Review: Idol Musings
If you like humor, real-life stories or just plain good writing, you will enjoy Idol Musings: Selected Writings from an Online Writing Competition edited by Sophie N. Childs. Idol Musings includes some of the best entries from LJ Idol, an annual online contest for Live Journal modeled after American Idol. Entrants come from a variety of backgrounds and experience. Some are established writers and some have never been previously published. What they do share is a love of blogging. Childs has included entries on a variety of topics; there is something for everybody. While there some humorous...
Read MoreReview: Dig Up My Gold
By the time anyone has reached 70 to 80 years of age, he or she will have accumulated a wealth of stories. At some point, a friend or family member is likely to suggest, “You ought to write a book.” Of all those people with interesting stories, only about 10 percent probably have anything worth writing about, and only a fraction of them are capable of turning their stories into a worthwhile book. I say this by way of explaining why so many memoirs — especially those which are independently or self-published — tend to fall flat. In Arthur Birkby’s case, he does relate...
Read MoreReview: Genuine Men
On the surface, Genuine Men: Journeys in Stories and Stills sounds like a promising project. Photographer Nancy Bruno set out to depict the lives of men from a variety of backgrounds and ages, and to share their views on what it means to be a real man. Unfortunately, for a book centered around photography, the portraits fail to impress. Considering that the photos are black-and-white, most are also low contrast, in an uninteresting palette of medum grays. The framing of these photos often fails to make sense, which could have been addressed during the print-making. All serious...
Read MoreReview: Halfling’s Court
While much of modern fantasy makes use of similar tropes and settings, The Halfling’s Court by Danielle Ackley-McPhail takes fantasy to a new level: blending the familiar with the unexpected, timelessness with modernity and— believe it or not — faeries with a biker gang. Ackley-McPhail first introduced this world through two stories she wrote for collections she edited, Bad Ass Faeries 1 and 2. Even though those collections focused on revisiting the mythological world of faeries, her stories stood out for their fresh perspective. She has clearly done her research into the biker...
Read MoreReview: Go Get Some Rosemary
Directed by Ben and Joshua Safdie Starring: Ronald Bronstein, Sage Ranaldo, Frey Ranaldo, Abel Ferrara, Lee Ranaldo According to FIPRESCI Jury Zoran Gojić, Špela Barlič and Radmila Djurica of the 20th Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFE) in Slovenia, the jurors made up their mind pretty fast to award the International Federation of Film Critics Award American to Go Get Some Rosemary, directed by Ben and Josh Safdie. “Josh and Ben Safdie brothers tell a simple story about a complicated family — which is their own. Inspired by the New York independent film tradition, it...
Read MoreReview: The Limits of Control
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch Starring: Tilda Swinton, Isaach De Bankolé, Luis Tosar, John Hurt The brand-new Jim Jarmusch film The Limits of Control was screened at the 20th annual Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFE) in Slovenia. One of the truly independent American film directors, Jim Jarmusch is an uncanny and charming writer-director (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train, Ghost Dog, and Broken Flowers). This time he headed to Spain to shoot The Limits of Control, his first film shot outside the U.S. “When I was writing the story, Spain kept calling me. I...
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