Book #42: The Graveyard Book

There are books that are uniformly good the whole way through, and there are books that are okay, but have sections that raise the level up to something better than it was.

And then there's Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which is uniformly great, with sections that raise it so far through the roof I am compelled to call it the best thing he's ever written.  And that's coming from someone who not only bought the individual issues of The Sandman, but the trade paperbacks and Absolute Editions as well.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Bod Owens, short for Nobody, whose parents and sibling were brutally murdered when he was infant.  But Bod crawls away, and is taken in by the local graveyard, there to be raised by the ghosts and spirits that reside within and without the old stones and trees.  He is awarded the Freedom of the Graveyard, which enables him to learn Fading, and Fear, and all manner of supernatural craft in between his letters and his counting lessons.  But the trick of it is, he has to stay in the graveyard.  For that is the only place he cane remain safe from the clutches of the Man Jack, who still has one piece of unfinished business left to settle.

At heart The Graveyard Book is a coming of age story firmly rooted in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, but Gaimain layers every ounce of his storytelling prowess into fleshing out (ha!) the ghostly world Bod and his friends inhabit.  Beautifully complemented by long time collaborator Dave McKean, who uses his singular artistry to illustrate sections of the novel, The Graveyard Book is ostensibly written for Young Adultstm, but doesn't sacrifice any maturity in its plot or style.  Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the chapter entitled "Danse Macabre" which involves a ritual it would spoil to describe in this review.  If you do nothing else, find this book and read that chapter - it's one of the most beautiful passages I've read in any book in quite some time.

I can't recommend The Graveyard Book enough.  If you're a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing this is essential stuff.  If you're interested in a good story, great characters, and a writing style that feels like you're walking in a dream, this is still essential.

Into the Fray?

Stuff's been percolating in the ol' cranium. Writerly things.

I've made a few attempts at fiction writing before: I have one short story I'm fairly happy with, and I have about 30 pages of a horror novella that needs some heavy editing1 and revising but could possibly go on to be something complete, if nothing else.

But both of those were written about 10 years ago, and despite a few half-hearted attempts at collaboration on short stories, a novel and two screen plays with various friends, the muse did not deign to raise her head in my general direction. Part of the reason is my writing interests have remained largely focused at nonfiction, where I'm determined to write something that gets my point across exactly as I intend it. 95% of my stuff gets about 65% close to it. One or two pieces may have even reached above the 90% mark. Doesn't really matter if my point is mundane2 or reaches to more lofty3 standards, the purpose has always been to get it across, as close as possible.

But the fiction urge is starting to build up a little bit, poking its fingers in my ears and scratching between my shoulder blades. Yesterday I was driving back to the office after a lunch hour spent perusing the Science Fiction/Fantasy aisles in Borders in response to a query I posted over at Unbound, and an idea sprang into my head. Very short, maybe 10 pages if that, but it was a fully-formed idea, and 10 minutes later it still seemed like a good one. So I battered out a rough outline of the action and beats in my notebook and left it. A few hours later I peeked in to check on it. Hadn't run away, and still seemed like a good idea.

So maybe this will go somewhere. Dunno. I'm going to take a stab at it and, if I'm feeling particularly bold, or jaunty, or perhaps drunk, I may post it in some form up here or elsewhere where it can be read and commented on. We'll see.

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1 Especially in the pretension deaprtment.  The working title was "The inevitable Inclusion of Death as a Variable in the Algebraic Formula for Love," the writing of which makes me wince with shame.

2 HATCHET is a bad movie.

3 The existence of a higher power, unassailable proof of which was demonstrated earlier this week when Knight Rider was actually picked up for an entire season while Pushing Daisies still languishes in television limbo, although one could argue that this gives more weight to the existence of the guy with the horns and the tail, although that could AGAIN point to the existence of the guy with beard and the flowing robes, since one could posit that the existence of one implies the existence of the other, although on an entirely different hand (let's assume we have more than two, and that we're Douglas Adams) there's the argument that proof denies faith, and without faith we're back to drawing board again.

Both of these footnotes are brough to you by the spirit of David Foster Wallace, may he rest in peace.

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Being Film #9 in Hail Horror 2008

C.H.U.D. is a great example of how time can play tricks on the mind.  I hadn't seen the film since I was a kid, maybe 15, 16 years old.  All I could remember was the unbelievably awesome acronym: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.  Which pretty much said it all, really.  The only other thing I recalled was really bad, tongue-in-cheek kind of humor.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not about it being bad; C.H.U.D. is pretty awful.  But its awfulness stems from its absolute earnestness around the plot.  This is a damn serious movie, despite how tacky and cheesy it is at times.  And it gets even weirder when you see such stars as Daniel Stern, John Heard, and even a brief appearance by John Goodman, who can't hide his charm even when he's playing a loser cop at a diner for less than a minute of screen time.

For those of you that blocked it out of your minds, C.H.U.D. is about a group of missing persons in the city, mostly homeless people called "undergrounders," who live in the sewer systems.  When a cop's wife also goes missing, he begins an investigation involving the head of a soup kitchen (Stern, in full afro mode) and a photographer (Heard) who had made a name for himself shooting a series of photo essays on the homeless.  They eventually learn that a bill to move toxic waste through the city was being appealed , and in the meantime the waste has been just sitting there, underground.  Slowly the Undergrounders have been turning into vicious radioactive monsters who are no longer content to remain underground.  C.H.U.D. is the name given to the creatures in a classified file on the beasts.

There are som gross-out moments, mostly focusing on bodies ripped in half and one scene where a clogged shower drain suddely shoots out a geyser of blood that rivals A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's classic Johnny Depp death scene.  But the C.H.U.D.'s are very much Man-in-Suit types: you can envision where the zippers are.  I read one review where they likened the creatures to Sloth in THE GOONIES, which isn't really too far off the mark.  Their eyes glow like big orange bulbs, they jump out and pose menacingly before killing you, and in one bizarre case they stretch their necks out in some weird, phallic pose that's outright laughable:

Stern and Heard are both pretty decent considering what they're up against - Heard in particular tries to wring everything he can out of his scenes with his pregnant girlfriend.  But that's not enough for a movie tries too hard to send multiple social messages instead of just being scary good fun.

In the end you get strangled dogs, decapitated homeless people, and lots of hands coming out of man hole covers.  You find out that C.H.U.D. in fact stands for something other than Cannibalisitic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, but you won't care because in the end that's what it HAS to stand for; it's the best thing about the movie.

Time and Color

"Dost thou love life?  Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."   -Benjamin Franklin

The above quote has nothing to do with the following post, which was about something else entirely before it crashed along with my hard drive about three hours ago.  That post was about college music as I remembered it back when I was a freshman in 1991.  The quote was found in an excellent blog post from Roger Ebert, concerning a review for a film he only sat through the first 8 minutes for. 

This post is about driving home with my son yesterday, and how the colors of trees bled from red to yellow to green to brown, and the wind picked up the leaves on sidewalks, giving the impression of invisible runners following us as we drove home. 

It's also about adjusting my rear view mirror so I can look at Jack's face, and sing along with him when he decides to launch into an impromptu rendition of "Happy Birthday" as he happily pulls off his shoes and socks.  Usually I sing along with him.  Sometimes I just watch.

This post is about the weather getting colder, the days getting grayer, and all of that making the world a Bergman film, a Sirk film, a Curtiz marathon on an early Sunday morning when you don't mind the sunlight drifting in from the windows and glaring against the television screen.  It's about everything that I should remember, about my family, my goals, my dreams, and about how all too often I forget until something happens...

...like seeing my son singing in the backseat of the car, as we drive home, the trees rolling their colors like a rainbow falling off the edge of the world.

Hatchet (2007)

UPDATED:  I was in awe at how many grammar and spelling mistakes I found upon re-reading this review.  So those are fixed.  I should also mention that in hindsight the character of the swamp guide was so ridiculous he made me laugh.  So factor that in when you decide whether or not to see HATCHET.

Being Film #8 in Hail Horror 2008

This one's for Sean, who loaded up his Netflix queue with horror films he was interested in and told me to take my pick.  So before I talk about 2007's HATCHET, directed by Adam Green, here is a personal message to Sean:

"Hi Sean!  Hope you're doing well - Jack misses you, so stop by soon!  Oh, and by the way - you have some fantastic horror films in your queue.  At a glance I can whole-heatedly recommend films like ROGUE, DANCE OF THE DEAD (obviously) BASKET CASE (which I hope to review next week), the original BLACK CHRISTMAS, and GINGER SNAPS, which I adore.  Please, PLEASE consider these options very carefully before taking a look at HATCHET.  You've been warned..."

Why do I say that?  Because the poster's tag line of "Old Fashioned American Horror" roughly translates to "low-budget 80's throwaway that stars someone who looks and acts roughly like the dude who stars in that show Chuck".  And while I can understand the film as a sort of reaction to the glut of PG-13 stuff that passes itself off as "horror" nowadays, HATCHET relies on simple devices like silly music and purposeful overacting for humor that feels more tired than funny.  And the horror, when it does come, is pretty much like everything else you've seen in the mid 80's, just not as scary.  Or good.

In short:  a motley crew of tourists take an illegal nighttime cruise in the swamps of New Orleans where they're terrorized by Victor Crowley, a deformed giant who was supposedly killed as a child when, after a childhood prank burns down his home, his father mistakenly slams a hatchet in his face trying to save him by breaking the door down.  You have your lanky hero, a pair of porno starlets and their sleazy director, the hot loner chick who will eventually have a tender moment with said hero, and the obligatory black sidekick who's main role is to scream and toss off unfunny one-liners.  That's it.  People get picked off one by one in gore-infested ways until only one remains.

Or maybe not, because every horror movie nowadays needs that little "jump" at the end that was probably the first thing thought of by the screenwriter.  And I'll admit that the ending to HATCHET is sly and kind of cool, but definitely not worth sitting through 90 minutes to get to. Very brief cameos by genre vets Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund and Tony "Candyman" Todd bring a little life but are in for too short a time to make any difference.  Huge gaps in internal logic pervade every decision made in the film, the power of Victor Crowley is inconsistent and although the gore is pretty impressive for such a low-budget movie, the murder scenes are shot in an over-the-top in a way that borders on the ridiculous.

Maybe drunk with a bunch of friends who don't care about anything other than tits and blood (both are offered in copious amounts) is the way to watch HATCHET.  It doesn't have any of the terror that the movies it prides itself on being a part of (e.g. FRIDAY THE 13th, etc..) have, so what  promises to be a refreshing change from the typical instead finds itself barely retreading water from 25 years instead of 5.