Books-Archived

Disney’s first trailer for John Carter has hit the internets –

The movie is intended to be the first of a trilogy based on the first three books in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series – I suspect another attempt to capture a little Pirates of the Caribbean magic, although that didn’t work too well for Prince of Persia – and so far it looks…well, it’s been a long time since I read any John Carter books, but I seem to remember red Martians being red and not merely tattooed, green Martians looking less like Geonosians, and there being much more nudity.

That said, I will give this a shot as I’m a big fan of Taylor Kitsch after Friday Night Lights (and yes, I liked him as Gambit), and because once I put my misgivings aside, it’s actually quite a nice trailer.

I still don’t quite understand the Disney marketing department’s decision to take the ‘of Mars’ out of the title, though. Are they worried that people will think it’s science fiction? Because there are aliens in it, you know…

When it comes to adapting books (or comics, for that matter) to screen, casting can be a tricky thing – especially for the main character of a series of novels with a pretty big following.

You see, there’s good casting, there’s casting against type, and there’s miscasting. And then there’s fatal miscasting. The kind of casting that results in howls of derision from fans of the source material, suggesting that producers simply do not understand the draw of characters in books.

Take Jack Reacher, the ex-Army MP who lives a nomadic life on the highways of America. Reacher’s a tough-as-nails 6’5″ powerhouse of a man who can take – and dish out – beatings that would make a normal man curl up in a ball and cry for his mother. He’s laconic but witty, a crack shot, an incredibly keen observer, with a nose for trouble and a highly developed sense of right and wrong. A man not afraid to break laws to protect the little guy (or girl).

Over the course of 15 hard-bittenly-titled novels (Child has said in the past that the 19th book will be Reacher’s last, titled ‘Die Lonely‘), Reacher has shot, punched, stabbed, thrown, and generally killed a wide array of shitheels, criminals and murderers across the country. Men want to be him, women want to be him. He’s one of the few current literary characters who matches so completely an archetype.

In spite of the modern setting and trappings of the books – Reacher’s worked with the Secret Service in one book, and the FBI in another – it’s very much a traditional Western series in my mind; only this cowboy leaves a pile of bodies behind him when he leaves town, not a silver bullet – but they all had it coming.

So who would you get to portray this tough as nails character? I’m actually not 100% committed to the character’s height, but he still needs to be of a decent size, and have an intimidating physicality. Viggo Mortenson was circling the role a few years ago; Hugh Jackman’s got the physique for it and can certainly turn up the machismo (and his casting as Wolverine is one of the reasons I don’t care about height too much); someone even tossed Liev Schreiber’s name into the mix, and I’d be good with that too.

However the perfect Reacher, for me at least, would be Jason Statham (if he could get the accent down).

Statham’s come a long way since he high-dived at the Olympics, and has carved himself an impressive career as one of the last remaining action heroes – but, as shown in The Bank Job, the man can also actually act.

And he can also summon up a glower that would make grown men piss their pants if they ran into him in a dark alley.

So do movie executives go for Statham? No. They go for Tom Cruise.

Now, can Tom Cruise act? Undoubtedly. In spite of what seems to be a quite abrasive off-screen persona, I’m actually a pretty big Cruise fan, and I think more people should see Valkyrie.

Can Tom Cruise act against type? Again, yes. This is the man who so completely went against type in Magnolia that there are very few occasions where yelling ‘Respect the cock!‘ will not get a laugh*.

Can Tom Cruise intimidate? Yes, his stone-cold killer in Collateral was a revelation.

But can Tom Cruise walk into a diner and intimidate the shit out of a man without opening his mouth? Can his sheer physicality cause people to worry? Can you buy him as an ex-Army badass who can take on five or six guys in a straight fistfight and win without breaking too much of a sweat?

No, you cannot.

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in One Shot: miscasting so fatal it makes casting Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross look like a genius move.

Via
*Laughter not guaranteed; also not recommended in an office environment, or where children are present.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s promotional push for Paul is in swing and as part of it they’ve put out a little video of them re-enacting Star Wars on College Humor. Well, kind of…

I read the script for Paul a while ago and loved it, although it did seem full of in-jokes to the extent that it may be impenetrable to non-geeks. Luckily, I don’t fall into that category, and as I love Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (and the last of those is probably the best of these, the most approachable and the most underrated) I’m going to try to go and see this at some point.

As it happens I’m also reading Pegg’s autobiography, Nerd Do Well that the better half bought for me in the UK at Christmas (it’s not out here till the summer, apparently).

It’s lightweight but entertaining – although if I’m perfectly honest, part of me could have probably done without the tale of how 14 year old Pegg got his first gobble.

Hee. ‘Gobble’.

It’s not all comics, comics, comics, you know. I do actually read real books too – although admittedly, I seem to be going a tad slow on those recently.

Anyway, there’s a bunch of books that look like they might be right up my street if I had the time to read them and since you might be looking to scratch a zombie itch now that The Walking Dead if off the air for a while.

You could even buy them for me if you like. Or not…

Feed - I’m a sucker for new, fresh, or simply good takes on zombies (I loved Stephen King’s Cell a few years back) and this sounds promising, especially given it starts in a society rebuilt after a zombie-like breakdown 25 years previously. Mix in social media, presidential shenanigans, and a cover design that I love, and this is on the list.

Play Dead – while I’m on the subject of zombies, I like the sound of this too. In a Texas town, an entire football team save the coach and the quarterback when their bus crashes – apparently due to another team. How are you going to win a championship with a dead team? Turn to a witch doctor, apparently. In my head, this is Friday Night Lights meets Dawn of the Dead.

Death Troopers – rounding out the zombie-type books that I quite like the sound of is this – and as it’s Star Wars Zombies, I really shouldn’t have to explain why it sounds good.

Full disclosure: first off, I’m not a huge fan of these ‘treasure trove’ types of books where the book comes with removable reprints of memorabilia, and second, I love Peanuts. So these two things should even themselves out.

There’s something about the antics of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, et al. that just gets me. Whether it’s Charlie Brown’s constant underdog status, Snoopy’s understated cool, Linus’ unshakable belief in things he’s told are wrong, or Lucy’s cynicism, there are so many elements of the strip that resonate with me and, given it’s longevity and popularity, millions of others.

Even accepting my general dislike of these kinds of book, this – released to coincide with Peanuts’ 60th anniversary – is a nice example of how they should be done. Not every page has something detachable, thankfully, but virtually every page does have several pictures of rare items. Items included include a film cel, some frameable prints, stickers, comics, a Great Pumpkin carol leaflet, early advertising featuring the characters (for the Ford Falcon) and much more.

On the text side, the book is relatively light – but that seems to be par for the course for these things. Yes, there are over 25 ‘chapters’ but each one takes only a page of the book and focuses on one topic. Subjects range from character pieces (why Linus and Lucy get combined on one page I’ll never know) to merchandising, animation, and a look at how the character of Franklin broke new ground. Writer Nat Gertler has an amazingly comprehensive knowledge of the strip and it’s history so they never fail to be entertaining, if short.

Realistically, this book isn’t going to win any new fans to the world of Peanuts but conversely it’s probably not aimed at them. For fans of the strip already, there’s plenty new here to enjoy – and for those people, I’d highly recommend the book.

The Peanuts Collection: Treasures from the World’s Most Beloved Comic Strip is available on Amazon and at other booksellers. A copy of this book was supplied by the publisher for review.

The trailer for Danny Boyle’s next movie, 127 Hours, has been released, and it’s not shy about touting the Oscar-winner’s previous successes.

For the sake of movie spoilers, I’m putting the rest of this post behind a jump…

I know, I know – I’m late to the party on the Scalzi-love. That’s what I get for reading too many comics, probably…

John Perry joins the army on his 75th birthday after a quiet life as an advertising copy writer in middle America. He and his wife had both signed the Intent to Join ten years previously and had a few standard medical tests but it wasn’t binding. Now, with Kathy long dead and an adult son who no longer needs him, Perry feels like joining the army is a pretty good idea. They’ll make him younger, able to fight – and when your body’s failing you that sounds pretty damn tempting – and after five years, maybe ten, he’ll be cut loose, still young, and with a whole new life to lead.

All he has to do is accept he’ll never see Earth again.

The army in question is the Colonial Defense Force, mankind’s only front in an ongoing interstellar game of tug with hundreds of other alien races. It seems that there are only limited number of planets available for colonization out there, and there aren’t many races inclined to share.

Old Man’s War follows Perry as he receives a fantastic new body grown from the DNA taken from him ten years before, goes through basic training, and is thrown into combat. Anchored by Perry’s dry wit, the book is by turns funny, sad and horrific as he discovers that going to war against aliens isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you and your friends have a survival rate of less than 25%. And as Perry progresses through the ranks, he comes to question the wisdom of the CDF’s strategy – especially when he encounters a Special Forces soldier who bears a striking resemblance to his late wife; just who are the Ghost Brigade anyway?

John Scalzi’s first entry into his popular series of books is, to put it bluntly, great. I don’t want to say it’s rip-roaring because that sounds a little hyperbolic, but it is rip-roaring. It’s fast paced, well-written with sharp characterization, an engaging narrative and plenty of twists. It’s got enough SCIENCE! to keep harder sci-fi readers interested without overwhelming more casual sci-fi readers like me.

Plus, it has a scene with a battle between humans and tiny Lilliputian-type aliens which involves lots of stomping – and while that sounds inherently funny, it’s actually a scene where the futility of it all really hits Perry.

For people who enjoy science-fiction, even casually, I really can’t recommend this enough.

Old Man’s War is available on Amazon, and also at all good bookstores, but I don’t get a commission from them so, you know…

I’m trying to catch up on my reading at the moment (although there are three Stephen Fry books, of which I’ve only started one, which mock me from the book shelf every time I see it) and, because I used to read a lot of fantasy as a kid I thought I’d try to get back into it.

Then again, what I read wasn’t really fantasy, it was mainly licensed fantasy. When I was younger I didn’t really know the difference. I mean, yes, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I enjoyed the Shannara trilogy. My poison, though, was Dragonlance.

I’d inherited some Advanced D&D books (from my at that time soon-to-be-brother-in-law) and somehow managed to fall in with a small gaming group at school, and every Friday or Saturday we’d get together and game. Not always D&D – we stretched out a bit. I vaguely recall Champions games, Marvel RPG games, possibly Top Secret, some Warhammer 40K style thing set in space – but for me, it was always D&D that I loved.

The group fell apart after a couple of years and I was left with nobody to game with (aw) but I did continue reading the manuals and handbooks and the like, and designing campaigns. Yes, I was that nerdy.

Anyway, I loved the Dragonlance campaign world. I loved the mythology, the work that had been put into it, the character types and races, everything – and I devoured the books for a long time. I liked the Forgotten Realms campaign setting too, but for some reason never read the novels.

Lately as I was looking at getting back into fantasy reading, I considered re-reading the Dragonlance Chronicles, the three volume set that started the world – but I had the sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t be as good as my fourteen year old self remembered them.

Instead, I decided to go with First King of Shannara. As I mentioned I’d read the original Shannara trilogy (Sword, Elfstones and Wishsong) before – more than once – and remembered them fondly if through the haze of memory. The fact that author Terry Brooks had turned out a few more in the series, including the First King prequel book, made me quietly confident that the series would hold up.

But man, this is hard work.

I’m only 80 or so pages in right now, but there’s very little original about it. There’s a mounting threat in some corner of the world; only a select few know about it; nobody listens to them so they decide to do the best they can on their own; a small group forms then splits into subsets to pursue individual quests; the threat attacks, wreaking havoc on one of the only forces that could oppose them, meaning that our heroes now have to save the world as we know it.

If any of that sounds familiar at all, like – oh, I don’t know – any fantasy book you’ve ever read – then you’ll understand where I’m coming from. It’s predictable, trite and not particularly engaging.

I think this only serves to underscore that you can’t go home again – unless anyone wants to recommend me some fantasy that I might like?

A few weeks back I asked Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth writer Victor Gischler to recommend one of his novels to me – and he offered up Gun Monkeys, saying ‘people seem to like it’.

Well, yes, I’m sure they do – because it’s a damn good book.

Charlie Swift is a gun monkey; the head gun monkey in Stan’s crew. He kills people for a living, and he’s very good at his job. Life’s pretty good; he’s got a good crew, he enjoys his job, he’s loyal to a fault, his mom cooks a mean meal, his little brother might go back to college,  and he just met a nice taxidermist who seems to be as okay with dead people as she is dead animals.

Unfortunately, Stan’s getting old and maybe losing his edge a little. He’s been muscled out of Orlando by his Miami equivalent, Beggar Johnson, and while he works out what to do, Stan agrees to send Charlie and his monkey cage crew on a hit at a lapdancing club.

Charlie being Charlie, it isn’t much of a problem – until four of the dead guys turn out to be cops,  Charlie’s monkeys disappear and start turning up dead, his brother wants in on the family business, Stan pulls a vanishing act, and Charlie’s left with a couple of accounting ledgers that everybody wants – including Beggar Johnson and the FBI.

Gun Monkeys is a classic, breezy, thriller and as a protagonist, Charlie follows the classic mold. He’s the right mix of tough and cynical, with a dash of humor thrown in for good measure, and Gischler’s easy handle on dialog and character makes this an entertaining and quick read. If there’s any faults in the book, it’s that it follows the set formula a little too closely – but it’s so entertaining while it does that you barely notice, and having an unrepentant killer who just might be a nice guy as the narrator adds a nice twist to it.

Highly recommended!

Gun Monkeys is available on Amazon, and probably at all good bookstores, but I don’t get a commission from them.

Ever get the feeling that someone wrote a book specifically for you?

Well, twitter-pal Sarah Kuhn’s One Con Glory is *this* close to that.

The book follows Julie, comics reporter, comics fan and die-hard Glory Gilmore fan, through one comics convention weekend as she deals with an irritating colleague, a pretty-boy TV star, the search for the ultimate collectible and, more importantly, her own neuroses.

In fact, it’s her neuroses that are the biggest obstacle to her achieving any of her goals – so pretty much true to life. The characters are recognizable, well-drawn and have you rooting for them almost immediately – and if there’s any flaw to the book at all, it’s that you don’t really have anyone to root against.

Packed with more pop-culture references (real and disguised) than you can shake a gaffi stick at, the pages of One Con Glory fly by. I can see this as a good independent film, actually – it’s certainly got more heart than a lot of romantic comedies out there, and the three act structure is already in place.

Recommended!

One Con Glory is available through Lulu here.

I haven’t. I encourage anyone to pick up and read Alice Sebold’s excellent book on which it’s based – which manages to be horrific, touching, uplifting,sad, hopeful and beautiful all at the same time. I’d throw in some extra adjectives, but you get the idea; it’s a good read.

I’m not saying it’s a comfortable read, beginning as it does with the rape and murder of a young girl from her point of view, but it’s a good read none the less.

So why haven’t I seen the movie yet, in spite of it being a result of another Peter Jackson-Fran Walsh script, and being directed by Peter Jackson himself?

Honestly, it’s not that it’s had some pretty disappointing reviews. And it’s not that I haven’t had a chance with the new baby and everything (okay, maybe it is, but that’s not what I’m talking about here).

It’s that here in New York on my way to work I see a couple of posters for it every day. And are they the beautiful, haunting posters like these?

No, they aren’t. Instead they’re posters so bad I can’t even find them on the internet – but they’re based around this image:

Yes. To advertise this movie about love, loss, murder and hope they’re using Mark Wahlberg staring past a candle with (possibly) the worst hair of his career. It’s not that I don’t like Wahlberg. I liked him in Three Kings and Boogie Nights, but lately he seems to be coasting through roles and emoting about as well as Keanu Reeves.

And most damning of all, everytime I see the poster, I don’t even think it’s for The Lovely Bones – I think it’s Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes.

Marketing FAIL.