BOOKS:

Frank Herbert, Heretics Of Dune (RE-READ): I can’t remember how much time I spent actually reading this ten years ago; in this case, I quickly decided against a close reading (unlike the four preceding novels in the series) and just began blazing through it as fast as I could. I know this means that I’ll forget the entire thing very shortly (barring a very awful Bad Sex In Fiction entry that proves precisely why Herbert avoided such stuff in earlier books–i.e., because he can’t write a sex scene to save his life), but that’s alright; I forgot the entire thing the first time around, too. And I was right about it, too: nothing about what Herbert is doing here story-wise justifies looking closer, let alone that the Dune series by this point had been reduced entirely to the subtleties that Herbert very much wanted people to look closer at. What a turd–I think I hated it even more than the first time around, too.

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune: As if knowing that he only had about a year left to live (and having lost his wife while writing Heretics, sadly) Frank Herbert immediately cranked out 500 more pages of All Uninteresting Subtext All The Time, but without the sex scene(s). I can’t decide if that means this is better than Heretics because it has nothing as awful in it, or if it’s worse because that just means it contains even less to remember than its predecessor. Who cares? RIP Herbert, too bad this turd had to be your final work.

MOVIES:

The Whale: It’s a tribute to the talent level of Darren Aronofsky, Brendan Fraser and whoever the original Whale playwright was that this doesn’t flat-out blow, because on paper it’s about one or two rungs up the ladder from being an American Beauty/Three Billboards-style Big Pathos-Ridden Oscar Bait Shit Drama. Although the parts of the plot that deal with the Fraser character’s angsty-bitchy teenage daughter from Stranger Things come closest to that (and an adjacent subplot about a corrupt Christian missionary is possibly even worse, and should have been excised from the final product), I guess I’m willing to play a bit nice with this movie because it’s about the Fraser character already being well aware that he has been feeling sorry for himself for too long, so I can’t really slaughter it on a moral level. I can’t say it made me cry though or even really came close; I’m just sort of willing to congratulate this film for not sucking, because in other hands, even hands other than Aronofsky’s (whose Wrestler is annoyingly close to this, and a better film anyway) it probably would have.

Andrei Rublev: Good enough, though I probably should have taken Tarkovsky’s advice and watched the 185-minute cut instead of the 205-minute cut, since Tarkovsky said nothing important was lost in the cut. Not all of it held my attention; some parts, such as the Tatar attack (which, really, if you think about it, is WORSE than the village burning in Come And See) and the ending with the boy and the bell, are clearly a bit better than others, and I find it more interesting when it’s dealing with the main character being a semi-passive observer of 15th century Russian hell than anything it had to say about art and the divine and the need to create, though it’s not like the two sides aren’t intertwined. I mean, by the end of it I kind of felt like I’d been there, man. Don’t worry, I watched this across a few days, and hey, isn’t it nice when one of these classic foreign art-house movies doesn’t put me off? Believe me, I know!

The Pit And The Pendulum: Stuart Gordon’s schlocky, Guignol-y 1991 adaptation actually takes place during the Spanish Inquisition instead of merely evoking it like Corman’s version did. Alas, this is a pretty embarassing film; first of all, it has the production value of an old episode of Xena: Warrior Princess and Gordon’s gore can’t decide whether it wants to be disgusting or funny (an old woman being burned at the stake for witchcraft swallows gunpowder so she explodes after burning long enough, spraying the crowd with her bones, impaling several people; the hero escapes from the pendulum when it bisects a rat that had been crawling around on him, and he picks up the squished rat and squeezes its guts all over his hands so as to lube himself free). The other big problem is a veritable smorgasbord of terrible acting, starting with the film’s two no-name leads, who evoke a dumb American high school boy and the lobotomized precursor to Salma Hayek, respectively, then continuing on through a bunch of bad performances by character actors who I’ve liked elsewhere (Tom Towles, Mark Margolis, Jeffrey Combs) and reaching a zenith with the hideous ham-slicing of Lance Henriksen as Torquemada, whose work here goes right next to Sean Penn in Casualties At War as being among the worst performances I can think of by a normally good actor. You’ve REALLY got to see his death scene, which gives Nicolas Cage’s excesses a run for their money. I liked Re-Animator but all I’d want to watch after this shit-pile is not more Stuart Gordon’s films, but rather Christopher Colubmus: The Discovery from the following year, which also had a great actor blowing it as Torquemada, but this time it was Marlon Brando, of whom Roger Ebert wrote: “Brando has phoned in performances before, but this is the first time I’ve wanted to hang up.”

Collateral (REWATCH): Haven’t seen this since it came out. It stuck with as one of Michael Mann’s better films but it’s inconsistent, because Tom Cruise’s performance is also inconsistent. During scenes such as the club-shootout setpiece, or when he kills two kids who walk off with his briefcase, Cruise exhibits genuine menace in one of his few villain roles, but other times he spouts weird Cruise-isms that seem to cause an unintentional laugh, like when Jamie Foxx tries to get away from Cruise and Cruise tackles him and sneers “YOU are RUINING my WORK!” or something like that. I’m reminded that this was around the time of the couch-jumping antics, too. The film’s climactic act is okay for something that just barely dodges the awful “wimp summons up the courage to defeat someone who’d slaughter him real life” trope, but I think the reason I haven’t ever really cottoned to any Michael Mann movie is that his subtleties are kinda plain; Cruise ends up murmuring the same “you’re just gonna die someday, nothing really matters in the face of the uncaring universe” stuff you’ve seen a zillion times elsewhere. So whether or not this is the best Mann film, I’m really not sure, because I’ve still never really loved one.

ALBUMS:

Aerosmith, Honkin’ On Bobo: Okay, they play “You Gotta Move” with some slick production muscle, that’s nice. “I’m Ready” is okay. And the non-cover, “The Grind” is okay for something these guys aren’t doing for the first time. That’s it, really–it’s laudable of these guys to put aside trashy MTV music to cover some old blues songs, but it’s still Big Bombastic Aerosmith all the same. So yeah, file this next to Rush’s Feedback as something I wish I liked more in principle, but I ended up thinking it was basically a toss-off.

The Jam, This Is The Modern World: The Obviously Rushed Sophomore Album Par Excellence. I think I liked “Modern World,” “London Girl” and “Here Comes The Weekend” a bit, but who cares–even those “high points” aren’t going to stand a chance against all the “red” tracks I’m finding on relistening to the Jam’s four major albums. What everyone says about this album is right. I’m probably just going to end up pretending it doesn’t exist, or hey, let’s forget it, better still. (Get it? A Who reference! Just like these guys do all the time!)

Rainbow, Straight Between The Eyes: Well, “Power” is a really dumb ass song with a really dumbass riff, but if you take the title, and the riff, as a parody of “power pop” (which these guys dabbled in nicely for one song two albums prior!), it’s sort of notable. “Bring On The Night” has some rushing energy like Dio with Black Sabbath, or hey, Dio with Rainbow for that matter! But chances of relistening to these two songs, let alone the rest of this totally generic dinosaur metal crap from 1982, is pretty slim. I don’t even know the singer’s name this time.

Blur, Think Tank: Well, it’s…like 13, but with less guitar because Graham Coxon was gone except for the last track. It’s also slightly less good than 13, which was itself a rather overlong and excessive art-rock album to begin with. The ballads “Good Song” and “Sweet Song” are both wonderful, proving that electronic art-rock stylings need not ruining Blur’s balladeering skills. Elsewhere, I could go to the bat for “On The Way To The Club,” the noirish “Ambulance,” “Gene By Gene” and “Battery In Your Leg,” which has a nice hidden bit after it, and Graham Coxon, too. But stuff like the overlong, sax-bloated “Jets,” the dumb joke “We Got A File On You” which I thought I liked at first because it sticks out…but turns out I don’t, and a lot of the rest of it just sort of seems like good but ultimately forgettable ideas on paper. POST SCRIPT: this has a mediocre/bad reputation now, but if you go back and read the actual reviews from 2003, aside from Stephen Thomas Erlewhiner, people actually really liked this at first. The Die Another Day of Blur albums?

The Clash, Cut The Crap: Well, “This Is England” is actually pretty fun, in spite of dumb echoey vocals and cheesy synth strings. “We Are The Clash,” too–I guess I like dumb football choruses, huh? “North And South” and “Cool Under Heat” struck me as salvageable too. But GOD “Dictator” and “Are You Red…Y” are fucking hideous–eeewggh, those SYNTHS!!! What were they THINKING? This isn’t quite as bad as you’ve been told, like Summer In Paradise–it ISN’T good, but it’s sort of disappointing in terms of how few gigantic embarrassments there are. But unlike the Beach Boys album, Joe Strummer immediately dismissed this.

The National, I Am Easy To Find: Well, it’s 64 minutes long, and 16 songs…and in addition to the synths from the previous album, they’ve added weird instrumentals, classical flourishes, and lots and LOTS of songs with guest/backup female vocalists, allegedly because people are tired of Matt Berninger and his schtick.