I’m thrilled that, over a decade after its release, The Road to the Dark Tower is still delivering semi-annual royalty checks. The latest, through the end of December 2014, was actually nearly twice as much as the one for the previous six-month period.
I’m told by the publisher, Centipede Press, that The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film will ship out starting next Monday, June 15.
I’m not sure that John Cusack would have sprung to mind to play Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, but that’s who’s the older version of the wunderkind in Love & Mercy, the new biopic that also stars Paul Dano as the pre- and mid-collapse Wilson. Elizabeth Banks is the woman who recognizes the unhealthy control Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) exerts over him. It’s an interesting telling of the story, with lots of music. We were particularly fascinated by the bits in the studio where Wilson used the professional studio musicians known as “the Wrecking Crew” to lay down the tracks for Pet Sounds according to the things he was hearing in his head. (We saw a documentary about the Wrecking Crew several weeks ago.) The vocals were all added later, a process that absolutely baffles me. The film has a few spacey moments, especially in the 1960s section, but Cusack and Banks hold it together even when things are spiraling out of control for Wilson. Dano resembles Wilson more than Cusack does, and Cusack only occasionally attempts some of Wilson’s more notable quirks and tics to remind us who he’s supposed to be.
I read a bit about Landy after we saw the movie yesterday afternoon, and it’s an interesting story. He pretty much saved Wilson’s life. Got him off drugs and back to a normal weight, eating healthy, but at some point he took his work to an extreme, monitored Wilson 24/7, took control of his life, his finances, everything, all apparently because he had unfulfilled musical aspirations of his own. Finally a court intervened, stripped him of his medical license in California and banned him from seeing Wilson ever again. However, that wasn’t the end of his medical practice. Apparently he moved first to New Mexico and then to Hawaii, where he continued to be a psychotherapist. This was before the age of Google, of course. Giamatti chews up the scenery in a terrible mop-top wig. His Landy seems maniacal.
My wife got me a Doctor Who-themed Monopoly game for my birthday, so we played with our daughter and her fiance on Saturday evening. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever played Monopoly through to completion. Usually someone gets bored and we mutually decide to tally up our assets and quit. This time we had three bankruptcies and my wife was victorious, all in under two hours.
