The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

The Pursuit of Happyness is a perfect example of an otherwise decent film that the coming attraction and publicity managed to ruin. I seriously knew just about the entire plot before I even watched the movie, and I don’t think that there was even one plot twist I was surprised about! Too bad that was the case because it significantly detracted from the experience.

The story features Will Smith portraying Chris Gardner. It's a real life "rags to riches" story that anyone who thinks the American dream is dead should watch. Gardner is a down on his luck medical salesman who is barely a paycheck away from bankruptcy, with only a high school education. When the opportunity to enter a stock broker trainee program presents itself, Gardner has to grab it. The real catch is that it involves a six months internship- without any paycheck (seriously, how do they expect folks to live?). To make matters worse, after the training, they only hire one out of the twenty, and the rest get nothing, and can’t apply the training to anything else as it is specific to that one company only. Under the best of circumstances it would be hard for one to work for six months for free, but Gardner has a family to support, and his wife is already working continuous "double shifts." Under very difficult circumstances, this intelligent guy makes the most of this opportunity, and the rest, as they say, is history.


I generally like a stand up and cheer flick, but The Pursuit of Happyness I found more exasperating than inspirational. Every time I didn't think he could drop any further, he manages to, whether it's losing his apartment, his car, his bank account is empty, or the place of last resort to spend the night has no room for him. Of note, Will Smith's real life son ably plays his son in the film. One criticism is that the scene in the Baptist Church with the church choir singing goes on way too long to say that one must keep the faith in this type of situation.

The Pursuit of Happyness is an average film, with a predictable plot. If we keep that in mind, and toss away the hype, we can enjoy it for what it is. Those looking for some inspiration should give it a screening. After the film, those nostalgic for the 80's can break out their Rubik's Cube.

Overall Grade: B

The Second Horseman (2006)

I was slightly disappointed with the first novel I read by Kyle Mills, Burn Factor. However, it was a reader’s comment on my review that encouraged me to try another one (yes, comments are really taken that seriously around here). So this time I decided to read Mills most recent novel, The Second Horseman; I’m still somewhat disappointed.

Given the novel’s mere 290 pages, the plot is rather intricate. The main character is Brandon Vale, a master thief who specializes in big diamond heists, with a trademark of not injuring anyone to get the job done. He gets framed for a job he didn’t do, and ends up in the slammer serving out a sentence. With barely a year on his sentence, he abruptly gets broken out for a job (by some private CIA group) that only he can masterfully do. So far, I was definitely interested, and on board for the ride.

The job they need our protagonist for is a 200 million dollar cash heist. They plan to hit a cash run from a Vegas casino heading to the bank in San Francisco. The reason they need the money is that there just happens to be a dozen nuclear bombs on the open market that they plan to buy and shelve before someone more dangerous buys them. In other words, they can justify the thievery for the greater good. Things are getting thin, but I’ve put up with plots more ridiculous.

What follows really never lives up to potential. The “handler,” chosen for her good looks, is rather predictable as she falls in love with the one she was supposed to seduce. There are a lot of details left out of the heist, like how did they just happened to know about a nearby GPS tracking signal dropout zone. And really, who ever saw an eighteen wheeler with a Budweiser sign on the side of it? And what happened to the security and truck driver that were kidnapped with the loot? There’s some serious holes in this plot that conveniently get glossed over.

In my view, this novel needed some additional character development, some additional plot depth, and a rewrite so that it flowed better. I think the last Mills novel I read actually was a better book in the end. If you want a ridiculously plotted novel with flat characters, the The Second Horseman is for you. This author is definitely capable of writing better stuff.

Overall Grade: C+

Hot Fuzz

Some of the best parodies love their subjects while making fun of them. This is certainly true in Hot Fuzz: It's easy to believe that, like one of the characters, writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have seen just about every action film ever made. The result is a hysterical romp that blends small rural English towns and blazing gun battles.

Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a supercop, a London dynamo who's skilled at almost every form of policework -- especially dangerous ones. He's so obsessed with his work that his closest friend is a houseplant, his girlfriend leaves him, and his fellow officers want him gone because he's making them look bad. The result: Angel gets an unwanted promotion and a new assignment.

In short order Angel is in Sandford, an amazingly quiet town. The local police force is more interested in eating desserts that prosecuting crimes, letting offenses go by "for the greater good." The village watch is most concerned with a performance artist who pretends to be a statue. Angel's new partner is Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the dopey, well-meaning son of the chief inspector; Danny also have a colossal action movie collection and he yearns for more shooting! And Angel's biggest case involves finding an escaped swan.

Things change quickly, though, as a large number of lethal accidents start befalling the citizenry. Local businessman Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) pops up at crime scenes makign sinister comments. And while the other police officers keep insisting these are only accidents, Angel and Danny wind up chasing a myserious person dressed in a black robe.

Hot Fuzz segues pretty quickly from quirky British town to roaring action flick -- and yet it somehow makes sense. Think of every action movie line, move, or cliche -- and you'll find it here. The comedy comes from two sides: Angel's anal-retentive obsessiveness about policework and Danny's lazy optimism. The film takes the notion of the quiet, quirky small British town and manages to turn it on its head (not unlike the Britcom The League of Gentlemen) quite beautifully and viciously. And while the whole movie is more than a bit silly, there are laughs from start to finish.

If you love action films, you'll enjoy seeing all of their elements done in Hot Fuzz to great comedic effect. If you haven't seen them, Hot Fuzz includes clips from Point Break and Bad Boys 2 to get you up to speed. So go see it already!

Overall Grade: A-

Reviewed by James Lynch

Thank God You're Here, NBC

I'm amused that the TV show Thank God You're Here claims originality for being an improvisational comedy. Improv has been a theater exercise for ages; it's been a stable of Christopher Guest films; it's the focus of the British and American shows Whose Line Is It Anyway? and a large part of Reno 911! Too bad Thank God You're Here isn't as funny as the rest of these; except for some of the theater classes.

Thank God You're Here is structured as a prizeless game show. Four celebrities each perform in sketches, but they don't know anything about the sketch they'll be in -- except for their costume and that they'll be greeted with someone saying "Thank God you're here." The celebrities then perform together in one sketch at the end. Dave Foley acts as a judge (meaning he presses a button to end the sketches and never says anything critical or negative), and David Alan Grier is the host with the most -- the most dull patter, that is. (He also pops up in a few sketches, getting laughs and applause for just showing up.) At the end Foley picks a winner, and that person gets a small glass trophy.

These weaknesses could be forgivable if the show was more creative. Alas, the setups are very predictable. When Brian Cranston is dressed as a rocker, his set is -- a rock studio! Jason Alexander gets outfitted as someone from Star Trek, and his set is -- a Star Trek-like starship! When the four players are dressed as vikings, they wind up in -- a viking hall! Where's the creativity or sense of silliness? Why not have an astronaut in a fast food joint, or a football player in the British parliament?

The celebrities have varying degrees of quality. Wayne Knight did a great job as a medical con man ("There's traditional medicine and alternative medicine. My product is an alternative to medicine") and Jennifer Coolidge was fun as a ditzy beauty pageant contestant. By contrast, Jason Alexander disappointed as he seemed to pause before every line; and if it does nothing else, Thank God You're Here reminds us that Tom Green should never be allowed on camera again. The supporting actors for the sketches are decent, but it's as if they are forbidden to be funny: All they do is ask open questions and pauses for the celebrities to fill in the blank. Instead of a wonderful comic blend, it's like a live-action rendition of Mad Libs.

I doubt Thank God You're Here will last long. No big loss.

Overall Grade: C-

Reviewed by James Lynch

Brandi Carlile, The Story (Columbia, 2007)

Brandi Carlile's self-titled 2005 debut CD made a big impression with me, due to the combination of some memorably catchy melodies and Carlile's husky, powerful alto. The past two years have seen her gradually building up a following, due to her strong live performances and some exposure on TV shows like Grey's Anatomy. Her sophomore effort The Story expands on the folk rock of the first album, branching out towards both country and harder rock. As before, her two primary accompanists and collaborators are identical twins Phil (bass) and Tim (lead guitar) Hanseroth. Renowned producer T Bone Burnett was brought to oversee the sessions for this recording.

One thing that becomes immediately obvious upon listening to The Story is that the vocals were done straight, with little or no overdubbing. Burnett clearly intended to capture the rawness in Carlile's vocals. I feel that the approach works well, and is needed to fully showcase the energy which Carlile puts into her singing, but it was the subject of a rather heated debate when the title song was the iTunes free download of the week about a month ago. Most of the comments centered around a moment nearly three minutes into the song, when Carlile's voice cracks as she reaches for a high note. One of the negative responders suggested that Simon Cowell would have a field day with that one, which led to somebody else suggesting that the American Idol audience wouldn't know honest music if they heard it. Indeed, the honesty in Brandi Carlile's music is her greatest asset (if you go for that sort of thing, naturally). Carlile sings from the heart, and that more than anything else gives her voice its power. The lyrics are likewise pointed and direct. The musical arrangements seldom differ from a standard two guitars, bass and drums format, but they suit Carlile's voice and style well.

The Story is a pretty solid CD from top to bottom. Standout tracks include a couple of particularly good rockers in "My Song" and "Losing Heart," a nice upbeat acoustic number in "Have You Ever," and an ominous minor-key ballad in "Shadow On The Wall." I don't think the best songs on the new CD match "Closer To You" and "Throw It All Away," the two real gems from Carlile's first album, so on the whole I probably wouldn't rate it quite as high. Still, anybody who liked the first CD will like this one as well, and anybody interested in hearing some honest, emotional, straight-from-the-gut singing and writing from a fresh young face on the music scene will want to give Brandi Carlile a listen.

Overall grade: B+

The Men in the Jungle - Norman Spinrad (1967)

Norman Spinrad is one of the old school of science-fiction writers. Like Harlan Ellison, he wrote teleplays (the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" is his), movie scripts, songs, short stories and novels. His books are commentaries, as most good science fiction and indeed most good fiction is, about society, politics and even what it means to be human.

The Men in the Jungle is an early novel, Spinrad's third, written in 1967. It transforms elements of Vietnam, Bolivia, Che Guevara and more, with a dash of Heart of Darkness, into a science fiction story about fomenting revolution on a backward planet. It asks the age old question of how can you kill a monster without becoming a monster yourself? It doesn't give any easy answers to that question of any of the others.

This is a horrible book, by which I mean it contains horrors. It is not a "horror" book, though. The horrors it illustrates are all too human. The society he paints is frighteningly believable from it's specially bred human killing machines to the specially bred human food animals to the institutionalized sadism of the the rules, the "Brotherhood of Pain."

While lacking the sophistication of Spinrad's later work, the book packs a visceral punch that rarely appears in his later work either. It is a difficult book to read, unremitting in its depictions of the depths to which humanity will sink. It would be nice to imagine that this sort of thing is simply a fiction, that no actual person or people would perpetuate such acts on other humans. But the atrocities of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Rwanda, the janjaweed militias and the situation in Darfur all show that reality is much, much worse than any fiction can ever be.

Perhaps that is why good science fiction works so well. By setting events in a different time or on a distant planet or both, the author gives his readers a little distance from the subject, allowing them to consider the horrors with some dispassion. It is to be hoped that by coping with the themes and issues in the abstract, they are better able to address the real issues when they arise. Or perhaps that is merely hopeless optomism.

As I say, this is a difficult book to read, requiring the reader to gaze into, if you will permit the phrase, the heart of darkness. And, even, into his own heart to regard the darkness that lies within. This book is not for everyone.

Overall Grade: B

The Drawing of the Dark - Tim Powers (1979)

Let me start by stating up front that Tim Powers is one of a handful of authors whose books I buy on sight. The Drawing of the Dark, one of his early novels which has recently been re-released, confirms my conviction that I am right to do so. Powers's best work combines history, fantasy and mythology into a heady brew that immmediately draws one into his world, a world which is more-or-less ours, but with hidden currents beneath the surface and where great events in history happen for reasons which are far more obscure and arcane than the commonly accepted ones.

For example, in this book, the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529 is because the forces of the East want to destroy or capture a brewery of exceptional mystical significance. Somehow, when Powers says that, it all makes perfect sense. The writing itself is superb, moving with excellent pace and clockwork intricacy. The research into the historical settings is good - and just gets better in his later books.

I don't really want to say much more about the plot, since a lot of the fun comes in seeing how the various pieces come together, so instead I'll content myself with comparing him to some other authors that are similar in some ways, or who strike me as being influenced by Powers.

Umberto Eco's Focault's Pendulum could almost be a Powers book. The idea that the a secret force has been manipulating things, the vast mystical conspiracy theory of it all, is the sort of thing that crops up in Powers. The Name of the Rose has a number of traits reminiscent of Powers as well; the tight and intricate plotting and historical placement.

Neil Gaiman's books have a similar feel as Powers's. His American Gods books in particular are very Powersian in their postulates that mundane history can be explained in terms of mystical, magical or mythical forces. Whereas Eco tends to avoid overt magic or fantasy, neither Gaiman nor Powers back off from it. Both Gaiman and Powers also like to deal with Ur-Myths, addressing for instance, the idea that Sigmund drawing Odin's sword from a tree trunk and Arthur drawing a sword from a stone are probably the same story ...

Ultimately, though, there is no one quite like Tim Powers. His books are splendid, and The Drawing of the Dark while perhaps not his absolute best (I think that The Anubis Gates has that honor), is a fine example. If you are familar with Powers and have not had a chance to read this book since it has been out of print, it is available again! If you have never read Powers, I envy you your first experience with this unique talent.

Overall Rating: A

Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett (1980)

Pratchett is one of that rarified breed of writers, like Wodehouse, who are such singular stylists that all other facets of their work fade into pale insignificance in comparison. His most enduring creation is the Discworld, chronicled in more than thirty books and Lord only knows how many spin-offs and related projects. The Discworld is an eccentric (in many senses) fantasy world, people by a bizarre mix of incongruous characters. It is improbable, anachronistic and utterly charming. Pratchett's usual plan of attack is to take some work of fiction, or an entire genre, and recast it in his own inimitable style. Like few modern writers, but most older writers, his books work better the more familiar you are with literature in general.

Which brings us to Wyrd Sisters. The book is funny enough on its own, but if you know your Shakespeare, you catch the joke in the title and know some of what's to come. An impression confirmed when the book begins with this:

The night was as black as the inside of a cat.  It
was the kind of night, you could believe, on which
gods moved men as though they were pawns on
the chessboard of fate.  In the middle of this elemental
storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze
bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye.  It
illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron
bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: "When shall
we three meet again?"


There was a pause.

Finally another voice said, in far more
ordinary tones: "Well, I can do next Tuesday."

With that we know that we are most definitely not in Macbeth, but the more you know about that play, the more in-jokes you get. If you don't think the above is even a little funny, then Pratchett may not be for you. If you do, then by all means give him a try. Wyrd Sisters is one of the best of the Discworld books, and is recommended on that account. It serves as a decent introduction to the series, which are so chaotic that reading them out of order is not a real problem. If one gets drawn in, then reading the first two books is probably a good idea; they are The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.

Finally, let me add that Pratchett probably writes the funniest footnotes in fiction.

Overall Grade: A

(as a final note, there is an extensive wikipedia entry on Discworld.)

The Night Man - K.W. Jeter (1989)

K.W. Jeter writes both science-fiction and horror novels, and his science-fiction is good enough that I will sometimes try his horror. The Night Man is my most recent endeavor in that direction. Jeter writes well enough, but in this case the material simply doesn't stand up.

An abused boy summons a "protector" of sorts from the recesses of his mind, and this apparition revenges itself on the offenders. Jeter manages to wring a good deal of mileage out of a remarkable small number of violent encounters - this is not a "splatter" book in any way. There are some interesting moments, and it moves along to a reasonable if not inspired climax.

Essentially, though, that is the problem. The entire book is reasonable but not inspired. It is telling that the pull quotes on the cover refer to Jeter as a writer and to his body of work, but not to this title in particular. As a result, it is impossible to recommend The Night Man except to Jeter fans or afficionados. However, one can certainly recommend Jeter! If you have not tried his work, I would suggest beginning with The Glass Hammer or Dr. Adder.

Overall Grade: C

Jericho, CBS Television, Season One, 2006-07

I recall when I was younger that we used to have civil defense drills in school to prepare us for a nuclear attack by the Russians. When the siren went off, we would head on over to the cinderblock walls, and kneel down bracing for the potential attack that never came thankfully. It also occurred to us that living in a suburb of New York City, that while we might not be killed in the initial blast, clearly the winds would blow the fallout onto Long Island, and pretty much we would all probably die of radiation poisoning anyway over the next week. I had images of us huddling into the town hall radiation shelter eating stale crackers and drinking brackish water. I also realized that society as we know it would become nonexistent with a state of anarchy ensuing quite quickly among the few long term survivors.

Ah, the good old days! Now we realize that we’ll be dead from bird flu or anthrax long before the Russians send a missile our way. Be that as it may, CBS’ Jericho explores the “what if” scenario of a nuclear attack. The action takes place in a small Kansas town known as Jericho. It is clearly “Middle America” with small town living; the kind of place where you can sleep with the windows open, and most everyone knows everybody else. This small town tranquility gets shattered one day when America’s cities suffer the unthinkable: a nuclear holocaust.



Now, Jericho has been on since September, why am I bringing this up now? Well, I just started watching it. Through the online offerings of the network, I decided to start viewing it, and I’m already hooked. It reminds me of television’s Lost- a group of people struggling to survive under extremely difficult conditions, however, there is none of the mysterious wackiness that permeates the island that rarely gets explained, or the annoying back stories. No, Jericho is more of a “forward plot” type of experience so far, and at times it feels more like a movie or mini series than “just” a television show (Kind of like Surface from last season that got cancelled and left too many things hanging, but it was excellent up until that point).

Using the CBS Innertube video watching service I'm enjoying the ultimate time shifting experience. Forget VCR’s and DVD recorders- by viewing online, I can shift an entire season! I’ve really enjoyed the first two episodes, and for now, all of the episodes are online. If, like me, you’re looking for some new television amongst the frequent repeats of the last month, than head on over and check out Jericho. While I didn’t have time for it earlier in the season, I’m enjoying it now.

Grade: A-

In Danger's Path

In Danger’s Path is the eighth novel in WEB Griffin’s series of The Corps. While it weighs in at a lengthy 550 pages in hardcover, it is well worth the effort.

The main plot focuses on, true to Griffin’s other novels, a little more obscure history. The US Navy needs better weather information about the Northern Pacific. The Army and their Air Corps also need this same info as they plan ahead for an invasion of the Japanese islands. It is decided that weather data from Mongolia would be helpful to both services. The issue becomes as to which service will mount the mission, and how to setup a weather station in Japan’s backyard, and keep it supplied without the enemy bombing it. While this doesn’t get highlighted in history books, this mission and the weather station is historically true.

Griffin uses this as his starting point for this apocryphal story of some of our favorite US Marines to setup the weather station in the Gobi Desert (imaginatively called Operation Gobi- seriously they should have had a better code name than that!). The storyline divides between General Pickering, now a bigwig at the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA) in charge of Pacific Operations. We follow the planning stages, and the interservice politics involved in a complicated mission on the other side of the world. There is also a sideline about a potential break in security that results in a shake up among the brass.

The other major plot line focuses on some issues that hadn’t seriously come up from the first novel in this series, Semper Fi. In typical Griffin fashion, he diabolically shelves these storylines on the back burner just until you start to give up hope (or at least forget…), and then he thrusts them into the forefront. More specifically, we hear more about the foreign wives left behind in China from the Marines that were withdrawn before World War II. He also interweaves some chronologically older events into this novel that brings things together. Seriously, anyone that can mesh eight books together into a cohesive plot line must be a master of their trade!

By the end of In Danger’s Path, it is 1943, all of the major characters in the series are featured, and a lot of loose ends get tied together. After eight novels, some of which are not exactly short, we have been taken on quite a tour of the Marines in World War Two. In my view, Griffin probably could have ended the series here. In fact it appears that this is the last of The Corps novels that deal with WW II. However, there are two more novels that head on over to the Korean War, and who knows if there are more coming.

Grade: A-



For reviews of the first six novels of the series, click here. For the seventh novel, Behind the Lines, see here.

Flyboys (2006)

Perhaps it is the lack of World War One films that got me instantly intrigued in the film Flyboys. Here we get a glimpse into Americans that volunteered for the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of American fighter pilots that fought before America entered the “war to end all wars.” In this early era of airplanes, this was dangerous to the point of bordering on suicidal as their life expectancy was measured in mere weeks.

The plot follows the young men of the squad from their joining up in the US, to their training, and on to combat. There is, as is almost predictable in these films, a romantic interest between one of the pilots and a French woman that intertwines the rest of the story.

On the downside, Flyboys is quite formulaic. We start with too many pilots to follow easily, but one by one they die off until we have it down to a core group to follow. There wasn't much surprise here as this 2 hour and nineteen minute film plodded along at points that probably could have been trimmed down to a more compact story of under two hours.

With those criticisms out in the open, there was a lot to like about this film. Visually, the film is quite strong as we show the biplanes flying over a rural France of World War I with its farmland, and rivers. The combat scenes are also very well done. Sure, it’s all digital effects, but how else can we see First World War biplanes dogfight, and even take on a zeppelin? In my view, these special effects truly are the spotlight of this film.

Overall, being a history, military and aviation buff, I did enjoy this film. Even for those that don’t share these interests, Flyboys is still a visual masterpiece at points, hampered by an average plot. Hollywood doesn’t make too many epic films anymore because of the financial risks involved, but this one takes its place in that grand tradition. It’s a shame that it was in theaters around the same time as Flags of Our Fathers which got all the attention, because Flyboys is a far better film. If you missed this one, definitely check it out on DVD; just be prepared with some extra popcorn for this long film.

Overall Grade: B+

The Kennedys, songs of the OPEN ROAD (Appleseed Recordings, 2006)

A couple of years ago, before a Sam Phillips concert at Joe's Pub in New York City, I got into a long discussion of music with a couple sitting at my table. We discussed the influences in Ms. Phillips' music, various world music acts we'd discovered, and the sorry state of commercial radio. After the show as I got up to leave, the woman introduced herself as Maura and the man as Pete. It didn't occur to me until I was outside that I had been sitting with the folk-rock duo The Kennedys. I guess I validated a point Pete made during our conversation about how hard it is to get noticed these days. As an avid fan of sixties rock who's played a 12-string guitar for nearly twenty years, I'm more or less The Kennedys' target audience, and I failed to recognize them while sharing a table and some conversation with them over several hours. Oops, my bad.

An oddity in music in that they've successfully balanced their marriage and a recording career for over a decade, Pete and Maura Kennedy are unrepentant believers in the power of rock and roll in its purest form. They tend to wear their influences on their sleeves even in their original compositions, but for their latest album songs of the OPEN ROAD, they decided to pay tribute to their favorite singers and songwriters directly with an album of covers. The writers covered range from fairly big stars like Bob Dylan and Stephen Stills, to less known but highly regarded performers like Nick Lowe and Jimmy Webb, to more recent voices like Victoria Williams and Nanci Griffith, to writers like the late Dave Carter who should be much better known than they are.

While I knew the names of all the writers, I was only really familiar with the original versions of two of the songs on this CD. The first of these is the classic Byrds' song "Eight Miles High." Given the complexity of the song, and the way it captures a particular moment in music and popular culture now forty years past, this was a very risky choice of songs. Pete maintains the intricacy of the original guitar arrangement while making it sound a bit more polished and less ominous. This might scandalize some people, but I think The Kennedys are trying to make the point that the song holds up even without the psychedelic underpinnings. Their version sounded fine to me on the whole, the glaring absence of the major seventh in the vocal harmonies notwithstanding. The other familiar song, and the real highlight of the album for me, was Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." The song's dark imagery holds up spectacularly well in the present -- a little too well, in fact, but that's hardly the fault of the song. Pete does a brilliant job of layering track after track of guitars and other guitar-like instruments under Maura's lead vocals, and the earnestness and passion in the singing and playing intensify beautifully as the verses get longer and longer. Unlike Edie Brickell's more familiar cover, which always felt watered down to me, The Kennedys' version has just the right amount of bite to it.

Not being familiar with the remaining songs, I could treat the rest of songs of the OPEN ROAD as an album of back-to-basics, no-frills acoustic guitar rock with some quality songwriting. Like I always say when I'm discussing Tom Petty's music, whatever strange places my musical wanderings may take me, there will always be room for music like this in my CD collection. I particularly liked Dave Carter's "Happytown (All Right With Me)." Carter's melodies frequently shine with a childlike happiness even when the tone of the lyrics is a bit more nuanced, and this song is a perfect example of that. The Brazilian feel of Stephen Stills' "Pretty Girl Why" and the fervent gospel of Mahalia Jackson's "I'm On My Way" provide some healthy diversity to the collection as well.

I suppose The Kennedys could be criticized for being so in awe of their influences that they don't really distinguish themselves musically from them. They can be forgiven for that, though, because their taste is impeccable. songs of the OPEN ROAD is a reverential collection of quality songs from some of the best writers in the folk and rock genres, and The Kennedys do a fine job performing them. The album will definitely appeal to fans of acoustic rock, especially if they have a soft spot for 12-strings. And if you're one of those people, find a picture of Pete and Maura and take a good, long look. You just might meet them at a show some day, and they deserve to be recognized.

Overall grade: B+

Reprinted with permission from The Green Man Review
Copyright 2007 The Green Man Review

Mail Order Wife (2005)

These days, for a grand or two, just about anyone can acquire a digital video camera, and a computer video workstation. Add in a compelling topic, and any average Joe can be a documentary filmmaker. Unfortunately, many of these budding Scorcese's films are better suited for YouTube than the big screen.

The premise of Mail Order Wife is based around a slightly below average guy decides to find his future wife from a catalog of foreign women. The film subsidizes him a couple grand, and welcome to America for a Southeast Asian woman. A couple of weeks later, they are married, and the film production is halted for the newlyweds. I kind of wish things had ended here.

What follows is a disturbing portrayal as the new marriage is not what it seems. The director tries to assist the Asian bride, but that was not without some serious strings. However, by the end, I was starting to wonder who really took the most advantage, and who to feel sorry for.

Mail Order Wife is a mostly forgettable pseudodocumentary that should convince any guy that just about any other method of finding a bride is preferable.

Overall Grade: C

Deep Six (1984)

While I generally try to read a series in order, for whatever reason, I find myself skipping around Cussler's longest running series of novels- the Dirk Pitt books. Deep Six is the sixth novel of the series.

I read in an interview that Cussler started to run out of plot ideas. On the one hand, it is certainly plausible that over three plus decades you craft so many fine novels, however, he feels the fault lies with that he uses several plot lines in each novel. Deep Six exemplifies this use of multiple plots.

The crux of Deep Six centers around abducting the President from his yacht, and brainwashing him, and then allowing them to return to power. Many novels would "make a meal" out of this plot alone, with the mayhem that ensues when the President declares Marshall law and locks out the Congress. Cussler adds in a background story of a lost ship at sea twenty years earlier with a valuable cargo. Then there is the plot about the toxic waste in the Bering Sea killing marine life. Also there's the computer hacking, and the multinational corporation involvement. And let's not forget about the final battle on the Mississippi Delta, and the Civil War reenactors that get pressed into duty! Do you see how Cussler can start to run short on material? Few authors out there can weld so many plot lines into a meaningful and seamless whole as Cussler can.

In my mind, Deep Six is a great example of Cussler's novels. The descriptions are spot on, and the dialogue is crisp. All of the major characters that appear in the later works figure into this one. If you want the American version of James Bond, then Deep Six is a good place to look. For a novel that's past the twenty year mark, I found Deep Six surprisingly contemporary.

Overall Grade: A

PS: We also find out how our hero, Pitt, met his boss, Sandecker, in this book.

You can read an excerpt here.