Season's Greetings

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season. Not much time to do a meaty post at the moment, but how about a few quick tips?  Stephen King's The Institute is a fine novel, with a dark and involving story.  Star Wars, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is a little busy and maybe a little too eager to please fans, but it's undeniably a very entertaining time at the movies.  And Robert Petkoff's narration of all the classic Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald kept me going back to Audible.com for audiobook after audiobook this past year.

I posted a little more in 2019 than I did in 2018, but here's hoping I get back to much more regular posing in 2020.  I do enjoy telling you all about all the stuff I've enjoyed reading, seeing, or listening to; I just need to be less lazy about posting. We shall see, right?  In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Couple of things

On this pleasant day-after-Thanksgiving Friday, let me hit you with one quick Thanksgiving joke as you enjoy your leftovers.  Courtesy of a signboard outside a local restaurant, here goes:

What side of the turkey has the most feathers?

The outside!

I know, kind of dumb. So how about if I leave you with a quick book tip, too??

The recently-reissued 1970's Hardman thriller series by Ralph Dennis continues to entertain.  I just finished the 6th entry, Murder Is Not An Odd Job, and it was another winner.  Aside from many other assets, the novel has one of the most satisfying "showdown in the wilderness" sequences between the heroes and the villains that I've read in ages.

Check out what I wrote a few posts ago about the first novel in the series, Atlanta Deathwatch, for more information on these highly recommended books.  All novels in the series are available in trade paperback editions or on Kindle.

Hands-on horror

On this lovely Halloween day, please let this slightly older blogger suggest a couple of slightly older horror movies that might provide a bit of frightful fun if you feel like watching something scary later on.  I picked these movies because they were both produced well before the CGI era, so if you see something that's memorably scary in them, it's because the filmmakers had to actually make that thing and film it, not simply animate it to life on a computer and cut and paste it into the movie later on. I'm not a CGI basher, but there is something to be said for the old hands-on approach to creating creatures and moody-looking spaceships and all the other things that went into making effective horror and horror/sci-fi movies in decades past.

Anyway, I'm just recommending two films for now: 1979's Alien, directed by Ridley Scott and 1982's The Thing, directed by John Carpenter.  Both were done in the pre-CGI era but both deliver very ambitious scares and monsters, some believing that the scares are much more effective because the actors were most likely interacting with elements right there in the shot with them at the time of filming. I often hold this outlook and you might, too, at least a little after seeing these films.  Both, by the way, are hard R-rated movies, given that rating for graphic violence and gore, as well as language. So, no, don't worry that these are quaint old horror movies.  They both still have bite.

And skill, too.  They both have skill.  Because if you are actually building a scary creature and filming it, that creature- and the things it does- better look good. Because a plastic and rubber monster will look like exactly that if your special effects people aren't top notch. And I guarantee that the best special effects artists and technicians were used in both of these movies.

Both Alien and The Thing shouldn't be too hard to find among all the available streaming services out there these days. Have fun hunting for them and have a fun Halloween!

Booze and pills and bullets, oh my

Reed Farrel Coleman has been doing a nice job continuing the adventures of the late Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone character, and the newest Stone book, Robert B. Parker's The Bitterest Pill, keeps that track record going.  This time out, Jesse, the police chief of the seaside resort town of Paradise, Massachusetts, has to confront murder and violence stemming from the opioid crisis, while at the same time getting acquainted with the grown son Jesse has only recently discovered existed. Oh, and the chief is also seriously confronting his drinking problem for the first time. And while juggling all this Jesse enters into a new romantic relationship.  It's a busy book.

With all this going on, though, the book never feels crowded or overstuffed, just pleasantly moves along in a breezy, involving fashion with everything getting the right amount of attention.  The alcoholism plotline is particularly interesting, as it veers off from what Robert Parker would have probably done.  Parker seemed to believe that a person's weaknesses and demons had to be managed and co-existed with, rather than eliminated.  Under Parker's watch, Jesse never gave up his problem drinking or his obsession with his ex-wife Jenn, only got enough help to keep those things enough under control so that he could do his job and live his life.  That approach provided a lot of complex, involving reading over the years, but I'm also enjoying Coleman's more blunt method: in recent books, Jesse has given up his preoccupation with Jenn and has made a kind of productive peace with her, and, in The Bitterest Pill, Jesse goes the full AA route after some tentative steps in the previous novel.  And it's all very interesting, and no less complex than Parker's approach.

The crime story this time is good, too.  The tragedy of kids and adults getting hooked on opioids is well presented here, with all details ringing true from what we readers unfortunately all know from our own associations with those confronting the same problems. And while Coleman is realistic about the prospects of Chief Stone making serious headway in his war against these particularly nasty and seductive drugs, he also gives us a handful of fairly nasty criminals at the top of the drug chain that Jesse might have at least some success against.

Some villains have to be defeated in these books, after all.

"Robert B. Parker's The Bitterest Pill", by Reed Farrel Coleman, is currently available in hardback, Kindle, and audio editions.

Makes sense

Just seen on a local restaurant's outdoor message board:

Time flies like an arrow.

Fruit flies like a banana.

Mini-reviews

I recently caught two movies that went a bit beyond the usual summer blockbuster fare.  Both made the viewer work a little.  The less successful of the two at being "entertaining" was Ari Aster's Midsommar, a horror movie about a group of American college kids visiting a remote cult-like group in Sweden to study its rituals.  Also strong with "artistic leanings" was Quentin Tarantino's latest, Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, but Tarantino being Tarantino, this one also never strayed far from being fun to watch.

Midsommar was a little long and dull for my tastes, at least while I was watching it.  Later, though, I found myself mulling over its haunting imagery and complex ideas.  Though the Tarantino film also felt a little long to me, it did a better job being both entertaining while I was watching it and entertaining in my head later.  Though I'm open to the value of both types of "complex" films, I prefer those in the latter group. Alfred Hitchcock also made movies that fit in that group: supremely entertaining as suspense thrillers, but loaded with all kinds of thematic material under the surface if you cared to look for it.

So, both of these films are worth seeing if you are in the mood for something more challenging at the movies this summer. But maybe lean more toward the Tarantino if you still want a fun night out.

Signage silliness

Funny sayings on businesses' outside message boards always make my drive time a little more amusing.  How about you?  Here are a couple bits of cleverness I recently spotted outside local restaurants:

Just say no to negativity!

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What did the pig say on a very hot day?

I'm bacon.

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Well, I thought these were cute, anyway.