Book Review : Alden Jones – Unaccompanied Minors (2014)

Order UNACCOMPANIED MINORS here

I came to Costa Rica to get away from people like you. I went as far away from you as I could get, and here you are.

I’ve tried to explain to Josie once why her music was making my ears bleed. It’s a complicated, gender-based issue. For exemple, if a young Lemmy Kilmister gets dumped, he is going to write an angry rock n’ roll song about booze, titty bars and unnecessary violence. Now, if Sarah McLachlan writes a song for the same reason, it’s going to be a quiet, mounrful song about keeping your dignity and moving on with your life into an incertain tomorrow. I don’t read nearly enough female readers for that same reason: I don’t feel an intimate relationship to what they do. I did, however feel the pull of Alden Jones‘ fiction. UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is a neurotic, self-sufficient short story collection that highlights the powerful economy of style of Ms. Jones. It’s a smart and mature first step ino the literary landscape.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is rather short. There are seven stories that clock at a little over than 160 pages and it’s entirely by design. Nothing about this collection hasn’t been carefully thought of. My favourite story was HEATHENS, a story that depicts the relationship between an expatriate English teacher in Costa Rica and a young Christian missionary.  Not only their relationship is about more than just a clash of values, but it’s drawn as the underlying issues of their day to day dealing. It’s a smart and deceptively complex story. I really liked FREAKS too, despite the alluded body horror (I have a weak stomach for that), a story that captured the complexity of human relationship to tragedy (and to their bodies), without taking shortcuts for narrative intensity purposes.

”She’s very mature for her age,” James said to his parents, with scripted sarcasm. The he took me upstairs and we had sex in his bedroom with the door locked. I let me voice be heard that day, with his parents downstairs, knowing I was matures for my age, wanting them to know. I understood pleasure. I attacked it at the throat and it fought back. I did know more than other girls.

What makes Alden Jones special is the level of control she had over her material. It’s normal for authors to want to hit emotional high points, and it’s a variable that often derails a story. The stories of Alden Jones don’t suffer any emotional overkill. They show a stunning creative maturity and precision. It’s so rare to come across an author, male or female, who knows himself/herself enough and understands the purpose of his stories well enough to acknowledge their limitations and use them as a set of boundaries to create their stories. The fiction of Alden Jones will resonate with just about anybody. They are so precise and uncluttered with personal crap that they reveal these traits of human nature that are too complex to be synthesized with words alone and need a narrative frame to be understood.

I had no expectations whatsoever about UNACCOMPANIED MINORS but shit, it was a wholesome and satisfying experience. If you’ll allow me to go back to my musical allegory, Alden Jones would be a band anybody can listen to and appreciate. For Josie and I, it would be Sia or Bad Religion. It’s a great feeling to stumble upon a new impressive talent like Jones, and while UNACCOMPANIED MINORS is bite-sized goodness, it successfully made me hungry for a novel. For a lack of a better comparison, I thought there was a little Raymond Carver to Alden Jones‘ short stories. There is a well-studied minimalism and a keen understanding of human nature to UNACCOMPANIED MINORS. If you didn’t know who Alden Jones was, this short story collection is a brilliant calling card. 

Movie Review : 30 Days of Night (2007)

Method Man once said: ”Never forget where you’re comng from, because you never know where you’re going.” It’s a deceptively profound piece of street philosophy that has multiple uses. For example, if you think that vampires are fictional creatures based on some brutal medieval warlord and an actual disease, it makes your appreciate how weird they have become. It’s like every supernatural creature in the book would’ve banged one another and created a super dangerous bastard species. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is a strange, yet efficient little movie that exploits the good side of that bastardization, the fear of the unknown that’s associated with strange creatures. It’s one of these not-so-bad movies that was released at the height of the vampire craze in Hollywood.

The city of Barrow, Alaska will be undergoing an entire month of night and the citizens are flocking back to Anchorage, a bigger, better prepared city for the occurrence in order to last it out. Sheriff Eben Olesen (Josh Hartnett) and his family are staying in Barrow to keep order in the town during this difficult month. The last flight out of town has left, and an unhealthy looking stranger has killed the sleigh dogs, crashed the snow clearing machine and sabotaged every other possible way out of Barrow. After the sunset, violent creatures start pounding the streets and breaking into houses, killing and drinking the blood out of every resident. Sheriff Olesen cannot save his town from disaster, but he’ll have to find a way to last through an entire month with homicidal vampires on his trail.

So what does 30 DAYS OF NIGHT have that other vampire movies don’t? It’s based on a graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, and it shows. I haven’t read the original material, but I’m sure the movie is a rather faithful rendition. The way 30 DAYS OF NIGHT was shot, the setting takes an important place and the attention to detail in that regard is simply delicious. Anybody can write about slaughtering vampires, but the idea of slaughtering vampires in an abandoned, snow covered backyard, under a children swing has a life of its own. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is very visual. Sometimes it’s used as a mean to cover for mediocre acting, but it’s not a movie that stands out through its acting game anyway. It’s about the eerie locale, creepy vampires and crazy fight scene. Director David Slade does a great job at concealing his actor’s limitations, so that they don’t get in the way of his movie.

Marilyn Manson called, he wants his likeness back.

The weak point/unwittingly funny part of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is the vampires themselves. I’ve made my homework and read about the graphic novel, so I’m aware there actually is a backstory to them, that they have names and such. I was genuinely surprised when the credits rolled and I’ve learned that the Grand Dooda of the Nosferatu was named Marlow (Danny Huston). I was expecting Gregor or something. I’m not sure what went wrong here, but the vampires are these soulless, dead-eyed creatures who move just like every other demonic creature moves in cinema (I call that ”the tremor of the possessed”) and hilariously speak in a devilish language that reminded me of that scene in FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS where Raoul Duke couldn’t speak right anymore, and the vampires spend a LOT of time talking among themselves. 

I am notoriously fickle with vampire movies, but I have to say that 30 DAYS OF NIGHT was a positive viewing experience overall. I think a lot of that has to do with creator of the original material Steve Niles co-writing the screenplay. Disasters happen when you stray too far from the original material, but I feel that this adaptation was really faithful, at least visually. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is a treat for the eyes and overall an above-average vampire story (it’s hard to believe, but they still exist). It’s littered with ridiculous details, given the extremely low expectations I had of this movie, I was pleasantly surprisd. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT may not be a masterpiece, but it should be in any vampire movie night discussions. 

Essay : On Henry Rollins & Social Media Controversy

The Ancients and the Law of Averages could’ve both predicted it. One day, the Internet and its headless devil-child Social Media would turn on someone I really liked. Someone I actually cared about. On August 21st, Henry Rollins wrote a column titled ”Fuck Suicide” in L.A Weekly. The pieces discussed the recent suicide of actor Robin Williams and Henry’s own, shocking stance on the issue of suicide. Since then, he apologized for his words and acknowledged the righteousness of the uproar against him. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t need an apology from him. Henry Rollins is my boy, and he has the right to fuck up like every other person on Earth.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Henry’s stance on suicide, as stated the his first piece, was 1) wrong 2) misinformed and 3) a little fucked up. I’ve been, like many of you, too close to the edge for my own taste. I understand that passed a certain point, you stop being legally responsible for yourself. It’s like being possessed by someone trying to kill you. Your mind knows that what you’re doing to your body and how you’re interacting with others is bad for you, but it’s locked within and it can’t do shit. I’m not debating the nature of Henry Rollins’ stance on suicide. He apologized and to me, it’s the end of the story. If you were angry at him, you should stop right here. If an immediate, spontaneous apology won’t satisfy you, there is a good chance that nothing will.

What bugged me was reading the comments on his Facebook page, from August 21 to August 25. It was reading my own newsfeed after ”Fuck Suicide” was published on Friday. I’m a Social Media professionnal, so it’s not like I can just turn off my computer and walk away. I had to sit through it for at least 6 long business hours. People I actually like went to town on Henry Rollins, called him an asshole, an ignorant and said they were ”disappointed” by him. To a certain extent, I understand that reaction from people who didn’t think much of Henry at first, but coming from people who posted videos and quotes of him weeks before the L.A Weekly essay, I took this shit personal. Motherfuckers, do you make a public scene every time a friend fucks up? 

Henry was wrong about suicide, but here is how I usually react when a friend of mine is wrong about something:

I understand the poor timing of ”Fuck Suicide”, Social Media-wise. The Internet was tense from Ferguson, the James Foley execution video and yes, it was still recoiling from Robin Williams’ suicide. When shit goes down, people just attack, comment, and hit the SHARE button like maniacs. I’m sorry if this sounds sanctimonious, but Henry Rollins is WAY too important for me to start pointing fingers at him when he fucks up. I’d gladly debate the issue of suicide with him in public or in private, but I’m not going to accuse him of anything on Social Media unless he kills a hooker or gets busted with child porn and it’s not going to happen. Even if I fail to change his mind, whatever happened to: ”I disagree, but it’s cool?”

I don’t know about you, but I can live being friend with someone who has radically different opinions than me. I’ll give you an example. Nobody has been more important to me professionally than Zelmer Pulp‘s head honcho, Ryan Sayles, for the last two years. He took interest in my work and in me, and kept me involved with writing projects at the heart of my biggest dry-spell. I can safely say that I love the guy. I even joined Zelmer Pulp in July (I guess this is an official announcement). Ryan is from Missouri, his political beliefs are different than mine and I’ve seen him share stuff from The Tea Party on his Facebook page a couple times. I didn’t say shit because I don’t care. I fundamentally disagree with his political views, but our friendship is not based on that and I don’t care if I ever talk politics with Ryan. Same goes with Henry and suicide. Even he wouldn’t want to change his mind, I ultimately don’t care.

Truth is, the words of Henry Rollins helped me through the darkest years of my life. He showed me that there were other angry intellectual people and that I could succeed in my own way if I worked hard enough, busted through obstacles head first and remained myself. He showed me that I could cut it with integrity and an earnest, hard-working attitude alone (thank God, because it’s pretty much all I have going for me). Henry was, and still is, a very important person to me. In fact, I could probably fit on a post-it the names of people who did more for me than Henry Rollins. He sure is a lot more important to me than Robin WIlliams ever was (no disrespect to Mr. Williams, but I was not a fan of his movies). Bottom line, he doesn’t owe me shit. He can have one fucked up opinion if he wants to, it’s not going to affect my loyalty. Fuck, I have probably ten fucked up opinions of my own. I’m sure I used to have a hundred. Acknowledging your mistakes and learning is part of being human.

Henry Rollins changed my life for the better. He keeps changing young people’s lives for the better and there are a lot of lives left that need changing. So do what you will, Internet people. Either you leave and never comeback, or you shut the fuck up, get over it and keep having Henry’s back. I know which side I’m on.

Do you?

Movie Review : Snowpiercer (2013)

So much of the entertainment culture is based on the illusion of freedom. Cinema is a good example of this *. It’s such an expensive medium that the choice of what you can see is limited to what has been greenlit and financed by movie studios and often to what has been promoted enough to make its way to you. You’re probably watching what a fat executive and a marketing major want you to see. I’m pretty sure that SNOWPIERCER has been financed in the post-HUNGER GAMES movie studio frenzy. It’s a movie that has enough similarities to interest the fans of Katniss Everdeen, that presents itself in a more mature and intellectual way, and that is original enough to stand out in a galaxy of movies with no soul. SNOWPIERCER is, both in its qualities and its flaws, one of the most interesting and unique movies I’ve seen this year.

In a distant future, where a failed climate change experiment killed all life on the planet, a couple of survivors are holding on inside the Snowpiercer, a train that’s been traveling around the globe without stopping for the last 17 years. Curtis (Chris Evans) has been living at the back of the train with the poor and the downtrodden for all that time. He’s grown into a strong and smart worker, who’s been fighting the oppression of the ruling class that lives near the engine. A few revolutions have been attempted in the Snowpiercer, but they all failed. Curtis and his men don’t intend to repeat the errors of their predecessors. They aim to take the engine by any means necessary. But it’s a long way to the top of the Snowpiercer and things can change while you get there.

SNOWPIERCER is not the most sublte movie. It’s a rather blunt allegory about the silliness of political and religious beliefs. It’s two hours of a class struggle put in perspective through an apocalyptic future and a train. It’s actually based on a graphic novel by French artist Jean-Marc Rochette. Despite its stellar cast, SNOWPIERCER is a visibly low-budget movie (estimated at 39 millions), and it finds awesome ways to deal with its own financial limitations. The violent scenes are almost always downplayed and rely on choreography, the actors’ game and Korean director Joon-ho Bong‘s creativity to make a unique visual impact. The use of lighting in the sauna scene in particular, I thought was a clever throwback to 1990s action/science-fiction movies like FORTRESS and JOHNNY MNEMONIC. Why not, after all? This time of movie was very enjoyable, I’m all for a revival of the style.

That scene.

I think I liked the idea of SNOWPIERCER more than I liked the movie itself. It’s a smart and uncompromising action movie with a high visual appeal despite its apparent lack of budget. It’s plot-driven, yet the characters are archetypal but dynamically flesh themelves out along the way. SNOWPIERCER competently crams a LOT of information within a mere two hours. It doesn’t pack surprises for veteran viewers, though. It’s a pretty straightforward tale of underdogs risking everything. I’m sure you’ve seen that story before. There were no plot twists that blew me out of the water and Josie and I pretty much figured everything out a half hour before the end. Oddly enough, it’s a movie that banks on its visual style and its mastery of successful movie narratives to win its audience and you know what? It works. I don’t think SNOWPIERCER ever intended to be an intellectual odyssey.

I kept having nostalgic flashbacks of 1990s filmmaking while watching SNOWPIERCER. It’s an era where movies just delivered without second guessing their box office results. It showed on the SNOWPIERCER financial numbers. It didn’t even come close to make its money back and it’s a movie bound to become a cult hit through Netflix, iTunes and illegal movie download. It’s a rather dark fate for such an original and dauntless movie, but I don’t see how it could’ve competed in theaters with your latest superhero movie hogging all the screens. In the end, you’re going to see what the fat executive and the marketing major want you to see, but it doesn’t mean you cannot do the extra work on your own and find the diamonds in the coal. Watch SNOWPIERCER, it might not be perfect, but it’s good for the soul.

* …and literature in the age of the eBook would be the counter example.

Book Review : David James Keaton – Fish Bites Cop! (2013)

Order FISH BITES COP! here

Daddy always called cops ”Lloyds,” and Jack thought that was their real name until he turned 18. Turned out it was short for ”mongoloids,” which seemed harsh for a whole hour after he first deciphered it.

Every book reviewer is secretly suspicious of short story collections. If they tell you they’re not, they’re lying. When done properly, short stories are mysterious and life-affirming little things, but a collection is also the first thing a writer is trying to sell you. So the quality is the available material on the market varies a lot. I had a good feeling about David James Keaton‘s FISH BITES COP! even if I hadn’t read anything by him before. The man I amicably call DJK has been a veteran of the short fiction scene for several years, won more than one award for his tales and had longer publications to his credit already. FISH BITES COP! is a collection that not only takes a swing at law enforcement institutions, but at every form of authority there is. It’s funny, enlightening and oh, so wrong.

My favourite story in FISH BITES COP! doesn’t deal with the police at all. KILLING COACHES is what happens to your stereotypical high school story when you turn it inside you. The protagonist is not a nerd, but an enthusiastic jock and a psychopath. He is allergic to authority figures, yet he participates in every sport offered in order to take a shot at the coach. David James Keaton‘s description of the authority figures in this story (and pretty much everywhere in FISH BITES COP!) seethes with disgust and contempt. They are clownish figures who gave up on what made them authority figures in the first place. They are fat, lazy, clumsy and hilarious to the objecive observer. KILLING COACHES revisits the high school trauma story in a much more original and liberating way than the stereotypical underdog story.

There is a lot of material in FISH BITES COP! Over 30 short stories, which is a lot to take in. The collection drifts a little bit from the theme of ”bashing authorities” that it promotes itself with. There are horror stories in there that have nothing to do with police or authority figures. They’re great stories, though. It’s just that the scope of the collection is so large and ambitious that it’s difficult to keep the focus and enthusiasm you began to read it. Not every story was a hit with me, but there were a couple standouts that stayed with me: TROPHIES, KILLING COACHES, LIFE EXPECTANCY IN A TRUNK, BURNING DOWN DJs, QUEEN EXCLUDER, CLAM DIGGER and NINE COPS KILLED FOR A GOLDFISH CRACKER are all memorable. Your run-of-the-mill short story collection doesn’t count as many standouts as FISH BITES COP!

”Do you hate all police officers?”

”I hate all cops, firefighters, paramedics, bounty hunters, security guards…and probably astronauts.”

A lot of hacks are going to try and sell you their weak stuff using catchphrases like ”unadorned prose”. It’s important to read authors like David James Keaton to understand the difference between deliberately unadorned prose and crap writing. DJK writes fiction like Henry Rollins writes letters to politicans and celebrities, with razor sharp irony and a violent sense of humor that defines his prose with an jagged edge that few author authors can brag to have. FISH BITES COP! is a bit of an endurance run at times, but there is enough standout material in there to keep you going. When dealing with short fiction, you should definitely choose who you’re paying attention to and David James Keaton is worth your time. 

Book Review : Archer Mayor – Three Can Keep A Secret (2013)

Order THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET here

”What can you tell me about Carolyn Barber? Governor-for-a-Day a long time ago?”

Raffner didn’t mind and didn’t hesitate: ”Wow- that’s a name from the past. Like bringing up the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles.”

There are some things in life that I like to do and I have no idea why. I just like to do them and that’s it. For example, I like watching the movie THE BURBS on late night television, preferably in the summer. Also, I like to wear cheap basketball shorts for pyjama. Archer Mayor‘s THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET was one of these unexplainable joys. I had no idea that Mayor’s Joe Gunter series was 24 novels long (soon to be 25) before going in. It was the first time I jumped into a series so late and part of my enjoyment came from the figuring out process, yet Joe Gunther and his boys have an undeniable and peculiar charm that’s very difficult to find in literature.

Joe Gunther is the head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, better known as VBI. He’s been a cop for long, he’s been on the beat before and now his outfit is often called for assistance by the local police forces to help solve difficult crimes. Hurricane Irene left a series of strange occurrences the trail of her desruction: a retired high-profile politician turns up dead, a state mental facility patient with a creepy legacy has disappeared and maybe the strangest of them all, an old grave is found filled with rocks and dirt. What has hurricane Irene brought to the surface exactly? Are the three cases connected? It’s the kind of problem the VBI specializes in solving.

A long-standing mystery series is an interesting problem and I thought THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET was a good example, without even having to read the other Joe Gunther books. Writing one novel a year featuring the same characters, you’re going to lose some intensity. I’m sure that if I dig into Archer Mayor‘s books, I’m going to find some volumes that have great emotional peaks, but they’re going to be within the first half. Maybe even within the first five titles. What makes a series thrive for so long is its tremendous sense of structure. That’s why I felt right at home when I read THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET. I knew what direction it was going in, the cases were well defined, it was like watching a rerun of a CSI episode. Archer Mayor has developed a sense of structure that’s both accessible and involving for his Joe Gunther novels.

Of course, you can’t jump into a series at the end and not expect a little disorientation. There are a lot of characters, they all know each other and even if Archer Mayor take the time to bring you up to speed a little, it’s still difficult to point out to know the who’s who. I tried not to get attached to the characters though, since it was not the point of the exercise here and thankfully, Archer Mayor went easy on the exposition. Truth is, the cases were original and fun even if the treatment was a little impersonal for an outsider. So, THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET is a little bit of a fast-food mysery, but it fell into the hands of the biggest McDonald’s fan north of the border. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad term for literature. I just don’t mean it as an insult. I just think of fast-food books as a pre-processed product, rather than a work of art. Both have their place.

The life of a book reviewer is exciting like that. When major publishers send you books, it’s like spinning the wheel of fortune: you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s quite painful, but sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise like Archer Mayor‘s THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET. I would not know what to tell you about the Joe Gunther series in general, since I’ve kind of blanked out the series aspect and read it purely for the mystery. I can tell you Archer Mayor‘s a fun author, though. I’m still not too sure why I liked THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET as much as I liked it, but it was a lot of fun to read. It was fun enough for me to be intrigued about the older Joe Gunther novels. If you like your police procedurals original and unpretentious, you should give this series a shot. 

Movie Review : Nymphomaniac (2013)

I’m a good audience in general because I’m good-natured and easily entertained. The average qualiy of  high budget theatrical releases is, admittedly, dipping to spectacular new lows, but if there is a fool to find the silver lining in mediocre movies, it’s me. It doesn’t mean I can’t recognize standout filmmaking when it’s right up in my grill, though. I’ve been a Lars Von Trier fan since the day I forgave him about THE IDIOTS and his films haven’t let me down ever since. Von Trier, like most arthouse directors, is an acquired taste, but his mere presence in the high profile filmmaking landscape is a testament to the undying strength of artistic integrity. Even today, there are writers and directors who refuse to compromise their vision in order to make more people happy. Von Trier’s two parts epic of sexual  discovery NYMPHOMANIAC was clocking in at over 5 hours in theaters, but it was formatted into a 4 hours object for our home viewing pleasure. If LVT was shedding the cobwebs of depression in MELANCHOLIA, he was in tip-top shape when he wrote NYMPHOMANIAC, ladies and gentlemen!

Joe (the wonderful Charlotte Gainsbourg) was lying in the street unconscious, her face bruised and swollen, when she was found by Seligman (the equally great Stellan Skarsgard), an old and lonely man going through his daily routine. Seligman brings her home, offers her shelter and company, so Joe rewards his kindness by telling him the story of how she ended up there. Their encounter was cosmic event. Joe needed someone to talk to and Seligman needed a companion to break his solitude. Joe is no damsel in distress though. The story she has to tell is going to drag him in and brush him off a couple times. She is a nymphomaniac. She was born with a vampire-like taste for sex. It’s the one variable that guided all her life. The story of how she ended up on Seligman’s street is tragic, provocative, insane, erotic and beautiful and since Lars Von Trier is awesome, he gave us 4 hours of that in NYMPHOMANIAC. 

Let’s adress the elephant in the room first: the sex. Yes, there is a lot of fucking in NYMPHOMANIAC and no, it’s not a visually predominant variable. It’s not beautiful, steamy sex but it’s not internet-porn freaky sex either. I might be wrong, but I think you see sperm only once (but it is a memorable scene). It’s probably no better or worse than what you look like when you’re having sex. There is a lot of flesh, but nothing to balk about if you keep an open mind. Yes, you see what I believe to be Shia LaBeouf‘s penis in NYMPHOMANIAC, but the scene is so original and ambiguous it’ll pry a smile from you. LaBeouf is, by the way, not all that bad in this movie. He’s a tiny cog in a giant machine and he knows how to act within well-defined parameters. What you need to know about NYMPHOMANIAC is that it’s about more than sex. It’s about how can human existence be about more than our lowest reproductive instincts and it makes its point rather beautifully.

To me, what made NYMPHOMANIAC so special was the discussions between Joe and Seligman. The old man’s relentless efforts to put Joe’s sex life in perspective also affect the viewer’s perspective about the Great Taboo of Female Sexuality. Seligman symbolized the other side of human pleasure: cognition, the capacity of drawing links between everything in the universe and appreciate how everything has been divinely put in its rightful place. Neither Joe and Seligman have the complete portrait of existence, so it was important in the divine order of things that they met and that their respective visions of the world clashed. NYMPHOMANIAC is about passion versus cognition, reproduction versus reflexion. It’s a majestic portrait of the human condition drawn by Lars Von Trier. 

Another subject of debate about NYMPHOMANIAC is the quality of part 2 versus the quality of part 1. A lot of viewers said they had been ”let down” by part 2. The issue here is that part 2 deals with less original content as Joe becomes restless with her own sexuality and explores darker options. Part 2 of NYMPHOMANIAC is more conform to what you think the movie is about. It’s nastier and goes for cheaper thrills, but LVT knows where he wants to dock his ship and sails the stormier seas quite aptly. There are longer, more difficult scenes, but they are never without a payoff. In the end, everything about NYMPHOMANIAC is about the duality it discusses. 

You should watch NYMPHOMANIAC. You should do so at the first opportunity you get. It’s the best movie I’ve seen this year, so far. It’s smart, original, challenging and absurdly well-written. It’s by far the best written LVT movie I’ve had the pleasure to see. Isn’t that crazy? Von Trier can craft images of an unspeakable beauty, but he can also write way better than your average screenwriter. My favourite Lars Von Trier movie used to be DOGVILLE, but NYMPHOMANIAC is some serious competition. It’s a piece of epic ambition and beauty. God bless you, Lars Von Trier. Seriously, you make a reviewer’s life more intense and exciting. 

BADASS

Book Review : Richard Thomas – Staring Into The Abyss (2013)

Order STARING INTO THE ABYSS here

(also reviewed)
Order HERNIATED ROOTS here
Order TRANSUBSTANTIATE here

No, she was no ray of sunshine.

Short stories are the great existential question of the publishing game. They are fun, easy to read and a completely different experience from novels, yet no one since Raymond Carver made a decent living only writing shorts. Richard Thomas is one of the most prolific and talented short story writers you can find online and he’s been hard at work this last couple years. In 2013, Kraken Press published an anthology of some of his darkest work yet, titled STARING INTO THE ABYSS. I’ve been a Richard Thomas fan some time, but he’s so active that it’s always hard to wrangle all new publications, so I’m always glad when he publishes a collection that allows me to catch up. Has Thomas found a solution to the short story enigma? Time will tell, but STARING INTO THE ABYSS is another fine addition to his growing underground legacy.

The stories of STARING INTO THE ABYSS have been collected to fit the overarching theme of confronting darkness. Whether it’s the darkness within, the darkness of other, a supernatural kind or nothingness, the characters of Richard Thomas here are all standing in the dark and facing demons. What transpires of that is, surprisingly, some of Thomas’ most humane work yet. He’s a writer with a knack for intimate atmospheres and strong first person narrations, but STARING INTO THE ABYSS highlights the strength and the beauty of human character facing torment. I did not expect that, but I gotta say it layered the reading experience quite nicely and made STARING INTO THE ABYSS a stand out Richard Thomas publication.

One of my favourite stories was SPLINTERED, which is about an estranged couple going through a separation. It’s built on the old choose-your-own adventure format, so there are different ways to read it and different stories that emerge from the same text, depending on your decision. The subject matter is extremely involving from the get-go, and there are subtle hints of supernatural elements. So much is going on in that story. I loved the story TRANSMOGRIFY, too. A cyberpunk tale that’s as much of an aesthetic trip than a narrative one. Whenever Thomas integrates science-fiction or supernatural elements to his stories, he does it very successfully and generates an abstract beauty that his other work doesn’t have. I would go as far as calling him a poet of the cyberspace.

I used to lie awake at night and fantasize about such things. Romanticize these horrible moments and how I would react. War, rape, fistfights. Violence layered upon violence, a momentary release of every thread of anger that had knitted its way through my being.

Perhaps none of the stories in STARING INTO THE ABYSS fascinated me more than VICTIMIZED, though. It’s the kind of story I usually hate, but Richard Thomas succeeded in making me conflicted about his. It’s a fighting story and I’ve had the privilege of being in the ring/cage myself a couple times and it’s not like that at all, yet I would have a difficult time finding a story that epitomizes the romantic myth of fighting so well. Plus, Thomas has an understanding of the cathartic power of fighting that he doesn’t try to justify in self-righetous rants. Sometimes, punching something into oblivion just feels good and when you have your back to the wall, you fight better than your normally would. VICTIMIZED is a story that’s very much pertinent in this era where everyone and their moms discover their inner fighter, so it kind of obsessed me. It sure is an interesting read.

Not all that many authors can make me passionate about a short story collection like this. STARING INTO THE ABYSS was my favourite Richard Thomas so far and I’m sure that as his legacy is growing, it’s going to be a mandatory stop for every reader. While browsing Thomas’ website for this review, I found out that he signed a two books deal with Random House Alibi, so you are bound to see him take the center stage in the near future. It’s good to know that there is still a place in literature for authors like Richard Thomas, who fear nothing and who take pleasure and pride in challenging their reader. If you didn’t know him previously, get started on STARING INTO THE ABYSS  and fall in love with one of the most peculiar, transcendent neo-noir authors in the game. 

Movie Review : Incendies (2010)

One thing about French Canadian people that you need to know is that we love our stand-up comedians. We’re crazy about them. In fact, we love them so much that we give them jobs as talk show hosts, politicians and often as movie stars. The most popular movie genre in French Canadian cinema is the big, fat comedy that features one of our beloved stand-up comidan in a lead role. Some of these movie turn out just fine (one of our most iconic comedies just got the Hollywood treatment), but you know, there is a lot of terrible stuff being made. Our brightest star of filmmaking would be Denis Villeneuve, who has taken Hollywood by storm last year, with movies about Jake Gyllenhaal wrestling with his emotional issues. How did Villeneuve find his way to Hollywoodland? His golden ticket was a little powerhouse called INCENDIES, who got nominated for the Oscar of Best Foreign Movie in 2010. It’s the king of movie that’ll wreck your day and that’ll make you say ”thank you” for it.

INCENDIES is based on a stage play by Wajdi Mouawad. After the passing of their mother Nawal (Lubna Azabal), twins Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) receive two letters from notary Lebel (Rémy Girard), their late mother’s boss. One is adressed to their dad, who they thought to be long dead and the other is adressed to their brother, who they didn’t know existed. Nawal doesn’t want a headstone on her grave until Simon and Jeanne delivered these two letters. They will travel to Lebanon and back, looking for a family they didn’t know they had and digging up their mother’s buried secrets. They are going to find out who their mother really was, every reason behind her wild behavior and it’s going to hurt. A lot. There is nothing nice to dig up from a civil war.

It’s difficult for someone who hasn’t lived through war to understand hatred. It’s an emotion that’s often confused with anger and rage. I’ve never been even remotely close to war, but I thought INCENDIES portrayed hatred in a very striking way, which I thing is as close as cinema can get to the real thing. The flashback scenes that feature moments of Nawal’s life during the civil war have some powerful displays of heartless violence that will freak out the most hardened viewers. Hatred is that cold resolution that makes you do horrible things to people without batting an eyelash, because you’re convinced they don’t deserve to live. INCENDIES has some pulverizing, gazing-into-the-abyss scenes where hatred and death are illustrated in all their complexity and horror. The bus scene (featured on the cover) is going to cause some major damage. It’s the kind of scene that you can’t unsee, that shapes your understanding of things a little better. Fuck, I could write an entire blog post on that scene.

INCENDIES is a HARD movie. It’s not difficult per se, Denis Villeneuve‘s filmmaking is as fuild and seamless as ever, but it’s a film that want to fuck you up. I love when movies jump at my throat like this, but sometimes INCENDIES is trying a little too hard. It’s not a major problem, it’s isolated to two or three scenes, but I thought it drained some transcendent power out of it. I call that issue ‘harvesting tears”. It’s when a scene has no point in the movie whatsoever but trying to squeeze tears out of you. The opening sequence for example, which is renowned for being haunting, features children getting their head shaved and going to war…wait for it….wait for it…ON A RADIOHEAD SONG *. The sequence contains one importat detail that is later revealed in the movie, but the entire point of it is to look in the child’s eyes and squirt a tear. It’s the first scene of the movie! I have agreed to watch a movie about civil war in Lebanon, it’s the kind of thing I expect to see. It’s not going to move me right off the bat. It’s not going to be moved just because it’s a child going to war because it’s an eventuality I was prepared to see when I pressed PLAY.

Anyway….

Why should you step away from your busy schedule of Hollywood blockbusters to seek a depressing foreign movie? Well, first of all, I’m pretty sure INCENDIES is better than whatever movie you feel like watching right now. The characters are fascinating and profound and Denis Villeneuve‘s cunning camera work gives them all the lattitude they need to reach out to you, not unlike the characters of PRISONERS. Also, INCENDIES shows things that are rarely show in movie theaters. Hatred is exactly a nice thing to witness, but it serves a purpose in Villeneuve’s movie and by the time the credits roll, you feel like you’ve done something valuable with your time. That you’ve acually learned something about the world. I’d go as far as to call INCENDIES a cinema classic and an important war movie. It’s going to make you rethink the way you’re watching bullshit nationalist propaganda war movies. I was lucky enough to never experience war, but after watching INCENDIES, I feel like I know a little bit how it goes.

* Major Radiohead hater here. 

Book Review : American Nightmare (2014)

Order AMERICAN NIGHTMARE here

I thought of my father as completely faceless. In my mind’s eye he is a strange creature with the body of a man and the head of an opened newspaper; an odd mythological figure makes in the Sun Times and bellowing like an elephant.

If you’re wondering how society shaped itself into what it is now, you have to go back to the post-WWII boom to understand how it all started. The western world, lead by America, had triumphed of the last great evil : the nazis. So, in the happily ever after that followed, it positioned Americas as ”the good guys” and however they decided to live their lives was seen as ”right”, because it was how ”the good guys” lived. So the post-WII boom was one of the most artificial, self-conscious era in 20th century United States and the cunning head of Kraken Press, Mr. George Cotronis himself, decided it would be the perfect setting for a horror anthology. The result spoke for itself: AMERICAN NIGHTMARE contains some powerful and visceral horror stories that will keep you awake at night.

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE doesn’t fuck around. You won’t find post-WWII stories with ”horror undertones” in there. These are intense horror stories that use the 1950s backdrop to create strong, long lasting images that’ll give them an unforgettable edge. The opener GRANDMA ELSPETH’S CULINARY ENCHIRIDON FOR DOMESTIC HARMONY, by Rachel Anding, reminded me in terms of atmosphere, of Soundgarden’s video BLACK HOLE SUN. There are several layers to it: an idealized family unit, a tyrannic father figure operating behind closed doors and a mother using ancestral knowledge to escape an otherwise hopeless situation. I thought it offered an original and precise social commentary without stepping away from horror. It makes full use of the potent symbolism the genre has to offer.

Speaking of symbolism, I thought the best story in the collection was BOW CREEK, by Raymond Little. It’s one of the best short stories I’ve read this year. I had no idea who Little was before reading this, but he’s officially on my radar. BOW CREEK is so successful and anxiety-inducing because it doesn’t offer the usual answers to the reader. It’s a story about the dark side of a town, which swallows some of its inhabitants. I thought it illustrated in a very literal way the dark side of the American Dream. BOW CREEK showed what happened to the pure soul of children once they grow up to be young adults. There were a couple images in that story that wormed their way into my nightmares. It’s a rare thing for me, with books, but BOW CREEK, by Raymond Little is worth the asking price of AMERICAN NIGHTMARE alone, folks. 

Some other stories that stood out: W.P Johnson‘s THE KING, made a surprisingly playful use the mailman, a recurring figure of 1950s, Rockwellian America and gave it realistic twist that was fun and that constrasted nicely with the horror portion of the story. Max Booth III‘s ALL THE BEAUTIFUL MARYLINS closed AMERICAN NIGHTMARE beautifully. Booth stays true to his reputation of having one of the most original, tormented imaginaries in the game. Once I finished reading it, I’ve actually started it over feeling an unexplainable sense of dread creeping up my spine. Max Booth III does that to me often. I see an overwhelming, terrifying bigger picture to his stories and ALL THE BEAUTIFUL MARYLINS also succeeds at that.

Not every story in AMERICAN NIGHTMARE worked for me. I thought those who invoked 1950s cinema fell flat. I’m a very earnest reader and if a story like BOW CREEK scares the pants out of me right off the bat, it’s difficult for me to get enthusiastic for a story about aliens that look like pears. I thought 1950s horror cinema is the easiest thing to make 1950s horror stories about and those stories who did in AMERICAN NIGHTMARE didn’t work for me. Overall though, it’s an original and terrifying collection about a fascinating, artificial and existential era in the Western World. The authors of AMERICAN NIGHTMARE understand what makes the 1950s so appealing for horror stories.  Readers who like their books to do some damage and challenge them will be pleased by this collection.