Ed Gorman's Blog, page 232

Why is Phil Spector giving us the finger?

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Ed here: over at MUBI Glen Kenny talks about the Phil Spector documentary. Well worth reading. Here's a long paragraph from the post. I should note here I'm a big fan of Phil Spector's music.

"Jayanti's interview with Spector is the film's fulcrum. Conducted in Spector's castle, with the man sitting in front of the white piano he claims is the "Imagine" piano of John Lennon fame (although I myself saw a white piano that I presumed to be same in Yoko Ono's Dakota apartment when I interviewed h...

More on the controversial Mark Twain autobiography

Ed here: It'll be interesting to see how America responds to publication of a book that spits in the face of many of our most sacred beliefs, including religion and the military. If as this piece in the NY Times suggests Twain's work has a real timeliness given today's politics, I imagine we'll hear a lot about it.

Dead for a Century, Twain Says What He Meant
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: July 9, 2010

Wry and cranky, droll and cantankerous — that's the Mark Twain we think we know, thanks to reading...

Beware of Blurbs

Ed Gorman: Laura Miller of Salon posted a column about blurbs today. It's (to me at least) an even-handed take on the subject. She even cites some UK publishing figures that insist blurbs are useful. I dunno. Once in a while a blurb will get me to buy a book but usually I'm more impressed with review quotes (even from small papers) unless they're like the one Damon Knight always cited. "This...is...a...book."


, JUL 9, 2010 07:01 ET
Beware of blurbs
From back-scratching to overpraise, why autho...

Mark Twain's Autobiography will piss some people off

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Ed here: Twain was adamant about his autobiography--it wasn't to be published until one hundred years after his death. The Huffington Post explains why.


Huffington:

Mark Twain's autobiography will be published this November, 100 years after his death, per Twain's own dying wishes. A fear of being shunned for the shocking and controversial opinions that he voices in the document left Twain unwilling to release his autobiography until long after his death, but the time has come to unveil Twain's...

Forgotten Books: Looking For Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner

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When Looking For Mrs. Goodbar was published in 1975 it was such a sensational hit that I put off reading because I assumed it would be not much more than trendy titillation. When I finally got to it I was stunned by how fine a writer Judith Rossner was and how truly her novel reflected the times.

Based on a particularly ugly murder in New York City, Rossner offers us the life of one Theresa Dunn, a lower class but good looking Irish Catholic teacher much respected by her colleagues and much pu...

Interesting hook for a mystery

This is from New York magazine today. Doesn't take much imagination how this would turn into the kind of material the late Ed McBain loved to work with.


Someone Is Killing Off Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, and Frank Lautenberg
7/6/10 at 6:00 PM Comment

Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A mysterious prankster has been trying to fool news outlets into thinking that very alive Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, and Frank Lautenberg have died. It started yesterday, when California ...

Tana French turns the detective story inside out

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Ed here: Reading Laura Miller is one of the real pleasures offered by the website Salon. Here she does an intriguing profile of Tana French's novels.


"Faithful Place": Tana French turns the detective story inside out
Part Raymond Chandler, part Roddy Doyle, crime fiction's rising star takes it into mesmerizing new territory
BY LAURA MILLER

tanafrench.com

You know Frank Mackey's type. You've met him many, many times before, in hundreds of films and TV series and in dozens of crime novels. He's a po...

Hickey & Boggs

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I finally caught up with the film Hickey & Boggs after all these years. Amazon offers a buy for ten bucks and a rent for three. I may be wrong about this but the version I saw may be the tv edit. There are a few odd breaks that might be at the service of a truckload of commercials and the language is awful clean.

But whatever this is one fine film. The script is by Walter Hill back when he cared as much about character as he did action set pieces. Robert Culp stars in and directed this unique ...

Couch potatoing gone CRAZY

From The Wrap:

Movie Blogger Supersizes Himself
By Daniel Frankel
Published: July 2, 2010


"I definitely feel like Morgan Spurlock right now," concedes Chuck Walton, a thirtysomething editor for online movie-ticket seller Fandango.

Certainly, 55 days into his quest to see 100 movies at 100 different theaters in 100 nights, Walton's physiology and personal life are starting to resemble those of famous documentarian Spurlock, in the latter self-experimental stages of his groundbreaking fast-food exp...

Mel Gibson pisses off even more people

Ed Gorman: Way back in the eighties I stayed up for some reason and watched Carson. On came Mel Gibson. Previously I'd only seen him on a movie screen. A few minutes with him and I realized here was a prime asshole. He exuded assholishness the way Matthew Machonohay exudes stupidity (go on you tube and watch Matt Damon's parody of walking down the street with dim bulb Matthew). Then we hear about his old man's anti-Semetic "Old'fashioned" Catholic church (you have to score at least a 95 on t...