"Sweeney's waiting. I want you bleeders."
Apr. 8th, 2008 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastI think the insomnia has reached a point where it's easier to count how many hours I didn't sleep than those I did.
It's spring outside today. It's spring, and it looks and feels like spring. High 60s today, low 70s tomorrow. The trees are going green.
And I keep forgetting to mention that the mass-market paperback of Murder of Angels is out. Indeed, I think it's been out for a week or two. With great luck, you can find it in bookshops. You can't yet get it from Amazon.com, for reasons no one is bothering to explain, but you can get it from Barnes & Noble (just follow the link above). If you can, if you are interested, please pick up a copy. Spooky put a lot of time into the corrections on this edition. And it has a nice cover (and a dubious cover blurb):
By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest between now and midnight (EST) on Sunday will get #28FREE when they receive April's issue (#29).
Yesterday, we made the 3:15 screening of Carter Smith's The Ruins (based on the novel by Scott Smith). And despite having four or five interchangeable and utterly vapid protagonists, once I got past the sluggish first half hour or so (and my annoyance at the bland glamor of the aforementioned "characters"), the film suddenly comes alive and delivers a deeply chilling bit of weird fiction. Two words: screaming flowers. That ought to be enough, right there. For a short bit, I feared that The Ruins would merely be a crawl through a perilous underworld, such as that already delivered quite well by Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005). Instead, The Ruins turns out to deal with a sort of horror that occurs almost entirely above ground and usually in broad daylight, which, of course, makes its horror all the more horrible. There's something here that harks back to films of the seventies, in the bleakness of delivery, in the wonderful abruptness of the conclusion. I am reminded, in the main, of Stephen King's short story, "The Raft," and in a lot of ways, The Ruins is that story moved from a lake in Maine to the jungles of Mexico. The gore is handled skillfully and never overpowers subtler effects. Graeme Revell delivers a score that helps to move it all along. I can't say this is a genuinely good movie, if only because the beginning fails so completely, but it is a very rare film that juggles darkness well enough to artfully unnerve me. When it was over, I'd had enough, which, I think, is the way a film like this ought to make you feel. I'd even been made to feel sympathy for the idiot American college students, because the Bad Thing waiting for them in the ruins of the title is bad enough, wrong enough, that the threat to life and sanity it poses struck me as something not even those disposable fools deserved. Had the director seen fit to insert actual characters for his carnivorous Cannabis to munch on, I think this might have been a genuinely good film. Regardless, definitely worth a matinée, though you shouldn't pay full price.
Back home, we watched Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street again, and it's still gorgeous and brilliant and sexy. The rest of the evening is a blur of insomnia and Second Life.
My coffee is cold, which is probably for the best.
It's spring outside today. It's spring, and it looks and feels like spring. High 60s today, low 70s tomorrow. The trees are going green.
And I keep forgetting to mention that the mass-market paperback of Murder of Angels is out. Indeed, I think it's been out for a week or two. With great luck, you can find it in bookshops. You can't yet get it from Amazon.com, for reasons no one is bothering to explain, but you can get it from Barnes & Noble (just follow the link above). If you can, if you are interested, please pick up a copy. Spooky put a lot of time into the corrections on this edition. And it has a nice cover (and a dubious cover blurb):
By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest between now and midnight (EST) on Sunday will get #28
Yesterday, we made the 3:15 screening of Carter Smith's The Ruins (based on the novel by Scott Smith). And despite having four or five interchangeable and utterly vapid protagonists, once I got past the sluggish first half hour or so (and my annoyance at the bland glamor of the aforementioned "characters"), the film suddenly comes alive and delivers a deeply chilling bit of weird fiction. Two words: screaming flowers. That ought to be enough, right there. For a short bit, I feared that The Ruins would merely be a crawl through a perilous underworld, such as that already delivered quite well by Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005). Instead, The Ruins turns out to deal with a sort of horror that occurs almost entirely above ground and usually in broad daylight, which, of course, makes its horror all the more horrible. There's something here that harks back to films of the seventies, in the bleakness of delivery, in the wonderful abruptness of the conclusion. I am reminded, in the main, of Stephen King's short story, "The Raft," and in a lot of ways, The Ruins is that story moved from a lake in Maine to the jungles of Mexico. The gore is handled skillfully and never overpowers subtler effects. Graeme Revell delivers a score that helps to move it all along. I can't say this is a genuinely good movie, if only because the beginning fails so completely, but it is a very rare film that juggles darkness well enough to artfully unnerve me. When it was over, I'd had enough, which, I think, is the way a film like this ought to make you feel. I'd even been made to feel sympathy for the idiot American college students, because the Bad Thing waiting for them in the ruins of the title is bad enough, wrong enough, that the threat to life and sanity it poses struck me as something not even those disposable fools deserved. Had the director seen fit to insert actual characters for his carnivorous Cannabis to munch on, I think this might have been a genuinely good film. Regardless, definitely worth a matinée, though you shouldn't pay full price.
Back home, we watched Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street again, and it's still gorgeous and brilliant and sexy. The rest of the evening is a blur of insomnia and Second Life.
My coffee is cold, which is probably for the best.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:11 pm (UTC)Okay. That's wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:24 pm (UTC)Also, I'm hoping Smith goes more into just what the hell those flowers are in the prose.
See, I think it was a point in the film's favour that we never learn much about them, beyond their abilities. But, for me, less is almost always more.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:26 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity, are there any other blurbs that the publishers have used for your novels that you didn't care for, or any favourites?
There have been a few that I've not been happy with, though it would be impolite of me to point them out. One of my favourites is the Green Man Press' comment that Daughter of Hounds reads like Pulp Fiction written by John Bellairs.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:45 pm (UTC)Got my MoA copy last week, can't wait to read it-- for about the tenth time.
Oh, and as long as I'm rambling, thanks for your tireless efforts in service to your stories; your humble readers are very much the better for them.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 09:22 pm (UTC)Particularly if the Bellairs-Gorey collaboration continued on it. I could squee for a Gorey illo of the Soldier/Saben neck biting scene, or the phantasmagorical entry into the Woonsocket cemetary.
Of course, Soldier would be wearing Converse (not boots) for her kicks, but wtf.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 10:05 pm (UTC)Of course, Soldier would be wearing Converse (not boots) for her kicks, but wtf.
That's a delightful image, really.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 08:10 pm (UTC)Just wanted to mention that. You inspire me, often.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 10:06 pm (UTC)Just wanted to mention that. You inspire me, often.
Thank you for telling me that, truly! It's so rare I even think about my work on The Dreaming anymore. Glad someone's still getting something out of it. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 09:05 pm (UTC)I recommend them heartily: the service is prompt and the prices affordable.
I added MoA on my "books to buy" list when the new edition came. I'll have to do something about the said list one of these days - it's getting to fearful proportions...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 10:07 pm (UTC)A little FYI for the interested outside the US: the Book Depository has Murder of Angels and free delivery worldwide
Thank you. I will post this link tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 11:09 pm (UTC)I saw this and thought of you: http://www.mcphee.com/items/11699.html
My silly girlfriend saw it and thought the very same thing. She gave it to me for my birthday last year!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 11:32 pm (UTC)So, thanks for that.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:15 pm (UTC)I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your film-bizarre trilogy (or whatever you want to call it). After reading "Pickman's Other …" I went back and re-read "Road of Pins" and "Flicker" and tried to figure out why they appeal to me so. Film fetish, maybe?
Well, I know that's why I keep writing them. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 12:33 am (UTC)Congratulations, you just managed to do what $1,000 software, bands of any sort, or most media can't accomplish.
You got my money!
~Jacob
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:16 pm (UTC)You got my money!
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 02:28 am (UTC)By the by--and I'm terrible at lit crit--I truly enjoyed "Pickman's Other Model." There was something almost trance-like reading it, as though I was walking the folds of Eliot's memory andor subconscious, and his voice... you really captured his era. As always, thank you for these wonders.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 08:14 pm (UTC)It's certainly possible.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 03:06 am (UTC)(When I first typed that sentence, it read, "I could just be delusional (always a possibility)...".)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 07:55 am (UTC)The delusion or the book-sighting?
Both. Either. You decide.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 05:00 pm (UTC)Off Topic: Air Kraken
Date: 2008-04-09 07:38 pm (UTC)Re: Off Topic: Air Kraken
Date: 2008-04-09 08:13 pm (UTC)Thank you! That's really gorgeous. I'd totally forgotten I put my air kraken out on St. Patrick's Day.