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I've had Musee Mechanique by Rodney Koeneke (Blaze Vox 2006) for a while, reading it in my poky fashion. I really liked Rouge State, his 1st book, from Pavement Saw (2003). here, he's doing these flarfistic modalities and executions that have been discussed and HOYed by the child himself (I mean Dan Hoy beginning to read). I think methodology has been overweighted, flarf-wise, insofar as Koeneke's pre-flarf work rings well and with amplitude, just like this consciously flarf-inflected work. I for one am tired of the debate re the political lines of making poems the right way. the right way appears in the poem as poem, live electric. see, it's just a wasting to need all this defensive intro, hoping for readers who will just handle the trouble as if it were worth it. I mean, a poem in sight, thus to comprise what it has. it is ever fucking thus, I know, this prevalent resistance, which is such a historical truism that it shouldn't need to be iterated. and yet boundaries, ugh, how we sanction their security. perhaps I could speak of the poems now. 1st lemme say that this book comes across somewhat as a companion volume to Mainstream by Michael Magee, insofar as both share a Blaze Voxian look, and they clearly endure with a flarfian metre. also, both have useful, thoughtful afterwords, removing smoke and mirrors from the equation. both credit the flarf list of the time, where a collaborative energy prevailed. but having said that, let me acknowledge that these are separate works that needn't be lumped. needn't, that is, unless you're working on your crappy grad thesis, good luck on that, or feeding Harold Bloom his latest 'ideas. I'm still at the superficial stage with this book. I do not want to be definitive, I've seen where that shit goes. I like the frisky multiples of distraction that bubble up in this book. the poet survives incoming, if you see what I mean. all the cultural shit and busy busyness. kitty + pizza, for instance, howe'er canst one make poem from that??? poem, is the reply. a section of poems is entitled On The Clamways, referring of course to On The Nameways by Clark Coolidge. which is a fun, snapping release by CC, after tome after relevant tome of big stuff. Koeneke rings the friskiness that Coolidge explored (language as immediacy), but scoots along as well with a preposterous clamminess. why clams??? and then you realize that clams are dirty, funny, unexpected. "And by the way, clam culture as it happens / Is ruled by this bitchy little number called 'Snappy / the Clam'." why yes! much variety imbeds itself in CLAM. notice how hilarity cues something dismal and politically crushing. notice how innocuousness borders on desperate, and desperate gives you republicans. I'm not chatting up Helen Vendler here, nor trying to formalize. I like the idea of the reading process as adventure, somewhat courageous (don't make a big deal of that, please), and possibly even enjoyable. I'm saying read with adventure, because here we have that exactly. so this isn't a review of Rodney Koeneke's 2nd poetry book, it is more an advocation of the reading process, which invites feelings of curiosity, openness and confusion. I needn't refer to Negative Capability, need I? a poem is music, surprise and hilarity, which is to say a healthful disaster of formalized expectation. approach, I'm saying, these poems thusly, and see what wiggles. I sound blurbish here, but I only want to suggest an evolving process begun. these poems are really really, and the book as well.

  

  

  

last year Jordan Davis posted a picture of his son looking out on a jostled, ramshackle view of things (the world). this photo seems to follow that one. a zigzag path, lines pointing every which way. the play area looks more like a stockade, and the path veers away. whereas the earlier picture showed wonder, this one shows rigidity and restriction. striking.

I like this reminiscence by Joel Sloman. rumination from a distance in time, tho time's got porous boundaries so... I think particularly for writers, because the word/thought thing (we think (a lot) in words), have this slippery what time is it quality to deal with. is this my thought now or it is from then: that sort of fluidity. I am fascinated by all my visual work (paintings and collage), even the crap, because of the immediacy and visceral effect of colour and form, whereas I choke on the crappy writing of (my) yore. I think that's in the nature of writing. when I used to enter Grolier, not often but always with anticipation, it was a stunning world of discovery. when I visited saturday, it was different. I put aside that the selection needs refreshment. I give Grolier a mulligan on that point, assuming that some funding will now be ultilized for improvement vis-a-vis. I now know the names better, whereas back in the day I'd have to pick up and peer thru a Mary Oliver book to see what up. so the magic... and yet... magic is the word, really, at the risk of sounding like some dread provocateur of poetry. in his post, you can see the younger Sloman struggling with... something. I recognize that. it took me a long time for my intelligence to catch up with the dynamic energy of writing. I wrote lots and lots but, you know, please don't look at it now. young writers (poets especially), unless they have a keen ability to imitate and pastiche (a legit learning means), must suffer thru a period of blurry amorphousness based on the sore point of what, exactly, a poem is. I envy those who seem so clear on the concept, but on the other hand, no I'm do not. I want to go as long as possible without firming up my definition of poetry. method is adventure or, you know, why bother. anyway, thanks to Joel for the madeleine.

venerable Brattle Theatre in venerable Cambridge had an anime festival today. ongoing, it's a 24 hour affair, but Erin and I are content with our 9 1/2. the Brattle has for years been home to your basic hip showings of Bogart films and Rocky Horror Show: that sort of theatre. what I'm after saying is that the audience engages to the point of considerable comment during the flick. looked like a hardened crowd, people ready for the derby distance. probably not great attendance, at least so far. I liked the anime. visually, very cinematic and gratifying. I absolutely can't stand the sort of animation used in movies like Shrek, all that techno wizardry strikes me as lifeless. whereas what I saw yesterday had considerable zest and liveliness. and they have surprising depth. one featured a girl who said at the beginning that she woke the night before and realized that she was a god. with ensuing adventures in which indeed she was a god. but she's also smitten by the clueless boy with the cool spiky hair who doesn't quite get that she's there. Half-hearted cosplay (costume contest) occurred during one of the breaks. 3 entrants. one seemed to be a samurai geisha. another wore cargo pants, tube top and kerchief on her head, which is to say, not very identifiable as a character, altho she noted who she was dressed as. showing her stomach may have been the point for her. the winner wore black fatigues or jumpsuit, had blond spiky hair and wielded an outsized sword. One anime concerned two brothers fighting over their father's sword. this one also featured a school girl who goes back to their time, and occasionally returns to the present. she rides her bicycle everywhere, even in the air, and dynamically uses a particularly efficient bow and arrow. there were some wonderful filler shorts seeded thru out the event. one was a student film done by someone who went on to greater things (of which I know nothing). no dialogue, just zooming images. it featured your typical and ubiquitous young school girl in school uniform, but early on she transmogrifies into a Playboy bunny, and proceeds to do hyperkinetic laser battle with Darth Vader, and fly around on what I take to be Silver Surfer's surfboard, all the while with things exploding with nuclear wrath. just so odd. odder still was a live action music video. it featured five guys on stage singing. the group is possibly called Yatta. they wore just their Fruit of the Looms, with fig leaf over the crotch. it's a parody of boy bands and Village People and Menudo and poppy pop music. the five look like software developers but are all exultant smiles and sincere singing and mugging and eye contact with the crowd. the crowd is an odd blend of elders and children. the boys shake their skinny booties in some of the goofiest choreography possible, jumping, marching and kicking. cut into the live performance are the usual vid vignettes. one of which shows one of our heroes, in Yatta mufti, walking down a city sidewalk. he passes a young woman, who smiles at him. he turns with a sad look of yearning. out of the shadows come his four mates, grinning and supportive, and suddenly everything is fine again, lots of hppy reenforcement. there are no subtexts here, it's all uber text. I was quite entertained by everything shown during the event. at one point I left to call Beth and to walk around. which led me to the Grolier Bookstore, now safe to enter. a much calmer place than it used to be. whatever the shoplifting problem under previous ownership, the security archway took way too much acreage in such a small shop. glad to see that gone. I had no particular bees in my bonnet as to what I would look for, tho I don't know why I share personal bonnet information in such a public forum as this. I mainly just wanted to see if the coast were clear at the old poetry shop. what's not surprising but I am hopeful will change is that the selection had glaring holes. er um no Creeley, for one. the shop's latter years were not well funded, so selection kinda sorta didn't keep up with the times. I picked up a copy of Kirby Doyle's collected, priced at the 1986 price of 7 dollars that it entered the shop by. aint never read him. I also discovered Stops by Joel Sloman (Zoland 1999), one of the good people in the local arena. it has an introduction by Denise Levertov. he seems detached from the professorially inspired (or conspired) embargo on originality and verve that obtains in this fusty old town, yet seems like a supportive citizen in the best sense. I was glad to get his book. a guy in the shop needed help from the person working there. I didn't hear his entreaty but apparently he had the woman looking for some Bulgarian poet. eventually he said something that lit the idea of Bukowski in the woman's mind, and that proved to be what the guy wanted. no Bukowskian poetry was in attendance at the shop however so the guy was referred to Harvard Bookstore, right next door. another person wanted a poetry book from, as he said, the man who wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Farina (Farina also wrote some lovely songs, too, buddy), but the shop lacked that as well. new ownership should sell off the dustier tomes (i. e. the ones I'm not interested in) and dedicate a handful of smackers to an A-Z overhaul. christ, should I send a letter listing books and authors to carry? I checked for Kasey Mohammad, Stephanie Young, Shanna Compton, as poets who ought and maybe could (they all seem to have some sort of distribution going) be on the shelves. and that I'd be interested in reading. none of them were to be found. see, I'm not crazy about SPD, at least so far as the D of the acronym goes. with our press, they were supposed to send our new publications to libraries as standing orders but oops, never happened. and little presses with micro budgets having to wait 6-9 months for proceeds from sales, yeesh. and hey the exorbitant cost of doing business with...okay, okay, don't get me started. Grolier is supposedly one of 2 poetry shops in the country. I say, send them 3 copies of your book, call it consignment if you like, just to freshen the selection as a material instance of a selection. which brings to mind what I'm told a certain poet does: sneaks copies of his books onto store shelves, with the idea that readers and orders would therefore occur. I didn't feel the kind of excitement I used to feel in the store, but I don't blame current ownership. around 6 Beth arrived and we convened for dinner at an Indian restaurant, then Erin bustled off to see Steam, a parody of anime, gaming, commercials and so on. I saw parts of it at Anime Boston. quite funny, tho many allusions and references exist well outside my ken. Beth and I wandered around Harvard and Brattle Squares. flashback the 60s and hippies and excitement. this wounded-seeming Asian fellow I'd noticed 3 years ago was there in front of the Harvard Coop, playing his 3-stringed instrument and looking very distant. I saw an older man in a couple of different places during the day. he had earphones, and just sat there rocking back and forth to the music. autistic, I would imagine. anyway we scurried home once Steam ended.

Gawd!!! Jack Kimall's been busy

among the balls that I've dropped is not keeping up with Stephen Vincent's series Tenderly, which is a utilization (is that the right word?) of Stein's Tender Buttons. Stephen works an interesting method. a means of enduring respectfully within the work of certain writers. why that verb endure? he faces, confronts, lives with... specificially Zukofsky, Sappho, Stein, so far, that I know of. both critical and collaborative. he assays, which is the genuine article we all should (equal that is to the real itself). Stein maybe nervoused me up more than any writer when I was young and stupid. Tender Buttons, tho, came a-brimming. I think I'm vaguing out here but I really caught something with Buttons. not that I even tried to accomodate the possibility, back then when I first read. it was too magical, Stein's processing of words into things or vice versa. I have to mark how unready I was for such discovery. I was absurdly ignorant when school force fed me these instigations. maybe I'm a brighter candle than I want to admit, because I took on the registry of proprioceptive response which is WORD. I went against my own prosaicness, when I saw the flow of Stein's urge. does anyone else admit to a nakedness when in the lights of different arts bearing? I don't think I've ever writ an oh well blubba blubba response to words as poetry. I've been stupid but Ive managed to halt at the point of freeze up. still, I envy the seeming readiness of Stephen Vincent, in collecting the energy. on the other hand, I''m not as stupid as you, categorizer. I plant difficulty as my challenge, not my duty to cover up. you ought to listen, readership, beneath the equivocations here. poetry enjoys the mystery of living tension. tension is the movement of living entirely. entity right in the word. okay, haul all this rumination back to TENDERLY. words are real employment of active essential in a... in what, exactly? in what one can comprise, as Reader. well yeah, okay. I commend Stephen's work into in. simply that. continuing the Steinian... what's your haul?

had an urge to visit Grolier Poetry Bookshop today, but it is closed on sundays. under previous ownership, we weren't allowed to bring Erin in. he was 12, and gave no evidence of being trouble. that's what the Grolier experience devolved to. anyway, in lieu, a visit to B&N. I almost got away with no purchase, until I saw a book, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde. the front cover blurb says the book "celebrates the need for the kind of paintings, music, books and ideas that society initially finds unpleasant". my 1st thought was flarf. I'm not doing my Gary Snyder imitation here. Hyde himself writes "trickster is a boundary-crosser". I think that works well as an aspect of flarf. not to limit it to flarf, but I think flarf can reasonably be viewed in such terms. just as last night, the puppet porno in Team America was really, really disturbing, even as it was hilarious (Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore et alia getting slaughtered was not, btw, disturbing, it was just a good hearty laugh). I don't know how far I want to develope this idea, but I do see a use in the outrageous and in boundary crossing. it is certainly true that that which makes us uncomfortable should at least be examined. the recent reaction to Mike Magee's Asian Guys poem has been useful when it has been seen as queries on the border. squeaks of propriety do not work with trickster, that much I've gleaned from my forays into the literature. the discomfort of flarf, which also includes its disjointedness, and its silliness and triviality of subject, produces areas of consideration. irritation can be good. Trickster pulls our chain, removes safety net, makes things serious after all. that initial discomfort bespeaks areas of restriction. those areas of consternation are areas of illuminations. so I'm reading Hyde's book now, that's what I'm doing.

  

  

... and speaking of flarf. 2nd issue of Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere arrived yesterday. front and back covers are really lovely, dude check it out. the colour scheme is bluish grey mainly, very compelling. the back cover shows this Mickey Mouse sort of character, a doll maybe, with an electrical cord wrapped around its head. for some reason. those 2 images pretty much encapsulate what's inside. the words are by Nada Gordon, kaleidoscopic impressions. the 2 took a bus trip to Coney Island, Gary took photos from which the drawings were developed. it's like Walt Whitman took acid then welcomed all that he saw. or make that Frank O'Hara. there's a gracious acceptance in what could seem jostling and foreign. the drawings inside (b&w) possess a heavy line, weird weighty modules. almost emblems, that is. there's one Crumbian image of a fellow with not just eyes popping out of his skull but everything else, teeth, brains everything. that nod to Crumb fits perfectly. while neither Sullivan or Gordon show the snideness that Crumb does (I love Crumb), a sense of swimming the human stream is shared. I'm glad to see comix stretching its form. I mean continue stretching. I guess I never cottoned to Marvel's soap opera necessity. having read 3 manga recently, thus making me an expert, I can speak of the cinematic quality of manga, which is a nice breath to take. everything is interesting. people, words, things. I'm suddenly thinking Stein. in Tender Buttons, she tries to see ordinariness. note the fantastic lengths she must go. our seeing is language. this comic is what Gary and Nada saw. comprised, but not explained (death lives in explanation). I'm being rather general in my comments here. the comic is not at my side at the moment, I'm going by my memory of reading it thru last night. the effect of it is a disjointedness but not an unsettling. read Gary's account of the MOCCA (comix convention, I presume). the same sort of fun commitment displayed as I witnessed at the anime festival. dunno why poetry can't be fun like that. flarf, being funny, wanting to be funny, takes a positive step. the the point is not that poetry should be funny, just not so precious and headache. Knopfitude, that draggy condition of sunless poetry. poetry as an excuse to vent. I think I can accept many means, but not that end. which is why we listen to music, perhaps. and turn to visual. come on Poetry, kick out the jams.

we watched Team America yesterday. holy crap!!! it's the marionette movie produced by the South Park team. I guess there's nothing more to say. sure, it's weird to see puppets all serious like, in an action flick. my memory contains Supercar, featuring that arch-nemesis Master Spy, but this movie is on a much grander scale. 1st class marionettes, quite expressive. early on there's a martial arts scene, a mighty showdown. when the 2 opponents close on each other, they just flail absurdly, like puppets. it is hilarious. Team America members manage to blow up almost everything in sight, which gets the ire of Hollywood liberals led by Alex Baldwin. who, it turns out, are under the sway of Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. denouement of the movie features the slaughtering of these liberals. hooray! you know about that bad taste aspect of flarf. naturally, this movie went for the same thrum. there's an extended, graphic sex scene that is so perfectly absurd (puppets pooping and peeing on each other, OMFG!!!). later, the dramatic lowpoint for Our Hero, there's an extended puking scene. in both cases, the score is lush with all dramatic markers in place. it's a weird sort of genius, lighthearted and unsettling.

I've added Joel Sloman to my links.

coupla recently arrived poem books at the library. by Franz Wright and Dan Chiasson. both published by Alfred Knopf, and I guess it is Knopfiness that they exhibit. you know, thin, airy books, lots of blank, air of solemnity. what ways to kill poetry has Knopf not thought of? I'm being tactile here, and the thing doesn't want to be touched. somehow Knopf read Darwin while other publishers of poetry were what, reading poetry? Chiasson's production was granted by several fellowships or what all, including kind and beneficent Harvard. I don't begrudge the free money, but how much support does a little poem book need? I mean time to whip this creation up? it's the work of down time. honest to god, Chiasson needed support for his hobby? for this glib plain by the book stuff? Wright's book is another matter. this guy, clearly, has seen some shit. there's some real kick to it. I just wonder as I read why is it Poetry. okay, it is poetry because the work is broken into lines. broken is the right word. those lines are purely visual, and even there the critical valve barely holds. why must Wright be so slavish to format? he is a poet. he's got a smacked up Bukowski rawness that can't be faked. I mean, I dunno the living truth of his persistent dark night of the soul, but it rings like he means it. but what is the art of poetry to him? I mean that he should formalize what is so sore and needful in him. Knopf is no help. they just want precious, but I think Wright is working with crucial. but that sense of proper format (poetry by the numbers), ugh.

I am obliged to to pass along this link

I got Not Even Dogs by Ernesto Priego (Meritage 2005). a collection of hay(na)ku. the hay(na)ku format is simple to the point of wicked simple (one word line, then 2 word, then 3 word, or turn that upside down). its value consists in how it places emphasis on each word. or put better, each word is weight bearing. Priego uses the form here exclusively as a stanza. altho the form presents a haiku-ish potential as a brief meditative measure, it also links nicely. Priego writes easily within the format. a micro/macro simultaneity occurs (sorry for that lump of a phrase), in which one reads the poem as a whole, but also looks to each stanza discretely, poems within poems. one poem hangs on a sore throat (I infer):

Maybe
the cactus
in your throat

Doesn't
let you
sleep at all

the poem ends with the question:

whadda
want to
say without pain.

so there's this physical sense (or demand) of writing. but verses jump out singularly for me:

Rough
and dirty
in your throat

Get
in there
like a desert

The
green, black,
dusty present pain

A
white page
full of sand

(I just noticed that Ernesto capitalizes the 1st word of each stanzas, which, let us say, defines porous limits). see, the verses can be read out of order, as you find them, but also narratively. I learned an emphatic attention from Robert Grenier (not to say I utilize it well, just that he provided a rich exemplar), in which the reader gives every word all chances to, um, mean something. consider all definitions, yup, peer at etymology, okay doke, but also, perhaps weirder, be prepared to see lack in black, age in page. look at all possibilities. I think Ernesto Priego possesses that attention. that he is bilingual adds a consternation and question, in the sense that he has these 2 languages, but Poetry is his mother tongue. that sounds like a floppy statement but give me a chance. the Wryting list to which I belong is small but its members are from all over the globe. posts are mostly in English, but it is English inflected by all these languages, including programming. Poetry then is the lingua franca. Ernesto's language is largely ordinary and conversational. which is sneaky, because his words reveal such depth and perception. I want to note the book design by Michelle Bautista. the central colums oif the poems are offset by larger boldface repetitions of the 1st stanza. this demarcates the poems from each other and is visually gratifying. I mean, even if my description doesn't zackly make it sound so. lovely book.

I know you shouldn't start judging a work until you've finished reading it, which is pretty much why I do it. I like to see some issues as I read. Sorrentino's book is kicking ass at this point in my reading, about a quarter of the way thru. he does indeed have the sort of story in a story in a story frame that Flann O'Brien used. as he urges the story along he's commenting on the contaption that is the novel, the occasionally silly demand of plot and characterization. sometimes it reads like a roman a clef, other times the characters just seem like types. Sorrentino reaches a snide hilarity, prickly and indiscreet. rather relentlessly so, you might think Smollett. it feels like he decided as he wrote to trash his characters rather than just paint them. I'm fine with that, tho I did earlier note my discomfort with authors who don't like their characters. I guess if the author can unfurl an acid tongue as well as Sorrentino, it's okay. tho really, he lets the characters skewer themselves. I hate the attitude of keen portraiture in fiction, the sort of refiend work that wins awards. authors of such seem so uninvested when they effort such precision, as if the author can't get dirty. even Proust gets dirty, because he's so crazily focused on the people of his milieu, focused, curious, envious, and enamoured of. this book isn't as wild as Love and Fame in New York by Ed Sanders, with which it shares similarities. Sanders cranks invention by setting the story slightly in the future. Sorrentino ushers current types (circa 60s) thru his book. so much so that the book at times feels dated. I don't know all references, but even those that I do sound of a period. references to WCW, for instance, sound like what references to Creeley must sound today, an accepted master yet still vigourous (the writing at least). soon the honourifics will tone down with Creeley and emphasis will be given more to his human frailities. I mean, drunken fistfights with Pollock sound cool now, but when the big critical bio appears, we'll be treated to a pattern. this is an important step in the bio industry. that and What's this I hear about Creeley and the American Nazi party?. but I digress. Sorrentino seems lighthearted (in a grouchy way) about the process and procession of the novel. the novel as a form suffers so many plangencies, especially the one where you're supposed to feel better, learn more about the human condition, etc etc, GAH!!! like a poem, the novel does not want to be directed. as Sorrentino comments and footnotes, he allows lateral movement on the path. that is, he shifts his gaze away from that pinpoin goal THE THEME, you know: Moby Dick is about Man's Inhumanity to Man. please, let us all eschew straight lines.

reading Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino. yeah, because he died. I've never read him except, I'm sure, a few poems long ago. just another gap. I think poets should write novels, that the quality of poetry that one can bring to this craggy form might allow for something unique. possibly because novelists are fitted for plot first of all, and plot is often the most perfunctory aspect of a novel (like melody versus harmony). a sense of poetry in the writer seems a good idea. by sense of poetry I don't mean flowery language, that kind of well-weathered simulation, I mean the sense of open form and possibility that poetry is. James Schuyler's novels effortless avoid plotpush strictures, allowing for some amazing subtleties. Sorrentino's novel brings these thoughts up because he seems to confront the assumed necessities of the genre. he does this with asides by the narrator and footnotes by the author's. does separation exist between the two? I'm working on that one. the 1st chapter carefully portrays one of the characters. the tone is wry, yes, but also a bit untouchably superiour. the narrator participates in the story (barely, as yet), so this superiourity can work, tho as yet I find it tiresome. it's hard to read fiction in which the author shows little sympathy for the characters. I'm not yet sure how far that goes here, just an impression so far. the 2nd chapter takes on another character, 1st character's husband. I kinda want to skip these surgeries. I guess I want Sorrentino to weird out in the manner of Flann O'Brien. the author photo (window to the soul) suggests that he mightn't: full sideburns, studious glasses, and a dark turtleneck, circa 1971. if only he had a rapier scar on his cheek. I realize that I approach this book at a critically clumsy angle, but I defend my right to be tired of perfunctory novels (and poetry too, but that's another matter). narrative isn't dead, it just needs to be seen differently. narrative is not as simple as a conveyor belt. that Sorrentino can mention Spicer, Williams, O'Hara is a right step. you know, an alternate reality where people like the aforesaid can actually matter. jeepers, Stephen King makes passing notice of Creeley and Olson here and there in his novels. horror has the advantage of being of a different world. domestic novels really make my eyeballs squeak, unless someone has the grace and subtlety of Schuyler.

76th installment of Antic View

  

  

  

okay, I'm up to pop culture speed regarding Da Vinci Code, having absorbed the movie yestreen. before I'd seen/read, I assumed the movie would outstrip the book (having seen the explosion laden trailer) but hafta say otherwise now. we arrived way early, thus sat thru many repetitions of the loop of items on the screen prior to the previews. the something to look at that we early birds needed. to wit, a still from King Kong (did that movie sink or swim? I neve paid attention), a still from Ferris Buehler's Day Off, a still from Ray (did you know Jamie Fox wore eye prosthetics that made him blind for 14 hours a day? can you comprehend any reason why?), a tantalzing picture of an X-Men promotion featuring a limited edition Harley, and then, long tympani roll, a reminder that a snack bar exists in the complex and happy to displace funds from your grasp. each screen shot had different music. it went on and on. we were Da Vinci Code all the way, btw, tho Erin would have opted for X-Men. 2 theatres in the complex were movie-less. praps that's renovation but I feel just spooky enough about the economy to wonder about downturn. of course, why should I worry, I have 15,000,000 shares of Vonage. anyway, the future bodes more movies with explosions, surprisingly enough. personally I'm coocoo for Cocoa Crisps. the new James Bond, you know, whatever. I was struck that it didn't look like a James Bond movie. it had IMAXy breadth and a more frantic pace than earlier renditions, not to say combustion wasn't the co-star. Adam Sandler has a new movie to hate. talk about code, someone break the Sandler code for me. also upcoming a film from M Night Shyamalan. I quite liked that Shyamalan crop circle movie with Mel Gibson. the spookiness is very intimate and personal in it, in the way, somewhat at least, of Lovecraft. this new one, who can tell from previews, but it looked disturbing. something about a female what, ghost? mermaid? in a hotel swimming pool (Erin aptly spoke the phrase 'watery tart'). more definitively Lovecraftian, it would seem. anyway, we stayed to watch the feature too. at least with an Opie/Gump production, money's gonna be spent. and you could see it on the screen. that's enough to satisfy me. it's too hard to boil novels down to 2 hour movies, I knew that from the beginning. Hanks is at the point, careerwise, where he's just too much. the accolades, the niceness, the earnestness, all that overwhelms anything he might do on the screen. he postured some, seemed to be gliding. he should do dinner theatre as a change of pace. I like how in movies, if the lead plays a teacher, especially a prof, when he (always he, I think) shows off his teacherliness in lecture, his audience is always gape-mouthed morons. the arrival of Sophie in both book and movie just don't work. in the movie it is roughly her only pro-active moment. the rest of the way, Hanks does all the sleuthy thinking, which is not the case in the book. the monk Silas is an oddly sympathetic character in both movie and book. he wears his cilice tighter than I do. he should have been shown reading Gerard Manley Hopkins. the creepy side of the Church fascinates me. there were some brief visual evocations of the Crusades and pagan Constantinople that made me wish for a movie based on that. in Coppola's goofy Dracula, there's a short scene that shows the beginning of Vlad's impaling career (for some reason, he wears armour made from corn chips). I'd rather see more of that than the histrionic carnage that FFC served. the escape of the dynamic duo is so usual. you'd think escaping duos would trip over each other. especially when, as in DVC, you got characters (Sophie) driving down a Paris sidewalk backwards. I suspect if you haven't read the book, much would confuse you in the movie. finally, our heroes end up with Sir Leigh, which is to say, Gandalf gets to step centerstage and take a playful turn as a dotty Englishman. Hanks doesn't really let go of the earnest bit so he doesn't get to play along. he's capable but I think Opie believed that with such a serious subject, due resepct must be shown. yawn. things swirl to a finish, in which neither Sophie or Gump die whatesover. but wait, there's more! and this more seems anticlimactic. the final mystery must be broached and, yawn, is. Hanks kneeling down reverently at the end is one all star fake moment. here's a sop to those who thought this movie was sacrilegious. religion? Hollywood? come on! there's a kind of now what at the end of things here, like, can anything be made of this trust me royal line? Brown's next book, and it better be a doozy.