I finally updated my music, film, and book reviews on the sidebars of this blog... I was bursting at the seams. I hope you'll enjoy reading all the categories: Books on Sex, Theoretical Sex, Up All Night Reading, Books I Gave My Daughter, Music, and Movies!
You'll see what shocking good graphic novels my daughter is addicted to, and my latest obsessions in opera, rude blues, and anti-Xmas music.
I've walked out of three movie theaters this past weekend (Jarhead, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Derailed) so I felt like I needed to rehab with about a dozen old movies that restored my faith in cinema again. I started with Steve McQueen's Bullitt. I love movies like that— that are, on one hand, nothing but a great detective story, but on the other hand, represent tour de force filmmaking.
Jarhead, the book, meant so much to me. I read it out loud to my lover on a road trip. I gave it at least a half dozen people as a gift. I wrote to the author, Tony Swafford, and paraphrasing one of the minor characters in his marine saga, I opened my fan letter with: Hi. My name is Susie, I drop acid, and I like to fuck. His book was so funny, so poignant, so influenced by my OTHER favorite war novel, Dispatches, that I was in love.
If you had taken me to Jarhead the movie, and not told me the title, I wouldn't have recognized the story. I was heartbroken. Jake Gyllenhaal, naked is not enough, not by a long stretch. It was all macho tantrums and gratuitous explosions, with no soul, no writing genius, no insight, which was the basis of the original text. What a bad trip!
Seen any awesome movies lately? Or books that I could bury myself in, over Xmas? Also, what's your most magical Christmas tune? I already have Mr. Hanky, the Xmas Poo, so you have to do better than that.
