McCammon –

My Storytellers Unplugged essay, The Days Passed, The Nights Passed, went online yesterday. Links to the podcast available in the essay header, so you can listen to my dulcet voice reading my profound insights. 😉

This is pretty cool coverage for Legends of the Mountain State: editor Michael Knost was interviewed on the local ABC affiliate. My “legend,” Screaming Jenny, gets a passing mention.

I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo yesterday. Review forthcoming at Onyx Reviews, hopefully by the end of the week. Though I sussed out some of what would be revealed later on in the book, I enjoyed it and especially enjoyed the way the characters dug up the proof they needed (all across the board) and what they did with it. I’ll be interested to pick up the second book by Larsson when it is translated. I’ve decided to finally pick up The Children of Hurin. It’s been getting deeper in my TBR stack, so I rescued it.

We watched some decent movies this weekend. It was a rainy Saturday, so we camped in for the most part. First up was The Brave One with Jodi Foster. An interesting treatise on the victims of random violence. The scenes that show how she flirts with agoraphobia were nicely done. The ending was just a tad too neat for my liking, and I couldn’t rationalize one character’s actions with what we knew of his character up to that point, but people change, I guess. Poor Naveen Andrews (Sayeed from LOST) took a bad beating yet again.

10 Items Or Less was a fun “buddy” movie of a sort. The movie was filmed in 15 days, and stars Morgan Freeman as an actor who hasn’t worked in four years who is considering doing an indy movie where he plays a grocery store manager. As the film opens, he’s being driven (in a shabby old van) by the “production assistant” to an East L.A. grocery store where he will observe and learn. There, he meets Paz Vega (Spanglish), who works the express lane. Over the course of the next twelve hours or so, they get to know each other and influence each other’s lives. Scarlett (Vega) has an interview to get her out of her dead-end job, but no self-confidence. Freeman (his character is never named) helps her prepare for her “audition.” It is fun to watch her reticence and reluctance slowly transform. Freeman is a delight as the has-been everyone recognizes. He is so charismatic, everyone loves him. Appearances by the actors who play “Cutthroat Bitch” from House and “Leonard” from The Big Bang Theory and cameos by Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman. Paz Vega has learned a fair amount of English in the past few years, and is as charming as charming can be.

The other film of note was something called Jindabyne, starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney. Byrne’s character goes on his annual fishing expedition with his mates in a remote part of the Australian outback. Not long after they arrive, they find the body of an aboriginal girl floating in the river. No cell phone coverage. They rationalize their actions like this: the girl’s dead, they can’t do anything to help her. So, they continue fishing for a couple of days and only report the murder when they return to civilization. It’s based on the Raymond Carver short story So Much Water So Close to Home. Linney, Byrne’s wife, had a bad bout of postpartum depression a number of years earlier, and the stress from public response to the fishermen’s callous behavior pushes her towards the deep end again. The film ends on an unfulfilling note, and the mystery of the murderer’s motives and strange actions is left unresolved, but it’s a thought-provoking movie. The title comes from the name of an Australian town that was flooded over when a dam was built, the metaphor for things hidden beneath the surface.

Big Brother was another shout-fest last night. I think there’s been more major conflict earlier in the season than any other version of this program. Adam is a bit of a lunkhead, but I don’t think he deserves the treatment he’s getting from his partner, and I’m glad the others are sticking up for him at last. The faux-lesbian surprise is a brilliant touch, though. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.