Category Archives: Reviews

RAYGUNS OVER TEXAS reviewed at GeorgeKelly.org

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Cover by Rocky Kelley

Cover by Rocky Kelley

Under the banner of FORGOTTEN BOOKS #243: RAYGUNS OVER TEXAS Edited by Richard Klaw, George Kelley wrote:

Scott Cupp generously sent me a copy of Rayguns Over Texas, a collection of Science Fiction short stories written by Texas writers. I love the cover by Rocky Kelley (no relation)! Bruce Sterling provides a wonderful Introduction. Scott Cupp’s essay on his SF reading is masterful. Neal Barrett, Jr., Joe R. Lansdale, and Michael Moorcock wrote my favorite stories in this collection, but there are plenty of other enjoyable stories here. Pick up a copy soon before they’re all gone!

Nice review but isn’t Rayguns a little new to be considered a “forgotten title?” Only been out for two months!

For more on Rayguns Over Texas, visit the FACT site.

Lost Review: Grown Ups

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Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and articles.

I had forgotten ever seeing Grown Ups, never mind reviewing it, until I ran across the review on my computer. Thankfully, I managed to miss this summer’s ill-advised sequel.

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Lost Review: Roku Netflix Player

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Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and articles.

Over five years ago, I reviewed the first iteration of the Roku, which at the time only offered Netflix. Now in version 3.0, today’s device offers over 1,000 channels.

Amazingly, my original Roku, though beginning to get cranky and show its age, is still going strong!

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Fantastic Fest wrap up Part II

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As promised here’s a wrap up of the movies I screened at Fantastic Fest 2013.
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Greatful Dead

Alongside the coverage here, I also wrote reviews about several of the movies for The Horn. The Japanese feature Greatful Dead, which enjoyed it’s world premiere at the Festival, fell in that category.

Greatful Dead (Gureitofuru deddo), the newest film from Japanese director Eiji Uchida (Last Days of the World), paints a darkly comic portrait of a disturbed young woman. The unsettling, but flawed, picture follows a descent into madness.

Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) grew up in a fractured household. Her mother (who cares more for poor foreign children than her own) abandons Nami and her older sister; her father spirals into depression and starts dating a beautiful younger woman; Nami’s older sister runs off with her boyfriend so she can have a “normal” life; and then her father commits suicide. All before she turns eighteen.

When she turns twenty, Nami inherits a sizable fortune, which enables her to engage fully in her secret life as voyeur. She prefers watching elderly men, who live alone with minimal contact with others. Nami calls these people “solitarians.”

Read the rest of my review at The Horn.

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Fantastic Fest wrap up Part I

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fantastic-fest-2013-poster

As promised here’s a wrap up of the movies I screened at Fantastic Fest 2013.

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Borgman

Borgman, the subversive film by Alex van Warmerdam (The Last Days of Emma Blank), opens oddly as a priest and two men armed with guns hunts for the dirty, unshaven, and frail Camiel Borgman who lives underground. He and two other similar men narrowly escape the attackers.

From there things get weirder and more inexplicable as he befriends Marina and Richard, eventually living in their house as the gardener. Borgman wields psychological and sexual power over Marina. Others of similar temperament join with him as the dead bodies start to pile up.

The bloodless movie relies on subtlety and dark pervasive humor in a story riddled with fascinating ideas and concepts but little explanation. All characters save Borgman are very passive in their actions and reactions. Matter of fact, the moment characters begin to exhibit proactive traits, they are killed.

Though Borgman suffers from vagueness and lack of clear motivation, van Warmerdam crafted an intriguing and compelling movie, fueled largely by the mysterious lead.

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Fantastic Fest Day One

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Slow start to my Fantastic Fest as I only saw two films today (well three if you count the one I stopped after 10 minutes). Tomorrow should be a lot busier.

greatfuldead__large

Alongside the coverage here, I am also writing reviews about several of the movies for The Horn. The Japanese feature Greatful Dead, which enjoyed it’s world premiere at the Festival, fell in that category.

Greatful Dead (Gureitofuru deddo), the newest film from Japanese director Eiji Uchida (Last Days of the World), paints a darkly comic portrait of a disturbed young woman. The unsettling, but flawed, picture follows a descent into madness.

Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) grew up in a fractured household. Her mother (who cares more for poor foreign children than her own) abandons Nami and her older sister; her father spirals into depression and starts dating a beautiful younger woman; Nami’s older sister runs off with her boyfriend so she can have a “normal” life; and then her father commits suicide. All before she turns eighteen.

When she turns twenty, Nami inherits a sizable fortune, which enables her to engage fully in her secret life as voyeur. She prefers watching elderly men, who live alone with minimal contact with others. Nami calls these people “solitarians.”

Read the rest of my review at The Horn. Continue reading →

Lost Review: We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay)

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Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and articles.

With the impending Fantastic Fest 2013, complete with Jim Mickle’s remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay), I’m offering up my take on the original film.

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Snobbery and lower literary forms

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Conversations with Texas Writers

While researching something else entirely, I ran across a scathing review of Conversations With Texas Writers from the Winter 2006 issue of Great Plains Quarterly (#26:1 for those who are counting) by Don B. Graham of the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

(Full disclosure time: I interviewed Joe R. Lansdale and Bruce Sterling in Conversations.)

While I agree with some of Graham’s assessments especially the book’s lack of focus, I, not surprisingly, have serious issues with his elitist attitude regarding genre writers.

Another problem is that genre writers are accorded the stature of Flaubert or Dostoevsky. This is perhaps the inevitable result of posing questions to an author of young-adult fiction or adult crime novels: the very, act of treating such authors seriously, as artists, produces what we might call the Fog of Literature. All writers are good on the subject of their own fiction, poetry, drama, whatever; indeed, everybody sounds like Tolstoy when asked about their intentions, their influences, their feelings.

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Lost Review: Salt

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Beginning in December 2005 with my history of apes in film essay “Gorilla of Your Dreams” (the substantially update and revised version appears in The Apes of Wrath), I regularly contributed to Moving Pictures Magazine. First in the print incarnation and then for primarily the website. I contributed reviews and essays for the last three years of the publications existence. Following the June 2011 demise of both the print and website editions, all of the digital work for MPM disappeared into the ether. In the coming months (years?), I plan on reposting many of my reviews and articles.

In memory of summers past, here’s my July 23, 2010 review of the Angelina Jolie action-thriller Salt.

salt_ver2 Continue reading →