A Quick Three

Someone once wrote that Patricia Highsmith’s books made you realize how predictably characters in most thrillers behaved; Brad Anderson’s film Transsiberian accomplishes much the same thing. Emily Mortimer is fantastic (and, well, unpredictable) in the lead. The spell is perhaps broken in the last act, when it becomes an action movie, but I didn’t mind.

I’ve abandoned books by Frederick Forsyth and Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum before my flight started boarding. In Gun Work, David J. Schow gets right the thing they most often get wrong: When he interrupts a gunfight to tell you that an Uzi on full auto tends to recoil up and to the right, it’s germane to the action at hand -- not just a clump of research to trip over.

Man, it’s been weeks since I put anything up here, but that’s the way it goes. Today I couldn’t find time to shave. If you like your blogs updated daily, you should check out David Cranmer’s very engaging The Education of a Pulp Writer. Today David announces the launch of a new e-zine he calls Beat to a Pulp. How could it not be good? (Dec. 15th )

Writers On The River

Detroit Noir editors E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking are taking part this Sunday in the 10th Annual Writers On The River Book Fair in Monroe, MI.

Check it out, won't you? I cannot attend, and my heart flutters at the thought of those two wandering unsupervised near a body of water.

The relevant details are here.

Double Feature: Degenerate Gamblers

I could not stand Matthew Broderick when he was young; after Election, I’m cheered whenever he waddles onto the screen. Since bulking up and slowing down, he’s become ridiculously smooth and low-key, a great comic actor. His boyish face, changing slowly from one bland expression to the next, makes for a perfect mask for the degenerate gambler he plays in Finding Amanda. There are some comedy set pieces in the film, but that’s when the film is least funny (with the exception of Steve Coogan’s first scene). The real laughs are kind of painful, but it’s funny nevertheless to watch the matter-of-fact way Broderick lies to everyone. When he develops an interest in his runaway niece Brittany Snow, a twenty-year old prostitute, it is also seems natural that there’s nothing sexual about it: Being interested in anyone is a new experience for him. The small-group swing and light tone is a perfect mask for a lonely and cutting little movie. Lose the scenes with the wacky dealer and the funny pimp and you’d have a minor gem.

In Cassandra’s Dream, the indispensible Tom Wilkinson has a small role which haunts the entire film, much as he did in Michael Clayton. Here, it’s the moment of rage his character allows himself (directed at Colin Ferrell; the audience sympathizes) that stays in the mind, and keeps the movie from drifting away. It’s noir, all right, but held at a distance, with pretty surfaces and a soundtrack by Phillip Glass and characters theatrically declaiming what’s eating them, and Woody Allen just doesn’t have the stomach for this high-style low-life stuff the way David Mamet does. Oh, listen, it’s better than I’m making it sound. Recommended.

Former Detroit Mayor Reports To Jail Today

I’m tempted to say that I will miss him…

How could I not? In some ways, the last six years in Detroit have been like living inside a really good James Ellroy novel.

…but he won’t be gone that long.

Upon his release: Talk radio show? Pulpit? Both?

(Wikipedia has the Kwame Kilpatrick story well-covered.)