blarg?

I was told I was going to see “V For Vendetta”. The posters, the ticket, the schedule in the newspaper and indeed the opening sequence and end credits indicated that the theater I was seated in was in fact the one showing “V For Vendetta”. There must have been some mistake, possibly a reel swapped accidentally with another movie, because the movie I ended up watching didn’t look a lot like Vendetta. It looked like “The Phantom Of The Politics As Spectacle”.

If you want to see a reasonably faithful rendition of a truly great comic up there on the big screen, you will have to keep on walking. If, on the other hand, you’re looking to sit in on a clinic of what “hollywoodizing” something means, your money could not be better spent.

Vendetta is striking in its comprehensive treatment of the subject.

A love interest? Wedge it in there. Slo-mo fight scenes? Ladle them on. Soaring violins? Keep’em coming. Need a superhero, pails of blood, you name it? Just back that truck up to the lot and start pouring.

There is some great acting in this movie. There is also a script that needs to be carried with tongs to be burned to ashes and never discussed again. There is an editor who needs to be caned.

Whoever’s responsible for that hack job cannot be allowed to touch film ever again. There should, as a matter of law, be a man of reasonable intelligence stationed in every editing studio in California, and every time a filmmaker decides to club their audience over the head with something, this guy gets to clout that filmmaker with an aluminum bat.

I understand that the actual V For Vendetta author, Alan Moore, actually sued to have his name taken out of the credits. Really, it’s not hard to see why; the movie is only related to his story in the most superficial, cosmetic sense.

Last night, after being awake for 40 hours at a stretch or so, I was lying in bed just beat and I couldn’t get to sleep at all. I was at that point where it hurt my eyes to look at things or change direction, and even though I wasn’t muscle-tired my connective tissues were sending in urgent reports of some extremely distressing news. My joints are irate at the best of times, and I think my shoulder was actually blinking red.

And I was just too wired up to sleep.

So obviously, I did what any responsible adult citizen would do in my situation; I decided to self-medicate with alcohol.

That’s not my drinking problem.

Investigating the alcohol-on premises situation, I discovered that my liquor shelf was very nearly bare. We’ve never really restocked since Christmas; we’ll grab a bottle of wine if we’re having guests over, but I haven’t even been restocking beer unless we’re going to be cooking with it too. We have, on my shelf:

• A half a bottle of Soho lychee liqueur,
• A little single-dose bottle of something called “Dubonnet”, described as a “wine-based apertif” and of unknown origin, and
• Another single-dose bottle of “Sourz”, a green-hued “sour apple beverage” that looks like the sort of thing that frosh week teaches girls to avoid.

… and that’s it.

That’s my drinking problem.

I want you to imagine me standing in the kitchen on shaky legs, staring at this bleak situation through forty-hours-open eyes. All the liquor stores are closed by now, I’m thinking, and there’s just no way I’m going to wade through amateur night and pay amateur night’s hyperinflated prices just so that I can get a decent night’s sleep. “It’s this, or nothing”, I’m thinking.

“Damn.”

As you might imagine, having recently called somebody a pussy for only wanting to crash a comet into Mars and not an entire Saturnian moon, I’ve been back at the science fiction and fantasy lately. I thought I should bring you up to speed, and if you’re seated comfortably I’ll do just that.

• “Feersum Endjinn” is the first Iain Banks book that I’ve read that was merely good. It’s an OK read, made somewhat difficult by the main character Bascule, hu toks lyk dis d ntir tym. It might even be enough to put somebody off Banks completely if it was their first exposure to his work. It’s not The Algebrist or Use Of Weapons, to be sure.
• “The Runes of the Earth”, by Stephen R. Donaldson. If you haven’t read the Thomas Covenant series, this book won’t have anything for you. If you have, it might have… just a little too much. The story is strangely timely, but the density of fact and motion in it this novel threatens to swamp the narrative, something I don’t remember from the earlier novels in the series. Still, I’ve got to say, I liked it. But if you haven’t read (and, you know, enjoyed) the first six novels in the series, don’t bother; you’ll be missing too much.
• “Spin”, by Robert Charles Wilson, is a shockingly good book. It is right up there with Altered Carbon, A Fire Upon The Deep and Eon on my list of mind-blowingly-awesome science fiction. I’m not going to tell you anything else about it, not even the central conceit, because I couldn’t do it justice in a few sentences; it is a beautiful, monstrous premise, followed through brilliantly. If you buy one book on my advice this month, it should be this one.

I’ve got “The Years Of Rice And Salt”, the first Prince Of Nothing book and Iain Banks’ “Inversions” on my side table right now. Nevertheless, if anything’s jumped out at you lately I’d like to know about it.

In the morning I look, I have just now been informed, like a baby eagle.

In my defence, if that’s the word, she does see me before I get to my coffee.

Dear mediocre artists of the present-

Please stop recording covers of inoffensive but commercially popular music by the mediocre artists of the past. Your cooperation in this matter is much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Good Taste, and
Artistic Integrity

UPDATE: Dear mediocre moviemakers of the present…