The Guards by Ken Bruen

This book came highly recommended to me and it did not disappoint.

Jack Taylor is an alcoholic ex-cop in Ireland who uses his experience, connections and bullheadedness to get answers for folks in need. But don’t call him a private eye.

Bruen is obviously a fan of the crime genre. Jack Taylor feels like he just stepped out of a David Goodis book but Bruen’s style is entirely his own. It’s stark, funny and brutal as hell.

Some of the Irish references were lost of me but I still very much enjoyed the regional flavor. I understand the series just gets better from here so I’m looking forward to reading more by Bruen.

Dead Snow

Dead Snow delivers pretty much everything you could possibly want from a Norwegian Nazi zombie movie.

I told you that I would be doing a lot of genre jumping for my movie reviews.  Last week I was trying to decide between Dead Snow and The Tree of Life.  I went with Dead Snow but The Tree of Life will be next week.

Dead Snow is a Norwegian horror movie written and directed by Tommy Wirkola.  The plot involves a group of medical students who decide to spend Easter weekend at a remote cabin in the mountains near Ørksfjord.  On their first night in the cabin they are visited by a local man who fills them in on the region’s dark past.  During World War II Ørksfjord was occupied by a particularly brutal company of SS.  As the war came to a close the Nazis began committing atrocities against the populace in the act of stealing their valuables.  The people rose up, killing many of the Nazis and driving the rest of them, including their leader Standartenführer Herzog, into the mountains.  Rumor has it that the Nazis haunt the mountain passes to this day and, sure enough, it is not long before the student run afoul of the zombified remains of the Nazi company.

Dead Snow features excellent production values and effects.  It’s beautifully shot and Wirkola really takes full advantage of the contrast between pure white snow and bright red blood.  Oh so much blood.  Most importantly, the movie has a wickedly perverse sense of humor.  Dead Snow repeatedly serves up fresh shocks that had me laughing out loud to the very end.  I won’t spoil any of them here but, if you are a fan of the genre, you must see this movie.

This is easily one of my favorite zombie movies and I give it four stars.

A Moment in The Sun by John Sayles

This is really an incredible novel, though at almost 1000 pages of dense historical detail and with a large cast of characters, it’s not a book for everyone. As someone who very much enjoys historical epics, I loved this book. Documenting the intersection of class warfare, racism and American imperialism during the gilded age, this book is so rich in its historic detail that it almost feels like Sayles was writing from personal experience. The book is also incredibly well written and this, combined with the scope and detail left me in awe of Sayles’ ability on almost every page.

Attack on Memory by Cloud Nothings

Cloud Nothing’s new album, Attack on Memory, starts strong but loses focus towards the end.

Before I get to the full album review, some words on reviewing music, a process which will pose some challenges for me.  For starters, I am not a musician and my ear is accordingly uneducated.  While I know what I enjoy, I often lack the vocabulary to discuss it critically.  Further, while some albums make a visceral impression the first time you listen to them, many of my favorite albums took months to fully sink in.  Accordingly, I’ll be giving my initial impressions of the albums I listen to from a listener’s point of view.  Whenever possible I’ll try to include samples and links to albums on Spotify.  I’ll also likely revisit certain albums with followup posts if my opinion on a given album changes dramatically over time.

Back to the matter at hand.  Attack on Memory is the second album from low-fi indie band Cloud Nothings.  The album was produced by Steve Albini and his past work with bands such as Nirvana and Fugazi can be felt in Cloud Nothing’s shift to a heavier sound.  (Cloud Nothings also spent time touring with Fucked Up last year so there is undoubtedly some influence from that quarter as well.)

Dylan Baldi is the brainchild behind Cloud Nothings and while he has a real talent for writing songs with great hooks, he says that on this album he wanted to move towards a more improvisational sound.  I would say that he has succeeded but, for me at least, the album is worse for it.  Maybe heavy lo-fi noodling is your thing, in which case you will love this album front to back but, for me, the further Baldi strays from his hooks, the less interesting the music becomes.

The second track on the album, “Wasted Days,” illustrates this point perfectly.  Right from the opening chords, “Wasted Days” grabs your attention on a visceral level.  If this song ended at the three minute mark it would be a tight, nearly perfect post-punk blast to the brain.  The interlude that kicks in at the three minute mark is actually interesting for the first minute but this is followed by a further four minutes of dull noodling.  By the time the song gets back on track in the final minute (and it does get back on track) it’s burned through a lot of good will and I’ve mostly lost interest.

So it is with the album as a whole.  That interminable interlude aside, the first four tracks of this album are pretty darn good but the album loses focus in the second act.  By the time the album gets back on track with “Our Plans,” I’ve mostly lost interest.  My solution?  I’ll be editing the album down to its essential core in iTunes.

Three stars.

Listen to Attack on Memory on Spotify.

Savage Season by Joe R Lansdale

Joe R Lansdale’s Savage Season is a poorly written mess of a book with paper thin characterization.

This series came highly recommended to me so I was very disappointed by this book. The biggest issue I had was that nothing in this book rings particularly true. None of the characters feel like real people, rather they are laundry lists of characteristics: Hap Collins is a jaded child of the Sixties who spent time in jail for resisting the draft. He knows martial arts and works as a day laborer doing farm work. His best friend is Leonard Pine. He’s black and gay and surly. He also knows martial arts. All of which sounds good on paper but you can’t short cut character development by giving your characters interesting characteristics and Lansdale never manages to sell any of this.

Moving beyond the unconvincing characters, the rest of the book is a series of bad cliches and the ending is cringe worthy. I almost put the book down with one page to go, just out of spite.

For music I’ll be doing something a little bit different in that I will only be reviewing albums released in 2012.  As not too many albums are released in early January, I’ll be playing catch-up a little at some point but I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding 52 new releases this year.  I’ll be using the same 5 star rating system that I use for movies for music.

For books, I’m likely not going to pull off another 52 Books in 52 Weeks this year but, who knows?  It will be close so maybe I’ll make a push in the end.  I have been reviewing the books I’ve been reading over on Goodreads, however, so I’m going to republish those reviews here.  Unlike movies and music, my reading year is tied to my birthday rather than a calendar year.  I’ve read 25 books since my last birthday so I’ll be publishing a review every day or so until I’m caught up.

I’ll also start tagging my posts so people can more easily locate the movie, album or books reviews.

The Guard is an understated bit of neo-noir comedy with excellent characters and great performances.  It is one of my favorite movies of 2011.

The Guard is written and directed by John Michael McDonagh whose brother, Martin McDonagh, wrote and directed one of my favorite movies, In Bruges.  The brothers share a sensibility and both movies are marked by a dry humor and well realized characters.  Indeed, it is a testament to the character building that, while both movies are comedies, they are also both genuinely moving.

In The Guard, Brendan Gleeson plays Gerry Boyle, a Sargent in the Irish Guards.  Boyle is, in the great noir tradition,  unconventional and fiercely independent.  His moral code is deeply personal and bears no relation to the law of the land which he has sworn an oath to uphold but it is, nonetheless, a strong moral code. Boyle may do drugs and sleep with prostitutes but he may be the only clean cop in the county and when drug traffickers murder his partner, no amount of intimidation will stop him from his pursuit of justice.

 Don Cheedle plays Wendell Everett, a fish out of water FBI agent who serves as the perfect straight man to Boyle.  Boyle’s every line is deadpan and, at one point, Everett turns to him in astonishment and remarks, “I can’t tell if you’re really motherfucking dumb or really motherfucking smart.”

Like his brother’s movie In Bruges, I loved The Guard because it was so well written.  McDonagh does not feel the need to spell every last thing out and the movie, like its main character, leaves plenty of room for people to draw their own conclusions.

I was going to give The Guard four stars but, as with my last review, I have talked myself into adding a star so this one gets the full five stars.

Aside from some minor concerns regarding the uncanny valley, I thoroughly enjoyed The Adventures of Tintin and thought it did a great job capturing the spirit of Herge’s comics.

My opinion of the movie may well be biased by the fond memories I have of reading Herge’s comics while curled up on a couch at my grandfather’s house on cold winter days.  Tintin comics had everything a young boy could want from a comic — Great characters, lots of humor, illustrations that were both clear and densely packed with detail, and epic adventures on a global scale.  There is a reason these comics are as loved world-wide as they are and everyone involved with the movie seems to share that love.

Of course, this can cut both ways.  My love of the source material could easily have translated into bitter disappointment so I suppose it is saying something that the movie lived up to my expectations.  It helps that the screenplay was co-written by Stephan Moffat (award winning head-writer of Dr Who), Edgar Wright (writer/director of Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs The World) and Joe Cornish (writer/director of Attack The Block, one of my favorite movies from 2011).

I continue to have my reservations about motion capture based animation and, sure enough, the uncanny valley was occasionally a distraction.  That having been said, the world the animators created was as lush and full of detail as the comics I loved so much as a kid and the motion capture adds a level of realism to the characters that gives dramatic weight to the movie’s incredible action set pieces.

Many people found those action set pieces to be over the top and ultimately wearisome but I am not one of those people.  The advantage of an animated action movie is that you are not bound by the constraints of reality.  The Adventures of Tintin uses this advantage to full effect and the extended action sequences are Rube Goldberg-esque exercises in cause and effect, building kinetically to fantastically absurd proportions.

I was going to give the Adventures of Tintin three and a half stars but in the course of writing this review I have talked myself into a four star rating.

I need some sort of catchy button for the end of these reviews.  ”Keep munching that popcorn!” That’s fucking terrible.  I’ll work on that.

While 52 Movies in 52 Weeks is nowhere near as challenging as 52 Books in 52 Weeks, I’m taking on the project as a commitment to mindfully viewing at least 52 movies this year because I only saw a small handful of movies in 2011 and it’s a state of affairs I would like to rectify.

I will, accordingly, be viewing and reviewing at least one movie a week for 2012. These do not have to be new movies and I will be all over the place in terms of genre and relative cinematic merit.

Movie reviews are better with arbitrary rating systems and mine will be as follows:

One star: I hated it with a burning passion.  ’A terrible piece of shit.

Two stars: No sir, I did not like it.  ’Not recommended.

Three stars: Mildly entertaining; Decent but flawed; Recommended with some reservations.

Four Stars: An excellent movie. ‘Highly recommended.

Five Stars: I loved it.  Destined to be a favorite of mine.

There you have it.  Reviews to start sometime this week.

J. K. Rowling — Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows
Bernard Cornwell — Agincourt
Nick Harkaway — The Gone Away World
Johnathan Barnes — The Sonambulist
S Thomas Russell — A Battle Won
Frederick Marryat — Masterman Ready
Richard Preston — The Hot Zone
Patrick Lynch — Carriers
Frederick Marryat — Peter Simple
David Goodis — Night Squad
Jim Thompson — The Killer Inside Me
J. R. R. Tolkein — The Hobbit
George R Stewart — Earth Abides
Graham Bowley — No Way Down: Life and Death on K2
Lloyd Alexander — The Book of Three
Arturo Perez-Reverte — Captain Alatriste
David Goodis — Dark Passage
Bernard Cornwell — The Fort
A Lee Martinez — The Automatic Detective
Paul Malmont — The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
Mihail Lermontov — A Hero of Our Time
Tea Obrecht — The Tiger’s Wife
Bernard Cornwell — The Winter King
A Lee Martinez — Divine Misfortune
Elmore Leonard — Comfort To The Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories
Steve Hamilton — The Lock Artist

That’s 26 books, coincidentally half of what I read the previous year.

While there are many great books on the list, my three favorites were Nick Harkaway’s The Gone Away World, George R Stewart’s Earth Abides and, Tea Obrecht’s The Tiger’s Wife.  The Gone Away World, in particular, stuck with me to such an extent that I had trouble getting into any other books for the next several weeks.