Posts Tagged ‘ review ’

Joe R. Lansdale’s All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

April 3, 2011
Joe R. Lansdale’s All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

Review by Jesse Lawrence

Like with Watson and Holmes, it was “an adventure of a lifetime.”1

In All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale weaves a buttered-up yarn, stretched from Oklahoma on down to East Texas.

Jack Catcher wasn’t having the best of times. The depression—the Great one, yeah—was sticking it to people left and right. And coming left, right, up and down was one harsh mother of a sandstorm.That there didn’t help matters one bit. Then again, weren’t for that storm, none of this would have happened. Jack’s mama wouldn’t have become ill and passed and his father wouldn’t have followed. But most of all, young Jack wouldn’t have teamed up with Jane and her little brother Tony.

With their ma long run-off, into the arms of another, and their pa done buried by sand under a tractor, Jane and Tony set off to get themselves some wheels—Old Man Turpin’s. Making their way through the storm, all thanks to Jane’s smarts, they come upon Jack, and it’s as if these here kids are the only ones to have survived the torrent of dirt.…

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There Are N0 Bad Movies! (Only Bad Audiences)

September 29, 2010

There Are No Bad Movies!
(Only Bad Audiences)
A Treatise On The Cynical Cinemaphile
By Dr. W.E.B. Sarcofiguy
With John Dimes
(Doctor Sarcofiguy is John Dimes)

Available through Amazon
Published by the author
$14.95

Reviewed by Victor Schwartzman:
The reviewer has never met John Dimes. However, the reviewer must publicly divulge that John Dimes hosts horror film conventions, and yours truly has hosted the movie room at a science fiction convention for 15 years. Therefore we are mutants under the skin.

The next time you go to a zombie movie or a sf film or something where teens get killed every ten minutes, and the guy in front of you groans that the effects suck, take this book and hit him over the head with it, to shut him up. Then give him the book so he’ll smarten up. He is being, according to John Dimes, a bad audience!
Easy availability leads to contempt in these cynical times? Movie-wise, John Dimes (aka Dr. W.E.B. Sarcofiguy, at www.johndimes.com) says yes. Who amongst us—at least, those of us old enough—does not remember that movies were in theatres for a first run, then a second run, and then good luck. So seeing an older film became a special serendipitous experience. But with the advent of VHS and then DVDs, no movie was hard to find or ‘special’. With everything accessible nothing is special, and hence cynicism rears its ugly head.
Dimes writers amusingly and with an obvious love for films. This book ain’t Hamlet or Hawkins on Relativity, nor does it pretend to be. It’s about enjoying shlock moving and being cheesed off at anyone who can’t see the difference between cheesy and fun (there is no difference).

In his attack on the audience as not responding properly to a movie, though, and …

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City Women and the Ghost Writer

March 18, 2009
City Women and the Ghost Writer

I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve never been to Nepal or India. I’ve never trekked through the mountains or eaten curry for a few rupees or bathed in the small river behind my house. Damn you, Krishna Bhatt, for confusing my already easily distracted and malleable mind!

City Women and the Ghost Writer collects observations and idiosyncrasies of Nepalese and Indian culture like an entomologist collects exoskeletons. Like a bug doctor, it examines these cultures with a neutral, sometimes detached, affect, but its fondness for the subject is evident. It floats through six-hut villages, over rivers crisscrossed with cattle, through the alleys of cities packed with village ex-pats scraping for a better life, and occasionally peeks its head up in a foreign country, a smug smile etched across its face.

Krishna Bhatt oscillates between nostalgic spectator, societal psychologist, and purveyor of scathing rants. For most of the book, an assortment of vignettes, (fictional?) short stories and musings, he relays everything with such an evenhanded, unexpressive tone that’s so voyeuristic, you almost feel guilty for intruding.

…

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The Human Case by David Barringer

December 20, 2008
The Human Case by David Barringer

The Human Case, David Barringer’s second story collection (after 2000’s The Leap & Other Mistakes) , expands upon his direct, condensed, and simplistic style, maintaining the oft-depth rarely seen in story collections three times the size of this slim 97 page volume. These stories are at times capable of the witted tongue of Amy Hempel, at times delivering the domestic absurdity of Aimee Bender, but always uniquely David Barringer in the amalgamation of styles and narrative voices so obviously a part of this great writer’s psyche. The argument could be made that Barringer himself is the human in the case depicted in the collection’s title story.…

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Recent releases from OW Press


By the Nails of the Warpriest
by Nik Korpon


i am here And You Are Gone
by Shome Dasgupta


One Damn Thing After Another
by Tim Hall


Charactered Pieces
by Caleb J Ross


Antisocial
by David Blaine