Woo hoo, have I been getting a lot of reading done lately. I’ve made a point to skip off to bed at a reasonable time, thus having time to actually read more than two pages before going to sleep. Why didn’t I think of this before? Everyone else has books sitting on their bed stands and in movies, the wives are always reading in bed while the husband is out having an affair/killing someone/running the country, and yet the thought of reading prior to sleep never occurred to me until I moved to Toronto. Huh.

So, some assorted reviews for my future reference and for possible use on Stark and my queer book/movie review site, if we ever get that going:

Movies:
- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
- Paris, je t’aime
- Escape from New York and LA
- Ripley’s Game

Books:
The Devil’s Cup
Two Ends of Sleep
The Glass Cell

MOVIES

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: A

This was a really decent thriller. Great performances. Good script. Just a straight forward movie that didn’t try anything flashy or attempt to be unique. Movies these days are always trying to hard. This movie was what it was, and what it was was simple, intelligent, and disturbing. I want to marry Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s acting talent. Marisa Tomei is hot as always.

Paris, je t’aime: A

Oooh, I love vignettes. Some were hit and some were miss, but they were all five minutes long, so, y’know, it was easy to wait for the next one. Highlights: The Coen brothers’ take on waiting for the train, Wes Craven’s take on comedy (and Oscar Wilde), Gus Van Sant’s gay boys, Maggie Gyllenhaal speaking French, and Alexander Payne’s American tourist. So much fun.

Escape from New York and LA: B+ and B-

I saw LA years ago when it first came out on video. It was right up my alley at the time, what with the industrial metal soundtrack (that I still own and which got me hooked on Tori Amos) and the early Nineties dystopia subject matter. It’s still not a very good movie, but it was fun seeing a few actors that I didn’t recognize at the time (Michelle Forbes in uniform, Pam Grier as a tranny) but am now fond of, clowning around. NY is the better movie, though (as it should be), and I loved how truly anti-authority/anti-hero/anti-social it was, no excuses or explanations or glamour. Snake really is just out for himself, there’s nothing really redeemable about him besides the fact that he can see through the world’s bullshit. But that doesn’t really make him good, just consistent. I have a feeling that if they remake this movie, they’ll throw all sorts of patriotic shit in, make Snake an American hero, and play down the USA as Evil Empire.

Ripley’s Game: B+

Oooh, such a fun movie to catch on IFC. The more I see of Ripley, the more I want to read the original books. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. Some really interesting developments for the Ripley character since Matty Damon played him, plus a big Italian villa to ogle.

BOOKS

The Devil’s Cup: F

Boy was that a crappy book. HOLY RACISM, BATMAN! That was the most Annoyingly Condescending White Man Book I’ve read since Shantaram. The author was just this asshole trying too hard to be cool and failing miserably at humor. At one point he compared his crappy relationships to the crisis in Somalia. At another, he wished he had his own Nubian slave girl to service him on the plane. He was very jealous of the Shah’s harem. He was way too interested in the slave torture room on a Brazilian coffee plantation. He said Calcutta is the greatest city in the world because the rich are disgustingly rich and the poor are so poor they could drop dead right in front of you on the train. Yeah, that spells great to me. I found it really hard to believe a word he said about anything, and thus I learned nothing from that book. Also, he says Starbucks coffee is AMAZING. Clearly, he knows nothing about anything, let alone coffee.

Two Ends of Sleep: A

I was so pleased with this book. At first I thought a story about a woman who slept all day because her MS and her depression left her exhausted might be boring. Then I thought that maybe it would be kinda crappy but tolerable in that way that lesbian books and movies tend to be. But no! It was great. Rusty, despite her sleeping all the time, was a great character, I really dug Lizard Jones’ style of writing, and the dream sequences were trippy and fun. Good stuff.

The Glass Cell: B

My first foray into Patricia Highsmith, bought on sale at the queer bookstore during their moving sale. They didn’t have any of her good gay books, so I bought this one figuring it would be like Oz in the Sixties. The first half was indeed like that, and I quite enjoyed it. As a whole though, the book was so realistic that it was just too bleak and depressing. The main character is depicted so honestly as to be… hard to read. But it was well written, and after seeing “Ripley’s Game” on IFC the other day, I am looking forward to reading other Highsmith books.