L.A. Confidential Non Traditional Christmas Movie

L.A. Confidential, is great movie for the Holidays.  Starting with Bloody Christmas and including The Christmas Blues by Dean Martin this is the perfect movie for adults strung out on a little too much Frosty and Grinch when Christmas Eve comes around.

Batman Noel by Lee Bermejo

Batman Noel is a retelling on Dicken's Christmas Carol with Batman as Scrooge, Catwoman as Christmas Past, Superman as Christmas Present and Joker as Christmas Future.  Lee Bermejo's wrote and produced the artwork for this very original Batman work.  While it was not a great read, it was never dull, or bad.  To me it represents a true innovator trying something original and succeeding at the task.

Silent Night 2012

I had heard good things about this flick, and figured I would give it a try for the Holidays.  Even with low expectations this was a rather large mistake.  Silent Night fails on virtually every level.  The victims of Santa are introduced mere minutes before their cliched and predictable deaths.  Aside from an abysmal slasher, the mystery elements are poorly done and the reveal of who Santa is is nothing short of stupid.  Just to pad the movie about a go nowhere drug dealer subplot is thrown in and does not matter to any of the other plot elements when it is easily resolved.  

Jaimie King and Malcolm Mc Dowell give solid performances, that are wasted in this uninspired drek.  

Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips

Tis the Season...Here's M.R.'s December recommendation

Overview;
Everywhere you look, trashy people are doing trashy things in this darkly delicious debut comic thriller. Set in the middle of a Christmas Eve blizzard in 1979 Wichita, the novel opens with lawyer-turned-petty-mobster Charlie Arglist marking time before an important meeting with his shady partner, Vic Cavanaugh. After this meeting he plans to leave Wichita hurriedly with a load of cash and, presumably, the enmity of its rightful owner, Bill Gerard, the local head of a larger regional crime syndicate. Charlie and Vic run a string of strip bars around Wichita for Gerard, from which they have been skimming cash on the sly. But Charlie, who sets out to visit all the outposts in his "empire" one last time, lets a drunken spirit of Yuletide sentimentality (or maybe spite) trigger an unprecedented (and therefore highly visible) string of improvisations. He comps some of his dancers' shakedown money, causing a riot at a club; he unwisely lets his would-be girlfriend in on one of Gerard's blackmail scams. Then he and his ex-brother-in-law crash the Christmas gathering of their cumulative ex-family, setting off a whole new string of disasters. For Charlie there is only the imminent future of his escape with Gerard's money, and it isn't until he discovers a fresh corpse buried behind Vic's empty house that he realizes that his future isn't what it used to be. Newcomer Phillips's seedy characters are skillfully developed, particularly the semiremorseful Charlie. The frigid Midwestern setting is the perfect frame for Charlie's wretched situation; the time period emphasizes the low-level viciousness of Charlie's contemporaries, and Phillips wastes no time in piling up the bodies. Charlie's final confrontation with Gerard will likely leave readers nauseated with laughterAaltogether not a bad way to debut in crime fiction.


Why for December?

Scott Phillip's cool assured prose creates a clear almost palpable mood of small town self destruction, and the glimmer that their my a horizon.  The Ice Harvest is a wonderful Neo Noir novel with a dark array of distinct characters, crackling dialogue and Phillip's use of the holiday season never comes off as tacky, but rather as a layer of crime to the residents of Wichita 

Raine Delight Interview

Click Below for my interview on Raine Delight

Cyber Monday Sale

All Books at the Untreed Reads Sale are 50% off all day Monday November 26th.  When you buy directly from Untreed you get a pdf, a kindle copy and a nook copy all for one low price. Click below to enter the sale.   

Alien The Illustrated Story by Archie Goodwin& Walt Simonson

"Two of comics’ greatest talents joined forces in 1979 to bring Ridley Scott’s epic Alien motion picture to the comic book page. Out of print for over thirty years, this brand new edition has been meticulously restored from original artwork in Walt Simonson’s studio — presenting for the very first time the definitive artist’s edition of the greatest sci-fi horror ever produced."

From Titan Publishing.

Alien The Illustrated Story, feels like a remarkable time capsule, and I was filled with waves of nostalgia as I read through the 64 pages.  Originally commissioned by Heavy Metal Magazine this adaptation has a look and feel of a bygone era, because it was produced in 79.  Being from Heavy Metal the content never needs to be toned down, and yet it does not linger on grotesqueries, or abuse profanity.  

As an huge fan of the Alien franchise, this was a blast to read, and am sure I will page through it regularly for years to come. And in an era before VHS I would have picked this up without a moments hesitation.