I did a Skype interview yesterday afternoon for the Ka-tet podcast. My interviewer was located in Australia, so it was Monday morning (quite early) for him. We talked for about 35-40 minutes about many Dark Tower topics. The podcast will be up within a week, I’m told.
This weekend, I worked on a batch of new essays for Stephen King Revisited. I’m up to Cujo, which gives me a bit of breathing room since The Stand (original) is the most recent one posted. I’ve been struck, while working on this project, by the difference between when a book was written and when it was released. For example, King started working on Cujo in 1977, before Night Shift was published. Doubleday books were in the publication queue when he moved to Viking. It’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance.
We went to see The Kingsman on Friday night. It was a very rainy evening. We managed to get from the restaurant to the multiplex between downpours, but we got soaked during our mad dash from the movie theater to the parking garage afterward. What an odd movie. I’m not sure whether it lampoons spy movies or pays tribute to them. The violence is orchestrated to the extent that it’s almost ballet or, in one case, disco dancing. The movie cues are hilarious: Pomp and Circumstance playing while peoples’ heads explode in puffs of color like fireworks. One part of the film is about a series of tests that recruits have to go through to try to qualify for one open position in the spy agency where all of the members are known by Arthurian nicknames. These are even more grueling than the ones Wesley Crusher had to go through to try to join Starfleet Academy. In parallel, The Kingsmen have to stop a lisping billionaire played by Samuel L. Jackson from decimating the world’s population to reduce global warming. My favorite character was Merlin (Mark Strong from Low Winter Sun and Zero Dark Thirty). Some of it was so over the top that my mouth gaped, and I had to laugh at other parts, but all in all it was fun. Mind-altering, but fun.
