Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro

Stephen King

Top 5 Stephen King books:

1. Pet Sematary
2. The Shining
3. Cujo
4. Salem's Lot
5. Firestarter

Agatha Christie by Tom Adams

Yvonne DeCarlo 2

Cruel Sister

On page 376

...of The Goldfinch. So far I like it. There's nothing like getting lost in a big fat novel.

Page 1

I had this image in my head for a long time, as an opening of a story. A man looks out a window, a phone rings, he answers it. Will it turn out to be something? Will there be a story? I don't know. Maybe.

Folk Rock

Top 5 British folk rock albums:

1. Unhalfbricking by Fairport Convention
2. The Lady and the Unicorn by John Renborn
3. Cruel Sister by Pentangle
4. A Maid in Bedlam by The John Renborn Group
5. Basket of Light by Pentangle

Michael Palin

Should have been working...
but watched Michael Palin's program about Andrew Wyeth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ1NDuvskpY
then another one, about the Danish artist Hammershoi, that I didn't know about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhQmS8KJeUo
and then finally watched an hour long interview with the man himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFHNY3fTIE

Laurel & Hardy sketch

Yvonne DeCarlo

Chapter two

I woke up, ants were walking in my ear. The fire had died out. A slow death for Mister Fire. The stars were looking down without comment. I listened to the sound of nothing. It was impossible to go back to sleep. To go to sleep in the desert. To wander in the desert, asleep. To sleep wander, in the desert. How long does the wall sleep? Who asks the dying bird? Do you see the seven stairs? Do you speak in the night? Do you walk in the rain on Sundays? Will you read the newspaper when it's wet? Will you read the moon when it's wrong? Have you walked around the mountain? Did I have a watch? No. No, I didn't. My wrist was bare. Klaus was awake, slowly putting on his boots.
-Will we be saved?

-If we are found.

Painting by Matisse

Constantine

Keanu Reeves is John Constantine. Directed by Francis Lawrence.

I kind of like this film. It's not perfect. Okay, Reeves is neither blond nor British, but that's not the problem - good old Keanu does an okay job. It's rather the weak script, the annoying sidekick character and relying too much on CGI. I wish they had gone for more practical effects. Visually, the film looks pretty good. The director comes from music videos, but the film doesn't have that fast editing MTV feel. You can see some Fincher and Wachowski influence, but that's okay, it's the guy's first film, after all. The scene with the cat is great, and Peter Stormare is a lot of fun as Lucifer.

The Limey

Terence Stamp goes to LA to avenge the death of his daughter, the leads point to Peter Fonda. Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

It's not quite Point Blank or Don't Look Now, but it's a pretty good film, an impressionistic style exercise, a dream memory mosaic. There are several 60s icons in the film, Stamp is glum, Fonda is cheerful, Stamp does the cockney rhyming thing, there's 60s music, there's nostalgia and disillusionment. Besides the non linear storytelling, the story itself is quite simple, unless I missed something. Stamp is very good. Headbutting is difficult if you wear glasses.

Top 5 Soderbergh films:
1. Out of Sight
2. Ocean's Eleven
3. Solaris
4. The Limey
5. Kafka

Some books I've read 14

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and The Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
It's a good book. I think I prefer the Janet Reitman one, maybe because I read that one first. Some information here you get for the second time. The crazy stuff goes up to 11, it's hard to believe some of it. The footnotes, with Tom Cruise's response to some of  the accusations, show that he actually lies on behalf of the cult. But, lying is pretty much all they do.

Not in Your Lifetime: The Assassination of JFK by Anthony Summers
A pretty good, objective ABC about the whole conspiracy thing. The writer didn't have a theory first and then went looking for proof, ignoring everything that didn't fit. And he's not totally up his own ass, saying it was Jackie or the driver or Elvis.
 
Plays vol. 1, 2, 3 and 4 by David Mamet
So yeah. I got a bit hooked on Mamet. There's Glengarry Glen Ross, of course. The fuckin' leads... What can you do? And American Buffalo. (pause) I really liked Squirrels. I liked that play. That's a good play. Not everything's gold, but... (shrugs) You can always enjoy Mamet's use of language.

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen
A collection of poems and writings, some older stuff, some from his Mt Baldy retreat period, about sex, growing old, spirituality, the usual Cohen suspects, sometimes it rhymes, sometimes it doesn't, and also including drawings that seem to be drawn on a computer. Frankly, a lot of it goes over my head, but it's still nice to read.

Hawkeye hardcover collection by Matt Fraction, David Aja and some other people
If the artist draws in the same style as David Mazzucchelli it creates big expectations. Is it as good as Batman Year 1? No, it's not. There's a cleverness in the book, but I'm not really sure if that's a good thing. Eleven chapters, and we still don't know the characters any better. Why include the last chapter, drawn in a Neal Adamsy style and with graded colours, completely clashing with the rest of the book? And I don't like the computer font.

Fran by Jim Woodring
Ring Jim Wood
Jim Ring Wood
Wood Jim Ring

Captain Easy vol. 4 1940-1943 by Roy Crane
I can still enjoy the cartoony drawing, but it's become less of an adventure strip, and at the end Easy even disappears as a character. And it's pretty much four daily strips on top of each other,  not the visually exciting Sunday page it was in the first volume.