Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

180th Anniversary of "A Christmas Carol"




Turns out today, Dec. 19th, 2023, is the 180th anniversary of the publication of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, arguably one of the most important works of English-language fiction.  Thanks to writer Neil Gaiman who pointed this out on social media, and who is currently doing his bit where he dresses up and reads the book, cover to cover, to a live audience.  

I'd love to see someone film that sometime.  The only audio book I've ever listened to was performed by Patrick Stewart, and, pals, I cannot recommend it enough.  I also recommend the film version he did.  

And that's really the thing.  Most of us come to A Christmas Carol through a movie or TV special, cartoon adaptation, puppet show or what-have-you.  And that's actually great.  I know mine was the Disney version with Scrooge McDuck and Mickey in key roles.  But I also grew up in the wake of the George C. Scott version.  And hit Scrooged at a key point in my teen-hood where it really landed, and not just because Karen Allen.*

I think I finally read the book in 8th or 9th grade.  What I really remember is that I was supposed to read bits at a time, and I did not.  It's short - Neil Gaiman can read it all in one shot, and Patrick Stewart's Audible version is like an hour and forty-five minutes - a fraction of your average Marvel film.

And, you know what?  The book is great.  I re-read it every decade or so. 

I don't need to explain it to you, which is a nice time-saver in writing about the thing.  You know there's a first ghost who warns about the other three.  You know there's some light time-travel and walking around as a phantom.  There's love lost and bitter childhood memories.  And there's social commentary aplenty, which has remained relevant year-over-year for the past 180 years.

In many ways, recognizing the echoes of the pre-reformed Ebenezer Scrooge's dialog is a shockingly easy way to spot a terrible human.  And yet, no matter how many times people see the movies or read passages or see plays, and, or. etc...  here we are.  

And so, the book remains endlessly relevant.

Movies may change things up - cosmetic bits like changing the look of a ghost.  Or minimizing or eliminating bits.  And the book's core remains intact.  Because it's a fantasy that those with no motivation to change their ways will somehow, through the hand of God where their own conscience failed them, be moved by humanity to be human, and not just an engine for generating wealth.  At the end of the day, how you'll be thought of in this life will be multiplied the moment you pass.  

Here's to another 180 years more.




*but also not not because of Karen Allen

  




Wednesday, August 24, 2022

SW Reads! Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock


Author:  Dr. Christina Lane
Year Released:  2020
Format:  Audio Book and Book

A while back I learned of Dr. Christina Lane's book, Phantom Lady:  Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock, which ticked a lot of boxes.  Lane's subject matter covered an area with which I had some familiarity - 1940's and 50's Hollywood (I don't claim an encyclopedic knowledge, natch).  The focus of her exploration was a person I didn't know anything about, but whose work I actually knew.

A biography of British-born film writer and producer Joan Harrison, it turned out that I had seen - and very much enjoyed - films produced by Harrison, not least of which was the eponymous Phantom Lady.  As one would guess, Hollywood was not overrun by women in positions of management or executive decision making in the 1940's and 1950's, and so I was curious enough, but then Lane was also featured on TCM's Noir Alley series as a guest, discussing Harrison in conjunction with some of her films.  I was sold.

Thursday, November 4, 2021

PODCAST: "Foundation" Sci-Fi TV discussion w/ JuanD and Ryan




Watched:  09 and 10/2021
Format:  Television Apple+
Viewing: First
Decade: 2020's
Director:  various




Juan and Ryan ponder what has come before to consider what is happening now and what will happen next as they take on the famously unfilmable series of books from one of the greats of American sci-fi. Join us as we run the numbers on a show that's epic in scale, and maybe dropping a space elevator on the fans of the books.




Music:
Foundation Main Theme - Bear McCreary


Sci-Fi Playlist

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Muad'Dib Watch: Dune (2021)




Watched:  10/24/2021
Format:  HBOmax
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2020's
Director:  Denis Villeneuve

Well, whatever opinion I have will be wrong, by everyone who watched this movie.  And, especially, if you read the book.

I've only read Dune once, years ago, at the recommendation of RHPT and StevenH (and probably Lauren, if Steven was pitching it).  That said, I thought it was a singular reading experience.  My inability to return to the book has much more to do with life being short and me doing other things rather than my lack of love for what I read.

I think people who read and grok Dune are changed a little after, maybe in tiny ways, but a bit.  I cannot imagine approaching a Dune movie without having read the book - I know watching Lynch's version without having read the book led to me giving up 20 minutes in.  But after reading it, I was like "oh, yeah, this is maybe not the best way to do this, but ok."  Similarly, before reading the book, I could only follow the SyFy Channel TV mini-series version of Dune so far before I was like "y'all are on your own".

So - I have no idea what those who didn't read the book took away from the movie currently in theaters and running on HBOmax.  

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Halloween Read: Carmilla (1872) - Audiobook


Finished:  10/03/2019
Author:  Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Reader:  Tracey Childes
Format:  Audiobook
Decade:  1870's
Recording:  2009

Growing up, I'd read that the book that had pre-dated Dracula and which likely inspired Stoker was Varney the Vampire (or: The Feast of Blood), a mid-19th Century penny dreadful that I've still not got around to reading.  I think I'd heard of Carmilla 1872) by J.S. LeFanu in passing, but it wasn't until I was reading up on the Hammer horror film The Vampire Lovers (based loosely on the book) that I did the Googling necessary to spark real interest in Carmilla -at least enough to get me to intend to read the book. 

As I am no longer working from home and once again enjoy a commute, I went ahead and got the audiobook of Carmilla for what will be one of my Halloween reads.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

A Picture Tour of Locations from "Anatomy of a Murder" - my vacation pics from the U.P. - Part 1



This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder.  If you've never seen it, it's a terrific film and holds up far better than you'd expect considering the changing mores, attitudes, laws and and more since 1959.  In some ways, it's covering territory we seem to cover over and over as a society and may be more relevant now than ever.  A legal drama, it should be a bit out of my wheelhouse, but instead it's been one of my favorite films since college.

Starring Jimmy Stewart, it has a terrific cast of well-known and lesser known actors.  Eve Arden, a very young George C. Scott, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzarra, Arthur O'Connell, and Kathryn Grant (a University of Texas alumnus and, at the time, just married to Bing Crosby).  And, a bit bizarre for the time and place, Duke Ellington.

The movie, however, was based on a novel written by Robert Traver.  Traver was the pen name for attorney John Voelker, who lived in Ishpeming, Michigan and served as the city prosecutor, ran for other public office and was generally highly involved in public life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Signal Watch Reads: "The Long Goodbye" (1953) and "Playback" (1958)



At long last, I read both The Long Goodbye (1953) and Playback (1958), the last of Raymond Chandler's novels centered upon detective Philip Marlowe.

You'll note a lengthy dry spell between books here, and there's a precipitous drop-off between the two in depth and strength.  It's curious as The Long Goodbye feels less like a detective novel and more like an author wrestling with himself, working through the point in his life where he'd enjoyed success and some fame and found neither amounted to much as he was still living with himself as an alcoholic, a writer of genre fiction, and now a widower.*

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

PODCAST: Noir Watch: "The Long Goodbye" (1973) - w/ SimonUK and Ryan


Watched:  02/01/2019
Format:  Kino Lorber BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's

Simon and Ryan delve into Film Noir via Neo-Noir, Altman-directed entry "The Long Goodbye" (1973), an oddball of a film with a lot to offer. We explore the role of Philip Marlowe in the world of fiction, some of the mechanics of noir, and whether or not any of this actually works as a movie.




Music:

The Long Goodbye - Music by John Williams/ Lyrics by Johnny Mercer/ performed by Jack Sheldon

Links:

For more about The Signal Watch PodCast
The Signal Watch Patreon

Thursday, December 27, 2018

RiffTrax-Watch: Ready Player One (2018)


Watched:  12/25/2018
Format:  Rifftrax
Viewing: First
Decade:  2010's

I am not a gamer.  The only console I own is one of those 2600 emulator boxes and it hasn't been out of the closet in a year.  I get that people spend a lot of time on video games, and that I have no stones to throw about people wasting their time and money on non-real-things.  I write on a blog that needlessly analyzes movies and occasionally comics and talks a lot about comic-based movies.  Take all of the below with the necessary grain of salt.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Signal Watch Reads: All the Answers (Kupperman, 2018)



I started reading All the Answers (2018) a couple of weeks ago, got ten pages in and realized that I wouldn't have time to read it cover to cover in one sitting, the way one generally wants to watch a film, and so I put away the book and picked it up again when I had uninterrupted time.

Written, researched, drawn and lived by Michael Kupperman, a cartoonist and artist I've followed for well over ten years at this point, the book is more than a minor pivot from a particular brand of humor comic that I would fail to capture here if I tried (and what is explaining a joke, anyway?) - this is also a biographical and autobiographical graphic novel.  I believe Snake n' Bacon strips were my entree into Kupperman's work, followed by Tales Designed to Thrizzle - something that should be a staple in any comics-studies course.  And, of course, Mark Twain's Autobiography, 1910-2010.

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Comics Culture Read: Marvel Comics - The Untold Story (2013)


Author:  Sean Howe
Release:  October, 2013

The manager at my Local Comic Shoppe, Brandon, suggested Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (2013) while we were discussing some minutia around the history of Marvel Comics. 

My knowledge of Marvel history is one mostly gathered patchwork from various interviews, articles, word-of-mouth stories, etc... so I knew some broad strokes, particularly around the infamous Kirby/ Lee creator debates and the Ditko/Lee broo-haha, but after Lee left Marvel, it's all bits and pieces gleaned from Bullpen Bulletins, credits on comics while certain things were happening, and trying to piece together what the hell, exactly, was going on at Marvel at any given time.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Signal Watch Reads: I'll Be Gone In The Dark (2018 - Audiobook)



I'd intended to read Michelle McNamara's true-crime book, I'll Be Gone In The Dark (2018), this year at some point, but was propelled to listen to the audiobook when, in late April, the subject of the book was apprehended in California.

Before the book is run-over, borrowed-from, and absorbed by osmosis as documentaries and news stories rushed into production - and likely a feature film or three - I wanted to hear what McNamara had to say and where she was in her crowd-sourced, DIY investigation into the Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and murderer who was active in multiple California communities in the late 70's and into the early 80's, before simply vanishing.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Signal Watch Reads: Pietr the Latvian (Inspector Maigret #1 - 1931)


After completing the two Maigret mystery movies, I decided to check out some actual Inspector Maigret novels.  Not as big of a deal here in the states, but in Europe, they appear to be quite popular.  I found a set on deep discount and after waiting for a month for them to make their way from a shop in the UK to my doorstep (amazing world we live in, what one mouse click sets in motion), I got to crack the set for my plane ride to San Jose.

After reading Hammett and Chandler, it seemed fair to see what was going on with mystery books across the ocean.

Georges Simenon was a Belgian writing in French about a Parisian detective circa 1930 when this book appeared.  I am unclear when the translation occurred or how much was changed in meaning - I would expect that after 80 years, everyone is satisfied with what's on the page.  It seems reasonable to trust Penguin to do right by these books.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Coen Watch: Miller's Crossing (1990)



Watched:  02/03/2018
Format:  Google Play Streaming
Viewing:  Unknown, but somewhere over 25th
Decade:  1990's

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

First Amazon Order


Seems this is a thing we're all doing, so here goes.

I very much remember placing this order (or these orders).  Half of my friends were totally excited about this new Amazon thing, and half of them were convinced Amazon would just take my credit card and drain me of money.  Both were right, as it turns out.

Monday, January 1, 2018

200th Anniversary of the First Publication of Frankenstein


Today marks the 200th Anniversary of the first publication of Frankenstein (or, The Modern Prometheus).  It's a book many of us were assigned to read.  As with any book, your mileage will vary.  Absolutely, that seems to depend upon interpretations and baggage brought to the book.

It is true that I am a fan of the Frankenstein films from Universal that appeared in 1932 and onward, but I'd read Shelley's book twice before seeing the first movie circa 1997. My Freshman year of high school I *absolutely* grokked the "wretch's" perspective and Victor's craziness, and of course the romantic torment that befalls them all.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Signal Watch Reads: Altered Carbon (2002 - audiobook)


A few folks had recommended to me Altered Carbon (2002) by Richard Morgan.  Likely this was due to my interests in science-fiction and detective/ noir fiction.  Not a bad call, that.  The book is more or less a detective story with a decidedly noirish bent set in a far-flung future of high technology and interstellar travel.

While our characters live in a fantasyland of technological wonders and possibilities, the technology the book is most preoccupied with is the digitization of the human consciousness, allowing minds and personalities to flow freely between bodies or into virtual environments as specters, even crossing the cosmos for business meetings into rented "sleeves".  While mankind lives at a point where genetic and chemical manipulation of the human form is common practice, the same ills that always plague humanity are no further off.  War, hunger, institutionalized economic disparity, religious mania... all still present hundreds of years from today despite the colonization of many new worlds and the discovery of alien artifacts.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Signal Watch Reads: Dirty Money (a Parker novel - 2008)



On Monday around 3:07 Pacific Time (I was flying back from Berkeley, CA), I finished the final Parker novel by Richard Stark, Dirty Money (2008).

It's a hell of a thing to say I read all 24 Parker books, plus the four Grofield spin-off novels.  That's certainly a first for me, when it comes to books.  Back in the 1990's, I read about five or six books with a tight continuity by William Kennedy, and I've read a lot of Hammett's "Continental Op" short stories - but 28 books by one person feels like a lot, airplane reading though they were.

Dirty Money doesn't conclude the series except for the fact that Donald Westlake (Stark's real name) passed on December 31, 2008 without producing any additional Parker novels.  Parker doesn't die, doesn't go to jail, doesn't give up on crime to have 3.5 kids and become a manager at Hardee's.  Butcher's Moon, the 1974 near-conclusion of the Parker series, also didn't feel quite like a finale, although the bodycount in the novel certainly had the sort of thing you didn't imagine Stark wanting to top.  But it did make for a satisfying conclusion of sorts.

Fortunately, so, too does Dirty Money make for a fantastic conclusion to the 90's-00's Parker rebirth.  The story ties together the plots of the two prior books into one continuous novel of sorts, refusing to gloss over the complications that I had, as a reader, half forgiven Stark for, thinking he had maybe written the other too quickly, hadn't really paid the same attention to detail he once did in that 1960's-70's heyday that produced the first ten novels of the series.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

SW Reads: Ask The Parrot (a Parker Novel by Richard Stark, 2006)



Ask The Parrot (2006) is the penultimate Parker novel.  Frankly, I'd been dreading hitting this book based on the title alone, which sounded like one of those caper novels that would get turned into a movie with Dennis Farina that was funny, but not *that* funny, and mostly forgettable.

It's a strange, small book, playing well to several of Stark's strengths and his interest in exploring multiple characters and POV's in a single book.  He sticks with the winning formula, maintaining a limited omniscient narrator's voice but using the 3rd section of the book to jump from person to person in the situation, setting up what would happen in the explosive fourth portion of the novel when everything comes together to fall apart.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Signal Watch Reads: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2004, audiobook)



Like everyone else, I didn't think about Alexander Hamilton a whole lot other than knowing he was on my money, invented the Fed, and somehow got into a duel (and lost) with a more obscure Founding Father, Aaron Burr.  The Revolutionary War era and the founding of the United States is such a deeply complex time in history, I've never really had my head around it, and as that history in broad scope tends to work best for me when woven into biographies, I'd long intended to read biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and a George Washington bio written by Ron Chernow that was given to me by NathanC that's been collecting dust for way too long.

Part of my issue is that most of those books are the "why is this 900 pages long?" variety, and I've been so buried in Roosevelt biographies, I've not really made enough time or room in my head for much else, but I've been working to change that.

Of course, along came the Grammy performance of the opening number to Hamilton, a fact-laden number intended to get us to the start of the action but laying out Hamilton's childhood story (which is enough to fill a book itself), and - like for so many of the rest of the people who saw this or listened to the soundtrack recording (or the lucky few who've seen the show), I was compelled to know more.  Maxwell suggested the Chernow bio, so I burned an Audible credit and picked up Alexander Hamilton (2004).  And, 37 hours of audiobook later, here we are.