I have no special knowledge who will win tonight, but here are my choices. Do you plan to watch the Oscars? Who do you think will win?
BEST PICTURE: The Power of the Dog
BEST DIRCTOR: Jane Campion
BEST ACTRESS: Jessica Chastain
BEST ACTOR: Will Smith
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ariana DeBose
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Troy Kotsur
American Rhapsody surprised me. I thought I was going to hear a tribute to George Gershwin. Instead, I saw a drama of two pianists. One is a classically trained pianist (Randall Kramer) who has been contracted to play Rhapsody in Blue with a local orchestra. The pianist struggles with the piece so he hires a local jazz pianist (Richard Satterwhite) to “teach” him how to play Rhapsody in Blue.
What the white pianist learns about Rhapsody in Blue from the Black pianist is that George Gershwin studied Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz to create his musical masterpiece. As the Black pianist plays the key songs (listed below) an “imaginary” group of singers appear to perform and sing the songs. Along with the classically trained pianist, the audience learns about the influences that produced Rhapsody in Blue.
The local theater group who put on American Rhapsody was terrific. The two pianists, who performed live on stage, were exceptional. If American Rhapsody shows up in your neighborhood, don’t miss it! GRADE: A
Back in the early 1970s when Men’s Action series like Don Pendleton’s EXECUTIONER and Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s DESTROYER dominated the paperback spinner racks, I started reading the quirky THE LONE WOLF series written by Barry N. Malzberg under his “Mike Barry” pseudonym. At the time, I didn’t know “Mike Barry” was actually Barry N. Malzberg whose Science Fiction I was also reading.
Malzberg conjures up a character named Burt Wulff who is launched on his violent rampage against drug dealers after he finds his fiancé murdered. I knew back in 1973 when I read Night Raider that this book was different from the rest of the men’s action-adventure series when I saw the lines of Yeats’ poetry at the start of the book!
In addition to Night Raider and Bay Prowler this Stark House omnibus includes “Prologue: The Passage of the Light, “Some Notes on the Long Wolf,” and “The Ethic of Vigilantism” where Malzberg writes about how the Lone Wolf series came to be and what his strategy was for the series. Another bonus is a Bibliography of Barry N. Malzberg’s works.
Rereading Night Raider and Bay Prowler after almost 50 years shows how canny Malzberg was in constructing this series to appear as an EXECUTIONER-like clone, but subverting the genre with a secret agenda. The Lone Wolf series features wholesale destruction and mayhem within a story arc that Malzberg cunningly devised from the beginning to explode in the series conclusion. Hang on for a wild ride through the dangerous darkness of America in the Seventies! GRADE: A
I decided to binge on three Rumer CDs that just arrived. I’ve been a fan of Rumer’s mellow voice for years. Her CDs follow no schedule. They’re released seemingly at random. Let’s start with RUMER: B-SIDES AND RARITIES (2015).
Randomness continues with Rumer singing familiar songs like “Arthur’s Theme” and “Sailing” and “It Might Be You.” I enjoyed “Alfie” and “Moon River.” These classic songs sound new with Rumer singing them. Volume 2 is due to be released next month so I’ll be reviewing that CD in a few weeks. Love the cover! GRADE: A
RUMER: B-SIDES AND RARITIES TRACKLIST:
| Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) | 3:57 | ||
| Dangerous (Bossa Nova) | 4:07 | ||
| Sailing | 4:29 | ||
| Hasbrook Heights | 3:24 | ||
| Come Saturday Morning | 3:14 | ||
| It Might Be You (Theme From “Tootsie”) | 3:20 | ||
| Moon River | 2:33 | ||
| Separate Lives | 3:49 | ||
| The Warmth Of The Sun | 3:21 | ||
| Alfie | 2:53 | ||
| Long Long Day | 3:12 | ||
| Soul Rebel | 3:33 | ||
| Here Comes The Sun | 3:50 | ||
| Marie | 2:41 | ||
| Frederick Douglass | 5:29 | ||
| That’s All | 3:12 | ||
| I Believe In You | 3:05 |
RUMER: LOVE IS THE ANSWER is an EP from 2015. My favorite song on this EP is Rumer’s version of the Hall & Oates hit, “I Can’t Go For That.” GRADE: B+
RUMER: LOVE IS THE ANSWER TRACK LIST:
| 1 | Love Is The AnswerWritten-By – John Wilcox, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell, Todd RundgrenWritten-By – John Wilcox, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell, Todd Rundgren | 4:11 | |
| 2 | Being At War With Each OtherWritten-By – Carole KingWritten-By – Carole King | 3:52 | |
| 3 | I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)Featuring – Paul PescoWritten-By – Daryl Hall, John Oates, Sara AllenFeaturing – Paul PescoWritten-By – Daryl Hall, John Oates, Sara Allen | 4:22 | |
| 4 | Be Thankful For What You GotWritten-By – William DeVaughnWritten-By – William DeVaughn | 6:00 |
I’m not a big fan of live CDs, but somehow Rumer and her team managed to suppress any crowd noise and applause–one of things that annoy me about many live recordings.
On RUMER: LIVE AT LAFAYETTE (2021) Rumer sounds relaxed and comfortable singing her set of songs–some new some familiar. The band sounds great and the result is a concert CD that will go into heavy rotation on my CD player. If you’re in the mood for some enjoyable songs sung by a wonderful artist with a great voice, check out Rumer’s work. GRADE: A
RUMER: LIVE AT LAFAYETTE TRACK LIST:
| The Fate Of Fireflies | |||
| Come To Me High | |||
| June It’s Gonna Happen | |||
| Take Me As I Am | |||
| Bristlecone Pine | |||
| Oklahoma Stray | |||
| Aretha | |||
| Learning How To Love | |||
| Play Your Guitar | |||
| You Just Don’t Know People | |||
| Pizza And Pinball | |||
| Sara Smile | |||
| Slow | |||
| Love Is The Answer | |||
| Better Place |
The stories in Beyond the Veil deal with aging, death, dying, and ghosts.
My favorite story in Beyond the Veil is Stephen Gallagher’s “A Mystery for Julie Chu.” Julie Chu likes to shop at auctions, thrift stores, and consignment stores. Chu has a talent at finding vintage items that are underpriced.
Chu finds an old toy called Mr. Disco. She buys it for a pittance. But Chu soon learns Mr. Disco allows the Dead to speak to the Living. I thought I knew where “A Mystery for Julie Chu” was going, but Stephen Gallagher had some clever tricks up his writer’s sleeve that surprised me.
Other than “A Mystery for Julie Chu,” I didn’t find any other story that pleased me in this anthology. The constant dying and suffering wore me down. GRADE: C
Introduction Mark Morris 1
The God Bag Christopher Golden 3
Caker’s Man Matthew Holness 21
The Beechfield Miracles Priya Sharma 44
Clockwork Dan Coxon 69
Soapstone Aliya Whiteley 79
The Dark Bit Toby Litt 93
Provenance Pond Josh Malerman 107
For All the Dead Angeline B. Adams Remco van Straten 119
The Girl in the Pool Bracken MacLeod 135
Nurse Varden Jeremy Dyson 144
If, Then Lisa L. Hannett 159
Aquarium Ward Karter Mycroft 173
A Mystery for Julie Chu Stephen Gallagher 185
Away Day Lisa Tuttle 205
Polaroid and Seaweed Peter Harness 213
Der Geisterbahnhof Lynda E. Rucker 231
Arnie’s Ashes John Everson 244
A Brief Tour of the Night Nathan Ballingrud 257
The Care and Feeding of Household Gods Frank J. Oreto 268
Yellowback Gemma Files 282
Biographies 307
I’m fond of Time Travel stories so you’d think I would be ecstatic over The Adam Project. But, you would be wrong.
Ryan Reynolds plays a pilot who travels from 2050 back to 2022 in an attempt to save his wife (Zoe Saldana). Reynolds’ character, called Adam, really wanted to arrive in 2018, but a mis-calibration by Adam’s craft lands him in the wrong year. Adult Adam then meets his 12-year-old self (brilliantly played by Walker Scobell) which does generate plenty of humor. But, murder squads from 2050 arrive to kill Adam (and even his younger self).
You would think that a movie with a cast that includes Ryan Reynolds; Mark Ruffalo; Jennifer Garner; Walker Scobell; Catherine Keener; and Zoe Saldaña would be fabulous. But, once again, you would wrong.
The Adam Project gets bogged down in family problems: an inattentive father, a surly son, and an unconfident mother. The action scenes are okay, but there are too few of them. There’s potential in The Adam Project but much of it is wasted. GRADE: B-
“In the spring of 1990, New Kids on the Block started the Magic Summer Tour, a summer that lasted 303 days and earned $57 million. The year’s highs grossing films was Ghost and the ghost of of Patrick Swayze was not CGI. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks debuted on ABC, but its hallucinatory Melo dram was disconnected from both lear time and the rest of the TV universe, where Cheers remained the most popular show.” (p. 33)
Chuck Closterman revisits the 1990s with insights into its music, movies, politics, TV shows, and famous people. Remember Operation Desert Storm? Remember the stock market zooming to new highs?
The Nineties will be famous for the introduction of the Internet and GOOGLE. And the culture changing TV programs like Seinfeld and Friends and The X-Files. The National Football League solidified its position as the dominant sport in America. People thought David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest–1,079 pages–was the best novel of the decade.
What do you remember best about the Nineties? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction p. 11
Fighting the Battle of Who Could Care Less p. 5
[projections of the distortion] p. 29
The Structure of Feeling (Swingin’ on the Flippity-Flop) p. 33
[i see death around the corner] p. 49
Nineteen Percent p. 53
[casual determinism] p. 73
The Edge, as Viewed from the Middle p. 77
[the slow cancellation of the future and the fast homogenization of the past] p. 103
The Movie Was about a Movie p. 107
[the power of myth] p. 123
CTRL + ALT + DELETE p. 129
[alive in the superunknown] p. 165
Three True Outcomes p. 169
[vodka on the chessboard] p. 185
Yesterday’s Concepts of Tomorrow p. 189
[the importance of being earnest] p. 209
Sauropods p. 213
[giving the people what they want, except that they don’t] p. 241
A Two-Dimensional Fourth Dimension p. 245
[the spin doctors] p. 273
I Feel the Pain of Everyone, Then I Feel Nothing p. 279
[just try it and see what happens] p. 305
The End of the Decade, the End of Decades p. 311
Acknowledgments p. 339
Sources p. 341
Sometimes I’m in the mood for a good, thrilling historical novel. And, here are two of them: The Eyes of the Queen (2020) and The Queen’s Men (2021). The two books are subtitled: An Agents of the Crown Novel.
The Eyes of the Queen introduces Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s “principal private secretary” (aka, spy master). Mary Queen of Scots is under confinement but she’s busy plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth using her wiles to feed information on the Queen’s movements to her supporters.
Meanwhile, Walsingham recruits Queen Elizabeth’s tutor and sometime alchemist, Dr. Dee, to investigate the assassination plot. Dee discovers threads that lead to a group who recruited a sharpshooter who never misses. Only Dee can disrupt the assassination…if the assassin’s minions can be outwitted! GRADE: B
When Queen Elizabeth travels in a convoy through Waltham Forest at night, her carriage is ambushed by masked gunmen and riddled with holes. By chance, the Queen happened to be in a different carriage, but one of her ladies-in-waiting is killed. Walsingham suspects someone in the Royal Court is leaking information to the assassination team…but who?
Dr. Dee is called in again to assist the investigation. In addition, the Queen asks Dee to discover the formula for “Greek Fire,” a incendiary fluid famous for its ability to burn on water. With the threat of an invasion from Spain, the secret of “Greek Fire” might delay the Spanish Armada. In 1578, Dee has limited equipment and knowledge of how to re-invent the long-lost toxic substance. But, conspiracies swirl around the Royal Court as members of the Privy Council attack Walsingham for not solving the latest assassination attempt.
Dee finds himself drawn into a nefarious plot to “protect” the Queen…which could lead him to the gallows. While Walsingham urgent searches for the assassination team, Dee discovers that one of the gunman had a relationship with the dead lady-in-waiting. Following that clue leads to a mind-boggling plot to destroy the Queen and most of the Royal Court. If you’re looking for action and intrigue, The Eyes of the Queen and The Queen’s Men deliver more thrills than a roller-coaster! Are you a fan of historical fiction? GRADE: B+
Yesterday, I reviewed Jack Vance’s Alastor series. Splatterlight Books published this authorize “sequel” to Vance’s trilogy in 2019. In addition, Splatterlight published a “sequel” to Vance’s Demon Princes by Matthew Hughes, Barbarians of the Beyond (you can read my review here), in 2021.
A young man named Gunnar and his mother Justine arrive on the peculiar planet Phaedra after Gunnar’s father is killed on a military mission. Gunnar signs up for school and immediately is attracted by one of his classmates, a strange girl, Lavoine, who claims she’s a witch.
Phaedra features artifacts from the Elder Race that dominated the Galaxy before disappearing. Strange alien boats called Galleons sail the rivers of Phaedra. But Bad Things happen to anyone who tries to interfere with the Galleons progress.
Lavoine, with Gunnar and some friends, attempts to contact the Galleons with forbidden technology. The result sends Gunnar and Semele, a fierce huntress, to try to stop the return of the Elder Race and the destruction of humanity!
I enjoyed this intense adventure. Not only did Tais Teng write Phaedra: Alastor 824, he also painted the wrap-around cover! If you’re a Jack Vance fan, you’ll be entertained by this book. I hope Tais Teng writes more Alastor adventure novels! GRADE: B+
In 1995, TOR Books published an omnibus edition of Jack Vance’s Alastor novels. Alastor is a region of 30,000 stars in an area roughly 30 light-years in diameter. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (Ballantine, 1973), Marune: Alastor 933 (Ballantine, 1975), and Wyst: Alastor 1716 (DAW, 1978), each named after a world in the cluster. Vance planned a fourth novel Pharism: Alastor 458, but it was never written.
Trillion: Alastor 2262 follows the adventures of Glinnes Hulden, a young man who served in the Whelm–the military agency of the Connatic (who rules the Alastor Sector from his palace on Lusz)–and then retires to his home on Trillion. Glinnes arrives to find his twin brother, Glay, has sold the family homestead without his approval. Glinnes tries various strategies to earn the money to recover the land, but the only avenue he’s successful at is playing a team game called hussade. A conspiracy involving starmenters (aka, space pirates) changes Glinnes’ fortunes. GRADE: B
Marine: Alastor 933 opens on Bruse-Tansel, Alastor 1102 at the Carfaunge spaceport. A young man is found who claims he’s lost his memory. With help, the young man reaches the Connatic’s Hospital on Lusz. Although the doctors fail to restore the man’s memory, they determine the man’s origin: he is a member of a group called Rhunes on Marine, Alastor 933. The young man travels to Marine and discovers his identity: he’s Efraim, the Eighteenth Kairark of Scharrode.
Efraim’s return isn’t welcomed by everyone. Efraim’s father died in a military encounter so Efraim now succeeds him as leader. But political machinations, treachery, and murder threaten Efraim. I found the amnesia aspect skillfully manipulated by Jack Vance to produce a powerful conclusion. GRADE: B+
Wyst: Alastor 1716 begins with a strange interview between The Whispers of Wyst and the Connatic on Lusz. The Whispers are leaders, but the Connatic senses something is very wrong on Wyst. The story then shifts to Jantiff Ravenstroke, a talented artist on Zeck, Alastor 503. Jantiff decides to visit Wyst to pursue his artistic ambitions. What Jantiff encounters on Wyst is a society that disdains work and exceptionalism. Early on, Jantiff’s painting supples are stolen–a normal occurrence on Wyst–in the cause of “equality.”
Jack Vance plunges Jantiff, a naive young man, into a conspiracy with massive implications. Jantiff loses everything and Vance paints his hero into such a corner only a deus ex Machina solution resolves all the plot entanglements. GRADE: B-
The Alastor novels center around young men in desperate situations in very strange societies. I enjoyed the series and wish Vance had written more novels with this formula.