Innocent Bystander

Bay Area friends: WonderCon this weekend!

For all you comics, movie, TV, and pop culture loving readers, this weekend is the 25th anniversary of WonderCon, the Bay Area's home-grown comics convention. This is one of the most amazing events in comics each year--and yes, I have a horse in this race, so I'm biased. But if you even remotely like pop culture, you'll want to stop by Moscone Center on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Here's a link to buy tickets online--and save some money, too! And here's another link to the program schedule. WonderCon includes a giant Exhibit Hall, filled to the brim with amazing items and art. If you've never been and always wondered what a major comic book convention is like, this is the show for you. Stop on by!

In case you've noticed...

...that posting has been light the past week or so, it's because I have a huge work-related thing coming up this week and will be gone for a while from these pages. Or screens. Depends how you look at reading on the web.

Sunday's little movie--which has made me the toast of Paris, by the way (I fully expect the Legion of Honor medal for this...hey, they gave it to Jerry-f*ckin'-Lewis, right?)--was an exercise for later this week, a litle educational type thing that helped me learnt somethin' for once. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Um...that would be me, usually.

Anyway, posting will continue to be light, unless the spirit moves me, so sit tight. I'll be back on Terra Firma (that's her stripper name), in a week or so. In the meantime, we'll always have Paris.

Sometimes I guess I'm still all here...

As one gets older (I'm talkin' about me, dummy), one sometimes feels not as quick as in younger days. Today I had a pleasant surprise--even for me--in a work meeting that maybe just a little made me feel like I still have that certain somethin' somethin'.

Our whole staff was assembled as we have a big event coming up at the end of the week (more about that at...well, the end of the week). My boss went around the table asking for status reports from everyone, but began by saying, "Let's start with someone who has something short to say. How 'bout you, Gary...are you short?"

And I said, "All my life, actually."

It was one of my finer moments, I must say.

La Jolla 3.26.11--Un Film de Gary Sassaman...

 

Avec la musique de Charles Trenet ("Le Mer").

Friday Foto #173...

  Fun with filters...#5 in a series. Collect them all! Lately I've been playing  with some of the filters in the iPad app called CameraBag. This is my favorite one...it's called "Plastic" and it adds a vignette effect plus it over-saturates the colors. If some of these photos look familiar, they're old favorites that I re-energized with this filter.  This one is a rainy night in New York City.

To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!

 

 

The List: My five favorite mystery writers...

My life is complete once again. The three latest Richard Stark Parker thriller reissues are out from University of Chicago Press and they are all in my hot little hands. I'm currently reading Butcher's Moon, which wraps up the Parker series for Stark (aka Donald Westlake) when he thought he was done writing about the enigmatic crook, in 1974. Little did he know twenty years later he'd return and write eight more Parker novels to add to the list of 16 that he wrote from 1962-1974. But I digress...herein begins The List.

1. Richard Stark. There's nothing more beautiful in crime fiction than his Parker books. Told with an economy of words--there isn't a wasted one in any of the 24 books--that perfectly compliments his taciturn protagonist, Parker, a serial thief who is always looking for the next big score. But life happens to Parker each and every time, and that's what makes these books so great. Start with the first one--The Hunter (it's only $9 bucks!)--and work your way through the entire series.

2. Michael Connelly. I've enjoyed every one of his books from The Black Echo on, and luckily he puts out at least one a year, sometimes two. LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch remains my favorite of his characters and he appears in most of the 20+ books Connelly has written, with a few notable exceptions. While he sometimes misses (9 Dragons, anyone?), even then his writing is better than most. His latest--The Fifth Witness, starring Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller--comes out April 5.

3. James Ellroy. I gave up on Ellroy with his latest trilogy. He has his own style and rhythm these days and you either take to it or you don't. I prefer his earlier stuff. There's nothing better than the "LA Quartet," a series of historical novels that delve deep into the life and times of Los Angeles circa 1947-1960 or so. For my money, there is no greater mystery novel than LA Confidential...and it's probably the best book to movie adaptation since The Maltese Falcon.

4. Tom Rob Smith. And now for something completely different. Smith's books take place in post World War II Russia, as the Soviet Union moves into the Twentieth Century and slowly discovers the evil of the rest of the world, including serial killers. His Leo Demidov struggles with the basic villainy of his country while history marches on. Another historical fiction author, Smith has only two Demidov books out now (Child 44 and The Secret Speech) but both are epic in scope and cinematic to the max, artfully weaving in and out of Russia's tortured story to tell his own tales. A third novel featuring Demidov, Agent 6, is due out in January 2012.

5. Charlie Huston. His first Hank Thompson book--Caught Stealing--is one of the great crime novels of all time, in my opinion. But for a real kick in the pants, read his Joe Pitt Casebooks (start with the first, Already Dead), which marry hardcore noir detective stories with the ever-popular vampire genre, Twilight be damned. There are five of them, and sadly Charlie may be done with the character (for now). His The Shotgun Rule is also a great standalone novel.

True Confessions (1981)

Somewhere between Raging Bull and King of Comedy, Robert De Niro turned in what I think is the most understated performance of his career in this quiet, spooky, and evocative period crime piece that has become one of my favorite films. True Confessions was on cable over the weekend--this time spiffed up to HD standards--and like every other time it airs, I was once again mesmerized by it.

De Niro plays Father Desmond Spellacy, a rising star in the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese. Spellacy is more of an administrator than priest, though, involved in moving the church into more of a business mode after World War II. His brother, Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall, also in one of the best performances of his career) is an LAPD homicide detective with a haunted past. Seems he was once a bag man for pimp Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), who has since turned holier than thou and become a major contractor, especially in building projects for the Catholic church. Into all of this is injected the mutilation death of a young actress, dubbed the "Virgin Tramp" by the newspapers. Her murder is reminiscent of the real-life killing of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, whose body was found cut in half in an LA abandoned lot in 1947. Author John Gregory Dunne (who also wrote the screenplay with his wife Joan Didion), works this bit of historical fact into the film (albeit with Short's name changed) and then goes on to finding her killer, while also working in the sins of the Catholic church.

I don't know why I love this film so much. It's dark and moody and very melancholy. Tom Spellacy's actions as a cop brings down the whole house of cards, including his brother's rise to prominence within the church. Duvall and De Niro frame the movie with a pair of sad bookends from the 1960s. De Niro is quiet and restrained throughout the entire movie, ultimately resigned to his fate. Duvall is the opposite, explosive and angry, trying to right whatever perceived wrongs he did in the past. The pair are complimented by the excellent supporting cast which includes Burgess Meredith and Cyril Cusack as priest and Cardindal, Kenneth MaMillan as Duvall's cop partner, and Rose Gregorio as the sad hooker, Brenda, around whom Duvall's anger and guilt seems to center. Director Ulu Grosbard only made seven films, reteaming with De Niro for Falling in Love, three years after True Confessions. His understated direction, along with the intense feeling of time and place, is the primary reason why this film is so melancholy. Sad as it is, I love every dark moment of it.

New movie blues...

I haven't been to a movie in like, forever. And there's a reason for that: There's really nothing I want to see that can't wait three short months until it appears on video--or DVD, or Apple TV, or Netflix, or On Demand, or whatever the f*ck your preferred vehicle for watching movies at home is these days.

This weekend saw the release of two new movies featuring two stars I hate. Limitless stars Bradley Cooper, who reached his zenith as an actor--as far as I'm concerned--as the erstwhile boyfriend of Jennifer Garner (when she was likable) on Alias. The Hangover (1 or 2), The A-Team, whatever he stars in, I'll pretty much stay away. The Lincoln Lawyer stars rom-com refugee Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller, a character from a couple of of Michael Connelly's books, with a third one--The Fifth Witness--debuting April 5. Connelly is my favorite mystery author in the world, and I eagerly await any of his new books. But Haller is kind of a lesser character in the Bosch-verse that Connelly has set up in and around the environs of Los Angeles. While it allows the author to break out of his police procedural mode of storytelling and into the world of legal thrillers, Haller--who is the half-brother of LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, Connelly's main character in most of his books--just doesn't shine like Bosch does to me. Couple that with the regrettable casting of McConaughey and I'm not running out to the cinema to see this, even though Connelly himself has given it a rare thumb's up and is whole-heartedly endorsing the film. Still I am interested in seeing the always enjoyable Marisa Tomei as Maggie McFierce and Byron Cranston as the Harry Bosch stand-in. Connelly recently got back to the rights to Bosch from a long-time deal that tied the character up...I'm sure he's in no hurry to farm him out to someone until he's sure the deal is right.

I'm not quite sure what is up with the rest of Hollywood these days. Why Disney would make a film like Mars Needs Mom and decide to go the Robert Zemeckis route of motion-capture animation--which makes every character look like a live-action actor dipped in wax and forced to perform--is beyond me, especially since they own Pixar, the company who pioneered computer animation. Didn't John Lasseter--isn't he the creative head of Disney these days?--see this? Or A Christmas Carol? Or Polar Express? How can anyone make Tom Hanks scary AND creepy? Zemeckis managed to do so (Jim Carrey is already scary and creepy, so he needed no help). Perhaps the director just got tired of actors and longs for the days of directing Wilson, the volleyball, from Castaway? Who knows...what is certain is that Mars Needs Moms pretty much killed this form of animation...until of course, James Cameron uses it again for Avatar numbers 2 through 12.

There were some good films in the last 3 months that I did see in a theater--True Grit, The King's Speech, The Fighter--and all were movies that give me hope that maybe there are still filmmakers and studios who can make a decent movie without pandering to the audience or cowtowing to the whims of some over-priced, over-inflated, over-rated director type whose last film did billions at the box office but whose next will pay the price for all the things that are wrong with him (or her). As long as studio heads have to sell their soul to Satan to get the job, this will always be the way. In the meantime, there's always home video and a very quick 3-month waiting period.

Still not glowing, despite San Diego TV news' worst intentions...

There is absolutely nothing funny about the situation in Japan, despite what aged and aggravating "comic" Gilbert Gottfried might have tried to tell you a week or so ago. (His unfunny Twitter "jokes" caused him to be fired from the plum job of being the voice of the Aflac goose, where he got to yell "AFLAC!" in his one-word script. Hey...it WAS a living.)

What is funny is the attempt by local San Diego TV news stations to turn a local non-event into an event, pretty much what they do every time it rains here. The latter part of last week, all the stations pushed the story of potassium iodide tablets--which prevent the effects of radiation reaching your thyroid gland--being sold out all over San Diego, or how ever many drug stores they actually visited (I'm guessing one or two). When that failed, we were subject to a breathless round of live reports about the cloud of radiation that was heading to Southern California. Numerous experts were interviewed--some even with geiger counters testing gallons of milk, because you know that radiation gets to them cows (even the happy California ones) and into their milk--and all agreed: Nothing is going to happen to us right now radiation-wise.

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that the best thing to do these days is to NOT watch any local news coverage of ANYTHING. While the local stations did shine both times we've experienced huge wildfires in the San Diego area, they're lousy at covering pretty much anything else, with the exception of a murder here and there. And whether they know it or not--and I think it's NOT--the WAY they cover a story just makes it scary and inciteful. Not insightful, mind you...inciteful in the way of "OHMIGOD...I have to go get radiation pills and one of them geiger counters RIGHT NOW. And throw out my milk!"

But the utter devastation in Japan also brought out the usual "Can it happen here?" stories. The thing about TV news is they always ask that question, and of course the answer is always "YES!" They keep comparing the nuclear facility at San Onofre, about 50 miles up the road with the ones in Japan. How similar they are in design, how they're both by the ocean, how San Onofre has a 35-foot sea wall, and Japan's had a 25-foot one, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Yes, it can happen here, and it probably will some day. Despite mankind's best--and often, worst--intentions, Mother Nature always wins. And when it does happen here, it will happen the same way, without warning, with great surprise, and with utter devastation. That's one thing you can count on, as opposed to local TV news coverage.

Friday Foto #172...

  Fun with filters...#4 in a series. Collect them all! Lately I've been playing  with some of the filters in the iPad app called CameraBag. This is my favorite one...it's called "Plastic" and it adds a vignette effect plus it over-saturates the colors. If some of these photos look familiar, they're old favorites that I re-energized with this filter.  This one is from Coronado.

To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!