Monday, March 31, 2014
Desert Island Package Trip
You can take a book, a movie, and the complete episodes to a TV show to your island. What do you take? (PS Would have liked to include a CD but couldn't come up with just one.)
I take The Best Short Stories of the 20th Century, edited by John Updike
The Complete MAD MEN series.
FANNY AND ALEXANDER, THE THEATRICAL VERSION
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Keynote Speaker at SLC
Friday, March 28, 2014
Friday's Forgotten Books, March 28, 2014
From the archives.
R. Narvaez was born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His work has been published in A Thousand Faces, Indian Country Noir, Murdaland, Plots with Guns, Spinetingler, Shotgun Honey. He is President of the MWA-New York chapter.
Am Thinking of My Darling, Vincent McHugh
A virus. The City. Civic chaos. Government collapse. The stuff of zombie flicks and terrorist scenarios in 2010. But back in the ’40s, such a plot could still be light-hearted. In Vincent McHugh’s 1943 novel I Am Thinking of My Darling, a virus infects New York City—but it's a happy virus! The infected follow their bliss, feverishly losing their inhibitions (for you Trekkies, think "The Naked Time" episode). The problem is that no one wants to work. Honestly, who would?
Acting planning commissioner Jim Rowan returns home from a trip to DC to find cheerful chaos quickly spreading across town—and his actress wife Niobe missing. She’s infected and on the lam, looking to live out a succession of character roles in a kind of Method fervor. Meanwhile, in an emergency management meeting (consider what that term evokes today), the mayor announces he has the virus—and would rather play with model trains than lead the City. To avoid panic, Rowan is secretly made acting mayor.
The plots riffs genially from there, with Rowan hot on the trail of his slippery wife, cabbing from City Hall to Harlem across a Cityscape in Mardi Gras mode—all the while consulting with civil services to keep things running and with scientists to find a cure. (The fact that the virus apparently originated in the tropics, implying that people there are inhibition-less, may be another artifact of the past.) A polymath (when being a polymath was simpler), Rowan narrates in sensual, informed detail about now-bygone architectural wonders, regional accents, lab science, and jazz music.
This book, with its glad-rag view of a long-lost era, has been a favorite of mine since it was recommended to me decades ago. (I still have my first copy, bought in the now-bygone Tower Books in the Village). McHugh, a poet and a staff writer for The New Yorker in the ’30s, employs a prose style that winks slyly at Chandler and pulp. (Once Rowan is inevitably infected, he’s like Marlowe on E.) Darling also features a nice amount of sexual frankness that may surprise modern readers who forget that people in the ’40s had sex. The novel was made into the very '60s movie What's So Bad About Feeling Good?, but by then the times had already been a-changed enough that the conceit no longer had the right kind of jazz.
Sergio Angelini, THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, Gil Brewer
Joe Barone, THINNING THE TURKEY HERD, Robert Campbell
Brian Busby. POST-WAR PULP NOVELS
Bill Crider, WRITING FOR SURVIVAL, John D. MacDonald
Martin Edwards, THE WALKING STICK, Winston Graham
Curt Evans, SCARWEATHER, Anthony Rolls
Ray Garraty, SLAYGROUND, Richard Stark
Rich Horton, STONE OF CHASTITY, Margery Sharp
Jerry House, NIGHT OF SHADOWS, Ed Gorman
Randy Johnson, TRAIL OF THE LONG RIDER, Lee Martin
George Kelley, CONAN: THE ROAD OF KINGS by Karl Edward Wagner.(Link to follow)
Margot Kinberg, BLEAK HOUSE, Charles Dickens
B.V. Lawson, MURDER AT THE FOUL LINE, ed. Otto Penzler
Evan Lewis "A Corpse in the Hand" Carroll John Daly
Steve Lewis, MURDER TO GO, Emma Lathen
Todd Mason, LIVING IN FEAR: A HISTORY OF HORROR IN THE MASS MEDIA, Les Daniels
Neer, UP AT THE VILLA, W. Somerset Maugham
J.F. Norris, DEATH GOES TO A REUNION, Kathleen Moore Knight
James Reasoner, ARCTIC WINGS, L. Ron Hubbard
Gerard Saylor, THE BOMB, Steve Sheinkin
Kevin Tipple, "Artie and the Long-Legged Woman" from THE ARTIE CRIMES, Jan Christensen
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Three of My Favorite TV Cops
Peter Falk as COLUMBO, Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowicz on NYPD, and Regina King as Detective Lydia Adams on SOUTHLAND.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Overlooked Movies
Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012
This was my second road movie in the last week and a very odd one too. Michael Cera and Gabby Hoffman star in it along with three Chilean brothers (the director's brothers, in fact). It was written and directed by Sebastian Silva and concerns the trip these five take to hunt down a San Pedro Cactus, which one can make mescaline from. They encounter significant problem in getting the cactus. They want to distill the drug and sit on the beach and enjoy the hallucinations. Simple pleasures.
Hoffman, a hippy and rather a bossy one, is the thorne in Sera's side during the trip. The brothers, only understanding some of what she says, are more laid back about her coming along.
What is your favorite movie about a road trip?
What is your favorite movie about a road trip?
Monday, March 24, 2014
Your Favorite Opening Credits (and Music) to a TV Show
There are so many good choices. Some opening credits are strong on music, some on information, some on atmosphere. I think this one does a great job of setting the story and you can't beat the music for me.
Runner -up would be the opening credits to Mary Tyler Moore.
What do you like?
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
The Best War Movies
We were out with friends, great western and war movie lovers, on Saturday night and they had just watched TWELVE O"CLOCK HIGH, which they said was one of their favorite war movies.Then Bill Crider chose one for a forgotten movie this week, saying it was his favorite as a kid.
What are the best war movies ever? This can be a pretty wide-ranging question so let's say that is has to actually have battlescenes or be set in a war zone. In other words, SCHINDLER'S LIST would not qualify unless it has war scenes I don't remember.
Here are three to start it off: GO TELL THE SPARTANS, FULL METAL JACKET and MASH.
My review of ABOUT LAST NIGHT is on Crimespree Magazine.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, March 21, 2014: Ed McBain Day
Ed
McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific
crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926 - 2005). Born Salvatore Lambino
in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during
World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and
Psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went
to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as
Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse all the while working on his own
writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954
with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his
newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the
Bronx.
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer. (From his author page on Amazon)
LAST SUMMER
One of my favorites of Ed McBain's books was written under his real name Evan Hunter.LAST SUMMER is the story of three teenage friends - Sandy, David, and Peter who are spending a summer vacation on an island. They are a little out of control, stealing beer, experimenting with the life they are headed for, running naked through the woods. Their tightness as a group, a nearly perfect thing with Sandy taking the lead in almost everything, is tested when a new girl comes on the scene. It is their last summer of innocence and Rhoda, with her neediness and nerdiness, brings out the worst in them. Sandy uses Rhoda to test her mastery of the boys. An interesting novel that made an interesting movie.
Of course the books set in the 87th Precinct made McBain an eagerly awaited author for me. I think I read almost every book in the series. I was never as attached to Matthew Hope as I was to Steve Carella. IMDB lists all of the films McBain had a hand in. His website gives a complete list of his books and it's astounding.
Epitaphs is one of my favorite Nameless novels for a number of reasons.
For one thing this is one of Pronzini's finest depictions of Nameless' painfully complex relationship with his old partner Eberhardt. The anger, the distrust makes you feel sorry for both of them.
Then there's the even more serious problem of his friend and lover Kerry not wanting to marry him.
The novel is also a fine depiction of how Nameless' North Beach is changing and is being refurbished not only commercially but also sociologically. Proninzi writes with real power about how the Italian heritage he obviously reveres is also suffering because of the changes.
Then there's the story and it's one of Pronzini's most skillfully conceived and maneuvered. Gianna Fornessi is the name of the beautiful granddaughter who is missing. A mutual friend of Namless' asks him to help the grandfather who fears for her.
When he finds where she lives Nameless also realizes that something is wrong. She came from a humble area of North Beach but lives in a style fitting a much more moneyed life.
From this hook Pronzini takes us through enough ruses, masques, dead ends and mysterious but enigmatic clues to fill three or four average novels. And he does so with prose so evocative of both place and passion that you race to the end.
One of Bill Pronzini's finest novels and I don't have to say much more than that, do I?
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer. (From his author page on Amazon)
LAST SUMMER
One of my favorites of Ed McBain's books was written under his real name Evan Hunter.LAST SUMMER is the story of three teenage friends - Sandy, David, and Peter who are spending a summer vacation on an island. They are a little out of control, stealing beer, experimenting with the life they are headed for, running naked through the woods. Their tightness as a group, a nearly perfect thing with Sandy taking the lead in almost everything, is tested when a new girl comes on the scene. It is their last summer of innocence and Rhoda, with her neediness and nerdiness, brings out the worst in them. Sandy uses Rhoda to test her mastery of the boys. An interesting novel that made an interesting movie.
Of course the books set in the 87th Precinct made McBain an eagerly awaited author for me. I think I read almost every book in the series. I was never as attached to Matthew Hope as I was to Steve Carella. IMDB lists all of the films McBain had a hand in. His website gives a complete list of his books and it's astounding.
EPITAPHS by Bill Pronzini
Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of books along with countless other mysteries, westerns, anthologies, short stores and horror novels. You can find him here.
Epitaphs is one of my favorite Nameless novels for a number of reasons.
For one thing this is one of Pronzini's finest depictions of Nameless' painfully complex relationship with his old partner Eberhardt. The anger, the distrust makes you feel sorry for both of them.
Then there's the even more serious problem of his friend and lover Kerry not wanting to marry him.
The novel is also a fine depiction of how Nameless' North Beach is changing and is being refurbished not only commercially but also sociologically. Proninzi writes with real power about how the Italian heritage he obviously reveres is also suffering because of the changes.
Then there's the story and it's one of Pronzini's most skillfully conceived and maneuvered. Gianna Fornessi is the name of the beautiful granddaughter who is missing. A mutual friend of Namless' asks him to help the grandfather who fears for her.
When he finds where she lives Nameless also realizes that something is wrong. She came from a humble area of North Beach but lives in a style fitting a much more moneyed life.
From this hook Pronzini takes us through enough ruses, masques, dead ends and mysterious but enigmatic clues to fill three or four average novels. And he does so with prose so evocative of both place and passion that you race to the end.
One of Bill Pronzini's finest novels and I don't have to say much more than that, do I?
Sergio Angelini, BLOOD RELATIVES, Ed McBain
and http://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/hail-to-the-chief-1973-by-ed-mcbain/
https://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/bread-1974-by-ed-mcbain/ Brian Busby, CATTLE, Winifred Eaton
Bill Crider, THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, Third series, ed Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas
Martin Edwards, DOVER AND THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL, Joyce Porter
Curt Evans, PARTNERS IN CRIME, Agatha Christie
Rich Horton, THE ADVENTURER, Mika Waltari
Jerry House, THE COUNTY OF GASTON, Robert S Cope and Manly Wade Wellman
Nick Jones, Twenty Books to Remember
George Kelley, DANGER: DINOSAURS, Richard Marsten (Ed McBain)
Margot Kinberg, THE BURNING, Jane Casey
Rob Kitchin, CORRIDORS OF DEATH, Ruth Dudley Edwards; DISAPPEARED, Anthony Quinn
B.V. Lawson, NOCTURNE, Ed McBain
Evan Lewis, DANGER CIRCUS, Raoul Whitfled
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck, SOMETHING TO HIDE, Philip MacDonald
Todd Mason, Assorted Publications
Neer, DOWNTOWN, Ed McBain
J.F. Norris, CHILL AND THE KILL, Joan Fleiming
James Reasoner, WEIRD TALES, HERBERT WEST: RE:ANIMATOR, H.P. Lovecraft
Richard Robinson, DEAD SKIP, Joe Gores
Gerard Saylor, LET HIM GO, Larry Watson
Ron Scheer, FLINT'S GIFT, Richard S. Wheeler
Michael Slind
Kevin Tipple, THE PERFECT DETECTIVE, CLark Casey
TomCat, THE BISHOP'S GAME, H.C. Bailey
Prashant Trikkanad, The Science Fiction of Evan Hunter (Ed McBain)
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
