751) Rescue Dawn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre’s worst banalities....

Herzog in fine form.

752) All Aunt Hagar's Children/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a profound disappointment because, unlike bad writers like Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, newcomers like Donald Ray Pollock, or literary leeches like Thomas Steinbeck, Jones actually has (or had) writing talent. His 1991 book of short stories, Lost In The City, actually was a great piece of literature, with an astounding nine of its fourteen stories reaching greatness (utterly unheard of for published manuscripts). However, The Known World, his 2003 novel that actually won him the Pulitzer, was merely a mediocrity- very overwritten and dull....

Disgraceful.

753) The Rules Of The Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s 1939 black and white classic, The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu), routinely shows up on Top Five lists for best films ever, along with classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. But, it’s not in a league with any of that tercet. In fact, while it’s a good film, and a quite enjoyable one, it’s not even close to being a great film. There are two basic reasons why: first is that, despite some kudos given by technical experts, the film is not nearly as visually compelling nor stunning as the Welles film, and its oft-claimed camera innovations and cinematography are not anything that wows a viewer. Of course, there are some interesting moments, and some of the nature photography is first rate, but anyone expecting to see the 1930s equivalent of The Matrix....

Good, not great.

754) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’....

OK.

755) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate. This film was the first sound film released by the Danish filmmaker, and perhaps the last film in the vein of silent German Expressionism. That stated, it is a very different form of vampire film from the then contemporaneous Dracula, made by Tod Browning, for Universal Studios in America, as well the earlier explicitly Expressionistic take on the film, 1922’s Nosferatu, by F.W. Murnau....

Excellent.

756) High And Low/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  While most well known for his classic Japanese period dramas, such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne Of Blood, the fact is that director Akira Kurosawa’s lasting legacy will be sustained by his towering achievements in then contemporary Japanese drama; films such as Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and 1963’s black and white crime drama High And Low. Words like masterpiece simply do not do justice to such wholly and uniquely great cinema. And it’s not the fact that Kurosawa was able to blend action, social and other genre pieces- long associated with melodrama, with high and deep pure drama, but the fact that his ability to use radical means, quickly establish characterization and suspense, and add in true ethos and philosophy is nonpareil....

Great.

757) Pather Panchali/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica film lies the world of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray’s is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm’s employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation....

Great.

758) Au Hasard Balthazar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The greatness of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, it is one of the most poorly understood films I’ve ever read the criticism of. This is because so many aspects of the film are based upon its most superficial qualities, rather than those deeper and more essential, even as the film achieves this depth in only 95 minutes. This economy occurs because the film focuses not on the superfluities of living, but only those things with resonance and meaning, the important and poetic moments that distill all else. And, oftentimes, those things with meaning are not the expected architectures of the human face, but those of other parts of the human body, like hands, backs, and human postures; all of which evoke connections and depths that would likely be unthinkable to cogitate on in films by other directors....

Titanically great.

759) Borat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  A couple of years ago, in 2006, the biggest comedy hit was a film called Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. The film grew out of a recurring character on a British television show, Da Ali G. Show, created by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I mention the man’s religion because the film attacks Anti-Semitism in a brutally funny way, even as many dull-witted critics accuse the film of that bias. If so, then Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was also Anti-Semitic, and his Monsieur Verdoux was a defense of mass murder. Cohen plays a Kazakh television reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, sent to America to make a documentary on American living for the benefit of his home nation. That’s the setup, which starts in Borat’s native village, and depicts his family and villagers as a bunch of creepy, incestuous morons who have an annual ‘Running Of The Jew’ festival....

Funny.

760) Aparajito/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The first film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali, was such a great film that, naturally, the second film in the series was bound to suffer a bit of a let down. Thus, Aparajito (The Unvanquished)- based on the novel Aparajita, by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee, is not the unadulterated great piece of art that Pather Panchali is. Like many middle films of a series, it suffers from the infamous middle filmitis; when films that are not first in a series rely too heavily upon an audience’s memories of earlier films to inform them of the traits of characters, the chronology of prior events, and a general knowledge of the world the film series is set in....

Great.

761) The Gulag Archipelago/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  This is a great historical first hand account of the Russian Gulags, written by someone who not only lived it but can also write well. Never turgid, the narrative does not suffer the outcome of many historical texts where readers are bogged down with dates and irrelevant detail. Rather, The Gulag Archipelago is presented in a series of vignettes, all of which discuss different elements on this topic. Because this work is so large, it is impossible to cover all of them in a single review. But I will say that for anyone ever curious about reading this, the Abridged is suitable. The book was originally written in a three-volume form, but then the author released an Abridged version as a means for satisfying those Westerners who need not learn the intimate detail (he mentions this in his Introduction) regarding the all of Russian history....

History, writ large.

762) Say It Like Obama/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Even the deepest McCain supporters cannot deny the talent that Barack Obama has for oration. His articulation, mannerisms, and wording all play a role in a delivery that has placed him beside the likes of Martin Luther King and JFK. His speeches have been quoted all around the globe, even published in their very own book. He is so good, in fact, that his opposition has seized on this and tried to turn his skill into a negative. “They’re just words,” some have said. “He’s only a celebrity,” others have claimed. But there is no denying Barack Obama’s ability to captivate an audience, and in Shel Leanne’s book, titled Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking With Purpose and Vision, readers are given insights into just how to use these techniques for themselves....

Good stuff.

763) Obama/Centrist Presidency/Dan Schneider  Given Senator Barack Obama’s victory over Senator John McCain, last night, now is the time to dispel a few myths about what it all means. But first, let me toot my own horn a bit, for way back in early June I predicted here that the man would win with between 300 and 320 electoral votes; months before others came to a similar feeling. Most pundits foresaw another squeaker, ala 2000 or 2004. I did not; and it seems I was even too cautious. As of this morning, Obama holds a 349-163 electoral vote lead, with only North Carolina’s 15 and Missouri’s 11 outstanding. It looks like North Carolina will fall into Obama’s camp later today, with Missouri too close to call. McCain has a slight lead, but thousands of provisional ballots from urban areas could swing it to Obama, in a week or so. The final tally will likely be 364-174 or 375-163 Obama....

It's coming.

764) The Christmas Season/Essay/Barry Pomeroy  The broad narrative terms of how we view Christmas changes slightly just before the season arrives. Christmas is generally accepted as a materialistic festival, with Santa in his Coca-Cola suit hanging, with the presents, under the tree with joy. Jesus hovers in the background hoping to be invited to the real party, instead of sitting in the cold crèche beside the highway....

That time of the year....

765) Red Clay, Blue Cadillac/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Michael Malone is most well known for being the lead writer on the American soap opera One Life To Live. As someone who has watched soap operas and other serial fictions for years, I do not hold this against him. However, having read his collection of twelve stories centered on Southern belles, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, I can say that he certainly doesn’t hide the fact of his past employment. Overall, it’s a solid book- with some bad stories and a few good ones; although nothing great. Malone, in a sense, is a very generic Southern writer. All the standbys are in his work- murder, lust, drinking, red necks, etc. And, good or bad, his tales are loaded with melodrama of the sort that soap operas purvey....

Pretty good.

766) The Wink Of The Zenith/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Few writers have lived exciting lives with Jack London-type adventures. Yet in Floyd Skloot’s latest memoir, The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life, one is given a quiet slice of Americana that is neither extraordinary nor shaped with lyrical passion, but is much more solidly written than most memoirs published on similar topics. And by “similar topics,” I mean the standard “writer’s life” written by yet another upper middle class suburbanite complaining about the woes of suburbia. Instead, I found it a relief to read about a real person with real life issues, rather than the clichéd hyperbole found from most writers (alcoholism, self-indulgence, drug use, etc.) brought on themselves....

Solid.

767) Traveling With Mom/Memoir/Rick Stiegelman  I might’ve guessed what I was getting myself into. The offer of a major expenses paid trip to London, England had, after all, come courtesy of a woman whose unrelenting protest had once transformed a three-week family camping trip out west into a three-week roadside motel trip out west. The trailer that we lugged behind us went largely for show, its main function quickly relegated to blowing the cap off the car's radiator every now and then....

Boy alone?

768) Sister Carrie/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Sister Carrie is the first novel I’ve read by Theodore Dreiser. Previously, I’d read some of his short stories, which were excellent. I am pleased to say that Sister Carrie does not disappoint, though there are a few things about the book that intrigued me, as well as Dreiser himself as a writer. First, his prose is quite fresh. Sister Carrie, published in 1900, had little done in way of publicity, largely due to the controversial subject matter for the time. And although certain references evoke that period, the work, both in subject and form, is timeless. Because Dreiser is more concerned with the “working man” over someone like Henry James for example, there isn’t this aloofness present that often accompanies James’ novels. Dreiser, an American from Indiana, is more concerned with poverty and class struggles—some of the very themes present in Sister Carrie....

Great book.

769) Adoring Gay Men/Informal Social Research/Francis DiClemente  This admission would no doubt generate smirks, chuckles and potential dirty looks if overheard or uttered aloud in any public place in America. In particular, I would not want to say it in the Deep South or in our nation’s Heartland. Here it is: I simply adore gay men....

Say what?

770) Casablanca/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  About three years ago I finally gave in to watch It’s A Wonderful Life for the first time. I had hesitated because of the five and ten minute snippets of the film I had seen, and for its reputation as a hokey Christmas story ‘chestnut.’ Well, was I wrong, for that film is a truly great film, and arguably the best Frank Capra ever made. It also is a good example of the auteur theory of filmmaking, in that the film fits very well within the Capra canon. From the first five minutes the viewer knows that no one but Frank Capra could have directed that film. With that in mind, I decide to finally give in and watch Casablanca from start to finish. Like It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s a film, from the 1940s (1942 vs. Capra’s film’s being from 1946), that has a hold on audiences that has not abated. However, unlike It’s A Wonderful Life, Casablanca often turns up in the Top Ten of Greatest Films Of All Time lists, and this is wrong, for, while Casablanca is, overall, a good film (I’d give it a 75-80 out of a 100), it is nowhere near greatness, for reasons technical, aesthetic, and artistic. I will detail these reasons in this essay, and demonstrate that, while the film is eminently likeable, likeability and greatness are wholly different qualities that a thing possesses- be that thing a work of art, an idea, or just the execution of a plan....

Ok, but overrated.

771) The Conscience Of A Liberal/Book Review/Dan Schneider  In reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book, The Conscience Of A Liberal, I wanted to be able to speak of his writing style, as much as of his opinions, politically and economically. This is because I simply get tired of books being criticized simply for their arguments and not how they are presented. In the last year or so, as example, I got two books that exemplified this approach. The first was psychologist Steven Pinker’s The Stuff Of Thought. It’s a book suffused in science, but as I detailed in this review, it also showed off Pinker’s chops as a great prose stylist, regardless of what one thought of his theories. On the other hand, I also reviewed Michael Shermer’s The Mind Of The Market, a well written book (although Shermer is not the wordsmith Pinker is) but one’s whose Libertarian beliefs so clouded his judgment as to make the book almost laughable in its assertions....

Good.

772) John Arthur Martinez/Music Review/Dan Schneider  Recently, my wife and I spent a night at a local resort called the Canyon Of The Eagles, northwest of Burnet, Texas. As it was a week before Halloween, things were decked out in orange and black, and faux spider webs abounded. On out first evening there, after we returned from eating in Burnet, at about 7:45 pm, we saw that there was to be a small concert in front of the resort’s restaurant area. About 25 people were gathered about, the stars were out on a clear night, and a musical trio prepared to play. At the time, we did not even know the name of the group that was to play. It was obvious, however, that the music was to be country. Having grown up on Motown, then hard rock and heavy metal, I’ve never been partial to country nor classical....

Good stuff.

773) W./Film Review/Dan Schneider  Oliver Stone’s latest film, W., a seeming semi-satire on only the first term of President George W. Bush (no Hurricane Katrina, no BS on ‘the Surge has worked,’ no economic disaster), is a hit and miss affair which, given Stone’s track record in film this decade, is possibly a slight improvement on those earlier films. Recall the deadening mediocrity of U-Turn and utter pointlessness of Any Given Sunday, or the not quite campy enough schlock of Alexander? If you don’t, consider yourself lucky. That said, W. promised a hoped for return to the great films of Stone’s earlier days: Nixon, JFK, The Doors, or at least the gleeful camp of Wall Street. Unfortunately, Stone forgot the advice that Richard Nixon gave General Eisenhower, during the 1952 campaign, after Nixon’s slush fund was found out: shit or get off the pot. The fact is that Stone simply cannot decide whether or not to make his latest film a straight history or a satire. Thus, it fails on both counts....

Yawn.

774) Flash Of Genius/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The new film, Flash Of Genius, by first time director Marc Abraham, is one of those films that is well made, well acted, well shot, and technically, there is little to argue with. But, it’s still utterly predictable; as predictable as the sports film that features an underdog you just know will win in the end. As with most films that ultimately fail, this film fails for its screenplay. No film can succeed without a good screenplay- one with good dialogue, good characterization, and a good tale. The plot, also, has to come alive, and distinguish itself. Given that this film was based on reality, this constricts, a bit....

Solid.

775) Fame/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  There are some who need no last names. Paris. Lindsay. Britney. Sadly, just read those three words in context and you likely know the individuals I am speaking about. Why do we know about them, or more importantly, why do we care? Philosopher Mark Rowlands provides readers with an insightful look into what fame is, what motivates it, and how it has, in recent years, evolved. Fame is part of a series called The Art of Living put out by Acumen, and in it Rowlands argues that part of the problem is the culture’s “inability to distinguish quality from bullshit,” hence bringing about the rise of people who are merely famous for being famous....

Good.

776) McTeague/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Readers might not know a whole lot about Frank Norris due to his short life (1870-1902), but he is part of that school of modern style writers that include Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. Annoying purple prose still lingering from the days of the Victorian Era? You will not find that here. Unfortunately, Norris died at the age of 32 due to a ruptured appendix. McTeague is probably the most well known of his works (published in 1899), even though a number of additional titles were published after his death. Now after having read McTeague, I can say that his loss is a greater tragedy for literature—for who knows what additional masterpieces might have awaited him?....

Good stuff.

777) Fire/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  I watched the 1996 Canadian film Fire, by Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta for the first time, after having long heard of its taboo nature, based mainly on its depiction of lesbianism. And while not a silly film, like the softcore lesbian Canadian film When Night Is Falling, nor the horrid Hollywood ‘Hook’em’ gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain, it is nowhere near a great film, either. As for the lesbianism, there is very little skin and the ‘love story’ is rather demure. That said, there is far too much radical Westernized capital F Feminist ideology that lowers the intellectual argument of this film. The most manifest being that, basically, the film follows the trite radical line that all men are scum who use, abuse, neglect, or degrade women....

Solid.

778) Good Faith, Stupidity, And The Internet 2/Dean Esmay/Dan Schneider  In the first installment of this series of essays, I demolished the poor dialectic that two not too bright poets were having over things that neither had any real grasp of, and posited that, unfortunately, this sickly inability to even be able to argue correctly, was a mere symptom of a larger ill- not only of the Internet, but of the larger society; online or off. I detailed how diehard Communist poet Lyle Daggett still had no fundamental understanding of the fact that art, especially great art, needs no overt didactical tones, for that is redundant, as great art enlightens by the sheer quality of its structure and the ability to leave something memorable and potent in one’s mind. Whether or not its position (or that of its artist) is pro or con any given point is irrelevant. Any true lover of art would rather experience a piece of great art written by someone they find personally or ethically repugnant than a piece of artistic tripe composed by a person they care much of. If they do not, simply put, they are not true art lovers....

Guzzling to hell.

779) Wayfaring At Waverly In Silver Lake/Book Review/Dan Schneider  James McCourt is one of those writers who seems to have gotten in print via connections, and the fact that he is a ‘gay writer’. I say this because it is the only discernible reason available given his actual writing ability. That said, I had to Google him to find out that he is a ‘gay writer’, for, thankfully, although he has many ills as a writer, a predilection for masturbation, fellatio, and 69ing, does not infect every tale in this book, as it too often does the work of gay writers like David Leavitt. Yet, he is not a good writer, but a bad one, regardless of his sexual predilection. Is he the worst writer who’s ever been published? Certainly not, and with bottom feeders like a Nikki Giovanni, Dave Eggers, and a host of other Chick Literatistas around, he’s probably not even near the Bottom 100....

Ugh.

780) Man Bites Dog/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The 1992 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog (C'est Arrivé Près De Chez Vous or It Happened Close To Your House) is one of those films that is not bad nor good, and not really its own ‘thing.’ By that I mean that it is manifestly influenced by films that came before it, so it is nothing original, and it also displays techniques that other films have expanded upon. Yet, since most of these techniques and themes were not originally created within this film, it cannot be said to be ‘influential in its own right, more that it was a conduit between other, often better films....

Killer.

781) La Jetee & Sans Soleil/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Over the years, I had heard of the name Chris Marker, as an avante-garde filmmaker, but having sat through many lost hours, in my early twenties, watching Warhol Factory films, and their dread knockoffs, one can understand why I was never particularly moved to engage the films of this man; especially considering that he was French, from that nation that launched the careers of such notable filmic failures as Jean Cocteau and Jean-Luc Godard. But, then I did something amazing. I actually dropped my biases, and watched and engaged the work of art before me (or, technically, the two works of art), and let it, not the opinions of others, dictate my reaction....

Innovatively great.

782) Missing/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The 1982 political film, Missing, by Costa-Gavras (his first American production), is soon to be released on DVD by The Criterion Collection. It’s a good film, but not a great one. This is mostly because it lacks any real poetry, the way Ingmar Bergman’s anti-war film, Shame, has. Yes, it’s well plotted, well acted, well directed, and scrupulously avoids sentimentality. But, it also avoids any real higher purpose. Yes, Costa-Gavras is perhaps the foremost political filmmaker of our time, but that does not absolve an artist for striving to dig deeper, core into something more essential, or give a perspective on a known event in a different way that allows for a newer understanding. Of course, these things are not requirements, but they are the hallmarks of greatness....

Good.

783) Lolita/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Lolita. It’s been on my to read pile for a while now. It is a novel that, with reputation and all, stands as one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. Not that I appeal to authority, but given the book’s literary presence, in no way do I think Lolita qualifies as one of 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. It’s a good book certainly, but much of its reputation, I have to believe, is due to the controversial subject matter for its day, as well as critics cribbing from one another their overpraise for the book....

Good, not great.

784) The Spy Who Came In From The Cold/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The Criterion Collection’s latest release is the 1965 black and white spy classic, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, directed by Martin Ritt, whose best known films include the Woody Allen Blacklist film, The Front, and the Sally Field union drama Norma Rae. Like those, this is a very well directed and taut film. And, like those later films, this one also misses out on greatness. For those expecting a James Bondian sort of thriller, forget it. This film is an espionage character study, loaded with monologues, dialogues, and philosophic introspection. As such, I can say that there really is not a single genuine action sequence in the film....

Underrated classic.

785) Destroying David Orr/New York Times Poetry Hack/Dan Schneider  A few days ago my wife forwarded me on this link to an essay that appeared in the February 19^th, 2009 New York Times edition. It was written by mediocre poetry critic David Orr, who, five years ago, in a piece about the best websites online, delivered this snarky assessment of Cosmoetica; obviously forced to include it by his editors....

Out with the garbage.

786) The Devil In The White City/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  The Devil in the White City is a book that my stepfather recommended to me, and my stepfather is someone who reads Jimmy Buffett books, so I did not have high hopes. Yet The Devil in the White City is more a disappointment than it is a bad book, because it clearly is not a bad book. It actually had the potential to be an excellent one, but falls short. In fact, I have no choice but to give it an A plus when it comes to thoroughness and meticulous detail. Ever want to know every little thing that went into the construction of the 1893 World’s Fair? If so, this is the book for you. But I also must note that it is this very quality—that is, excessive detail, that makes this book such a drag to read. Allow me to explain....

Ok.

787) Damnation/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos’s films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s....

Tarr in command.

788) The Philosopher And The Wolf/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Philosopher Mark Rowlands is not what one would classically think of as a great writer, in that his prose is not supernally poetic like Loren Eiseley’s, he does not use easily understood but well-targeted metaphors like Stephen Jay Gould, nor does he have the raw power that Friedrich Nietszche did. But he manages to convey highly nuanced and deep concepts in remarkably simple sentences and constructs as he grounds each seemingly pedestrian sentence with its neighbor in ways that crescendo. Such was my conclusion in reading his latest book, The Philosopher And The Wolf, put out by Granta books....

Great book.

789) Mysterious Skin/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  In watching the 2004 drama, Mysterious Skin, by filmmaker Gregg Araki, I was reminded of the old gilding the lily nostrum, in that a little bit less would have been a whole lot more, qualitatively, for this film. This is a very good film, that certainly had the potential to be great, but whose excesses knock it a notch or two below, just enough that it barely makes the argument for near greatness. On the surface, it may be said to be much like a 1970s ABC Afterschool Special of a film, admixed with a sometimes gratuitous penchant for over the top sexuality. Despite that, however, it does succeed as a teen-based drama in ways that another teen drama, like Mean Creek, did not, but also in ways that a similarly themed, and also excellent, film like L.I.E. did not....

Good stuff.

790) Blade Runner/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci fi dystopian film Blade Runner is one of those Hollywood films whose initial mixed reviews, like those for Casablanca, were actually closer to the mark than the subsequent decades of hagiography that followed. That’s not to say that Blade Runner is a bad film, only a much ballyhooed mediocrity rather than a great, or even classic film; due mostly to its poor and sluggish screenplay. Adapted from a mediocre novel, called Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick- a writer whose initial ideas for stories always outstripped his creative ability to narratively render them into good prose, the film pales in comparison to Paul Verhoeven’s later filmic Dick adaptation, 1990’s Total Recall, as well as to Scott’s prior sci fi classic, Alien....

Overrated pap.

791) The Easter Parade/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Something happens with every Richard Yates book I read. I sit down to read it, and I find myself unable to be pulled away. This first occurred when I read his 1961 gem of a novel Revolutionary Road, and now the same has occurred for his 1976 novel Easter Parade. It is known now that for a number of years, Yates’ novels went out of print. They did not sell well upon their initial publication, and Revolutionary Road even lost the National Book Award. This does not surprise me, only shows that the public rarely appreciates quality when it is in front of them, and it is only upon the passage of years when people can finally take notice of how great and talented someone was in their day....

Good stuff.

792) The Mammy/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  The Mammy is the first book in the Agnes Browne Trilogy, which deals with a working class Irish family during the 1960s. The book is slim, finishing with large sized font, just under 175 pages. Agnes Browne is the Mammy the book speaks of—she’s the mother of seven who has found herself recently widowed. Forced to find a way to care for her family, the opening scene involves her going down to the Department of Social Welfare to pick up her check, yet the office has yet to receive her husband’s death certificate (he dies only hours before the book begins). Agnes wastes no time....

Solid.

793) The Financier/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Greed. Money. Power. Given our current financial times, I am surprised more are not speaking about Theodore Dreiser. The Financier is Dreiser’s 1912 novel following his most well known work, Sister Carrie. The Financier is set during the 1860s and 70s, though little dates the work as a whole, for the lead character, Frank Cowperwood, could be any corrupt CEO living on Wall Street today....

Good.

794) A Good School/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  A Good School is a good, solid novel, but that is about it. While many writers would be so lucky to able to actually have a good novel worthy of publication, A Good School is a bit of a let down, when compared to other works by Yates, but it is still something worth the read....

Good.

795) Jeff Buckley/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Rare is it to have two artists, one a father and the other a son, both who have talent in the same field. Think about it: while there are many offspring who try to follow in their parent’s footsteps, what usually happens is that the child is nothing but a distant drop of what the parent was, and that is putting it kindly. Examples would be Sylvia Plath and Frieda Hughes, John and Thomas Steinbeck, Anne and Linda Sexton. Even more odd is it to have a parent artist die at the age of 28, only then to have his son die at the age of 30....

Ok.

796) First Men In The Moon/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The 1964 film version of H.G. Wells’ First Men In The Moon is a film I was never really fond of. Yes, it was directed by the estimable B film legend Nathan Juran, who brought the world such great B film classics as The Brain From Planet Arous, 20 Million Miles To Earth, and The 7^th Voyage Of Sinbad, but it lacked the great special effects, hamminess, and babeoliciousness of those three films. On top of all that, it lacked the really horrid technical schlockery to propel it to the ‘so bad it’s good’ category either that films like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Robot Monster occupy....

Ok.

797) Hobson's Choice/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Having grown up on the more well known films of David Lean, from his 1940s period pieces, like Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, to his famed epics, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence Of Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago, I was surprised to learn that he even made comedies. In fact, he only made two, 1945’s Blithe Spirit, based on a Noel Coward play, and the film under review, 1954’s Hobson’s Choice (Lean’s last black and white film), also based upon a play- a 1916 play of the same title by Harold Brighouse....

Good.

798) Spoor Of Desire/Book Review/Kirpal Gordon  Lovers of poetry have come to William Seaton’s work in a variety of ways over the last forty years: with the Cloud House poets in San Francisco in the ‘70s; with his radio series, Poetry for the People, & his television show, Words in the Air, in the ‘80s; or with his long-running Poetry on the Loose that he produces in the mid-Hudson Valley, now in its sixteenth year.  Others have found him through his translations of Greek, Latin & German poets, as ancient as Sappho & as contemporary as Dada.  Others know him as an inspired teacher of the craft or as a captivating performer....

Good book.

799) Interview/William Seaton/Kirpal Gordon  After receiving my review copy of Spoor of Desire: Selected Poems from Foothills Publishing up in Katona, NY, I dutifully googled you only to discover that you were presently on the road giving a reading in Nepal.  Above a photograph of you reading from your new book the Kathmandu Post of 9 Feb 09 called you “a poet of music” & quoted you as saying: “Poetry is a craft.  It takes care, polishing & rewriting.  Many poets believe that first idea is the best idea which I don’t believe completely.  My poetic moment begins with an impression rather than an idea."....

Talkin' verse.

800) Lonely Planets/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy Of Alien Life, a 2004 book by astrobiologist David Grinspoon, is a terrific science book because it is informative, solidly written, and gives insights into not only history but its writer’s life and philosophy (natural and otherwise). It’s only flaw is that it shows some signs of being dated, even just five years on. As example, Grinspoon declares Mars is likely a dead world, for its lack of water. But, last year, water was indeed, discovered on Mars, and far more of it than thought just five years ago....

Good read.

801) Robinson Crusoe On Mars/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  It was over 30 years since I last saw the 1964 sci fi film Robinson Crusoe On Mars, before I popped in The Criterion Collection’s DVD of it. I’d only seen it in black and white, and then in a truncated version that cut the brief nude scene. Anyway, what stuck with me, and struck me again on rewatch, was just how good and emotionally realistic this film was. Yes, the special effects are dated, and the reuse of the flying saucers from The War Of The Worlds (another film by this film’s director, Byron Haskin) is cheaply done, and there are some clunkier moments....

Underrated.

802) Hearts Of Darkness/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Sometimes a film can get a reputation way beyond its worth, yet still be a good film. In watching the DVD release of Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Eleanor Coppola’s documentary on the making of the war epic Apocalypse Now, by her husband Francis Ford Coppola, this struck me as true. The title of this hour and a half long film, of course, comes from the source material for Apocalypse Now, Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart Of Darkness. While there is no doubt that Apocalypse Now is a great film, the documentary about it is not. Yes, it is a useful and instructive document, but, in many ways, it reminded me of the documentary about the making of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny And Alexander, which had almost no commentary....

Ok.

803) The Samurai Trilogy/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1954-1956 three part color film, The Samurai Trilogy, is unlike many filmic trilogies for the very fact that it is, indeed, one exactly five hour long film, and not three separate linked films, for the first two films have no real endings. In this way it has much in common with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. However, whereas those three are separate films, more or less, their source work is not. Yes, J.R.R. Tolkien’s book is often printed in three separate volumes, but it is one work.....

Solid.

804) Thames/Biography/Jessica Schneider/Book Review  “Water is permanent; water is destructive; everything returns to its depths.” Such is probably the simplest way to sum up Peter Ackroyd’s non-fiction title: Thames: A Biography. In his new book, readers are given the opportunity to not just imagine a river, but also the idea of one. With his richly organized chapters rife with detail, Ackroyd provides insight on all things Thames: history, geology, mythology, hydrology and how this all pertains to the larger aspects of culture....

Solid.

805) Cold Spring Harbor/Jessica Schneider/Book Review  Little gets past the eyes of Richard Yates. He is a writer who can take a dismal, ordinary set of characters and make them into real, flesh and bone beings, simply by the way he describes their patterns of behavior, their mannerisms, their dialogue. Cold Spring Harbor is his last novel, published in 1986, and it carries with it all the benefits of being a Yates novel: spare yet descriptive, insightful dialogue about seemingly “simple things,” peppered with his acute observational skills for human behavior....

Good.

806) A Tragic Honesty/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  To say that Richard Yates lived a troubled life would be an understatement. In fact, after learning of his life, it is easy to see just where he got all his material, and why he writes so well about alcoholics. In many ways his troubles were not only cliché (the tortured, depressed, lonely, mentally unstable, financially struggling artist that no one appreciates or understands) they were also self-induced....

Solid.

807) The Limey/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 so-called crime-action film, The Limey, is easily the best film of Soderbergh’s that I’ve ever seen. Part of this is due to the innovative narrative structure that makes all but the most of the last few minutes of this great film a flashback, and the rest is due to an excellent script by screenwriter Lem Dobbs, whose other great success came a year earlier, in Alex Proyas’s sci fi film Dark City. Both films, despite their seeming divergence, are acutely focused on human memory, and both deal with the fragility of such in novel ways....

Great.

808) Fiction/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  In reading the sophomore novel by Ara 13, my reaction was (while reading it) that I’d not ever read anything quite like it before. Fiction is actually a work of metafiction, and while I have read other metafictional books in the past, Fiction is unusual in its narrative approach and style—and I mean that as a good thing. Although it is difficult to pinpoint any particular writer 13’s novel reminds me of, I would have to say the closest thing might be Nathanael West, albeit 13 tends to veer off into more philosophical elements than West does, though both writers share a certain element of humor....

Solid.

809) Evil Brain From Outer Space/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  In all my years watching Gamera and Godzilla films, I thought I had seen all the possible Japanese monster movie variants, but, somehow, this little film slid by my attention. First, while this is technically a review of a DVD, the fact is that I watched this 1956 black and white film on one of those cheapo 50 pack cases from Mill Creek Entertainment, so there was absolutely nothing in terms of extra features. Yet, so what? If one were to expect features for a film that was clearly made for a 1950 television Captain Video And His Video Rangers knockoff for Japan, well, one would be silly....

What?

810) Days Of '36/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos’s 1972 film, Days Of ’36 (Μερες του ’36, or Meres Tou ‘36), is the least of the several films of his that I’ve seen. It is also, by over a decade and a half, the earliest of the films of his I’ve so far seen, and, at an hour and 45 minutes, by a good margin, the shortest as well. It clearly comes across as an ‘early’ work in the artists’ canon, because, especially when comparing it to later works, one can clearly see the artist making decisions here and being unsure of their potential success. In many ways, the film most reminds me of the first film of Werner Herzog, Signs Of Life (save the Angelopoulos film is in color, not black and white). That film was set in the Greek Islands, and was also not dependent upon a talky screenplay. There are large portions of this often wordless film that could have worked quite well in the silent era. And when the mostly anonymous characters do speak, they speak in the way that the satiric characters from the best plays of Samuel Beckett do- in riddles and whispered asides that mean little at the moment of their utterance, but which may have great meaning in retrospect....

Theo still rocks.

811) Il Generale Della Rovere/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Il Generale Della Rovere was one of Roberto Rossellini’s most successful films (winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), commercially, and there is a simple reason why. It’s not that good a film. It’s a rather formulaic film, slathered with faux patriotic sloganeering, whitewashed politics, and a rather banal cinematic approach. Rossellini was, along with the film’s star, Vittorio De Sica, one of the two big name directors of what was known as Italian Neo-Realism. But, while 1945’s Rome: Open City was also a financial success for Rossellini, he went almost fifteen years between that success and this one, in 1959. De Sica, however, had more commercial and critical success in the interim....

Good.

812) David Leavitt/Book Review/Dan Schneider  If I told you that a writer was best known for a) having the first published ‘gay’ story in The New Yorker, and b) getting sued by poet Stephen Spender, the most famous poet that no one can remember a line he’s written, for allegedly plagiarizing parts of Spender’s autobiography World Within World for a novel of his called While England Sleeps, what odds would you lay on that writer being any good? If you said slim and none you would be correct. Well, the writer is David Leavitt, and the book is his Collected Stories, published in 2003 by Bloomsbury, which consists of the three prior published collections of short stories that Leavitt wrote over the last quarter century....

Ugh.

813) Henry Grimes/Poetry Review/David Francis  Musician Henry Grimes came out with a volume of poetry in 2006 published by Buddy’s Knife Jazzedition based in Germany. Marc Ribot’s foreword is rendered in German and English, while the 49 poems are in the original English.  Illustrated with mostly recent performance and publicity photographs, the text, Ribot explains, was selected from notebooks kept during the thirty-year period when Grimes enigmatically disappeared from the music world, to reemerge in the 21st century.  Pieces are dated “early 80’s,” “circa 1979,” “undated,” and, humorously, “somewhere between 1984 and 1999.”  Only one is slated precisely for “August 12, 1983.”  Because of the time frame and what readers know about Grimes from the foreword, there is an expectation not of a collection but of the salvaging of wisdom and worthy writing from a mature man’s life....

Read on.

814) Dark City/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Australian filmmaker Alex Proyas’s 1998 film Dark City has been compared to many prior science fiction films, from Metropolis to Blade Runner, but, simply put, it’s better than those films. The comparison to Blade Runner, especially, is inapt, because that film is all style and little substance- a claim made of Dark City, but, in truth, the film is mostly substance, with style about the edges. Yet, the style is so memorable that viewers and critics have had a hard time realizing it is a film that is original fiction, and not based upon a comic strip, as the urban legend goes. I first saw the film in theaters, over a decade ago, and watched the theatrical version on DVD a couple of times since. But, having heard that there was a new Director’s Cut coming to DVD....

Great.

815) Satantango/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  In 1994, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr released a seven hour black and white film called Satantango (Satan’s Tango in English) that presented a conundrum for both the purveyors of plot-driven, character-empty Lowest Common Denominator blockbuster action summer movies and those who favor the cerebral, pretentious, film school fawning indulgences of Eurotrash (aka World Cinema) filmmaking. The conundrum was how can time be manipulated by the artist (filmmaker) so that the viewer (percipient) is removed from its passage? No, that theme is never directly stated nor implied in the film’s frames, but it is there, and Satantango is a film that, like Chris Marker’s La Jetee, will stand as a milestone in cinema history. Like Marker’s film, Satantango is a great film, and I will detail and argue such in this essay. But, I believe that it could well be the sort of film that, decades hence, serves as the template for what remains of modern cinema culture....

Bottleneck art at its best.