First off, I’d like to apologize for getting so literary with this column. I always assume Matt breaks down in tears whenever sees one of my posts. I do have reviews of Federico Fellini’s La Strada, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (which might just have one of the greatest and most compact scripts in cinema history) in line; however, they are not finished. I also want to talk about the amazing pop cultural pastiche that is The Venture Bros. sometime down the road as well. I was in the process of working on a two part piece about liberature (no, I spelled it right) and how video games can provide hints to literature’s ability to remain valid in the 21^st century, when I decided it would be best to do something a little more…light. Don’t worry though, the literary torture will resume next week.

In the meantime, since I’ve been living in Poland for five years this month, I thought it might be fun to make some general observations about Polish pop culture from an American’s perspective. (more…)

Everything Bad is Good For You

With the difficulty in modern literature finding an audience, it is no wonder that classic literature is having an even more difficult time connecting with readers. Results from marketing research performed by Orion Group publishing were “near-unanimous” in revealing that people thought classic literature to be “long, slow and repetitive” and “many respondents admitted to having an interest in the stories when they had come upon them in another way, like watching a TV adaptation or film that brought alive the story and characters.”

This lead to Orion to consider publishing condensed versions of classic literature:

“Literally, life is too short. Once you get to a certain place in your life, you realize that there is a finite number of books you’re going to be able to read,” [Malcom] Edwards [of Orion] says. He admits to “bouncing off” Moby Dick several times, even though the whaling, the quest and the biblical aspects of the book all sound appealing. Would he have had more success with a shorter, snappier version?

The condensing of classic literature can be seen as a beginning. How long will it be until modern literature is viewed as being slow or repetitive? Already English teachers are using film at some point “as a replacement for a long text, or as a supplement to a written text or thematic unit.” How long before teachers exclusively use movies as an alternative experience of the text, especially when taking into account the finite amount of classes and the seemingly infinite amount of available material? How long before the idea of the text becomes just as important – if not more – as the text itself? (more…)

Seeing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at the top of the list for Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008 fascinates me. The 2006 book deserves all of the praise and attention it’s received since publication. Even Oprah Winfrey got it right for once when she ordered her minions to read The Road for her book club.

The Road tells the story of a father and son as they wander through an ash covered, post-apocalyptic America. McCarthy’s 2005 book No Country for Old Men – known better as a Coen brothers movie than a McCarthy novel – reads in hindsight like an appetizer for The Road. In the former book, McCarthy slowly dissects the American Dream and reveals the unpleasant possibility that it’s coming to an end, whereas in the latter book, he destroys America and shows us the possibility of what comes next. And what does come next? Well, a lot of despair, darkness and pain. Make no mistake about it, The Road is bleak; which is just fine for McCarthy, a writer who is notorious for never quite giving readers what they expect and want. For instance, outside of a “long shear of light and then a series of low concussions”, it is not clear in the book what caused the devastation. But really, it isn’t important what really happened – this is a journey story, one of survival.

More importantly, The Road is part of an interesting 21st century trend towards end of the world stories. (more…)

I always had a soft spot for John Carpenter. As a kid, he was the first director whose name meant something to me. Seeing his name flash across the screen for the commercials for The Fog when I was a child left an impression that I’m still trying to shake off today. More than any other director, Carpenter appeared to be making movies just for me. Halloween and The Fog were there when I was first discovering horror movies. Escape from New York, The Thing and Starman arrived when I was exploring other genres. When I discovered Stephen King, Christine arrived at the video store. When I stumbled on martial arts movies, he gave me Big Trouble in Little China. When I became interested in science, Carpenter churned out the underrated Prince of Darkness (a pessimistic and claustrophobic End of Days story offset by the optimism of quantum physics). And when I started to question authority, along came They Live (a movie remembered more for its excess than its restraint). Looking at Carpenter’s work from The Fog (1980) to They Live (1988), not only is it an impressive resume, but it is a body of work that perfectly reflects the paranoia, glut and cynicism that was the Eighties.

Sadly, the Nineties would not be a good time for Carpenter, and this, like many of us, is when I started to lose interest in his work. Memoirs of an Invisible Man, while inventive at times, is painful and never quite understands what kind of movie it wants to be; all of this is made worse by the fact that many scenes practically scream studio intervention.

So when I saw the trailer for 1995’s In the Mouth of Madness, I tried not to get my hopes too high. The good news was the movie ended up being pretty good, and the bad news was that it would be Carpenter’s last good movie. (more…)

I’ve only met Matt once in my life. It was four years ago at a bar in Florida. Though I’m not legally allowed to discuss the details of that ill-fated evening, I can disclose that there was a lot of beer, awkward silences and a giraffe (that poor creature never had a chance). I must have made quite an impression on him, however, as Matt has asked me to write a column here at Where the Long Tail Ends.

Though this is my third contribution, I suppose now is as good as any time to explain what TOO SOON will be about. For those of you who’ve asked what the title means, I really can’t say; it just amuses me for some reason, and it’s vague enough of a title to represent a column that will inevitably be many things.

As of now, TOO SOON will focus on my re-watching horror movies I haven’t seen in years to see if they still hold up (like Alone in the Dark), as well as watching movies I’ve always wanted to see but never got around to (such as Blast of Silence). Plus, since my love of movies is often eclipsed by my love of books, I’d like to go through my library and share not only what I feel the best books are, but the books that altered my DNA and completely changed who I was as a person – you know, those books. In fact, I’m finishing up a piece on Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves to get us started. (more…)