Showing posts with label Jonathan Lethem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jonathan Lethem. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Reading Rainbow: Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

So I am waaaaayy behind on these entries (try six books)...

Anyway, a little while back I read this book having heard good things about Jonathan Lethem. It is a post-apocalyptic novel in which largely ineffectual characters settle on a foreign planet with the primary character being 14-year-old Pella Marsh. If none of that sounded good, it is because it wasn't.

Now the back of the book sold Girl in Landscape as a "genre-bending, mind-expanding tale of sexual perversity on a new frontier." Look elsewhere, brave reader, because there is little in the way of what that promises. The prose is tedious, the narrative is surprisingly unimaginative and entirely dull, and the characters lack any qualities that would give cause to care.

I would commit more words to this, but what is the point?

Coming soon: more posts.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Man on Film: Affleck News

My apologies for not quite getting around to the Shutter Island film review as I had intended. I was initially planning on seeing it Thursday night at an advance screening, but life got in the way. I didn't end up seeing it until Sunday, and I've been working on another gargantuan column for Sports Grumblings about the teams that ESPN forgot exists. I fully anticipate getting to that write-up as soon as Thursday night, after which I have a queue of things I need to cover ranging from another Tim O'Brien-related Reading Rainbow entry, the newest season of "Friday Night Lights," and my first foray into the works of Jonathan Lethem.

Since I've not got the time at present to complete those tasks and more (namely, more Munch My Benson content), I did feel I should stop in and drop some ka-nowledge on y'all. To longtime readers this will come as no surprise, but your faithful Inconsiderate Prick is what could mildly be called a "big fan" of Ben Affleck. In recent years, he has made good on my consistent defense of him through trying times by being fantastic in such films as Hollywoodland, State of Play, and Extract, while also stepping behind the lens (figuratively) to give us the superb Dennis Lehane adaptation, Gone Baby Gone.

Coming out later this year (tentative release date of September 10th), we will get to see Affleck's directorial follow-up to Gone Baby Gone: The Town, another crime drama which will feature Blake Lively, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Chris Cooper, and the inimitable Ben Affleck.

Now while nothing about the above (and it's adapted from a Chuck Hogan novel, 2004 Hammett Prize Winner Prince of Thieves) doesn't get my hopes up insanely, what is perhaps even better news is that the infamous wife-trading* story of former Yankees' teammates Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, The Trade. More details on the film can be found here and here, but the script was written by former "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" scribe Dave Mandel.

*I hesitate to use the term wife-swap as theirs was a full-on trading of each others wives, on a permanent basis.

The first time I heard this story, which I think I first read about here, I thought, "Holy shit is that weird." When you think that about a true story, you can't help but think it would make a sweet-ass movie. Seriously, read that last link, and tell me you don't want a Red Sox fan making (and allegedly co-starring in it with friend, Matt Damon) that film?

Thank you, Benjamin Geza Affleck, for rewarding my loyalty with your greatness.
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