by Dean | Aug 23, 2012 | General
For a book published in 1977, Lewis Patten’s The Trial at Apache Junction might seem like a pretty tired Western. But how tired, really, is such a novel when its story makes sense and its action passages are fairly imaginative? It concerns a sheriff who knows the scoundrel he’s supposed to execute did not get a proper trial, and it’s fun despite a few stale details. Throw in a perfidious deputy and a career-ending murder, and you just might end up with a notable entertainment.
Does the book have anything to say? Nope. It’s neither philosophical nor religious nor political. It’s the usual trinket. Have fun.
Sunset, 3/9/08, near Apache Junction, Arizona (Photo credit: gwilmore)
by Dean | Aug 20, 2012 | General
Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2003), which concerns a drug dealer’s last day of freedom before his prison sentence begins, is a sluggish and offputting film which I didn’t bother watching to the end. Lee’s style is pushy and unreal, and there is too much of Terence Blanchard’s often gimcrack music.
“At its best,” wrote David Edelstein for Slate, “25th Hour is a melancholy tone poem,” but I wouldn’t expect a cinematic tone poem to be as talky as this. And that it is genuinely poetic is debatable.
Cover of 25th Hour
by Dean | Aug 14, 2012 | General
It was in 1979 that the late Donna Summer had a Top 40 hit with “Fujiyama Mama”. . . No, wait a minute! That was Wanda Jackson. Donna Summer had a hit with “Hot Love.” I get confused because both women were pleasure-seeking pop stars who eventually turned to Jesus Christ, albeit in Donna’s case it was only her public image that was pleasure-seeking (and sex-lovin’). From the porno song “Love to Love You Baby” to The Wanderer album (1980) with its “I Believe in Jesus” cut–this constituted Disco Gal’s journey. Summer did a duet with Streisand called “No More Tears.” With The Wanderer, it was No More Hedonism.
Technically not a Christian album, The Wanderer nonetheless offers “I Believe in Jesus” amid the optimistic “Looking Up” and songs about failed love (“Breakdown”). It has its spiritual dimension, in addition to being very entertaining. For all the no-account lyrics, almost every tune on it is catchy–and blessed with Summer’s powerful but unmannered vocals. Her voice is The Instrument here, that’s for sure.
I don’t know how meritorious Donna’s following albums were, but there have certainly been some strong individual songs, such as “Unconditional Love,” except for the line “Give me your unconditional love / The kind of love I deserve.” The kind of love I DESERVE?
The Donna Summer Anthology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Aug 9, 2012 | General
Set in New York during the Twenties, Thomas Mallon’s comic novel Bandbox (2004) chronicles the doings of those who put out fictitious Bandbox magazine for men. Indeed, they struggle to keep the magazine afloat in the face of such realities as gangster involvement and the recalcitrance of film star Rosemary LaRoche, intended for a cover shoot.
A man who values animals (sometimes treated cruelly, to be sure), not people. The gangster activity of selling illegal narcotics. A strictly non-intellectual mag which may be considered the Maxim of its day. Bandbox presents all this–and what we understand, of course, is that much in America never changes (also true of other countries). And yet, simultaneously, there is that early 20th century innocence among Mallon’s people which many of us today apprehend and which will never exist again.
Great novels, it seems, are no longer being written, and it’s probably undeniable that this one isn’t great. Still, it’s bouncy and shrewd and enjoyable, the work of a talented writer.
Cover of Bandbox: A Novel
by Dean | Aug 6, 2012 | General
Pirates–i.e., evildoers–are sanitized and trivialized in the clay-animation feature, The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012), and there is a conspicuously silly plot, but a lot of good jokes crop up as well. Even something weird will occur now and then, as witness the presence of Jane Austen and the Elephant Man (the year is 1837). Also, surprise, there is no love interest.
A product of Britain’s Aardman Animations, Pirates! is a rowdy family film proffering the voices of Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, and Salma Hayek. Miss Staunton “plays” a mean Queen Victoria, who looks like a fat Helena Bonham Carter.
Film poster for The Pirates! - Courtesy of Columbia Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
