, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, directed by Patty Jenkins

12:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Louis Bayard's Mr Timothy is a Victorian psychological mystery taking off on the character of Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol and sounds like a hoot: review

Indeed, what's best about this novel has nothing to do with what makes it such an exciting story. Tim is still untangling his complicated grief over his father's death, seeing his ghost everywhere. In letters to the late Bob Cratchit, Tim recounts the discomfort of being the subject of his father's sentimental visions of how a little crippled boy should act.

"It was a bit like a serialized novel," he notes with a touch of poststructural humor. "I couldn't recall even thinking the words you assigned to me," he writes to his father. "But those were the words I was assigned, and so they became my words, and you became my teller." Desperate to please his father, he practiced the dewy look, the hopeful sigh, the pitiful cheeriness, contorting his character more surely than that mysterious illness could ever twist his legs.

But now, with both his parents gone and the Cratchit family dispersed, Tim must be his own narrator in a story of his own making.

12:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 04, 2004

Movies 2003 I

salon reviews of Altman's ballet flick The Company and first-time director Vadim Perelman's The House of Sand and Fog are encouraging.

Also found the 3 salon critics' "Best-of" lists informative and agreeable.

I don't keep track of what I see (though I will be this year), but Catherine O'Hara should definitely be nominated for any award she likes for A Mighty Wind. . .maybe it's just a generational thing, but Return of the King was very moving for me. . .I thought Lisa Chlodolenko's Laurel Canyon was underrated. . .Freaky Friday was entertaining but not as good as I'd hoped.

Of course, many movies I enjoyed weren't released last year. For one, I just watched Quai des Orfèvres and it's easily as classic a noir as Double Indemnity or In a Lonely Place. If he's known at all, Henri-Georges Clouzot is remembered for Les Diaboliques and Wages of Fear (both of which were "honored" by Hollywood remakes), but I could find NO books on this remarkable writer and director -- in English anyway. If you can, watch Quai and Le Corbeau (The Raven) (coming out next month), both on Criterion. The dialogue moves along pretty quick, so you have to watch/read carefully if you don't know French, but it's worth it.

Le cercle rouge -- while entertaining -- is overrated I think. And I thought Auto-Focus kicked butt, dark and unsettling as it is.

And I'm looking forward to Lost in Translation, In America, Spellbound, School of Rock, Bad Santa (who would've thought Terry Zwigoff would make a hit Christmas movie -- er, offbeat as it is...?), and (without too high expectations) demonlover on disc.

I'll comment on other films I saw last year as they come to mind.

11:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

We've been down for nearly a week, and I'm pretty flatlined right now, so minimal posting tonight

11:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()