Movies I Want To See This Summer

It's now the middle of April, which means the season of the blockbuster is upon us. In no particular order, here are some of the movies I want to see this summer...

1. Star Trek. I've already posted here and here about this movie, so I won't say any more now.

2. Terminator Salvation, because I have to see if Bale's performance is good enough to justify the ridiculous on-set rant. Okay, nothing could ever justify something like that, but still, Bale's capable of being a great actor (The Machinist, anyone?) and it's a Terminator movie.

3. Funny People, which stars Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Eric Bana. Sandler has been very good in his more serious roles, like in Punch Drunk Love and Reign Over Me. Based on the preview, it looks like this one will have decent drama and lots of laughs, but without descending into some of the more silly humor.

4. Whatever Works. If you haven't heard of this movie, here's all you need to know: Woody Allen directs Larry David.

5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

6. The Taking of Pelham 123. Call this one morbid curiosity. I absolutely love the original with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, and I want to see if Tony "I have to stylize every single shot in a movie" Scott pulls off a decent remake. I was skeptical, and still am, of this being a good film, but the trailer has got me wondering.

7. Public Enemies. A film about John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and J. Edgar Hoover, directed by Michael Mann. Need I say more?

Adrian McKinty’s Dead Trilogy

This is a repost in honor of the upcoming April 27th release of Adrian McKinty's kick-ass thriller: Fifty Grand.
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You need to buy these books:

Dead I Well May Be
The Dead Yard
The Bloomsday Dead

Yes, I’m serious. You need to go out and buy these books.

Adrian McKinty is a great writer and a great storyteller. With most fiction, you’re lucky if you get one or the other. If you want to marvel at lyricism, clever turns of phrase, and complex, murky characters, you read the literary. If you want to escape and go on a thrill ride, you read the commercial. But you need not pick and choose with McKinty. You can have your cake and eat it too.

McKinty’s stories have been described as literary action thrillers. As accurate as that may be, the description doesn’t do his novels, or his prose, justice. Simply put, the guy knows his way around the keyboard. His approach to storytelling is quasi-conversational. You feel like you’re sitting down to a pint with him at the bar as he unveils the latest in a long-line of misadventures. But at the same time, his stories abound with moments of sheer literary brilliance that no amount of alcohol could produce.

McKinty, I suspect, is a guy who’s lived quite an interesting life, and his writing is all the more informed and hard-hitting because of it. No ivory towers for this author.

I’ve just finished his Dead Trilogy, three stories chronicling the life and times of his wonderfully-flawed, but cool-as-hell, protagonist Michael Forsythe. I’m tempted to call the character an author surrogate, but that would be presumptuous on my part. Forsythe is complicated, brooding, at times frightening, usually one step ahead of a bullet, exceptionally violent, but always likeable. I can’t decide if he merits a classification of hero or anti-hero. But that’s what makes him so damned great.

The three stories are ostensibly action thrillers, but unlike most other commercial writers, McKinty never falls into the typical trappings of the genre. Dead I Well May Be and its two sequels (The Dead Yard and The Bloomsday Dead) are not repackaged variations of each other. Thankfully, Forsythe isn’t charged with tracking a different serial killer each outing. He’s not approached by a gorgeous blonde and asked to investigate the disappearance of her husband/boyfriend/brother at the beginning of every story. He’s given different task in each tale and the unique challenges he faces serve to round out his character. Don’t get me wrong though: all three books are replete with carnage, mayhem (in the literal legal sense), double-crosses, twists, love, sex, and violence.

McKinty’s prose fires on all cylinders. And he pulls no punches when it comes to plotting. There is violence in his world, and more violence, and more violence, but it always serves the story. Along those lines, McKinty takes a lot of narrative risks, especially in The Dead Yard, but they all pay off. He allows the story to go where it has to.

Each Dead Trilogy novel contemplates its own issues, speaks its own voice, and has its own narrative drive. By the end, you’ve gone on quite a journey with Michael Forsythe, from upstart mobster, to mole, to detective of sorts, as McKinty unleashes his prose on us. I can’t recommend these novels enough.

Now seriously, go buy these books. Or you're in for a Belfast six-pack.

Join Rita Vetere's Monthly Chat!

My good friend, Rita Vetere, is hosting her monthly chat on Monday, April 13th at 8:00 PM EST. Stop by if you get a chance.

This month, fellow Lyrical Press authors Grayson Reyes-Cole and Barton Paul Levenson will be Rita's featured guests.

Please check out Rita's website, as she has information about her UPCOMING BOOK SIGNINGS too! If you're in the Toronto or Woodbridge areas, you might just get a chance to meet the author herself soon!

Your Civic Duty: Get Wolverine To Come To Philly

The studio that produced X-Men Origins: Wolverine is running a cool promotional: it is allowing fans to vote for which city they want the film to premiere in.

Go to this link to vote.

As it turns out, Philly is one of the cities on the list of possibles. (hint, hint)

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If I'm conspicuously absent from the blogosphere over the next few days, I apologize in advance--the Masters Tournament starts today and I'll be glued to the TV over the next four days.

Drive For Show, Take Lessons For Dough

Amateur golfers everywhere, heed my advice. Do NOT spend hundreds of dollars on a new driver for that extra ten or fifteen yards you'll get off the tee. Chances are you'll only see those extra yards for a very short while. This is all related to the First Use Rule: the first time you try any new golf clubs, you will see dramatic improvements instantly. But these new-found skills will quickly fade away and you'll go back to hitting the ball like you always did. This is all probably distantly related to the Placebo effect.

For the love of god, you don't need a new driver every season. Trust me on this. Instead, take the four or five hundred dollars you were going to spend and put it toward a series of lessons. A set of decent lessons will cost you half that money. You can use the remaining money to pay for balls at the driving range instead, since you'll want to practice what you've learned in your lessons. Or, if you absolutely must have a new club, take that remaining money, get creative, and find that driver you're looking for used at a golf store or online.

Too many people spend all their money on equipment, which most of the time doesn't have any lasting impact on their golf games. Sure, if you're playing with a brassie, a new driver will help your game a lot. What I'm talking about here are the guys who, every March, are stopping in the pro shop to test out new drivers.

There are also golfers who spend hours and hours at the driving range, honestly looking to improve their games, but who for various reasons refuse to take lessons. All they usually end up doing is ingraining bad habits and bad moves into their swings; in effect all their practice is making them worse!

Take lessons. I understand the desire to "do it yourself," to be able proudly boast you're "self-taught." There are professional golfers who are self-taught, but I seriously doubt they never traded tips and advice with their buddies while on-course or at the range.

Ben Hogan was renowned for how much practice he put in and figuring out the golf swing on his own. But at various crisis points in his career, he received some good advice from his fellow touring pros that helped him out in the long run. And I'll bet most of us don't have the time Ben did to spend eight hours a day at the range.

And if you still think you can figure it out on your own, consider this: Tiger Woods takes lessons. He's taken lessons ALL HIS LIFE. If Tiger doesn't feel he's "better than taking a lesson," then you shouldn't feel you are either.

Masters Week Is Upon Us

It's Masters Week, the season's first major tournament and my personal favorite. As with all sporting events, there's an unwritten law that we must try to predict the outcome.

Tiger is the favorite, naturally. He has to be.

As for Phil Mickelson, he was driving the ball better than he ever has before this year, that is until this week's Shell Houston Open where he missed the cut by a long shot. Still though, Lefty always has a shot at winning any time he tees it up. If he gets his driver working again, watch out.

I'd love to see Ernie Els finally win a green jacket. He's been my favorite player ever since David Duval dropped off the radar. The Big Easy has the best golf swing in the game right now, and he gives Sam Snead a run for the best golf swing ever. But he just hasn't played well the last few years, owing to injury and family issues.

Last but not least, you have to like Padraig Harrington's chances. He hasn't played extremely well yet this year, but he did win the last two majors played. Paddy has a chance to become the third player, after Tiger and Ben Hogan, to win three straight major championships. I'd love to see him do it.

Here's some trivia for you: who scored the first of two double eagles at the Masters?

The Most Difficult Super Mario Brothers Level Ever

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on the greatest video game ever, I thought I'd put this link to a great YouTube video up. The title of the post says it all. Someone with way too much time on their hands designed what has become known as the most difficult Super Mario Brothers Level ever. Someone else with too much time on his hands sat down to play it.

And people like us, with apparently too much time on their hands as well, have sat down to watch the guy play the board.

Warning: The guy playing the game narrates his misadventures and tends to curse. A lot. Understandably, if you ask me, as his frustration mounts with each successive death. My recommendation is to watch a couple of minutes of the video. You don't need to see the whole thing to get the gist, and you won't get tired of hearing some guy overuse the f word. And don't watch it at work. Hope you enjoy.

The Greatest Video Game Ever Made

Sorry, Mario. You may be the most instantly recognizable video game character of all-time, and you've been the star in many great games. But none of them were The Legend of Zelda.

The Legend of Zelda was released by Nintendo in America in 1987, and it was every young boy's dreams realized. I was too young at the time and didn't know much about the history of video games to fully appreciate the genius that is Zelda, but looking back now, I see it for the incredibly well-designed game it is. And that's not just nostalgia talking.

For starters, as the wikipedia article puts it, its "gameplay defied categorization." Zelda contained elements of action, adventure, and puzzle-solving. As opposed to being a side-scroller, the screen follows our hero, Link, from a bird's eye view. He has various weapons, faces enemies of varying difficulty, and explores both the overworld and underworld. The land of Hyrule, where the action takes place, is truly a world fully-realized, or at least, as realized as an 8-bit system with limited memory allows.

But ultimately, what Zelda boils down to is this: a boy and his sword, a damsel in distress, magic and sorcery, and the hero's journey. Sure, all this was done to death before the game's release and it's been done to death since, but rarely has it worked better than in Zelda.

Tiger Woods Is Too Good

As soon as that ball left his putter yesterday evening, there was no doubt Tiger was going to hole that near-sixteen footer on the 18th to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Never. A. Doubt.

The guy's just too good. This is his first win since June of last year, when he hobbled his way around Torrey Pines on a BROKEN LEG to earn his third U.S. Open title in an 18-hole playoff and thus claim his 14th major victory overall. All he needs now is four more majors and he'll match Nicklaus's record, one which many people believed was unbreakable.

In the middle of the round yesterday, the broadcast flashed an incredible stat: he'd made every single putt that was six feet or less from the cup.

If you're not a golfer, you might be thinking that's easy. But let me assure you it is not. That is quite a feat, considering how quick and tricky these greens are in PGA tournament golf. It takes a lot of skill, a deft touch, and good solid technique.

But what it takes most of all is mental toughness.

You have to have guts to consistently hole putts like that. Physically-speaking, Woods might be the most impressive golfer the world has ever seen. But when it comes to his his mental game, he's tougher than Nicklaus and rivals even Hogan.

Ghostwriter Publications Makes It Official

Ghostwriter Publications has made it official on their blog today. The UK print version of The Unearthed will be available as early as June of this year!

And don't you worry, all you Anglophobes. Neil Jackson, the man with the plan at Ghostwriter Publications, has assured me he will keep the American English spelling and word choice intact. So that troublesome letter "u" won't pop up in things like color or flavor. Nor will "s" replace the "z" in words like authorize. The characters will continue to drink coffee, as opposed to tea. Exits shall remain exits, and not "ways out."

And finally, the only things that will be referred to as "bloody" will be all the dead bodies.

What's Romanian for "Great Story"?

The Carpathian Shadows Volume II is a collection of short stories set at Lord Erdely's Castle in Transylvania. A group of travelers, most of them strangers to one another, end up stranded at this "tourist trap" for a few nights. Each story in the collection offers a different point-of-view character, or set of characters.

Seana Graham wrote "The Scholar," a story that follows a textual scholar, his wife, and a Romanian friend/colleague on their outing to the castle. Ostensibly, the story is about the scholar, Howard Green, and his quest for information to further his research on the area. But as the story unfolds, Seana deftly spins a yarn that is both unpredictable and very enjoyable. Disguised as a horror story, "The Scholar" is every bit as much an exploration of love and marriage. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

I have yet to read any of the other stories in the collection, but I do highly recommend it based solely on Seana's contribution. Seana takes everything that's good about old-fashioned storytelling and adds to it her own acute sense of observation when it comes to her protagonist, Howard:

"After all, unlike him, she was actually on vacation. Must be nice, he thought begrudgingly, conveniently forgetting that it was his project that had been the catalyst for this trip."

As many of you know, Seana is a prolific blogger, who is somehow able to manage four of her own blogs while still frequently contributing to many other blogs as well. She works for a bookseller at a large independent store in Santa Cruz, CA.

Promote Whatever You Want On My Blog

In one of the Yahoo groups I participate in, someone has complained of seeing too many posts about my book. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

To atone for my shameless self-promotion, I'm making everyone out there in the blogosphere this offer: feel free to plug whatever you want by commenting on this post.

For the next two days, I'll leave this post at the top of my blog.

There is only one rule: you cannot promote anything for me.

Aside from that, you can promote whatever you want. Own a pizza shop? Writing a book? Get a promotion at work? Getting married? Is your wife pregnant? Are you starting you own business? Is your band playing somewhere soon? Got a blog you want people to read?

Don't limit yourselves here. Just run with it.

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Friday, March 27th: This is a lot of fun. I'm considering doing something like this every month.

British Invasion? Ha

It's been nearly fifty years since our friends from across the pond started their pop art invasion of the United States. The Beatles, the Stones, etc., have all had their day, many days in fact, to shine. Well my friends their time is over.

For too long have the Brits and the Irish dominated the arts. It's time we Yanks took the power back.

I'm not afraid to lead the charge. And so that's why I'm pleased to announce The Unearthed will be available in print in the UK. I've signed with Ghostwriter Publications, a small press specializing in horror. Ghostwriter will be doing a print run of The Unearthed, and we're also discussing an audio version as well.

We're still ironing out the timeline, but once I have some more information, I will let you know.

(DISCLAIMER: Most of my favorite authors and actors are British and Irish.)

Flight of Joaquin Phoenix

The wife and I just took in Two Lovers, a film written and directed by James Gray and starring Joaquin Phoenix in what could prove to be his final role as an actor.

Okay, I'm not falling for Phoenix's publicity stunt--that he's given up his acting career--one bit.

The film is very good at being both sad and strangely happy. I won't give away the ending or spoil the plot in any way, but it left me happily depressed. Or, sadly happy. It's an interesting film thematically, at times a romantic comedy but more an exploration of what love really is. The film manages to strip away any sense of sentimentality and presents love in its crudest, ugliest, messiest forms.

I'm really starting to dig James Gray as a director. He impressed me with We Own The Night, a film I had dismissed unfairly when it hit the theaters. Two Lovers has a lot of style to it, but in an unobtrusive sort of way. The effect, while understated, is still felt.

So will this be Phoenix's swan song? Or will he rise from the ashes like a...oh god I can't even write it.

Recap of Last Night's Reading

When I said "I'll be reading from my novel. It's a thriller," there was some eye-rolling, but thankfully the groans were barely audible.

Whoever said know thyself should have followed it up with "know thy audience." The literary crowd that attended the Open Mic last night was there to hear their classmates and fellow English majors recite their villanelles, sestinas, triptychs, their flash fiction written for senior seminar, etc. They weren't there to hear an excerpt from Chapter One of a paranormal thriller written by the weird older dude that graduated from college eight years ago and who shouldn't have been anywhere near a campus, let alone hanging out in the student lounge.

Thankfully, I wasn't the only alum there, and the event turned into a reunion of sorts. I hung with some old friends I haven't seen in awhile, including John Slinka who also very recently entered the blogosphere.

There were a lot of good readings from the students last night, and it's great to see how the arts have taken root at Widener and grown substantially since I was an undergrad there who spent way too much of his free time reading Ayn Rand and arguing with everyone.