Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 61

LA Literature Examiner: A Profile: Gerald Jones

LA Literature Examiner: A Profile: Gerald Jones

Posted using ShareThisGerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv[image error]

Book Reviews: 'The Tourist' Plays 'The Spanish Game'

[cross-posted on goodreads.com]

I'm disappointed. But if all you expect in a spy thriller is a convoluted plot with suspense and surprises, you'll probably be satisfied.

My suspicion that Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist might be too similar to Charles Cumming's The Spanish Game proved correct, I'm sorry to say. No, the plots aren't the same, just equally complex. However, the characterizations in both books are rather shallow. It's all about action here, possibly so the movie plot "falls out" of the

Does the Peter Rice Promotion Leverage Off Slumdog?

I've said for a long time if the studios would do one or two less $100M blockbusters a year and start 20 indies instead, their ROI would go up, although you can't predict which titles will be hits. (Like the book biz or music now.) You can bundle the investment offerings, as Disney often does, to package three movies, say, as a single offering. But investors in the movie business are greedy wildcatters. They don't want to spread the risk. They want a 10 multiple sure-thing. Hence the blockbuster

G&G Review Kirk Douglas at the Kirk Douglas

Amazing how far a guy can go with a dimple on his chin and a wickedly playful sparkle in his eye.

Georja and I took in his one-man show Before I Forget.

And speaking of sexual politics, 92-year-old Douglas has been married to his beloved Anne for more than a half-century now. He'd been married once before, and first wife Diana (mother to Michael and Joel) left him when she found out he'd strayed. Later, Anne was his assistant and language coach on a movie shoot in Paris. For his birthday, she thre

Book Review: Bill Bryson's Shakespeare

Ever since I learned that Gerald and Shakespeare both mean "spear chucker," I've had a long-standing Jones for the Bard. Quite coincidentally, a colleague recently suggested that I'd enjoy anything written by Bill Bryson. My friend suggested A Walk in the Woods or A Short History of Nearly Everything. The first sounded too much like a mossy travelogue and the ambitious scope of the second seemed far too cumbersome for casual sampling. So Bryson's biography, Shakespeare: The World As Stage, was t

Book Review: The Long Lavender Look

Time was, I was a big fan of John D. MacDonald (he was still alive then). I believe I read all of the Travis McGee books, of which this is one. I also read Condominium, one of his attempts at literary fiction, and predictably it was a disappointment. The power of the McGee books is in the genre and in the attitude. Dirty dealings and benign cynicism.

Trav is a very 'Sixties hero, with parallels to James Bond. Like Bond, McGee is a garbage-collector of the vile detritus left behind by the world's

The Boychik's Los Angeles Events Next Weekend

Reflections Publishing 2nd Annual Writers Seminar (Free)
January 24, 2009 01:00PM
LAX Radisson Hotel, 6225 W. Century Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, The United States
http://www.reflectionspublishings.net
<!-- <span class="greyText">description: </span> --> Gerald will appear on a panel to discuss "Making Early Decisions that Affect, Duh, Everything!" Intended particularly for memoirists, his examples will address point of view, voice, plot, emotional subplots, and structure, as well as editorial discipline to support t

G&G Review 'The Magic Flute' at LA Opera

Masonic ritual is fun and games! A flute and a few bells are potent weaponry against villainy! Enlightenment is a stroll through a translucent pyramid! Life is paradox, and paradox is just damn funny.



Read all about it here.



The Freemasons were not exactly latter-day feminists, but at least in this production, the princess joins the prince as they both scramble to the top of the pyramid of wisdom.

(Photos by Robert Millar courtesy LA Opera)Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv[image error]

G&G Savor Pink Martini

On New Year's Eve, Georja and I took in Pink Martini's performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. You can read our review for LASplash.com here.

Besides obvious musical virtues we mention in our review, I want to give Pink Martini credit for their business savvy. They've released three successful albums so far, all under their own label (Heinz Records, named for artistic director Thomas Lauderdale's late, beloved dog). So even though their CDs have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, this wor

G&G Review 'The Little Dog Laughed' at the Kirk Douglas

Who knew there were handsome leading men in Hollywood who pretend to be heterosexual for the sake of their box office draw? Perhaps the central question is, how do you feel about a Hollywood superagent's pushing that cause? Even fighting for it? She'll stop at nothing to promote her pretty-boy client and his boy-next-door image in this send-up farce by wickedly funny playwright Douglas Carter Beane.

Put another way, behind the scenes, the business of managing the box office takes exactly the oppo