Notes from a bibliophile

Back in the day, I worked at a little mom-and-pop video store. It was pretty cool. We rented VHS and Beta. They had a pretty awesome backlist of titles, too many to work through. Also a lot of soft porn. The best was working on Saturday mornings. The boss didn’t come in til late in the day, and no one came in the story, or if they did, it was just to drop off and run back out. So you had all morning and an extensive library at your fingertips. I saw Eraserhead on one of those Saturdays, and after I transferred to closing their other branch, I was able to watch pretty much watch the entire run of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Not to mention the screeners we’d get in advance of the tapes hitting the shelves. Those were good times. A friend and I had a pool going every year about which of us could predict the most Oscar wins. I invariably lost every year, because I tend to vote with my heart and not like an Oscar voter (and who knows what they vote with). Granted, I haven’t seen a lot of...

For such a short month, February already looks like a much more promising month than January. I’ve never paid this much attention to it before, so maybe that’s the way it always is. But there’s one thing that I find that’s really annoying me. The point of making and distributing a film/television show is to get viewers. Viewers bring in revenue, which means people can make more films and television shows that viewers will want to watch. Pretty basic stuff. So why, pray tell, am I finding it so hard to access trailers for upcoming titles? It’s not like I’m trying to see a trailer of Infinity War  or anything. These things are a month or so out. If I can’t find something online by now that intrigues me enough to say, I gotta see that, then someone is not doing their job. More on that later. First up, on February 2nd, there’s two Netflix originals that look really promising while appearing to be worlds apart. First is Altered Carbon . I...

It’s like Hollywood suffers from the same post-holiday stupor as the rest of us. They’ve had too much turkey all year and finally have to put on their stretchy pants before falling asleep in the BarcaLounger in front of whatever sports game they happen to be interested in. Hardly anything of interest comes out in January. Here’s what I could scrape together: On January 1st, there’s a French thriller called Glacé which is about a murder in the Alps. On January 12, The Post hits movie theatres. It tells the story of The Washington Post ’s decision to go against White House orders to publish information about the Vietnam War. It may get a lot of airtime,  what with one side bashing it as maybe where journalism begin its foray into “fake news” and the other side peraising it as a shining beacon of journalistic integrity. I’m sure it’ll get lots of nominations too. On Amazon Prime - which now has an app on Apple TV and I apparently have an account ( who knew?!?) - Philip K Dick’s ...

I struggled to get books read this year, and those I did read were mostly graphic novels. I’ve also read a lot of Brian K Vaughan. I wanted to like his stuff as much as I liked Y: The Last Man, but I didn’t. What’s not so obvious is that a lot of the graphic novels I really liked were by Image Comics. I’m not sure what that means, but I may be checking out more of their stuff in 2018. Here’s what I eventually worked my way through this year: Outcast Vol. 3 by Robert Kirkman & Paul Azaceta The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean Saga Vol 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples The Monk by Matthew Lewis Wolverine: Logan by Brian K Vaughan, Eduardo Russo, & Dean White East of West Vol 2 by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughan & Niko Henrichon We Stand On Guard by Brian K Vaughan, Steve Skroce, & Matt Hollingsworth The Private Eye by Brian K Vaughan, Marcos Martin, & Muntsa Vicente Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin...

It’s the end of the year and it’s time to look back on what happened in the previous twelve months. February Kong: Skull Island, which I liked pretty well, and A Cure For Wellness. I’ve already written my thoughts about that in another blog. Short version, meh. March Logan, which I really liked, and Beauty and the Beast, which was pointless. I’m boycotting live action remakes of animated films. April Colossal. Really good! June Wonder Woman Spider-Man: Homecoming Despicable Me 3. Unfortunately. July Dunkirk (LOVE) The Dark Tower Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (biggest disappointment of the year) November Blade Runner 2049 Thor: Ragnarok (probably tied for favorite film of the year) Justice League The Star Murder on the Orient Express Coco December Ferdinand The Darkest Hour The Shape of Water (bizarre but good) Star Wars: The Last Jedi 😢

I was raised Baptist. My grandmother on my dad’s side was very much into church life. She was there every Sunday and Wednesday; she helped serve the Wednesday dinner at the church; she played piano for a long time, then retired so to speak to the pews where she was almost a hall monitor over the kids, who kept moving further and further to the front to escape her. The quote from Shakespeare could have been written for her, “And though she be little, she is fierce.” My dad said I’m a lot like her; I kind of wish that was more true than it is. My family was not into church life so much. We recently watched the film Almost Christmas with Danny Glover, and there’s one part where they’re all in church and the pastor refers to them as CME Christians - they’re only in church on Christmas, Mothers Day, and Easter. That was us. Dad claimed it was because of the hypocrisy he saw in the church, and I totally understood that. I went to a private school tha...

It’s the last month of the year. Finally. We get to the end of the year and we’re just so ready for it to be over, hoping the new year will hold so much more promise. But the end of the year is the time when the Oscar-bait movies come out. Here’s some stuff I’m looking forward to. On December 1st, Netflix debuts the first German language series its carried as an original series. Dark   is a story about a town where two kids go missing. The disappearances hearken back to other missing kids from decades earlier and reveals secrets about the town and its inhabitants. It sounds a little like a German version of IT  but without the creepy clown. It looks like there will be some mind-bending, timey-wimey warping that the characters have to deal with, maybe? Whatever it is, it looks really pretty cool. Also on December 1st, is the decidedly uncool sounding, and yet still intriguing, Voyeur . This is the true story of Gerald Foos, who bought a motel for the ...