Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
You’ve heard me talk about how much I’m digging Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips work on their award-winning Criminal. Check out 
Cinemablend has posted up 7 clips to No Country for Old Men. You can see them by clicking 
Have you seen THIS TRAILER for Revolver? I hadn’t until just a few minutes ago.
It looks like it could be really good. With a screenplay by Guy Ritchie and Luc Besson and a cast that includes Jason Statham, Ray Liotta and Vincent Pastore, you’d have to believe it’s going to be good, right? Then when you read THIS PLOT SUMMARY you have to ask, how can this not be a winner?
So why do I still have some doubts?
If the movie American Gangster captures half the flavor of this interview with the Frank Lucas, the real-life OG, then it’s sure to be a winner.
I’ve been a fan of Scalped by Jason Aaron [writer] and R.M. Guera [artist] since issue one. In fact I like the series so much I’ve purchased both the individual comics and the trade paperbacks [Indian Country and Casino Boogie] as they become available.
So what are you waiting for? A money back guarantee? Click HERE and you’ve got one!
Based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name; Gone, Baby, Gone is a powerful drama wrapped around the mystery of a kidnapped girl and the secrets of everyone involved. When three days have passed without any progress the missing little girl’s aunt hires two young private detectives from the neighborhood to get information unavailable to the police. As the mystery unravels and secrets are revealed the detectives [and audience] are left with tough moral questions and no easy answers.
The Good: The relationship between Cassie Affleck and Michelle Monaaghan. The bar scene. The mean streets of Boston. The real people from these streets given cameos and speaking parts. Ed Harris. The screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard. The direction by Ben Affleck. The ending.
The Bad: The house with the ex-con child molesters [well done, but bad stuff].
The Ugly: The handsome woman… the choices that have to be made.
Gone, Baby, Gone is a Good, Baby, Good.
While we’re on the subject of “can’t wait to see movies” — below is a new trailer for The Cohen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men.
Based on the highly recommended book by Cormac McCarthy, this one is already being hailed as one of the best films of the year by critics around the world.
And who am I to argue with them?
If there’s a bigger Charlie Huston fan than me, he’s probably a related to Charlie. Today Huston’s latest novel, The Shotgun Rule becomes available. If it’s half as good as anything else he’s written, I’m going to love it.
Nothing is as it seems in Duane Swierczynski’s first novel Secret Dead Men. Del Farmer appears to be an FBI agent investigating a mob hit. In reality Farmer is a dead reporter trying to discover the reason behind his own murder. Yeah, you read that correctly. Farmer is a dead guy. Well…
…he isn’t just a dead guy.
See, Farmer has the ability to collect souls of the recently departed. In his quest to discover the secrets behind his own murder, Farmer has collected the souls of about a dozen others…
… and they live in his brain hotel.
See, the brain hotel is a mental construct, that appears like a typical hotel and allows the recently departed to have a semblance of life. People in the brain hotel go on about living [although it’s just their memories for the most part] but they can also interact with each other. Sometimes, if their skills are better suited to getting him out of whatever jam he’s in, Farmer even uses them to pilot the body that he currently inhabits…
…and if you’re still with me, then my guess is you’ll enjoy the novel.
I loved Swierczynski’s The Wheelman and The Blonde. And although Secret Dead Men falls a bit short of being as good, we should remember that Secret Dead Men was Swierczynski’s first novel. It’s definitely worth a look.
I’ve never been into the whole MySpace scene, but I definitely went to check out “Digger” McCrea’s page. It was just as cool, retro, hip and tough as I knew it would be. Christopher Mills not only provides us with Digger’s new digs but tantalizes us by saying…
“Oh – and by the way, there will be some exciting news about the future of McCrae’s criminal career coming soon….”
I can hardly wait.
I loved Duane Swierczynski’s The Wheelman which opened in the middle of a bank robbery gone wrong and was a fast paced, violent, at times humorous and always unpredictable story. So I couldn’t wait to read Swierczynski’s next novel The Blonde. I’m happy to say that I was hooked from the opening sentence [one of the best in recent memory]:
“I poisoned your drink.”
From there we are taken on a wild ride as Jack Eisley attempts to learn why he was poisoned by a beautiful blonde named Kelly White and why she is infected and on the run from a covert government agency’s hitman. The Blonde is fast paced, lean and will keep you on the edge of your seat as the pages fly by. Duane Swierczynski has another winner that left me excited to start on Secret Dead Men!
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Update: Duane Swierczynski just posted up the paperback cover to The Blonde which will be available October 30th!
Ape Entertainment has announced that writer Christopher [Gravedigger: The Scavengers] Mills will team team with artist Joe [E-Man, Green Lantern, Scooby Doo] Staton to produce a four-issue, full-color miniseries based on their popular webcomic, Femme Noir.Mills describes what to expect when he says: “The Femme Noir series is my unabashed valentine to the crime fiction genre… All the conventions of the genre – and the cliches – are happily and enthusiastically embraced. It’s an amalgamation of 40’s Poverty Row B-movies, Golden and Silver Age comics, old radio shows, pulp stories… a little bit of everything I love in Pop Culture, old and new.”
BIG CONGRATS to Chris!
Newsarama has a brief interview with writer Glen Brunswick about his upcoming miniseries, Killing Girl which hits the stands next week. Brunswick teamed with artist Frank (Rocketo) Espinosa to create a series that is worth a look.
Greg Rucka, one of my favorite novelists, has announced that he’ll be writing a new detective series called Stumptown that takes place in the same world as his novels!Although Rucka has been writing award-winning [Whiteout — soon to be a major motion picture] and fan favorite comics [Queen & Country, Gotham Central, etc] for some time, it is his five Atticus Kodiac novels [Finder, Keeper, Smoker, Shooting at Midnight, and Critical Space] that put him on my “must buy” list.
Rucka has a new Atticus Kodiac novel, Patriot Acts, coming out next month. It’s already on my pre-order list!
