Top Films of 2011

Well, I'm two months late on this, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

One BIG caveat: Whenever I've put together these lists in recent years, the process always really shows me how few movies I actually bother to see anymore. I only saw one ("Tree of Life") of the Oscar-nominated films this past year. Many movies -- "Shame," "My Week With Marilyn," "The Artist," "Melancholia," etc. -- that I wanted to see completely slipped through the cracks. So this is not meant to be a definitive list by any means.

But of the films I DID see, these are my favorites.

1. Take Shelter

Every so often someone puts out a movie that seems like pretty much the exact movie I want to make. Duncan Jones's "Moon" was that in 2009. Last year, it was Jeff Nichols's "Take Shelter." The story of a hardworking Midwestern family man (Michael Shannon) who begins experiencing apocalyptic visions and the toll this takes on his exasperated wife (Jessica Chastain) and young daughter, "Take Shelter" is about as moving an exploration of quiet, encroaching insanity as I've ever seen. Neither as narratively crazy nor as hopeless as "Jacob's Ladder" and "Pi" (both movies I love), Nichols's film is no less haunting for its sheer starkness. It's also beautiful to look at. And it's got one doozy of an ending.

2. Martha Marcy May Marlene

Believe it or not, that girl in the trailer above is the younger sister of the Olsen twins. But don't hold that against her. Elizabeth Olsen's performance as the title character in Sean Durkin's debut film "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is a powerhouse. She owns this movie from start to finish -- which is an accomplishment, considering she's playing opposite the always amazing John Hawkes ("Winter's Bone"). Durkin's movie is about a young woman (Olsen) who escapes the clutches of a Manson-esque cult in upstate New York. Her sister (Sarah Paulson) and her sister's husband (Hugh Dancy) take her in, but are at a loss to explain her increasingly bizarre behavior (it doesn't help that they only think she's running away from an ex boyfriend). The movie cuts seamlessly between her listless existence at her sister's lake house and her time with the quietly terrifying Hawkes and his moon-eyed clan. Like "Take Shelter," so much of the power of this movie comes from its simplicity. Durkin is an able filmmaker with a sensitive hand, and he knows how to take his time and when to get out of a scene before blowing it. This is one of those movies where what's not said or seen is much more important than what is.

3. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

It was fashionable amongst the snobs to deride this film before it was even released in favor of the Swedish originals, and then to knock it after it came out for supposedly gutting author Stieg Larsson's feminist commentary. Here's a little secret: the Swedish films are MUCH more gratuitously sexed-up than Fincher's American remake, and I always felt Larsson got way too much credit as a progressive firebrand than he deserved. Sure, the feminist angle was there, but the books were always pretty pulpy. What Fincher gets right in his version is the vulnerability of its lead character. Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is a tough but heartbreaking figure, and she should be. She's not a superhero. Mara doesn't try to soften her edges, but she does show the painful beating heart within her in a way that Swedish actress Noomi Rapace never pulled off. Fincher and Mara defetishize Lisbeth. They allow her to be sexual, but don't get lost in the goth sex-doll dreaminess that Rapace inspired with the first film's devoted fans. The sex itself (and I'm not talking about the rape scene) is pretty honest and real and matter-of-fact here, whereas it's all gloss and steam in the original. As directed by Fincher, the movie itself is a suitably creepy and stylish thriller with at least a little something to say. It bums me out that it tanked at the box office. For those of you who let all the snark and criticism keep you away, I'd suggest giving it another chance.

4. Super 8

I'm perfectly willing to admit that this isn't necessarily a great movie, but it's so perfectly designed to trigger the nostalgia reflex in people like me (specifically geeky thirty-something dudes who grew up with Spielberg and "The Goonies") that I have to give director J.J. Abrams credit. I don't have a lot to say beyond that, but I probably had more fun with this than I did any other movie this year.

5. Drive

I decided to post a clip instead of the trailer because the trailer completely missed what's so great about this movie. This isn't "The Fast and The Furious." Instead it's a moody and ultimately sad character study of an antihero who is basically psychotic, as well as a wildly stylistic rumination of everything that's awesome about the 80s. I was sold the moment the neon pink opening titles kicked in over a glistening nightscape of LA and the drone of Kavinsky's "Nightcall." The plot itself is pretty standard heist/revenge stuff, but there's an actual heart to this movie that I completely engaged with. Neither Ryan Gosling nor Carey Mulligan have much to work with, but what they do they do with aplomb. And the fact that Albert Brooks was snubbed for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar is just further proof that the Motion Picture Academy has lost all relevancy.

6. Margin Call

There's a general wisdom amongst those of us who are trying to make movies that no one wants to see a film where a bunch of people just sit around around and talk. Tell that to Sidney Lumet, Roman Polanski, David Mamet, and first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor, whose "Margin Call" is as tense a thriller as you're likely to see. And it's basically people sitting around talking. A fictionalized look at the financial meltdown in 2008, Chandor's film is likely to provoke outrage in you if you're able to keep up with it. He doesn't waste time trying to explain the mechanics of short selling, securities or collateralized debt obligations (thank God). Instead he focuses in on the people whose selfish decisions lead to the mess we're all in now. This is a classic morality tale in the vein of Lumet's "12 Angry Men" or Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross." It's also (next to "Martha Marcy") the most self-assured debut film I saw this year.

7. The Ides of March

This movie kind of got lost in the shuffle this year, which is a shame because (without having seen most of the nominated films) it seems to me it should have been perfect Oscar bait. George Clooney directed this political drama based on Beau Willimon's popular play "Farragut North," and does a solid job portraying an idealistic (but flawed) presidential candidate, Senator Mike Morris, who seems equal parts Barack Obama idealist and Bill Clinton triangulator. Ryan Gosling stars as Morris's "media guy", a political prodigy whose own idealism is his undoing. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Evan Rachel Wood all turn in strong performances in roles that could have easily been nothing more than stock. Clooney doesn't reinvent the wheel here, but this movie shows that -- with the right star power attached -- Hollywood can still deliver smart straight-forward drama for grownups. That's something to be celebrated.

8. The Tree of Life

What to say about this film? Only Terrence Malick could make a movie that encapsulates all of existence within the story of a kid growing up in Texas. It's gorgeous. It's overloaded. It's wildly, gloriously pretentious. And yeah, it has dinosaurs. It's less a movie than an experience, and you're either going to be on board with it or you're not. I was on board.

9. Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy

Like "Margin Call," Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John Le Carré's "Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy" is mostly a movie about old men sitting in dark rooms talking to other old men. And it's awesome. The knock on it has been that it's boring and confusing. Bullshit. I didn't find it hard to follow (I do want to see it again, however, just to be sure I got it all), and I was never bored. Only a culture bred on James Bond-style histrionics would balk at a spy movie as subtle and smart as this one. Gary Oldman gives one of the finest (and quietest) performances of his career, and the rest of the cast -- from Benedict Cumberbatch (the BBC's "Sherlock") to the great John Hurt -- simply kill this thing. It's a murky film -- both visually and morally -- which is probably why people didn't really go for it. Those people are stupid. After this and "Let the Right One In," Alfredson has established himself as one of the directors to watch.

10 Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I love, love, LOVE the original "Planet of the Apes" series (all of them, from 1968's original through 1972's "Conquest". I like to pretend 1973's "Battle" doesn't exist), but -- knowing how Hollywood screws up these things and considering Tim Burton's 2001 mess of a remake -- I did not have high hopes for this one. But married screenwriters Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa ("The Hand That Rocks the Cradle") are clearly fans of the original series and worked really hard to reclaim the franchise for a new generation. The script is silly at times (the whole smart gas thing feels kind of tired), but overall they do a commendable job of capturing what made Roddy McDowell's Caesar (in "Conquest") such an iconic character. The humans here (James Franco, John Lithgow, and a bunch of other people) are pretty mediocre, but the apes are badass and Andy Serkis's reinterpretation of Caesar further shows that he should pretty much be the only guy allowed to act in motion-capture performances. It sets up a new franchise nicely, and I'm glad to hear that Silver and Jaffa are back to pen the next installment. Fingers crossed.

Honorable mentions: Contagion, Source Code, Carlos, Bridesmaids

Album Review: Pop. 1280 - "The Horror"

I stumbled on these guys a couple days ago while surfing through some old Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds videos on youTube. The band name immediately caught my attention. Any group who YouTube thinks is related to old-school Nick Cave and who so baldly reference one of my favorite Jim Thompson novels is at least worth a listen.

The album title gave me pause, though. Seemed a little on-the-nose. At best, I figured, they'd be some sort of novelty Misfits knockoff. At worst, they'd be Goth.

What they actually are, to my surprise and pleasure, is a pretty decent punk-influenced indie rock band with shades of mid-80s Krautrock drone, a liberal dose of Big Black-style sonic dissonance, all with just a pinch of early Hüsker Dü. And yes, there's definitely some Your Funeral, My Trial-era Nick Cave in there as well.



I haven't been able to find out too much about these guys. Apparently they're from New York. The end.

This is definitely not going to be for everybody. The opening lyric is "Two dogs fucking..." While that brought a smile to my face, it also fairly accurately describes the tone of the album. The drums and bass clank and churn along with all the propulsiveness of an ill-maintained diesel engine, while the guitars scratch away at your eardrums like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard. Meanwhile, vocalist Chris Bug sort of sing-shouts like a bored Meantime-era Paige Hamilton.

Sure, it's all a little monotonous. Monotonous the way a series of punches to the testicles is monotonous.

The standout tracks -- the above-linked "Bodies in the Dunes" and the album-opening "Burn the Worm" -- come early in the proceedings. Unsurprisingly, things sort of run out of steam halfway through. But it's a short record so I never really got bored with it.

If this doesn't really sound like your cup of tea, then by all means stay away. But if you, like me, occasionally seek out music that stirs your bowels as much as it does your heart, then you might want to give it a listen.

Book Review: "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin

The Kingslayer

I have very much the same defensive angry nerd reaction to fantasy as I do towards science fiction. When a friend or someone else I respect recommends that I read something ("A Song of Ice and Fire") or watch something ("Battlestar Galactica," "Firefly," etc.) that falls into either one of these two genres, my back immediately gets all up in a fighting stance. What do you mean, I'll like it? I'm not THAT guy. Why would you think that? I mean, sure, I had a mullet in high school and I was in the marching band and I didn't go to any of the school dances and I played Dungeons and Dragons for way longer than I'm comfortable admitting...but really? "Battlestar Galactica"? Come on! My favorite movie is "Apocalypse Now." I rocked so hard at death metal concerts in college that this one time I needed surgery afterwards! I used to have a mohawk, for fuck's sake! I shoot guns sometimes! I interviewed the drummer from Slipknot! I hung out on the guy from Coal Chamber's tour bus! "Firefly"? Whatever. You might as well suggest I should dive into the "Star Trek: Voyager" DVD set. No fucking way. I'm not gonna watch some bullshit about spaceships and robots, and I sure as shit am not gonna read some nerdy crap about swords and princesses and dragons and whatever else. Give me a good gangster movie any day of the week. The mullet is long gone. I haven't played a video game in years. I've had hot girlfriends. My ears are pierced. So no WAY I'm that guy!

I say all this to explain how it is that I've finally come to the sad realization that I really, REALLY need to get over myself.

Over and over again I've found myself having to eat crow once I actually do sit down and watch or read one of these things. I finally gave "Firefly" a shot last year. Brilliant. "Battlestar Galactica"? One of my favorite shows of all time.

This whole "Game of Thrones" phenomenon seemed way beyond me for the longest time. I'd been told of it ("really, Scotty, you'll like it..."), but I'd managed to pretty much avoid the whole thing. And then HBO had to go and make a show. And all the critics had to go and rave about it. And all the sudden everyone had to tell me, again, how brilliant the books are. How gritty and dark and real. Seriously, Scotty, you'll like it.

Ugh.

I watched a YouTube teaser trailer for the first season of "Game of Thrones" with deep suspicion. This sure looks like bullshit nerdboy fantasy to me, I thought. Why is that blonde chick wearing furs? Oh crap, that's the dude from "Lord of the Rings". Jeez, now they're sword fighting. That other chick sure looks like a princess. I don't know...

But the critics kept raving, and the friends kept recommending. But read the books first they said.

Damnit, so now this is going to have to be a commitment.

Sigh.

Finally, back around the end of November, pretty much on a whim I decided to download "Game of Thrones" as an audio book. Thirty-three hours, it was. I could listen to it, an hour a day, at the gym. At the GYM. That's not too dorky, right? And if I don't like it I can just delete it from my iPod and pretend this sorry mummer's farce never happened.

If you're in the know, you can probably guess from that last sentence how things turned out.

I cruised through "Game of Thrones" in about a week. The whole "hour at the gym" thing fell apart when I then found myself driving around in circles for another five ("just one more chapter...") When I finished I had an actual panic attack that I hadn't yet purchased "A Clash of Kings." It took about a half-hour to download from Audible. Unacceptable. It was three in the morning, so I actually sat there and stared at the little spinny icon thing on my computer until it finished. And then, at 3:30 a.m., I put on my headphones and started right up again.

It's about two months later, and I'm about a third of the way through "A Dance With Dragons." I almost feel like I'm emerging from some sort of solitary confinement, all haggard and bleary eyed and grateful for human contact (sort of like Reek emerging from Ramsey Bolton's dungeon...). I've had countless dreams about being on The Wall with Jon Snow and facing off against the Wights on the Fist of the First Men with Samwell Tarly, as well as several fairly embarrassing ones about Danaerys Targaryan and one really horrible one in which I was consumed by Wildfire while Varys the Eunuch stood by and laughed. When people talk to me in regular American accents, I don't quite know how to respond. I haven't even touched the HBO show yet. I'm actually a little terrified to watch it. If they screw it up, I might cry.

This is maybe my favorite series of books ever.

What Martin manages to do with "A Song of Ice and Fire" is what all good fantasy should do, but what most that I've tried to read (which, admittedly, is not all that much since I got bored with the "Dragonlance" books in elementary school) don't: immerse the reader in a whole-world experience that, over time, begins to feel more real than his or her own. I feel -- between the books themselves and all the extra hours wasted on A Wiki of Ice and Fire filling in the blanks -- that I probably know at least as much about the history and mythologies of Westeros and the lands of the East as I do about the Greeks, Romans, medieval Brits, etc. I can close my eyes and picture the geography of the Seven Kingdoms as clearly as I can that of North America.

But Martin goes much further than just that. Everything you've heard about how gritty and morally ambiguous these books are is absolutely true. My biggest problem with fantasy (and science fiction) are always the stock characters and the emphasis on high romance and heroics (I know, I know, I'm painting with too a broad brush and forgetting everything from "Blade Runner" to "Beowulf." I get it. Settle down). There's none of that here. Instead, we're given a world so rich as to be almost overpowering, rooted in the darkest sort of reality and populated with characters who either can't distinguish between right and wrong or who simply don't give a shit.

This is what I captured my grim cynic's heart about "Battlestar Galactica" when I finally sat down to watch it. Martin does it even better, and with an ear for dialogue and an eye for truly excruciating detail that the writer in me can only admire with awe and envy.

The story is so incredibly dense that I'm not even going to try to summarize it. I'll also do my best to avoid major spoilers, but if you haven't read the books or watched the series, beware.

Here are a few of my thoughts on each book:

1. "A Game of Thrones" (1996)

Oh, Dany...

The first book is one of the shortest and probably overall the simplest of the series. Even so, it's pretty sprawling. We're introduced to so many characters that, at times, I felt a little shell shocked (and, as I learned later, we only meet about half of the people who are going to matter here).

The book grabbed me from the prologue, where we see our first Other, and Chapter One, where we meet Bran and get to know the Starks of Winterfell. Right away, I could tell this wasn't exactly fantasy fiction the way I've come to understand it. Sure, there are swords and Knights and Lords, but it reads more like historical fiction crossed with a good James M. Cain novel or Dashiell Hammett murder mystery. The sense of dread that Martin builds is as powerful and ominous as in any respectable horror story.

This is fantasy by way of film noir. Heroes don't really exist in Martin's world ... but villains do. We come to love Eddard Stark and his unbending sense of honor, but about halfway through the book we want to slap him upside the head for his confounding obtuseness. Everyone else falls somewhere in the middle...except for Cersei and Jaimie Lannister, of course. Holy God. Are there any two characters more vile in the history of English letters? I can't think of them.

And then, of course, there's Tyrion. How can you not love Tyrion?

Defining moment: What Cersei made Eddard do to Lady. If I ever wished I could actually murder a fictional character, it was her in that moment.

2. "A Clash of Kings" (1999)

After the genuinely shocking conclusion to "A Game of Thrones," Martin takes us through the fallout in "Clash" at a leisurely (some might say grueling) pace. His War of the Five Kings very clearly shows how rooted his imagination is in actual medieval history rather than Gary Gygax-esque mysticism. I felt like I was experiencing, in real time, the Wars of the Roses that tore England apart. So far, there's still very little beyond the setting that is in any way fantastical. The dragons have barely been touched upon, and the Wights are still a complete and utter mystery. We have Bran's visions, but it's too early to tell what any of it means.

What I loved about this book is how deftly Martin sets up and then follows through with all the labyrinthine political and military conflicts. Everything that transpires -- from the North's rebellion, the courtship of Highgarden, to the invasion of the Iron Men -- feels completely logical and utterly true. Nothing is simple, allegiances aren't what they seem, and as the war progresses we begin to comprehend the full scope, horror and devastation of this sort of conflict. There is nothing heroic or romantic about any of it.

It's in this book where Tyrion really starts to come into focus as a character. The story of his first wife, Tysha, is heartbreaking, but it's not until we meet his father, Tywin, and see the two interact that we really start to understand the demons that drive the little man. But he's unquestionably a genius, of the most diabolical (and still lovable) sort. What he did with the Chain and the Wildfire...as much as I hated myself for it, I couldn't help but cheer.

Martin also very deftly dives into the gender roles of the day through his depictions of what happens to Arya Stark and her sister Sansa. Arya can only survive by pretending to be a boy, and Sansa is punished every day for being a girl. The abuse Sansa suffers at the hands of the Lannisters is nauseating. If I hated Cersei in the first book, I really hated Joffrey in this one. But the way Arya consistently gets the better of those who underestimate her is, by contrast, exhilarating. She's the most badass little 10-year-old in all of fiction, as far as I'm concerned.

At this point, I found the chapters focusing on Jon (on the Wall) and Dany (far in the East) as frustrating as they were entertaining. They're both interesting stories in their own right, but I got so wrapped up in the War for the Iron Throne that every time we cut away to either of them I was tempted to just skip that chapter and get back to Westeros.

Defining moment: what happens to Winterfell.

3. "A Storm of Swords" (2000)

Long as it is, in some ways "A Storm of Swords" feels less like a book in its own right and more the very extended conclusion to "Clash". When we pick things up, not a whole lot has changed for our major characters (save for Bran and Rickon). Jon's still on The Wall. Dany's still in the East. Sansa's still in the clutches of the Lannisters. Arya's still wandering the Riverlands, trying to find her way back home. And Robb, Catelyn, Stannis, and the Iron Men are still waging their bloody war against King Joffrey.

The most interesting -- and, to be honest, genius -- twist that Martin gives us is to finally introduce Jaime as a POV character. We've come to revile both him and Cersei over the course of the previous two books. Now, we get to see the world through Jaime's eyes. And suddenly things become much more complicated.

There's not too much I want to say about this book (in many ways, it's my favorite) because there's little I can say without giving anything precious away. It's by far the darkest of the series (and that's really saying something). What I will say is this:

1) Brienne of Tarth is a badass. And I really want to give her a hug.
2) We finally start to get a sense of how Dany and Jon's stories are going to relate to the larger drama.
3) The Red Wedding. Fuck me...
4) I kind of like Little Finger, despite myself.
5) Tyrion rules.

Beyond that, suffice it to say that, if this is in any way similar to the way the Wars of the Roses played out, I thank the Seven that I wasn't born until a millennia later.

Defining moment: The Red Wedding. Fucking hell. I haven't experienced anything near that upsetting since I read "American Psycho" while delerious with pneumonia.

4. "A Feast For Crows" (2005)

To understand why this book is so weird, you need to know a little about its publishing history. Originally, "Feast" and "A Dance With Dragons" were meant to be one book. The manuscript was so long that Martin's publisher insisted he divide it into two books. Instead of making the obvious choice of simply cutting it in half, he decided to separate them by character and location and then extensively rewrite both (this also lead to the long publishing delay that made so many of his fans howl with rage, apparently).

I understand why he did it the way he did, but unfortunately the result is that "Feast" is probably the weakest of the series. It's still good, but most of the characters we've come to really care about are either dead or are off somewhere out of sight, barely mentioned. Instead of Jon, Davos, Cat, Bran, and Tyrion, we're given Cersei, Jaimie, and Brienne as our main POV characters, with little jaunts off with the Dornish and the Iron Men. We do get a bit of Arya and Sansa, but they're mostly in the background (I'll get back to Arya in a minute).

We're mostly left with the dust settling from the War of the Five Kings. As is the case with most wars, the conclusion isn't nearly as satisfying as we might have wished. That's okay, because what Martin sacrifices in heroics and epic valor, he more than makes up in some truly chilling psychological realism.

After four books, we finally get to peak inside the head of Cersei. Whereas Jaimie becomes more sympathetic the more we get to know him, Cersei grows -- if possible -- even more vile. But she stops being evil for the sake of being evil. What Martin gives us is a truly unsettling look into the mind of an utterly damaged sociopath. Even scarier, we start to comprehend the cruel and twisted logic she uses to justify her increasingly horrifying actions. Cersei is someone who simply cannot exist without an enemy. Even when there are none to be found, she has to create them. And there's more than a little "Mommy Dearest" to her relationship with Tommen. To say any more would be to spoil some truly bone-chilling stuff.

For the first time, Arya's story feels a little superfluous. I'm not sure where Martin is going with this, but to be honest it's straining credibility. Again, I don't want to say much more.

I'm also not sure about the Lady Stoneheart subplot. It's interesting, but I have to admit that at this point it it feels like Martin's reaching. We'll see.

Try as I might, I just can't seem to care about what's going on in Dorne. I know it's going to be important, but we're four books in and it just feels too late for Martin to introduce this whole new culture and host of characters, particularly at the expense of the ones we're waiting to come back.

Defining moment: Cersei burning the Tower of the Hand.

5. "A Dance With Dragons" (2011)

I'm only about a third of the way through this one, so I don't have too much to say about it yet. So far, at least, it seems to be an improvement over "Feast." I'm glad to be back with Tyrion, Bran, Jon and Dany -- particularly now that Jon and Dany's stories finally feel intrinsically tied to the whole story.

Defining moment (so far): Tyrion's plunge into the Rhoyne while battling the Stone Man. Or maybe Bran's first meeting with the Three Eyed Crow.

Can I just take a moment to bitch about the audio books? The first three were fantastic. But apparently there was a change in publishers, and even though they brought narrator Roy Dotrice (an English actor) back they've completely changed the pronunciation of names (Petyr Baelish and Catelyn Stark, most eggregiously) and the character voices. Arya and Dany now talk like withered old crones. Mellisandre sounds like Corky from "Life Goes On." The worst is Petyr. Dotrice had previously given him the silkiest, sleaziest drawl, barely above a whisper. Now he talks with Tywin Lannister's bluster.

WTF Random House?!? Why make these changes? Are you just trying to put your own stamp on the books? Then sack up and get a different narrator altogether. At least then the new voices would make sense.

Best of 2010

I'm not going to include the generally required "Worst of" list here because I haven't seen, read, or listened to enough stuff to feel like I reliably know what ate shit the hardest. I will include a couple disappointments, however, things I was really looking forward to that let me down.

Also -- for the same reason -- calling this a "Best of" list is probably somewhat deceiving. I missed a LOT of stuff this year. These are simply the things that stuck out in my mind the most.

Best Movie: Shutter Island

Yeah, I'm surprised by this one too. Looking back at Wikipedia's list of films released in 2010, it's impossible not to be struck by how weak this year really was for movie fans. Granted, I missed the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop and I haven't seen The Fighter or True Grit yet, but even if those are as brilliant as everyone has been saying they are, 2010 still sucked the big one for movies.

Objectively speaking, Inception and The Social Network are probably the better movies. But if I'm going to be 100 percent honest I have to say Shutter Island is probably the film I had the most fun with this year. It's minor Scorsese, to be sure, and deeply flawed. But I loved the energy and Scorsese's complete committment to the movie's pulp, overwrought tone and story. You can just feel the fun everyone was having making this. Mark Ruffalo's understated performance manages to anchor an otherwise wildly histrionic experience, and Michelle Williams' gooseflesh-inducing final scene still sticks with me.

Honorable Mentions: The Social Network, Un Prophet, Inception, 127 Hours

Biggest Disappointment: Black Swan

I was really looking forward to this one. The trailer made it seem like it was going to be Darren Aronofsky at his Pi/Requiem For A Dream mind-exploding best. Instead it's merely a decent, mostly watchable thriller with a half-baked script that borrows liberally from much better fare like Repulsion and a central performance (by Natalie Portman) that is one of the most irritating things I've seen onscreen since Jar-Jar Binks.

Best TV: The Walking Dead

The above scene encapsulates everything I love about AMC's new Frank Darabont-produced zombie saga. After too many years of watching my beloved zombies reduced to a joke and a silly punchline in movies and books, finally we get something that -- like Romero's original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead -- actually takes the idea seriously. Think about it: a zombie apocalypse is about the most horrifying concept anyone can think of. To survive you're not just forced to shoot shambling, flesh-eating ghouls ... you'd have to put a bullet in the brains of your friends, your brothers and sisters, your husbands and wives, maybe even your children.

Zombies aren't funny. Zombies are tragic.

The Walking Dead does for zombies what Battlestar Galactica did for space operas. The show has moments that are truly thrilling and genuinely scary, but the overall tone is one of contemplative sadness. That phrase may not sell the show to the more ADD-prone amongst us, but for a zombie purist like myself it came as a truly welcome breath of fresh air.

Honorable Mention: Sons of Anarchy Season 3

Best Book: The Passage by Justin Cronin

I already wrote a pretty long review of this one, so I won't say too much about it here. Suffice it to say that this book works in much the same way as The Walking Dead. It takes an over-familiar horror concept -- in this case a vampire apocalypse -- and elevates it to something that approaches high art. This book pretty much single-handedly renewed my faith in the possibilities for horror fiction.

And it's the first in a trilogy! I literally cannot wait for the second installment.

Honorable Mention: Full Dark No Stars by Stephen King (you can also read my review of this one)

Biggest Disappointment: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The last in Larsson's immensely popular Millenium trilogy was a decent enough book, but ultimately it was kind of anticlimactic after the superlative The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. Lisbeth Salander -- one of the most badass heroines in the history of modern fiction -- spends most her time in a hospital bed or a courtroom. As much as I enjoyed the book, overall I'd have to say it was a big letdown. This is probably because it was not actually meant to be the end of the trilogy, but became so after Larsson's untimely death. Here's to imagining what could have been...

Best Album: High Violet by The National

This came out of nowhere for me. I read a little blurb about these guys in Rolling Stone that said they were influenced by Nick Cave, so I downloaded it from iTunes figuring it'd be something I'd listen to once and forget about. Instead, it hasn't left my earphones for more than two weeks at a time. The album is a simple, gorgeous, and melancholy wonder. I listened to it nonstop while reading The Passage, and I think the pairing improved both the album and the book for me. The second track, "Sorrow," can still bring a tear to my eye if I'm in the right (or wrong) mood.

If you haven't taken the time to listen to it yet, do yourself a favor and give it a spin. If it doesn't pluck at your heart strings, you're probably either a serial killer, a politician, or you work on Wall Street.

Honorable Mention: Grinderman II by Grinderman

Best Home Video Discovery: (tie) Moon (2009) and The Wire (2002-2008)

All I'm going to say is that Moon might be the best movie I've seen in ten years and The Wire is the best television show, ever. You might disagree. But you'd be wrong.

Book Review: "Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King (2010)

Warning: some spoilers below

As much as I love, love, LOVE Stephen King, I'll be the first to admit that, even at his very best, he can be kind of a clumsy writer. Much as King himself described the late, great Robert E. Howard (of the original "Conan the Barbarian" stories), King tends to wield his considerable talent as bludgeon rather than a scalpel.

But, while he will never be a perfect writer, he is -- at his best -- a near perfect storyteller.

Full Dark, No Stars is a case in point.

The problem with Big Steve -- can I call you Big Steve? Thanks -- is that, as soon as he turned into a Bestsellasaurus Rex (his phrase), he appeared to believe that he really didn't need an editor anymore. I've always bristled at the oft-stated cliché that Steve could publish his laundry list if he wanted. But, as much as I hate to admit it, it's true. And, as time went on, the books just got longer...and longer...and longer...

Last year's Under the Dome was heralded by many as a return to form. It garnered (ridiculous) comparisons to The Stand. I disagree. It was good, but it wasn't great. The closest Steve has gotten to greatness in recent years was 2002's From a Buick 8, which -- aside from an absolutely godawful final chapter that I have since tried my best to block from my memory -- was taut, tight, original, and very scary. It was also the shortest book he had published in a long, long time.

Even though he has become so known for his massive, phonebook-sized tomes, with the exception of The Stand(1978), It (1986) and maybe Bag of Bones (1998) , most of them grow more exasperating than exhilarating as they ramble on (two of them -- 1987's The Tommyknockers and 1994's Insomnia -- are damn near unreadable).

This is what makes Full Dark, No Stars the first true King classic in probably about 15 years. It's a collection of novellas, much like the masterful Different Seasons (1982) and the very-good-if-not-quite-masterful Four Past Midnight (1990). This is the length where King is at his best. Most of my favorite King stories -- The Body, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, Secret Window, Secret Garden -- appeared in one of those two books. My other favorite King story, The Mist, is another novella first published in Kirby McCauley's Dark Forces anthology (1981) and reprinted in King's own Skeleton Crew (1985).

Add to that list at least two of the stories in the new collection. This is King at his leanest, meanest, darkest, Bachman best.

The first, longest, and best story in Full Dark, No Stars is 1922. Told in the first person in the form of a written confession by Nebraska Farmer Wilfred James, 1922 is a black-as-pitch examination of how apparent good fortune can lead to catastrophe. Wilfred's wife, Arletta, comes into an inheritance of 100 acres from her dead father. Arletta wants to sell the land and move to Omaha to open a dress shop. Wilfred wants to add the land to his own 80 acres. An immovable force meets and unstoppable object. Eventually (no spoiler here, this is revealed on the first page), Wilfred convinces their fourteen-year-old son, Hank, to help him murder Arletta and dump her body into an old well.

This being a Stephen King story, things go disastrously awry. The punishment meeted out to Wilfred, Hank, and Hank's innocent girlfriend Shannon is as tragic as it is absolutely horrifying. Supernatural elements aside, it's also all strangely plausible, rooted in the truth of 1920s Midwestern farm life.. King is a master at finding horror in everyday objects and situations, and in 1922 such things as a cracked drain pipe and a lady's hatbox gain almost totemic significance.

And, of course, there are the rats. I've never really had a fear of rats before, but I do now.

Steve follows this with Big Driver, a 70s-style rape-revenge fantasy that thankfully stays away from the inherent exploitation elements (Steve depicts the assault itself in just a couple pages, wisely getting in and getting out as quickly as possible) and instead focuses on the trauma and the aftermath. The lead character, Tess, is a semi-successful mystery novelist assaulted and left for dead on her way home from a lecture. Instead of reporting her attack she instead decides to exact her own justice. Steve makes a lot of the disconnect between Tess's fictional, light-hearted murder mysteries and the true horror of what she has experienced.

The story rings some false notes (there are a couple twists and turns that had me shaking my head) and wraps up altogether too neatly, but King paints a portrait of trauma that is both harrowing and heartbreaking, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to cheer Tess on when her simmering rage inevitably turns to murder.

Fair Extension, the third and shortest story, is the only one that sort of feels like fluff. Streeter is a miserable man in his early 50s dying of cancer. He meets a stranger by the side of the road who may be the Devil himself. Ole' Scratch offers Streeter a deal: he'll give Streeter a "life extension" if he agrees to fork over 15 percent of his income (it seems Satan has lost interest in souls and is instead looking for Caribbean tax shelters). The catch is that Streeter has to pick someone to receive all his bad luck. Streeter picks his best friend from childhood, Tom Goodhough, a successful businessman with a perfect family whom Streeter has secretly hated for decades.

The story is a breezy and entertaining black comedy, but there's very little substance to it. We get to see Streeter's life improve as Tom's falls apart in Biblical ways. That's about it. What I did like, however, is how Steve essentially turns the old Faustian morality tale on its head. We keep waiting for Streeter to get his comeuppance. It doesn't happen.

The book ends with A Good Marriage, which is Steve's meditation on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, and how his wife claimed to know nothing of his murderous ways. Probably the less said about this one the better. Again, Steve very astutely stays away from most of the seamy details of the killings and instead focuses on the sheer horror of what it would be like to find out that the sweet, attentive husband you have shared a bed with for more than a quarter-century might actually be a psychopath. The story unfolds in some nice, unexpected ways, and leads to a conclusion that is -- while predictable -- ultimately satisfying. In many ways, it's the quietest of the four stories. It's also probably the most chilling.

I have no illusions that Full Dark, No Stars is going to be the start of a Stephen King renaissance. I'm sure his next book will likely be another bloated, overplotted brick. I'll read it anyway, and I'm sure I'll (mostly) like it. But until then, I'm thankful to have a little taste of the old, transcendent King that I have yearned for for so long.

A few thoughts on the response to "SEND"

SEND (2010) from Trifecta+ Entertainment on Vimeo.

I sort of feel like trying to write a really good story is a bit like conducting surgery while blindfolded. You hack away at the thing, hoping you don't hit an artery and kill it. You try to find the infected appendix or whatever it is you're looking for by touch alone and take it out.

And sometimes your hand slips and you stick your scalpel into a bundle of raw nerves.

That seems to be what's happened with "SEND."

I went to see a play back in August -- "Trust," by Stephen Dietz -- and I was floored by this one scene. One character confronts another about his infidelity. Glasses are thrown. Accusations are hurled. And my jaw was on the floor.

The actress in that scene was Amelia Ampuero, and I immediately had the thought that I wanted to do a movie with her where I would just put the camera on her face and let her do her thing. It seemed sort of crazy, like something you think about and right away realize won't work at all.

But then -- and this is just the way my brain works, folks -- I suddenly had this image of her covered in blood and talking about eating a rat. To steal my favorite metaphor from Stephen King, my Muse took a big old crap on the top of my head and the idea was there, whole and pretty much fully formed.

That's it. I initially thought this would just be a little web video, something I could post quickly while we were finishing up some of our larger projects. I figured it would be, at most, ten minutes long. I hammered out a draft that came out to about thirteen pages, sent it to a few friends for feedback, and contacted Amelia to see if she was interested.

Once Amelia agreed to do it, I incorporated some of the notes I had gotten from friends and started fleshing out the script. It began to bloat over the coarse of a few drafts, ending up at about twenty pages. A little long for a web video, but whatever. It would still be super easy to shoot, which was what I was looking for at that moment. Some people would stick with it, I figured, and some wouldn't.

As far as the content itself, as I saw the story taking shape I realized this had the potential to be a really striking and unsettling little film if we did it right. I liked that. I thought the movie would fuck with people. That's good. I like to fuck with people.

The shoot went well. Amelia was incredible, as I knew she would be. Mary's makeup was stunning. I started thinking that maybe this was a bit more of a "real" film than I had initially figured it would be.

I sort of knew I had a tiger by the tail when I started editing it last Monday. Amelia's performance was absolutely riveting. I found myself just sitting and watching it rather than working on it.

But I still had no idea.

After I posted it on Friday, I watched as the number of views climbed up to 100...then 300...then suddenly 1,500...3,600...finally over 6,000. Over 80 people reposted it on Facebook. An untold number sent the link to their friends via email. It wasn't exactly viral, but it was on its way.

Then the emails started rolling in. Amongst all the "way to go"s and "that was awesome"s that you expect to get from your friends, I started getting email after email from people I didn't know. Most of them seemed to be from women, many of them mothers. They all told me the movie made them cry. One woman told me that, immediately after watching it, she went and hugged her kids and then called her husband while he was at work to tell him she loved him. Yet another told me the movie was making her "rethink the way I'm living my life."

To which my response was "...uh...what?"

And then I got this email this morning:

"hi. you dont know me. a friend sent me a link to your movie Send and I just felt like i had to write to you to express my gratitude. I felt you made this movie about me. a year ago i split up with my husband. It has been a nasty divorce and i have at times even contemplated suicide, only not doing it because of my kids. but then I saw your movie and it made me realize what is important, and i cannot thank you enough. thank you thank you thank you"

(I wrote back and asked the sender -- who will remain anonymous -- if I could reprint that here. She said yes.)

I just don't know what to say to that.

I don't want to overstate this. I know we didn't cure cancer or anything. We made a movie. I guess all I can say is that I'm absolutely floored, humbled, and completely overwhelmed by the response. As a writer and filmmaker I've never experienced anything remotely like it before.

One thing I absolutely must say, though, is that I refuse to take credit. Sure, I think I wrote a pretty good script. But I had help from friends, who were not shy about telling me what worked and what didn't.

Really, this movie only exists because of Amelia. It was watching her on stage that inspired me to write it, and it was her performance in the film that, I believe, has led to the response that it has had.

And, of course, there's my beloved Trifecta team. There's Mary's makeup. You truly have to see it to believe it. There were Bust's costumes and guns, which is what gives that last scene the boxer's punch that it has. And -- even though I sort of shot this one myself -- there was Corey's invaluable advice and help with the lighting.

Beyond that, I don't really have anything else to say. I really, honestly had no idea. Sometimes you just stick your blade into a bundle of nerves, that's all.

Two new albums by Grinderman and Dead Confederate

Grinderman - "Grinderman II"

When Nick Cave stepped away from his piano and picked up a guitar in 2005 and started writing the messy, blues-punk songs that eventually coalesced into his 2007 side project Grinderman, it was clear that the dour Australian was looking to break from the bleak confines of The Bad Seeds and have himself a little fun. Grinderman was a welcome departure, even for die hard Seeds fans like myself, completely tossing aside the Gothic melancholia of his regular band (at least in its more recent outings) and harkening back to his snarling days with seminal Aussie punk band The Birthday Party in the early 1980s. With the album's first single, the viciously hilarious "No Pussy Blues," Cave showed the world that he could still cut loose and have a laugh.

Now he's back with Grinderman II. Where Grinderman was a fun but ultimately pretty depthless diversion, the new album is probably Cave's best and most vital new music since the Bad Seeds Nocturama in 2003. At the very least, it's a marked improvement over both the first Grinderman album and the Bad Seeds' somewhat lackluster Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008).

Announcing itself with a roar from the very first track, the absurdly titled "Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man," Cave and his crew have managed to craft an album that has all the gnarled, messy punk-rock swirl of their first effort along with the brooding Apocalyptic menace of The Bad Seeds at their best. Whereas Dig had a few good songs sprinkled amongst a lot of filler and Grinderman sort of ran out of steam about three quarters of the way through, Grinderman II stays taut and focused until the very last note. This is music from the id. There's nary a misstep here.

And if you haven't seen it yet, you must check out the completely unhinged video for the album's first single, "Heathen Child" (NSFW). WTF?


Grinderman - "Heathen Child"
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Dead Confederate - "Sugar"

Dead Confederate are a really solid band from Athens, Georgia, who have never quite lived up to the promise of their first self-titled E.P. in 2008. That collection of five songs -- from the gloomy swagger of their first single "The Rat" to the bludgeoning stomp of the E.P.'s closing track "Shadow the Walls -- just came out of nowhere and crushed me. I don't think it left my earphones for about five months.

Their first full length album, Wrecking Ball came out at the end of that year, and had some real highs and lows. They re-recorded "The Rat" and somehow managed to sap the song of its energy, and other tracks like "Yer Circus" and "Heavy Petting" felt like half-baked filler. But they nailed it with "It Was A Rose," "Goner," and "Start Me Laughing." They were sort of dismissed by critics as Southern neo-grunge, but really at their best they were loud alt-country with a bite, displaying aural flourishes drawn from influences as disparate as Skynyrd and Floyd, Nirvana and Joy Division.

Their just-released second album, Sugar, is an odd departure. Noticeably absent are the alt-country touches that defined their sound early on. This record is much more rooted in late 80s/early 90s post-punk -- undoubtably influenced in no small part by their association with J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., with whom they toured last year and who makes a guest appearance on the album's first single, "Giving it All Away."

It took me about three listens to decide that this is actually a much stronger album than Wrecking Ball, which for all its assets can be a singularly frustrating experience to listen to all the way through. Where Wrecking Ball featured some real standout tracks but didn't cohere as an album, Sugar doesn't feature any one song that will jump out at you but somehow comes together magnificently as an entire work.

There's something weirdly fractured and unpleasant about this album ... and I mean that as a compliment. The songs drone and crash without any real obvious sense of purpose, but then somehow it all just comes together in the end. There's very little of what you could call a hook anywhere to be found, and yet the album as a whole has a strange momentum and builds a dark, almost schizophrenic mood that, by the end, seeps into your pores. It's what Sonic Youth and Fugazi do at their best.

Unfortunately, the one glaring weak spot on the album is the single. The song just kind of jangles along and then ends without any real impact. The only thing moderately memorable is Mascis's buzz-saw guitar solo. If it hadn't been for that, I would have said they should have just that one on the cutting room floor.

Luckily they've released another video for a much better song, "Run From the Gun." Check it out.