DVDs
Get Smart (1.5 Spuds)
Paul Blart Mall Cop (No Spud 4U)
TV SHOWS
True Blood (2 Xl Spuds)
BOOKS…YEAH BOOKS
John Sandford
KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks
VOLUME 354
It’s the middle, and I mean right smack in the middle, of June, and it’s an absolutely perfect night. I went out and stood in the back yard for a few minutes. Just to feel the perfect night on my skin. Its not like the day with the sun beating down through an ever thinning layer of ozone, making the air feel like really fine sandpaper. The air on this perfect night felt like a thin layer of velvet. I could have stood there for a long time, basking in it. Feeling absolutely calm, my mind emptied out, just for a brief instant, and I got to experience genuine tranquility.
Of course a brief instant is all you are allowed in this life. Some homey drove by in his little Honda playing nihilistic gangsta rock at 3000 dp. The yappy little shit for brains poodle next door did her routine. And some clown walked by telling somebody his whole freaking life story on a cell phone, talking way too loud, like anything he has to say is going to actually impress anyone. Poof. But there’s a moral to be drawn here and that is to simply savour, for all they are worth, any precious moments of tranquility that fate deigns to push your way. They are worth their weight in gold. But only last as long as an echo.
TRUE BLOOD SEASON 2 (2 XL SPUDS)
You may recall that I raved quite loudly and long about how incredible this series is. As we move into Season 2, it just gets better and better. I’m pretty sure that this series owes a whole lot to the brilliant David Lynch/Mark Frost series Twin Peaks, which in turn owes a lot to The Prisoner, which in turn owes a lot to, Kirosawa and Orson Welles and so it goes. There’s a long broken trail of surrealists who were also popular in film and TV, and now True Blood creator Alan Ball is carrying the torch.
On the surface, True Blood is a series about vampires. But beneath the surface it’s really a series about how damn strange just about everybody is. Every character in this series is something other than human, and what the series itself is doing is just revealing exactly what they are one tantalizing bit at a time. There is no way for me to measure how much I love and admire this kind of TV, and I really don’t think it would have been possible, none of it, without the vision of HBO, the USA Network, Showtime and FX, among others, who have contributed in a major way to the overall quality of good TV these days. And by so doing, they have forced the more conservative conventional networks to clean up their acts and start competing with shows like House, Lie To Me, The Unusuals, Southland, and a bunch of others. Who says competition isn’t good for the marketplace? In TVland that’s never been truer. But I digress.
True Blood is just plain fascinating gothic TV entertainment at its finest. This season some of the minor story lines ie character lines are being expanded, just in case were getting bored…not. The actors are really comfortable in their roles and the writing is sharper than ever. This is amazing stuff. We have season one as a top priority for re-viewing at the cottage this summer. Nuff said.
GET SMART (1.5 SPUDS)
Since I have always prided myself on being fairly discerning about TV , the original Get Smart Series with deadpan Don Adams only made a glancing blow on my psyche. To wit I only really remember the shoe phone and a couple of the classic Don Adams quips. But I knew enough about it to understand that it wasn’t what you would call sophisticated humour, or maybe that was just some sort of oxymoron back in the day.
But I was kind of interested in seeing how they would treat a feature film of the same name in this day and age. So while the wife was partying with the girls all weekend I went out and got it.
I really wasn’t expecting to be able to watch this film all the way through, but I have always liked Steve Carrell, who plays Max Smart and was curious to see what he would do with the part, since he’s not really a slapstick comic actor, a la Kevin Nealon.
Well…I have to say that the movie really wasn’t half bad. They managed to get in all the typical Get Smart schtick, but nowhere in the film did you ever get the impression that Carrell’s character was some sort of idiot, which I have to say, was a real step up from Don Adams. Yeah, I didn’t take anything very seriously, but the screenplay, the production values and the supporting cast helped to make this movie more of a sophisticated (and big budget) spoof of spy movies in general, but not at the expense of anyone’s dignity.
The bottom line is that you can watch this movie and chuckle, be entertained but never really have your intelligence pummeled by its stupidity. It’s not really a two spud movie experience, but you know what…it’ll pass in a pinch, and it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s not really bad at all.
PAUL BLART MALL COP (NO SPUD 4U)
There was a great John Candy movie called Armed & Dangerous made back in the last century about a fired cop who becomes a security guard. This movie is in the same mould. However, that’s where the similarities end. John Candy was a great comic actor. Kevin James, who plays the Paul Blart role, is really not much more than TV guy from a popular sitcom who is trying to make it in the movies. So far, not so good. The best thing he’s done is a supporting role in the Will Smith vehicle, Hitch. And this flick is pretty much right up there (or down there) with the Adam Sandler miscue, I Now Pronounce you Chuck & Larry.
I have to confess, I only watched about half of this flick. That’s about all I could take.
But I have learned over the years that you don’t really have to watch a whole bad movie to know it’s bad.
Loveable loser movies only really work if the Loser is actually loveable. And there’s something about Kevin James that simply isn’t. He always looks a little pissed off. He doesn’t have the genuine funny-ness in this personality that guys like Eddie Murphy, John Candy and Martin Short have.
In this flick he plays an overly officious Mall Cop who nobody takes seriously because he takes himself way too seriously. He’s madly in love with a beautiful wig kiosk owner and he’s been rejected by the New Jersey State police force about 8 times, because he’s hypoglycemic.
This movie fails to provide James with a decent sidekick to cushion some of the blow of the awful script and give him some much needed humanity. It also, as it turns out is a movie that is more about failure than success and that, all by itself is enough to bum you out totally.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on too long about a movie that sucked. I wish Kevin James a lot of luck. And I think he might just stumble across some luck one of these days if he stops trying to be the next John Candy. They broke the big mould when they made that dude.
BOOKS, YEAH BOOKS
JOHN SANDFORD – THE ARCH DUKE OF MINNESOTA
A lot of writers in the thriller/mystery/crime area tend to stay pretty localized. James Lee Burke, Tami Hoag and Greg Iles write about the deep south, Stuart Woods sets his stuff in New York and New England etc. Well, John Sandford has written an amazing number of books about the Minneapolis/St Paul area of Minnesota. His Prey series has been on the top of my reading list since he started in 1990. This series centres around a cop named Lucas Davenport, who has risen to be a bureaucrat who just can’t leave the street cop behind. The powers that be know that and let him work on the cases that need solving the most, ie the politically motivated ones.
Over the years, Mr Sanford’s style has become less and less formal. It’s like he knows that he has a big following and he’s very relaxed about it. The odd thing is that the less formal his writing has becomes the more entertaining his stories become and the more human and relatable his characters become.
I enjoy reading the Prey books, because he always tries to lay out the criminals point of view. Doing this and playing it off Lucas Davenport’s point of view gives you a really neat x-ray picture of how the cop’s mind works. Because you know who the bad guy is and your satisfaction as a reader comes from watching Lucas Davenport put all the pieces together in his mind, bounce theories off his wife, his step daughter, his other cop pals, his boss, pretty much anyone he comes across including the perp. That’s pretty cool.
In the last book I read, Phantom Prey, the perp describes Davenport thusly, “Yeah, he’s a real nice guy. But an inch below the surface, he’s a dangerous thug.”
In addition to the Prey series, Mr Sandford has also written novels about a computer hacker and famous artist named Kidd and his sidekick LuEllen (a cat burgler), and one of his cops, Virgil Flowers. He’s written some other stuff, but this is the cream of his work.
John Sandford is the pen name of Pulitzer prize winning journalist John Camp. He lives in Minnesota and knows the place like the back of his hand, which gives his work a real authenticity that most thriller writers can only dream about.
JOHN SANDFORD BOOKOGRAPHY
Lucas Davenport
1. Rules of Prey (1989)
2. Shadow Prey (1990)
3. Eyes of Prey (1991)
4. Silent Prey (1992)
5. Winter Prey (1993)
6. Night Prey (1994)
7. Mind Prey (1995)
8. Sudden Prey (1996)
9. Secret Prey (1998)
10. Certain Prey (1999)
11. Easy Prey (2000)
12. Chosen Prey (2001)
13. Mortal Prey (2002)
14. Naked Prey (2003)
15. Hidden Prey (2004)
16. Broken Prey (2005)
17. Invisible Prey (2007)
18. Phantom Prey (2008)
19. Wicked Prey (2009)
Kidd And LuEllen
1. The Fool’s Run (1989) (writing as John Camp)
2. The Empress File (1991)
3. The Devil’s Code (2000)
4. The Hanged Man’s Song (2003)
Virgil Flowers
1. Dark of the Moon (2007)
2. Heat Lightning (2008)
3. Rough Country (2009)
MY TWITTER LINKS
My regular twitter location:
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
I also have a new twitter for ourgreendirectory.com
http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry
