EASTERN PROMISES, David Cronenberg
Slick, deft, and efficient, but Eastern Promises lacks a heart to propel it through its grimy plot. The emotions are hollow, the motivations perfunctory, and the end product is surprisingly bloodless for such a gory film. Watch it for the gorgeous cinematography and Viggo Mortensen's messianic bone structure.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID, BILL BRYSON
In which Bill Bryson shows that he wasn't a complete little turd of an abomination when he was growing up in the Iowa of the 1950's. Psych!
I'm not entirely sure why I keep reading Bill Bryson. He's smug, priveleged, and snide without the saving graces of being particularly funny. Also, I finish every book wanting to punch him in throat. The problem is, great men have mulled over the peculiarities of growing up in the 1950's, and Bryson is not one of them. He covers the same topics (pornography; Our Friend, the Atom!; bad food; refrigerators), uses the same humor (Nyuk nyuk nyuk, you see the joke is that hiding underneath a desk WOULDN'T protect you from 500 megatons of sheer atomic power. Nyuk nyuk nyuk, that's what makes it so FUNNY!), and tops everything off with a thin, tenuous sheen of racism, sexism, and classism. Nothing is overt, but it's a bit like spending fifteen excruciating afternoons with your Sassy Grandma who doesn't understand why you keep on wincing when she uses the word "coloreds." This is made all the more worse by Bryson's acid nostalgia for the Good Old Days Where We Would Party At Woolworth's and his hackneyed insights into the Cheapness of Modern Day Life.
Otherwise, Bryson is a reliable mash-up of Dave Barry, Dave Sedaris, and Debbie Downer - and a caricature of Stuff White People Like. Dear Bill, Let It Go. Also, come here, I've got to do something with your throat.
* PROTIP, BILL. Your repeated claims that the Blacks That I Knew were so Athletic. And Strong. And Great at Sports. And Did I Mention That I Once Shook Hands with a Black Man? Does NOT make you sound any more racially sensitive. Please stop, lest thou protest too much.
Hijinks: (1) Boisterous or rambunctious carryings-on; (2) Carefree antics or horseplay. SYN: Wodehouse, PG.
Galahad has neither the same efficient, godly gravitas of Jeeves (who must have been some breed of genie in his past life) nor the good-humored, drink-sodden cluelessness of Bertie, but he'll do. He'll do. Galahad at Blandings is light, frothy, and funny. My only complaint is that Wodehouse sometimes lets his pen get the best of him, meaning that we occasionally have to trod through pages of something resembling Stephen Fry's 'The Letter' before we can reach the simple conclusion that Galahad is, in fact, sitting on a comfortable armchair and pretty surprised. But excessive floridity aside, Wodehouse is still very, very funny, and I appreciate his profound underlying message of SISTERS = SUXXX!!!
Some people anxiously await that sunny, breezy April day to break out their swishy summer dresses and seersucker suits. I wait to break out The Breeders.
CANNONBALL, The Breeders. One of those perfect summer anthems. Take off your shoes, coax the melanin back into your goth-skin, and get your terrible hippy-dance on.
FLASHMAN: A NOVEL; GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
Introducing the shining beacon of the Queen's Empire and a true Crown Jewel of England! Flashman is what Forrest Gump would have been if Forrest Gump were a pompous, shameless, endlessly horny homunculus of a nit instead of an inbred Arkansas charity case with the IQ of a dog. In other words: interesting and splendid in its awfulness.
The novel revolves entirely around its namesake: Harry Flashman who is, essentially, the antichrist. Flashman's facebook interests would probably alternate between: being boorish, being racist, being screamingly mysogynistic (rape 4 lyfe!), and BEING DRUNK. KAR-KRUNK BABY. Oh yeah, and England wot wot. But for all of his many* flaws, Flashman is a wonderful narrator. He is cunning, witty, and acerbically honest. He operates under no delusions about himself nor anyone else, which allows him plenty of operating room to cruelly deflate all the pomp, circumstance, and blatant incompetance surrounding the British military.
And as a personal point, gold stars and wet kisses to Fraser who truly goes out of his way to gut Flashman of any of the cloying virtues of a reader-friendly anti-hero. Flashman is one of the true, balls-out, unabashed snakes of literature. At no point does his cowardice waver towards any breed of courage, at no point does boning acquire any tinge of epic romance, at no point does Flashman ever turn towards decency. Even his intelligence is a primeval sort - born more of the spinal cord than the brain. Harry Flashman remains stubbornly black-hearted and unchanged, which is - in a way - a wonderful fuck-you to the bland moralizing and eventual redemption of so many other neutered anti-heroes. Stay rotten, Flashman. Stay rotten.
In general, even without Flashman, the story itself would be pretty solid; it's
brimming with Empire! Country! Battles! Hot Foreign Babes! Epic ruin!
But adding Flashman gives the novel fangs and a wicked, wicked sense of
humor.
IN CONCLUSION: Rule Britannia and God Bless Flashman!
* Many, many, many, many, infinitely many.
