The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

I mentioned my new interviewing gig the other day on here. I just wanted to get back to it, probably, one last time. This last bit will really explain why I like interviews so much.

I read Playboy for the articles. There, the truth is out. I am that one guy. Get the sniggering out of the way and now listen.

Have you ever read an interview by Playboy? They’re phenomenal. They cover absolutely everything and they go for pages. You read one of those bad boys and it’s like reading a good short story. The way they conduct an interview, the way the creators relax in their capable charms, makes me want to be a better interviewer.

I read a stack of my news online. I get the real news, life events there, and I get my entertainment news there because it is far more comprehensive. Most publications don’t cover good writer interviews anymore. I don’t check Playboy, so I have no idea who they’re interviewing these days, and I don’t get anything like GQ either, and sadly Fangoria just costs way too much for me to invest anymore. I loved the salad days of Fango where each issue was almost guaranteed to have an interview with either John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, or John Landis. That was how a mag was supposed to present itself.

I can’t afford the magazines anymore, they’re around $10 a pop, each month. Even my Empire Magazine subscription is ending and I am not sure if I will renew it, which is so immensely sad for me. I love my creator interviews, I love a behind the scenes look into the mind, the process, the thoughts, the beginnings, middles, and ends. I like to get into my writer’s headspace and have a looooong look around.

And I can do that online, mostly. If there’s a site you want then chances are it’s out there if you look hard enough and in the right seedy corners. If there’s an interview you want to read then you can most likely track it down be it current or four years prior. The footnotes on Wikipedia are a great source of links for fantastic interviews.

This morning I read a great interview of Joe Hill by Powell’s Books. It was comprehensive and long and it kept me engaged all morning while I wrote over a k of words on my novel. I remember the Cormac McCarthy interview with the Wall Street Journal doing the rounds a few months ago and I loved that too.

In Playboy, the ultimate interview was that of Stephen King. The dude bared his soul in that chat and it’s something that can suffer repeated readings. I am such a nerd that I do read interviews over again later on. I read all those 80’s Fango mags so many times they were falling apart. That’s why I know so much awesome trivia about 80’s horror films. Before the internet could tell you ten different ways that Sam Rockwell got his start in Clownhouse, I was there.

Yet I tangent again, the point is. I like me a nice comprehensive interview that covers a lot of space. If an interview, with someone I like or respect, goes for five pages on the internet then I’m excited. I don’t want the chat to end. If the scroll bar on the right is nice and small then that’s all the better. It means I’m getting more and I always find I want more of interviews. Much like author’s forewards and notes, I like hearing the author’s voice. I find a good author has a good voice that is instantly readable and enjoyable. Stephen King was certainly the first person to show me that the man behind the curtain was just as much fun as the crazy things he controlled.

So that’s the sort of interview I want to do. A sprawling epic that isn’t for the light of heart. I want to know backgrounds, favourites, thoughts during creation and after it is birthed into the world. I love the process and want to know all about it.

I also know this stems from the desire to one day be interviewed too. Stephen King put it perfectly, in his Playboy interview, that he used to lie in bed as a struggling author and dream of being interviewed by Playboy. He’s pose the questions himself and answer them in his head. That was how he knew he would have made it, when he was on the pages between some titties. King then passed that trait onto his main character in ’salem’s Lot. And I myself have now picked it up; I would love to be interviewed by Playboy. I nice big sit down over a meal and drinks and really chew the fat.

At the moment, that ain’t happening, but I can be the interviewer, and as such I want to give my guests as much rope as possible. It’s the only way you’ll ever get anything of meaning because with enough rope there’s always a risk, and a payoff that’s worth it.

Posted on March 8th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: books, comics, gonzo | 2 Comments »

Most know I am digging the latest issues of Fantastic Four, and most, even myself, mention it as Hickman’s run. But the artist, Dale Eaglesham, should not be forgotten. He is doing a stellar job on the sequentials every issue that he touches and this tease, courtesy of CBR, shows just that.

This is stunning artwork. I love a good pencil job and this is near perfection. The Inhumans are very cool characters but they’ve never looked this cool. Eaglesham sets the scene here with an establishing shot that doesn’t feel like a wasted panel.

In the last issue published, there was a soundless sequence and instead of skimming through it I took even longer than if there had been words because I needed to take in so much information. Eaglesham really goes for the detail and makes sure there’s plenty to give us, if we’ll take the time to notice it.

This is good art, and I love that it’s paired with good writing. It’s making a great comic.

Posted on March 4th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: comics | 1 Comment »

Being the resident gonzo over at The Weekly Crisis has given me the chance to infect a wider range of the populace through their larger internets portal. It’s fun. I also wonder how many then follow me back here, or even know to…and in the end, would it change a thing? Knowing me, most likely not.

So, over there I’ve been writing about the books I like, and other nerd stuff. Usually I just rant, op/ed style, and the fantastic creator of the site, Kirk Warren, just gives me enough rope each time. I’ve looked at the Savage Magazine Format of Marvel and the resurgence (very small) that it is making once more; I’ve looked at the upcoming Secret Avengers title from Ed Brubaker and rather than be journalistic with the investigation and the hoo-ha I’ve instead just discussed what I think about it; I’ve hyped up a new series soon to hit by Jonathan Hickman titled S.H.I.E.L.D., and showcased some stuff from the artist, Dustin Weaver; they’ve let me join in commentary of covers of the week and solicitation thoughts, which has been revamped and I really dig; and obviously I’ve looked at the pending Daredevil film reboot, mostly just editorialising because of lack of real news to report, and just today have put up my 10 favourite DD covers. It’s been real fun but the thing I get most caught up in is the interviews.

Yeah, interviews, like a real journalist. I managed to interview Steven Sanders, the artist behind Marvel’s sadly cancelled S.W.O.R.D. and now I’ve got three more interviews with big league creators, all of whom are some of my favourites in the field. Imagine that, getting to interview massive names that you buy and respect each month. Most people won’t understand, but this is the comic equivalent of interviewing Martin Scorsese, or Michael Jordan, or Kevin Rudd, or Garth Brooks; and yes, no hyperbole, these people I’m interviewing are that big in their equivalent fields. I’m excited but in the end I need to keep my stony professional exterior on show, or do I?

There are comic news websites out there, CBR, Newsarama, etc, who lead the field and get the most page views. They score all the big releases and they interview all the big names. Smaller presses do what they can, but no one wants to read the same information from a bunch of different sites, we need to make the interviews different. So I thought long and hard about how to do this.

Could it be the venue? If we interviewed creators from inside giant dead armadillos, would this make for a better process? Considering I use email for all interviews as I live in Australia and the rest of the world lives scattered, almost randomly, throughout the rest of the world it seems my venue is stuck.

Could it be what we wore? If I insisted that each creator sat at their computer with a helmet made of honey would that increase the creativity, or simply melt brain function in order for us to sneak an exclusive? I doubt it on both counts.

The questions? Could they have anything to do with an interview? I hope so because they’re all I’ve got. With my trusty long bow in hand, I find my quiver only full of words, and it’s the order in which I fire them that makes the difference. So I endeavour to make my interviews a tad more relaxed, a little more fun, dare I say it, not even serious. I don’t devolve into dick and fart jokes, but I’m not the staid upper lip of boredom either. I want to know what I want to know, and it just so happens people who read our interviews will only get to know what I ask, so we’re stuck with that cycle. Fear not, I don’t want to know anything lame, all question’s are certain to be awesome, 99 and 3/4% guaranteed. Hell, even look at the name of the segment we gave it. If that doesn’t spell relaxed then I don’t know what does.

But these interviews are certainly not puff pieces where the creator sounds off on a bunch of news flashes to promote the latest work, oh no. That’s not my style. These things tangent out and give us all a slice of the creator that they’ll never get back.

Sure, I want to know what they’re working on and how it’s going, but I also want to know what they’ve been listening to while they created it. I want to know what influences them, comics from childhood, art on their walls now, and I want to know where they’re headed, dream characters, a movie or book they’d love to adapt to the four colour world. I want to know the creator, not just the work they dish out. Comics is a small field, in perspective, and there’s no reason we can’t all just get along.

I have also invented, and I’m sure no one else is doing this right now but I’m also sure someone will prove me wrong, the Literary Rorschach Test; this is where I give the creator ten words and they have to write whatever it makes them think or feel. Could be one word, could be a half a page rant. Any and all elicited responses must simply be real. I like it because they’re not questions I would generally ask but they are little nuggets of the world I am interested in getting their perspective on.

The interviews need to be fun and interesting and hopefully unlike anything else going out there. That’s the plan and hopefully in the next few weeks you’ll see just what I’m talking about as more will be coming live at you through your Weekly Crisis fix.

Until then, have a browse around the site and make yourself comfortable. It’s a friendly place to go and you’ll learn all sorts of fun stuff. Maybe even about yourself.

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: comics | 1 Comment »

I am a massive fan of Scorsese, always have been. I watched Taxi Driver as a young teen and was completely won over. Through repeat viewings over time and age I understood more and more of the film and it now ranks as number two on my all-time list. Scorsese was a master, no doubt about it. Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, I tracked them all down and loved every frame. But collectively they build the wrong idea in a viewer’s head.

Most cinemaphiles think of Scorsese as synonymous of hard street violence. He’s the guy that shows gangsters and rough people doing nasty things to each other, and he has shown us much of that, yet he’s also shown us saxophone players, and Jesus, bad dates, and Renaissance affairs. We forget that he might just be multi-dimensional, and so do the studios. He makes something violent for them just so he can then fund something for himself. They get Casino, a throw back to Goodfellas, which may well be one of his many masterpieces, just so he can turn around and do Kundun, the story of the Dalai Lama. We forget that Scorsese very nearly entered the priesthood, and that intense violence is tempered within him by a fascination also by the intense serenity that can fester within people.

It felt like Scorsese kind of disappeared for a decade there. Casino yielded Kundun, which was closely followed by the under-appreciated Bringing Out The Dead. Gangs of New York was solid, but lacked the usual punch of a Scorsese flick. People wanted the brilliance they were used to and felt that anything less might as well have been nothing. Which is a shame. Not every throw of the dart can be triple-sixty. Sometimes you’ve gotta play strategically, and sometimes your aim is off. Doesn’t mean your game is over.

I thought Gangs wasn’t too bad but suffered, like Heather Graham in From Hell, from having a woman far too gorgeous play a lady of the street, (Cameron Diaz is a good actor, but some faces just can’t fit a role). Luckily, the movie introduced Scorsese to rising talent Leonardo Di Caprio. He was lost for a few years in the mire of teen magazine covers but it seems after taking his young success too seriously he finally settled down and showed he could act more than he could party. And over the subsequent three more films with Scorsese he has proved just that.

The Aviator took both talents and made them serious Oscar contenders, and The Departed gave Scorsese something he rightfully should have held years prior, an Oscar. It was vindication and they weren’t even over yet. Now they have the Dennis Lehane adaptation, Shutter Island under their belts and it’s another great addition to the relationship built between the two, much like Scorsese had previously worked continuously with Robert De Niro.

I have been waiting a long time for Shutter Island. The preview was good, and sets the premise easily. Leo’s Federal Marshall goes to Shutter Island, home of a mental institution for the criminally insane, to investigate a missing persons case. Once there things get creepy, the truth seems to be buried, scares and shocks abound, and insanity ensues. It looks good, knowing it’s Scorsese/Di Caprio makes me think it might even be better. And it is.

The basic premise of the trailer sets us off. The institution is creepy and something is not right. I won’t discuss what is not right because a good twist should never be revealed. Ever. There is no excuse for ruining something in a few seconds, through some sloppy words, when someone else took great pains to great that story. So I won’t do that here, but I will give attention to a few things that I liked, of which there is plenty to choose from.

There are many great conversations in this movie. Di Caprio discusses violence with one of the doctors of the island, played by Max Von Sydow. It’s a tense discussion and when Nazis are involved everything should be tense. Di Caprio holds the scene tautly and Von Sydow sneaks his lines in like some sort of Shakespearean Iago-like mole. It’s fascinating to watch and I would have only liked the scene to continue but ends must always be found.

Later, Di Caprio sits in a military vehicle with the island Warden, played with menace and steel eyes by Ted Levine. There is such hatred and anger between each word spoken that you can only sit and wait for the inevitable eruption. It’s a metaphorical discussion on the inherent violence of man, and that they are both violent men, and they have known each other for centuries. Levine delivers a line that in my mind is already an instant classic: “If I were to lean over and bite into your eye, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?” Di Caprio’s response is perfectly delivered. He really shows that he might just be a man you don’t want to mess with. You believe that Di Caprio is a man of violence, a man with a heart of black wood.

The movie itself is a discussion of violence. Violent patients are the order of the institution, violent pasts change men forever, and violence can often be the only way to find the end you so surely feel you deserve. The movie looks at violence and what it means to the greater impact of society, and how it changes a man’s soul. It cannot be scrubbed off, it cannot be forgotten.

Every bit player offers their role with great gusto, from Mark Ruffalo’s pitch perfect partner, to Jackie Earle Haley’s creepy inmate/patient. Michelle Williams plays Di Caprio’s dead wife, and it’s hard to tell just where her character lies, and this turns out to be exactly what we need to think of her. Ben Kingsley offers the most hints as to where the movie is truly going, and just as importantly why. The hints aren’t obvious, but you’ll see them later when you know it all. The plague of twenty/twenty hindsight you’ll have for this movie will only make you want to watch it again straight away.

I rate this movie pretty highly, but I can also understand how others may not. It doesn’t appear to be a movie that will garner unanimous praise, and initial reviews sadly reflect this, but I can only say that I really dig this flick as a piece of film. It’s structure is great, it’s delivery is tensely watchable, and some of the dialogue is placed so specifically to make you think that you have to be on your toes at all times trying to find that fine line between studying the film and purely enjoying it.

If you like Scorsese as a film maker then you owe it to yourself to see this offering. It is perfection of the genre, and the genre for the day is identity noir. You can see the spiral leading downwards, but much like all of the dream sequences where things are falling down, pushing down on you, you’ll find that there’s no option to go up. You can only see what waits down in the dark. And like all noir you won’t necessarily like it but you’ll have to lump it.

Posted on February 27th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Writers generally love to read, and this extension brings them to love to write. As I’ve said before, and I stole it then, to write is terrible but to have written is the most amazing feeling in the world. Part of that feeling of having written is getting the chance to go back and read over your stuff. I love reading some of my stuff and absolutely loving it. It’s the greatest feeling in the world to enjoy something so purely and then realise that it was you who created it in the first place. Without you, you wouldn’t have had anything to enjoy. It’s a bit meta, and wanky, but you get the drift.

Sure, sometimes reading your own work is laborious because you’re proofing for superfluous letters, words, syllables, punctuation. That’s not the most fun aspect of the job and so in those times you need to go and read, and read for pleasure. It’s like research, if you can convince yourself of it. I can, I can easily convince myself that reading voraciously, and watching well written movies is research, hell, I almost want to claim the books and tickets on tax. But I don’t…

Tonight I am going to read for pleasure. And I cannot wait for it. This morning I wrote 500 words on my novel, as well as wrote a set of questions for a comic artist I’ll be interviewing soon for The Weekly Crisis, and looked over another article I am writing for said gonzo duties on the comic review and news website. It was a successful morning, if a tad fractured and smaller than I have been used to. It’s the new me, I’m loving it all.

Then this afternoon I managed to sneak in another 300 words. And good words they were, I do declare. They came in one quick flurry and then I was called away for dinner, and walking the dog (the ever present office dog by the name of Tesla), and making dinner, and shooting up the shop to get some milk for tomorrow’s breakfast. I’m letting life in and my writing is evolving around it, praise be given.

But right now, as I write this, I don’t feel like writing. Or, at least, I don’t feel that writing would be the best choice. I have had a wicked week at work, rugby league trials and training nearly every day meaning I’m pretending to be tackled to the ground just to prove a point and get itchy, hot, dirty, and time-poor each time it occurs. I just led a staff meeting, of which a fair degree of preparation time was needed, and I’ve also been doing my actual job, teaching 21 ten year olds. It’s fun and constant. And I love it too, at times.

I feel that were I to write tonight, more that just this little post, then I might be pushing it. I plan on getting up at 5am tomorrow, as usual, and writing until work, and then work will be the usual, then we have staff drinks after work, being Friday night and all. It’s a nice lead in to the weekend, where I’m hoping Shutter Island will make a showing, and I’ll also take time to relax with Tesla the office mascot, and my wife, the mascot of my heart, if you will.

So tonight, amigos, we read.

I’ve got plenty of entrants waiting for my dance card, and they’ll all get a turn.

First up, I’ve got my latest addition, in the mail today in fact. I have no want to savour the anticipation on this one. I want it now. It’s Gotham Central: Jokers and Madmen by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark. Just the introduction by Duane Swierczynski is enough to get me between the pages.

I got this from the lovely wife, we played Book or Bust on Valentine’s Day. She picked the amount I could spend on Amazon for my present. I then started queuing up books into the cart and if I went over the price I got nothing, if I pulled out too early then I’d miss out on what could have been rightfully mine. I got the price just right, under on the books, over on the postage, and we called it a win for everyone. This was actually posted second, so I assume the first package will turn up tomorrow.

I have also been dabbling in The Science of Superman. It’s much more science than Superman, but luckily I’m such a nerd that I already know a lot of this space science, but love to read it again. And certainly appreciate how it is stood up against what we know of the Man of Steel.

It’s dense reading and so usually a page or two will give me enough to think about or bore those around me with.

The actual novel I have on the go right now, and there’s always one, is Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme. It’s pretty crazy so far, but I am enjoying that. It’ll be short, insane, punchy, and wicked and those blended ingredients spell guilty delight every time.

I’m also reading this novel because of the upcoming relaunch of one of my favourite comic series’ of all time. This is meant to be quite an inspiration on it, so I want to see where the Quinn genes have stemmed from.

I’m listening to the masters, many of whom say that to write you have to read. And to write well you have to read in a diverse amount of genres and you have to read constantly. So tonight, constant reader, I’ll be buried in a book. I’ll let you know how they go.

Posted on February 25th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, books | No Comments »

My writing for 2010 is markedly different to my writing for 2009. Not necessarily in a bad way, in fact I think it’s going smashingly, but it most certainly is different and that can take some getting used to.

I am writing for The Weekly Crisis now, adding Op/Ed pieces about whatever in the comics world fascinates me enough to slap an article together. Call me crazy, but I view it as real journalism, honest to god words about news. Sure, you say, it’s only about comics, but hey, journalists cover every field. I cover comics and I like it. I know a fair bit about it and I find enthusiasm creeps into my work, it’s personal, and that’s the type of comic journalism I like to read as well, so it’s kicking goals everywhere.

It’s a fun job, but it is taking up more of my time, in that it never used to take up any of my time. I like the time I spend doing it, I always wanted to be a journalist but was warned that it can be a hard career to crack into, you usually need to know someone first. I love journalism because I love writing, and I was told to find a fall-back career that will pay the bills (and still one you like) while you write in your free time. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. I like teaching, some days love it when I’m not having to restrain violent children or fill in too much red tape paperwork, and it gives me time aeround the job to work on my novels. It seems I’ve achieved this lifestyle setting that I always wanted, always read about. Stephen King used to teach and write in his very limited spare time. That could be me too, couldn’t it…?

So each morning I write but now I’ve just added a journalist hat to my collection. I put it on and bang out some gonzo piece and all is well in the world, I hope. My article might be complete tripe, I hope not, but one on the inside can be far too invested to know, objectively, what they’ve created and put out there. The rest of the WC crew don’t complain too loudly, nor do the commenters, so I’ll just keep on keeping on.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this comic/gonzo job can, and will, affect my novel writing. And that’s cool, so long as I realistically factor it all in. I have lowered my daily expectations and am meeting my goals, just at a slower pace. I am probably writing more words per week, they are just far more split. Novel - Alt-Tab - Article - Alt-Tab - Novel - Alt-Tab - Blog Post - etc. and so on. I distract and procrastinate on one writing by subbing in another form. It’s an interesting choice, and beats just surfing eBay constantly with money I’m no longer allowed to allocate to whatever books may take my fancy. So I write and write and each week passes with mini-goals being met.

One such goal has cropped up this week and I wanted to share it.

My novel, the fourth one, just hit 50k of words. I wanted to hit it this morning and I stuck with it until I got it. And I got it pretty easily, which was nice. I find that each day will bring me an indiscriminate number of words for the novel, could be 100 or could be 1k, usually it’s somewhere evenly between the two, roughly. I have taught myself, and it’s been hard, to just allow that to be.

I need to think of my end game, of which I’m playing a few concurrently, and it’s an endurance sport. It kind of makes me think of playing chess games in the park. I can either be Samuel L Jackson in Fresh putting players on speed and smoking those fools, or I can be Bart Simpson who looks impressive playing heaps of games, until they all come back checkmate at once. I’d like to be keeping my head above water, and so I find that realistic expectations mixed with continual practise will get me there.

And I will get there each time I hit a nice word count goal or see an article published that receives some quality comments, and at the moment I’m getting all of those.

For those who don’t know yet, you can access The Weekly Crisis by following the picture link below.

Enjoy.

Posted on February 23rd, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: Writing | 4 Comments »

There’s not too much that needs to be said. I’ve got lots of thoughts and wonderment to share but it’s the end of the week and you, constant reader, should be allowed to just sit back and enjoy.

And enjoy you shall.

For it is coming.

Posted on February 18th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: comics | 1 Comment »

I could simply post that cover and it would say so much. Marko Djurdjevic is one brilliant artist and I nearly always love his covers. I can stare at them and appreciate every stroke that he puts onto the characters he focuses on. He’s a mastermind, pure and simple.

The cover refers to a Daredevil one-shot coming out in May. Daredevil: Cage Match will focus on the history of Matt Murdock and Luke Cage, Power Man. They have shared many adventures before, Frank Miller even wrote them together, and Bendis brought them back together in a big way with Cage being Murdock’s body guard when his secret identity was outed to the press.

The story is a historical look back as a prelude to a possible upcoming Daredevil family event, tentatively titled ‘Shadowland‘. Nothing is set in stone, though Shadowland is name checked in the solicit for this issue, so it looks like things are building quite nicely (a pun if you know what the story entails so far…).

I put this cover up on the hope is spreading some art appreciation. I love the composition, DD’s silhouette on the left hovering over a shadow sensed NY cityscape. The eye is so red and draws the attention, only to also point towards out other character. Luke Cage is someone who gets drawn very differently by a lot of artists but Djurdjevic nails his face completely. This is what Cage looks like, for real. Being an old school story we get the old school Cage, silk shirt, chains, ‘fro, sideburns, and tiara all included in the deal. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wonder where the logo will fit, because I’d pick this up from the stands will no logo, easily. I only hope a few other people will as well.

The issue will be written by Antony Johnston, of Wasteland fame and soon to be co-writer for one arc of Daredevil with Andy Diggle, and I am keen to see this title ship, even if no other DD titles ships in May and this is seen as a kind of filler issue. I would prefer that a filler issue be placed in the main title, even if breaking up a story, as I see that as being allowed, but I understand that one-shot can attract just a few more passing readers, so I hope it does. Might even bring in a few Cage only fans and hook them. It also doesn’t have the usual one-shot price gouge, so that’s appreciated.

But what’s most appreciated, at least so far, is this cover. So much of Djurdjevic’s work deserves being oversized and slapped on a wall. And one day, no doubt, it will be.

Posted on February 16th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: comics | No Comments »

It took Stephen King years, decades even, to write Under The Dome. He had the idea kicking around since forever and even once wrote a stack of it only to throw it all out as unsatisfactory. Yet he still knew that one day he would get back to it. He says he remembered the first chapter in its entirety, or close enough, so he wrote the aeroplane and the chipmunk and the game was, once more, afoot.

Under The Dome is a satisfying read, a real page turner even. It posits that a small Maine town in America suddenly and inexplicably has a dome thrown around it. Not even just over it, the invisible and impenetrable force field goes all the way under the town as well. After the initial plane crash, a few cars and tanks hit the nothing and kill or maim their passengers, and a hell of a lot of birds meet their broken necked demise, the authorities are called in and they can’t find a way in at the top and they dig into the bedrock with no avail as well. The people of Chester’s Mill are cut off from the rest of the world.

With this isolation, King then crafts a tale of how terrible, cruel, mean, and selfish people can be. A small town politician, Big Jim Rennie, sees this as an opportunity to up his game and really control the situation. His son does some terrible things, but that’s even before he knows the dome exists, so you know this boy just ain’t no good no matter what. There’s a riot at the food store and the police force just keeps needing more numbers, or so Rennie says as he builds a private army of goons.

King loves to paint a detailed and crummy bad guy for you to hate. When he takes on injustice it just makes you feel bad. You want to jump in the pages and smack some heads around to stop it or get answers. You feel frustrated, and King is in fine form in offering us plenty of that.

The town is isolated from the rest of the world and don’t people quickly figure that out. This changes the law, very quickly, as you can really exert might equalling right every time. Depravity sinks into many of the young police charges and soon you can see where things are headed. Absolute power and all that.

The hero of the piece, Dale Barbara, is an Iraq vet who has taken to transient wandering, Bruce Banner-style. He was on his way out but the dome pulls him back in, or at least traps him within. The President re-enlists him, promotes him to Colonel and places him in charge of everything under the dome. Whicj is a fine idea except that anyone who could enforce this rule is not under the dome with the rest of the town so Rennie summarily ignores this decree and goes about setting up Barbara as the villain of the piece. It’s corrupt and it’s no doubt evil, but it’s also kind of real. People don’t know where the dome came from or when it will leave, if it ever does. They become weak and pliable, which Rennie knows completely.

From there we watch the town slowly unravel as the good guys separate from the bad and we get true emotions and action out of people, much like the hysteria of Lord of the Flies or The Crucible. This is about isolating people and seeing what happens. It’s a social experiment.

One of my main problems was that I never got a feeling for Barbara, or Barbie as he is known. We get told that he is a veteran, and he served in the Gulf, but that’s about it. Dropping words like Fallujah and gymnasium do not complete a person’s history for me. I want to know more, and King is usually the master of giving such detail of a character’s past. He does it for all the other character but I never get it for Barbie. It’s a shame because the character has potential but the main reveal of what happened in that gymnasium (and it’s not the craziest shock) needed to be saved for later so in that we lose his whole back story. I wanted to feel him, as I feel most King characters, and I felt many of the supporting players, but I just wasn’t in on it, sadly. I also got the feeling that earlier he would have been a ‘Nam vet and that might have been something that King could understand and conceptualise easier.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. For 880 pages it turns pretty quickly and there were plenty of set pieces that King wrote with Crichton-style delivery that had me constantly adding ‘just one more chapter’ before lights out. It’s an enjoyable ride, it just lacks that precision and literate mastery that I truly believe King once held.

Perhaps it’s as the saying goes; “the golden age of science fiction is when you are 13.” I read most of King’s output when I was a formative teen and they all rang true for me, many I consider classics. Lately his work just doesn’t seem to have it for me. Except for the short Hearts In Atlantis, and even that I worry he wrote years ago and just finally found a vehicle to ride it in.

I’d recommend Under The Dome, especially to King fans, he serves up a lot of his usual interesting cruelty, and I would promote that it is a page turner, but it is far away from his best. But it just might show a resurgence to an upwardly mobile game. That I will always hold out hope for.

CODA - SPOILERS

The ending. Don’t read this if you don’t know the ending or don’t want to know what it isn’t. This particularly means my brother who has 200 pages to go and has a weak set of will powers. Walk away now, James.

The ending fell flat on me pretty much completely. It wasn’t satisfying on so many levels and it gave me the same distaste I got in Dreamcatcher when the aliens arrived. Everything was going so well until the aliens came to town. I really wished he had ended it on a down note. The premise is that it’s kind of alien kid’s who have set up the dome, torturing us playfully, much like our human children burn ants. It’s not entirely malicious, just devoid of empathy. And in saying, this I don’t mind spoiling that part because the story is about so much more that this all over the book, this is merely the extended MacGuffin.

In the end, they go to the communication access area where they can see the aliens and they beg to be let go. Things under the dome have become dire, people are dying (a lot) and pleading is their literal last resort. It works. Few survive but those who do get their freedom by begging intergalactic children to let them go.

What I would have done; have them go to beg, sure, fine, but when they get there they find that no alien children are left. They’ve all abandoned the game and that dome will be there until the end of time. The few left will die in it and America will hold it as an unknown vigil, as no one outside had any idea about the aliens and there’s really no way they’ll ever be able to find it. It would be a bleak ending, sure, but King was 4/5’s of his way there anyway. He had the accelerator jammed through the chassis and into the engine itself but then he decided to land a handbreak skid of a stop right before the finish line. He should have just raced through and kept on going, not looking back for photographs or awards. Screw everybody, kill ‘em all and let that be because there’s nobody out there to sort ‘em out.

I would have respected that conviction but instead I get the feeling that the King might be getting a little weary to wear the crown anymore.

Posted on February 11th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: books | 2 Comments »

I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy because my brother told me to. He read it because it was post-apocalyptic fiction, as did I. He also said it was damn good. Once I was finished, which was only a few days later, I agreed. It wasn’t long after that for news of a movie to trickle through and get me excited. The two main exciting aspects being the involvement of John Hillcoat and Viggo Mortensen. I held my breath and waited. Waited a very long time.

The movie kept getting pushed back, and I had hoped this time it was to make the prime time for Oscar awards season. Either the movie overshot the mark or it just wasn’t as good as I had hoped because it didn’t get a single nod that I could see. Which is a shame because I can think of 3 or 4 noms I’d sling its way. But before that I’d better review the flick.

The Road looks brilliant. Everything is black and grey, no bright colours have survived whatever caused this complete phenomenon of death and destruction. I still veer towards thinking it was something environmental in nature. The Man and The Boy trek across the land in search of the water to the south. It’s a sad and fruitless journey, only to be made sadder along the way by cannibalistic bastards on the roads looking for whatever they can find.

The movie is bleak, and you need to be prepared for that. Viggo Mortensen is in a constant state of emotional strain, and his son, Kodi Smit-McPhee, gets dragged through the mud at every turn. The pair carry a gun with two bullets left, one each. A chance encounter sees Viggo use one of those shells and so for the rest of the movie you can see he is even more pained that he will be left alone in the world because there is no way in hell he’ll allow his son to succumb to anything evil that roams in the ashy wastes that surround them.

The scenes of human anguish are real, and when they first venture into a cellar only to find the pale and limbless people who are being harvested for food you want to jump or scream or express some guttural emotion. It’s horrific and the aftermath is just as taxing. The movie puts you against a wall and then starts to twist and grind you.

The Boy carries his half of the movie well, he is all heart, or at least the character tries to be. He wants to help those he stumbles across, and seems to be able to sense when they are worthy of this help. The Man, however, never sees this distinction in people because he is lost to humanity, and has lost faith in it. It’s sad, but The Man is without hope completely.

The essence of the movie is boiled down, for me, in one line by The Man:

The boy is the word of God and if he is not then God never spoke.

It says so much about his view on the world and on his son. It’s heartbreaking and I warn you, if you have children, that this film will be confronting. I’m glad I saw it before I had a kid, or even a son, in the same way I’m glad I read Pet Sematary early as well. It’s emotionally draining, but that’s what you go in expecting. That’s what is meant to happen.

I’d certainly give an Oscar nod to Viggo Mortensen. The man is a powerhouse of emotion at all times and yet there are scenes where he relaxes and he plays this so well, especially in the scenes in the bunker. I’d give a nod to director John Hillcoat because his vision is so complete and tactile. Everything is right there in the mise en scene and that’s an impressive feat. I’d think about possibly throwing some nods towards the script and The Boy but my other certainty would be Charlize Theron.

Theron plays The Wife in flashbacks only and she is phenomenal. If I was going to cry in a movie, and it’s only happened twice, then she would have done it. Her scenes are pure anguish and she nails them perfectly. You leave her last scene just wondering what else could go wrong. The world has just ended and she is so blessedly cold. It’s a chilly performance and a commendable one because it certainly could not have been easy to deliver.

It’s not a movie you walk away saying you loved, but I damn well respected it. I couldn’t watch it every week, but it was forever linger within me, much as the book is. It’s a masterful adaptation and an impressive flick. I’d suggest you check it out for those reasons.

Posted on February 7th, 2010 by ryan
Filed under: movies | 4 Comments »