Journal

Saturday, December 02, 2006

closing tabs

I didn't get to the Stardust test screening in Pasadena, and won't be at the screening in Sherman Oaks in an hour, but the first of the reviews have already started to surface from the first screening, and they're up at ain't it cool... http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30863. They aren't spoiler heavy, but there are a few.

[Edit to add -- And also a much longer review now up at http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30866 ]


(From these screenings they learn things that will influence the edit and so forth. I think so far the biggest thing they've learned is that everyone seems to love Robert Di Niro.)
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I love it when the underground goes mainstream in odd ways. Here's my favourite disturbing photographer, Joel Peter Witkin, doing a hat fashion shoot for the New York Times. I sort of wish he'd had a few more women with three breasts or extra heads, but the images are beautiful, and pure Witkin.

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There's an interview with me in the Minneapolis City Pages at http://www.citypages.com/databank/27/1356/article14921.asp, and from this City Pages review (http://citypages.com/databank/27/1356/article14926.asp) I learned that Susanna Clarke "exploits her gift for the creation of tiny fictional packets of dread, one she honed during the years she spent writing episodic tales for Neil Gaiman's masterful Sandman graphic novel series," which is the kind of thing that makes me point out she only wrote one story, "Stopp'd Clock Yard" in the Sandman: Book of Dreams short story collection, and it is very good, but it wasn't very episodic.


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Over at The Comics Journal website, Art Spiegelman writes a terrific gift list --
http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=470&Itemid=48
-- and I'll try to suggest a few cool gifty book things over the next few days.

Until I do, a small gift for anyone reading. Daniel Pinkwater's latest novel, The Neddiad, is a wonderful thing. I know because his publisher sent it to me, and I read it. I really liked it (I am a sucker for Pinkwater, and this is grade A+ Pinkwater) and I mentioned it in Forbes Magazine.

Mr Pinkwater is currently serialising it online, prior to publication. We're now up to Chapter Nineteen, with a new Chapter going up every Tuesday. It's getting exciting. Go and read the first nineteen chapters. Mystery! Travel! Shoelaces! Shamans! Turtle! Thrilling Air HighJack Foiled By Simple Conjuring Trick! http://www.pinkwater.com/theneddiad/