A week ago I reviewed Best American Screenplays: First Series. You can read my review here. I ordered the next book in the series, also edited by Sam Thomas, and read the screenplays.
My favorite screenplay in this volume is James L. Brooks’s Terms of Endearment, a movie that I cannot watch without crying…no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Also very powerful is James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter.
The most fun reading is Billy Wilder and I.A. L. Diamond’s Some Like It Hot. And, I’m fond of David Ward’s The Sting, too.
How many of these movies have you seen? Any favorites here? GRADE: A
Before Peter Wolf became the lead singer for the J. Geils Band, he performed in New York City, rubbing shoulders with other musicians just starting their careers.
“Bob was always playing and trading songs with other musicians, and this exposed him to a wide array of influences, including Appalachian mountain music, Elizabethan ballads, and the songs of Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. I came to learn that this voracious curiosity was typical of Bob.” (p. 45)
Yes, Peter Wolf hung out with Bob Dylan. And Van Morrison, David Lynch, Muddy Waters, Andy Warhol, and dozens of other artists who would hit the Big Time.
Peter Wolf and The J. Geils Band also hit the Big Time for a short period with a couple of hits. But as Wolf writes: “Success, if it does come to a band, often comes with its own special price.” (p. 284). At the height of their success, the J. Geils Band broke up.
“Frank Barsalona, our agent, took me out for a dinner after his final meeting with the other band members. In disbelief, he said, ‘After al these years, the band finally made it. It’s really quite unbelievable. I’ve dealt with the craziest of crazies; the drugs, the girlfriends, the managers–nothing even comes close to this. Nothing as stupid, as senseless, and as wasteful in what these guys are insisting on doing. So, Peter, let’s start thinking about your solo career.'” (p. 285)
And the result: “Shortly after the split, I went on to release an album called Lights Out which rose to the top ten on the Billboard charts. All the songs on that album were the very songs the band had rejected. The J. Geils Band then released You’re Gettin’ Even While I’m Gettin’ Old. As a result of poor sales, the band was dropped from the record company, and the ‘new’ J. Geils Band came to an ignominious end.” (p. 285)
I learned a lot about the era where Peter Wolf began his career with so many other musicians and performers. The dynamics of being in a band and trying to make it in a competitive music industry was also fascinating. Opening for The Rolling Stones, hanging out with Sly stone, meeting Alfred Hitchcock and Tennessee Williams, and falling in love with Faye Dunaway is just part of Peter Wolf’s amazing life. GRADE: A (for both the book and the CD)
Last week I reviewed Damon Knight’s One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (you can read my review here). I quibbled about the lack of introductory material about the stories and their authors. Well, A Century of Science Fiction rectifies that issue. Knight provides detail about the stories and the writers this time around.
Publishers in the 1960s seem to be in the market for anthologies that presented an historical approach to Science Fiction. Of the two Damon Knight edited, I prefer A Century of Science Fiction.
Using a topical approach–Robots, Time Travel, etc.–Knight chose some classics like H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (an excerpt) and more contemporary works like Keith Laumer’s Worlds of the Imperium (also an excerpt). Of the time travel stories, I really enjoyed Mack Reynolds’ snarky “Business As Usual.”
Where One Hundred Years of Science Fiction lacked some Big Names, A Century of Science Fiction includes Edmond Hamilton, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke.
Before Frank Herbert became a Big Name SF Writer with his DUNE series, he was a pretty good science fiction short story writer. “Cease Fire” is Herbert’s take on War and how to stop it.
A Century of Science Fiction is a first-rate SF anthology. Highly recommended! GRADE: A
While the first episodes of Ironheart are due to show up on Disney+ today, MARVEL fandom already hates it. “Iron Man retread with a Black Girl Genius” is just one of the takes about this new series of six episodes. Some fans are claiming Disney is already expecting the Ironheart to fare poorly, and decided dropping all the episodes within two weeks to keep audiences engaged.
Three episodes will drop today. Here’s the Official Trailer to give you a taste of what Disney+ hopes is a hit:
Andrea Barrett won a National Book Award for Ship Fever. Barrett has hit the Best Sellers List with Voyage of the Narwhal, Servants of the Map, and Natural History. In her new nonfiction book, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction, Barrett explores various means of injecting historical facts into novels.
One of my quibbles with many novels is that some authors do information dumps. The action of the novel is interrupted by a page or two (or more!) of fact after fact after fact. I find that trend annoying because it stalls the momentum of the novel and frequently bogs down the story.
Barrett’s techniques of weaving facts into fiction with grace and precision without grinding the story to a halt are both practical and clever. If you’re a fan of historical fiction, you’ll enjoy Barrett’s methods to keep novels lively and educational. GRADE: A
Diane and I watched Patience on PBS and enjoyed it (you can read my review here). Jeff Meyerson suggested that we watch the original French series, Astrid et Raphaëlle. I found it on AMAZON PRIME VIDEO and watched the first episode.
Like Patience, Astrid et Raphaelle focuses on Astrid Nielsen (Sara Mortensen), a woman on the Autism spectrum, who works in the police records department. Astrid is drawn into an active investigation by a frustrated detective, Raphaëlle Coste (Lola Dewaere), who is impressed by Astrid’s ability to see patterns in crimes that no one else does.
The two dissimilar characters develop a partnership that results in solving cases together. Astrid discovers key details that the police investigators miss that Costa can use to identify the perpetrator.
Jeff is right that Astrid et Raphaëlle is better than Patience because of the detail invested in the characters. And Paris has a lot more eye candy than York. I’m going to end up watch both series… GRADE: Incomplete, but trending towards an A
Martin Wolf, associate editor of the Financial Times, finds plenty to worry about in The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Wolf sees Trump and the wacky Right Wing as symptoms of underlying Democratic Capitalism. “…the appeal of right-wing populism to devotion to an idealized nation and a ‘great leader’ supplies a large mass of the people with what democracy cannot: relief from the burden of thinking for themselves in return for absolute loyalty to the leader. …it is going to win. It is far more successful than left-wing populism, because it feeds off fear and anger, while the left promises hope. …Hope requires trust. Fear does not: it just requires an enemy.” (p. 214)
Along with a brilliant economic analysis of our current problems, Wolf points out that climate change will affect all governments and all politics. No one can escape its effects. But, not much is being done to mitigate the problem which will be getting much worse in the years ahead.
“The marriage of liberal democracy with market capitalism is the most successful system in the history of the world. But liberal democrat is vulnerable to the selfishness of elites and ambitions of would-be despots. Historically, democratic republics have been exceptions. The normal human political patterns have been plutocracy or tyranny. The latter always waits in the wings. In todays world, tyrannies–demagogric and bureaucratic–are not just in the wings, but on the march.” (p. 375)
As the war in Ukraine and the possible invasion of Taiwan demonstrates, crises stress our global responsibilities. Wolf sets out an action agenda to address these matters, but warns the political will to solve these crises is currently lacking. If you’re interested in the present state of our fragile democratic and economic system, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism will enlighten…and alarm you. GRADE: A
Table of Contents
Preface: Why I Wrote This Book — xiii
Chapter One: The Fire This Time — 1
Part I: On Capitalism and Democracy
Prologue to Part I — 11
Chapter Two: Symbiotic Twins: Politics and Economics in Human History — 13
Chapter Three: The Evolution of Democratic Capitalism — 40
Part II: What Went Wrong
Prologue to Part II — 81
Chapter Four: It’s the Economy, Stupid — 83
Chapter Five: Rise of Rentier Capitalism — 118
Chapter Six: Perils of Populism — 175
Part III: Renewing Democratic Capitalism
Prologue to Part III — 217
Chapter Seven: Renewing Capitalism — 221
Chapter Eight: Toward a “New” New Deal — 283
Chapter Nine: Renewing Democracy –311
Part IV: A Hinge of History
Prologue to Part IV — 347
Chapter Ten: Democratic Capitalism in the World — 349
Just by chance I picked up this collection of screenplays. Best American Screenplays, First Series was first published in 1985 but I never saw it. Then, just last week, I bought it at a Library Sale. I read the screenplays and enjoyed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the best. But, there are plenty of great screenplays in this volume. The Graduate by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry is a delight! I found Casablanca by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch very moving.
How many of these movies do you remember? Do you have a favorite? GRADE: A
I enjoyed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs for years. But after reading Mike Campbell’s memoir, Heartbreaker (2025), the lead guitarist who played with Petty for decades tells how rocky the road to success really was. The band started out playing in strip clubs where the drunken audience would throw cans of beer at them if they blocked their view of the strippers.
Campbell writes about the tons of drugs and the many, many bad decisions, both personal and professional. Despite Campbell’s love for Tom Petty, Campbell tells how he and the Heartbreakers were told that the money would be split 50-50, with 50% going to Petty and the other 50% being split between the four members of the Heartbreakers. What a rip-off!
Later Campbell, who wrote and co-wrote several of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hits, tried to advocate for himself as a co-writer and arranger. His friend denied Campbell credit telling him: “But I’m Tom Petty.”
Another story involved Stevie Nicks, who recorded her hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, trying to join the band after feuding with Fleetwood Mac. The Heartbreakers took a vote and nobody wanted Stevie Nicks in the band. Campbell suggests that dealing with an ego-maniac like Tom Petty plus a Prima Donna like Stevie Nicks would be too much!
If you’re interested in the history of a band that opened for Bob Dylan and went on to become headlines themselves, Heartbreaker lays it all out. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — Greatest Hits includes the remastered versions of their best known songs. Are you a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fan? Which song is your favorite? GRADE: A for both the CD and the Book
Featuring one of the most lackluster covers in Science Fiction history, Damon Knight’s One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (1968) manages to redeem itself with some wonderful stories.
Back in 1968, Damon Knight was just beginning his career as an editor (while still writing short stories and novels from time to time). These 21 stories hardly accurately represent 100 years of Science Fiction–where are Heinlein, Van Vogt, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, and a dozen other major SF writers?
But any anthology that includes Fritz Leiber’s “Sanity” and Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Other Celia” has the Right Idea.
Damon Knight sprinkles in classic stories like “The Ingenious Patriot” by Ambrose Bierce and “With the Night Mail” by Rudyard Kipling. But the focus of this anthology is the 20th Century. My only quibble is that after his “INTRODUCTION” Damon Knight doesn’t introduce the individual stories which would have enhanced the reader’s understanding how and why these particular stories and writers were selected to represent a century of Science Fiction. How many of these stories do you recognize? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION by Damon Knight. — 7
I. WORLDS OF TOMORROW
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL by Rudyard Kipling — 13
Mr. Murphy of New York by Thomas McMorrow — 52
New Apples in the Garden by Kris Neville –68
Sanity by Fritz Leiber — 79
II. ALIENTS, ON EARTH AND ELSEWHERE
The Shapes by J. H. Rosny aine — 97
The Other Celia by Theodore Sturgeon — 122
Black Charlie by Gordon R. Dickson — 139
III. OTHER DIMENSIONS
A Subway Named Möbius by A. J. Deutsch — 157
The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson — 173
The Other Now by Murray Leinster — 198
IV. MUTANTS AND MONSTERS
Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo? by Gerald Kersh — 213
The Mindworm by C. M. Kornbluth — 238
Nobody Bothers Gus by Algis Budrys- 251
V. MARVELOUS INVENTIONS
The Ingenious Patriot by Ambrose Bierce — 267
The Equalizer by Norman Spinrad — 269
Splice of Life by Sonya Dorman — 278
Business As Usual, During Alterations by Ralph Williams — 285
VI. THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE
The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H. G. Wells — 311
The Quest for St. Aquin by Anthony Boucher — 327
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke — 345
