If you LOVED Avatar, chances are you'll hate The Ghost Writer

Roman Polanski's latest movie has no blue people, nothing explodes, the main character isn't a tough guy and the film isn't shot in 3-D. Ewan McGregor is the story's lead, the ghost writer. He doesn't punch anyone. There's no blood. And no fake-o political message either (big corporation - bad, trees - good).

Nope. Thus, The Ghost Writer is destined, like so many quality movies before it, to make very little money, to not pop up on the box office radar and to only impress the adult audiences that take the time to go out and see this old-school thriller.

While also asking some pretty potent political questions, The Ghost Writer is really a great work of suspense. Even the weather gets to you. And yet the movie harkens back to the Hollywood classics, Hitchcock-like, as it manages to mix foreboding with humor. Thrillers in my lifetime haven't usually had too many hardy hars and I forgot how effective a good laugh is when a movie has you all wound up. Better yet is how the movie's very real (character's reaction to a mugging, say) matches up against its rather campy (Kim Cattral's character).

I don't know if you'll like this movie, but I thought it was smart as hell, and the kind of perfectly crafted fun that is so seamless as to be very, very hard to explain the goodness of. I'm not sure I could have said that last sentence more awkwardly. But there you go. Nighty night.

David Fincher's "Zodiac" (2007) - A Movie Worth Returning To

Zodiac is a horror film in the sense that there are gruesome murders. There is blood. It is immensely disturbing, suspensful, eerie and mysterious. But it's not a horror movie, at least not in the blood, splatter and gore sense of the genre. Cause though there's blood, there ain't that much. And though it splatters it don't splatter too far. There's no squirting, you know what I mean? In other words, at no point in the rather long film, do any large breasted women take off their tops to shower. (This is, for some, a tragedy; I know.)

Also, Zodiac rises well above the horror genre's deservedly bad name because it's populated by two of my favourite current Hollywood actors, and it is directed by one of the best in the game, David Fincher.



Set in a beautifully re-created California of the 1970s, Zodiac is based on the true story of the cops and reporters chasing after the serial killer who called himself The Zodiac. The film is what's called a police procedural. It is, then, sort of like a horror murder-mystery, except that it's also so much a character study of the men hell-bent on catching the killer.

THE DIRECTOR'S MEDIUM
As a film buff once taught me (at a time when I persisted in watching crap 1990s movie after crap 1990s movie just cause Roberto DeNiro was in them): Don't follow actors, follow directors. These are the movies David Fincher directed before Zodiac (let's pretend the yawn that was Benjamin Button - Fincher's astonishingly lame follow-up to Zodiac - never was):

Aliens 3
Se7en
The Game
Fight Club
Panic Room

David Fincher is the kind of perfectionist filmmaker that makes every shot he chooses exciting, and tense, and beautiful, at least to movie nerds like me. With Zodiac, Fincher also exhibits a Kubrickian gift for music usage, doing for Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" what Kubrick did for Ludvig Van's "Symphony Number 9" in A Clockwork Orange, forever attaching creepy to a tune you may never have seen as such.

THE PLAYERS
The film stars Jack Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. At least two of these actors (not named Jake Gyllenhaal) are the best Hollywood's got right now. Downey Jr. playing a famous person (a reporter) descending into self-destruction due to drug abuse (alcohol). And I'm sorry but who doesn't enjoy indulging in the perverse pleasure of watching Downey Jr. hurt himself with much, in this case, alcohol, humor, irony and of course pathos.

Easily as compelling, if less screen dominating, as Downey Jr. is Mark Ruffalo. He gets a paragraph. Some first saw him in a small film called We Don't Live Here Anymore. I discovered him, though, in smaller parts, as a cop in Michael Mann's Collateral,
and as the lab technician in love with Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. With Zodiac, Ruffalo finally gets the attention he deserves, playing a cop (David Toschi) so famous in real life, Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry was based on him. It's that Ruffalo makes such unusual, yet believeable choices. He plays Toschi with an oddly soft voice, a voice that contradicts all the tough guy inspectors we've ever seen on screen. And yet you believe this guy can bust balls, bring down bad guys, and, most gratifiyingly, actually seem like a human being doing this, not a muscle-bound movie star of the Tom Cruise variety that just looks angry a lot.

Ruffalo (OK 2 paragraphs) is the kind of actor that can sip a cup of coffee and make it interesting. He doesn't have much screen time with Downey Jr., a good thing too, since I think these two firecrackers have so much energy and humanity and humor and sexuality, not to mention oddity and an exponential whopping adding of nuance so intricate and interesting and full the viewer wouldn't know where to look.

Round out the cast with the smaller roles played by legendary character actors you're certain to recognize but may not know by name (the best of art films or the stage) including: Brian Cox, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, Elias Koteas and Philip Baker Hall.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION
Like Fincher's manic attention to detail, Zodiac is itself a film about obsession. 3 men who give over so much of their lives to finding a killer, to trying to solve a puzzle, a mystery, a horror.

The same way you might savour reading Raymond Chandler or watching Wong Kar Wai, Fincher is a stylist, he's a Hemingway for the screen, so careful with each shot, so aware of each angle, the lighting, the framing, and a few hundred other visual details that this less than visually gifted, verbal learner couldn't possibly even take in, let alone articulate. But I know 'em when I see 'em and, let me tell you, this director's got the goods.

Delayed Post Reaction

This picture of sushi is.



From Tokyo. Near Tsukiji fish market. Biggest fish market in the world.
Freshest raw fish I ever did eat.
Booya!

Writerly Advice from Hem

In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.

-Ernest Hemingway

More Makers Than Takers - Pt II

Continued from Part I

The writer said, and I paraphrase:

The percentage of adult fiction readership has been in steady decline every year for the past decade(s?), and yet there are more creative writing masters programs in the United States now than at any other time, and the number grows every year.

Here is where, in my irrepressibly curious and chutzpadik way, I butted in on my neighbours' conversation. Who was this all-but-the-pipe, bespectacled man (M.T. Anderson, a Bostonian, he writes children's literature; Wikipedia says he's won awards; graduated from Harvard)? But equally importantly, to me, why was what he said so?

We got into a lovely conversation - I'm guessing it was my my line of questioning that had him guessing right off that I too wrote; it couldn't possibly have been the glasses and receding hairline that tipped him off, could it? - but he never did manage to solve the conundrum he'd brought up, nor did he ask me for a sweet potato fry.

So I ask you, why is everyone writing but no one is reading?
And maybe you do read. But what do you read? You read blogs? Magazines? Novels? What about short stories, though? Who is reading those? And poetry? How many people are reading poetry that don't also write poetry? How many non-writers can even name three literary magazines? According to Wikipedia there are 29 literary magazines. That begin with the letter C.

I've written for one, guest edited for them too. I read some of these magazines sometimes, and not just ones that start with the letter C. I even subscribe to a few (though not, sadly, to Mom Writer's). But I, of course, have a vested interest. This is precisely the problem. Would I have even heard of "Cha" or "The Missouri Review" if I didn't write?

I just wonder, who's reading all this stuff we're writing and what does it mean when you have more makers than takers.

More Makers Than Takers - Pt I

Two of Toronto's nicest pubs sit across the street from one another (Prince Arthur Avenue, for locals and future visitors).

The one, the Bedford Academy, the better one (sh), what with its rather convincing fake fireplace, the old books on the bookshelves and the dim candlelight, serves Kilkenny and you can get sweet potato fries with spicy mayonnaise.

Ai and I were indulging in precisely these treats, the creamy brew and the crispy fat dipped in creamy fat, last Friday eve when a gentleman, a lady and a teenage girl came and sat at a table next to us. They were not, as I first thought, a family.

The gentleman, clearly well spoken and not afraid to speak at strong volume and with words comprised of more than a single syllable, drank tea, with honey. The lady, quieter, more Canadian, but also clearly pretty bright, was, however, really just a woman. ie. her dress was not fancy. But the gentleman, he had these very round glasses, small round his eyes, and clothes that were formal, too stylish to be called academic, but still rather academic all-but-the-pipe dress. I struggle to remember details like the actual articles he was wearing. He could have been in a blazer or a topcoat. Dark denim? Light khaki? I don't have the foggiest. Don't even ask me about colour (my 2 favourite t-shirts are the same shade of grey). I could swear, though, that the gentleman had on a vest, and the impression of a bow tie, though not, unfortunately, the reality of one - apparently what he wasn't wearing I can remember. It all suggested to me that he was either in publishing or that he wrote.

He wrote. He writes. I listened in on his conversation with the woman, who turns out to, amongst other things, critique children's literature for "The Toronto Star" and who had brought the writer to the University of Toronto for a talk (I think). The teenager - well I never worked out what exactly the teenager was doing there. My guess is she was some kind of a big fan. Whether she won a contest to go to a pub and have tea with her beloved writer or whether she was in fact the niece of the woman I'll never know.

But I bring this all up because of an overheard line of the writer's that I've been mulling over since,

which I'll post in Pt II.

I can't find any bloomin' electricity on this damned desert island

It just isn't meant to be. This defies logic, but then so does a grown man writing stories of make believe. Twice now I've tried to add a movie to my Desert Island list. Twice offered a near promise of its impending post. Twice tried writing the entry. I have two drafts (a few thousand words at least) saved away in the old blogspot bank. Good movie. Multiple reasons why it's likeable. But something in me says it isn't meant to be. I'm boring you, I realize. I'm sorry. But it's true. I can't explain it in discursive terms (he's throwin out the big money words now, hey? hey?!), but this particular movie just doesn't want to get added. So, as it turns out, the Desert Island won't be televised after all, for now anyway. You're gutted. I know.

By way of compensation, here: the title of a short story I have a first draft for that I'm sure I'll be ready to share in no more than four or five years, max. It's called, "The Jew With the German Shepherd" and I only have four other stories to polish and spit shine before I get back to that one.

In the meantime, might I recommend the latest fiction and poetry at Cha: An Asian Literary Review. They're doing good shit over there. This story, here, is a primo example of some of that shit. Sorry, feeling a bit cussy this evening. Goodnight.

Wait! In this spirit of outrageous generosity (and in rather a derivative style of an author I write about all too often) I give you a picture of two ducks. Because, in the words of my immortal beloved, they're good guys. Yeah.

here: more truth than you get at your average dinner party.
i don't really know what i'm doing.
i have no idea how to write a novel.
it could take me many more years before i do.
i'll die trying though. whether that's soon or not. i'll die trying.
also, it hurts a lot. the learning how to aspect.

the contradictory part?

it's also the funnest thing i've ever done and better than any other job i can think of except being a movie star. until i think seriously of what it would actually be like to be a movie star. and then realize that would be an enormously difficult job. never mind the acting, or the weight training, i'm just thinking of the boredom. waiting in a trailer. doing that 800th interview for the Buffalo Herald or whatever.

it's late. i don't usually blog like this. lower case and at such fast pace. perhaps even i'll take this post down. could be like, this blog will self-destruct in ...
this is a different voice from my usual, i think. the one i usually share here, i mean. i suppose i'm writing this influenced by a guy who blogs in new york. i won't share his name because he's so vain he probably thinks this song is about him. also, he already publishes books. and i don't. so i'm jealous. screw him.
this isn't a side i usually show of me.
i should run and hide.
write and revise.
you think i'm wasting my time?
that was rhetorical.

The Desert Island will be Televised*

As Rob/John Cusack says in "High Fidelity," 'It's not who you are, but what you like.' Fortunately for me, Ai eats many of the same comfort foods I do, at least when it comes to books and movies. We met and bonded over a love of Murakami; something deeper clicked for me when I realized she too got it with a rather forgotten and definitely under-appreciated movie that is next up for the Desert Island list. A first for the island, a movie. (As luck would have it there will be a decent television and DVD player on the beach.)

Recap of what's been taken to palm tree paradise to read while sipping whiskey by the fire by the sea

#1 Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood"
#2 J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye"
#3 Arundathi Roy's "The God of Small Things"
#4 John Steinbeck's "East of Eden"
#5 Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

*I did publish this preamble of a post (a preambular post?) before, but I never followed up on it. Didn't follow through. This isn't cool. It's not responsible. For this I apologize. It'll never happen again, I was going to promise. But I can't promise. Not about this. Sorry. I will try though. I can assure a concerted effort. Love. I can also offer love. And sarcasm. I can offer sarcasm. But no chips, I'm afraid. Trying to eat better. A little salad maybe. I take requests. No, I don't. I only know how to make one salad. It's got pine nuts and feta cheese. It's not remotely original round these parts. But it's delicious. Truly.

**Justification for having a dessert island list in the first place can be found here.

***Salad recipes this way.

****Desert recipes not provided. Please. Don't be silly.

THE BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME when I was a teenager

Circa the 1980s and a little bit of the '90s (though many would argue that my teenage years have lasted long into this century as well).


1. The Breakfast Club (1985)

2. Heathers (1988)

3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

4. Dead Poet's Society (1989)

5. The Terminator (1984)

6. Pump Up the Volume (1990)

7. Point Break (1991)

8. The Princess Bride (1987)

9. Fletch (1985)

10. Die Hard (1988)

*I'm not sure why I limited myself to 10 as it hurts me to not have included: Say Anything, Stand By Me, Back to the Future, True Romance, The Terminator 2, The Shining, Total Recall, Reality Bites, The Karate Kid, Big Trouble in Little China, The Lost Boys, Roxanne, Top Gun, The Sure Thing, Some Kind of Wonderful, Can't Buy Me Love, Ghostbusters and of course, Fast Times at Ridgemont High - to name a few.

**Please also note (because I know how important this is to you) that this list is not of '80s movies but of movies I loved as a teenager. If asked of movies I love today from the '80s my list would surely include moves like: Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Full Metal Jacket and When Harry Met Sally.