I posted two new book reviews this weekend: Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto and Murder in the Ball Park by Robert Goldsborough. I really liked Galveston and intend to read Pizolatto’s recent short story collection soon. I’m currently reading The Troop by Nick Cutter, which is the pseudonym of Canadian author Craig Davidson. The book has been compared to Lord of the Flies, but it reminds me more of Dreamcatcher. Five 14-year-old Boy Scouts and their troopmaster are on uninhabited island off the coast of PEI when a man stumbles ashore and he’s infected with something ghastly and contagious. This isn’t a book for the queasy.
This week on The Walking Dead: Michonne walks through the woods and kills zombies. Carl is a spoiled brat. Rick is an ineffective leader. Original air date: every effing week. I did like the Michonne “flashback” and the closing line (“It’s for you”) was the funniest thing on the show in a long time.
I enjoyed the Grammy tribute to The Beatles last night. There were some excellent performances. I especially liked Jeff Lynne and Joe Walsh, with Dhani Harrison covering “Something.” The Eurythmics rebanded to do “Fool on the Hill,” which was not terrible. I thought Katy Perry was brave to take on “Yesterday,” and don’t quite get the flack over the fact that she changed the narrator’s gender to match hers. Dave Grohl was impressive, too, and his cute little daughter melted many hearts as she made a heart with her hands during his performance. The pièce de résistance, of course, was Ringo and then Paul and then Ringo and Paul at the end. I wasn’t old enough to remember the Ed Sullivan episode they first appeared on, but my sister bought all the singles and my father grumbled about John Lennon, who he pigeon-holed as a communist, so I was certainly aware of them from an early age.
That was an impressive piece of cinematography on last night’s True Detective. From the moment Cohle entered the stash house until he got into Marty’s back seat, there wasn’t a single cut. One continuous shot that lasted over six minutes. The director has a history of doing long shots (as in Jane Eyre), but this one covered a lot of territory and involved a lot of characters. It wouldn’t have taken much to mess it up. The camera even had to go over a wrought-iron fence at one point. It was breathtaking.
One of the more interesting aspects of this show is the fact that these two partners really don’t like each other. That’s been done before, of course, but never so effectively. I thought it was funny when Marty said to the guy in the lockup, referring to the prisoner’s former cellmate, “Gotta be tough living with someone spouting insane shit in your ear all day long,” looking at Cohle the whole time. Marty, the one who I formerly thought of as the saner partner, is now giving Cohle a run for his money. Not that he’s getting much sympathy from Cohle, which is understandable since Marty always cut Cohle off when he was talking before. Sons of Anarchy used to set the bar for gritty thuggery, but the bikers in this show would eat SAMCRO for lunch. They certainly made for a mangy looking bunch of cops. Cohle’s observation that the evidence locker “should have a better system than this” seemed a little self-serving. I did like Marty’s accusation that Cohle was “the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch.”
