The Great Curb-Seinfeld Controversy...

... that continues to rage (inside my head) is explored on Butnu:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/seincurb.html

Stephen King: Under The Dome

They say an artist produces their finest work in the first ten to fifteen years of their career. Something to do with that hoary old chestnut, "the hunger of youth". Or, as Simon David Williamson so memorably put it: "Well, at one time you've got it, and then you've lost it... and it's gone forever." I really don't know about that in general (take Clint Eastwood - you really gonna tell me Firefox is a better film than Mystic River?), but in the case of Stephen King the theory seemed to hold some water. The author's canon is front-loaded with classics and I had, without really knowing it, resigned myself to the reality that he would never write anything else that could sit truly comfortably upon the shelf next to Salem's Lot, The Shining, It, and of course, The Stand. Those four have always been the benchmark for me, populating the highest of grounds with the likes of The Dead Zone, Pet Sematary and Carrie scattered about a few feet below them.

Under The Dome, published last year, probably is not destined to join the former group; after one read I'm not going to commit either way. But what is certain is that it is his most absorbing, muscular novel since It, not to mention the most ambitious. (I'd like to make it clear at this point that I am not including the Dark Tower books here, mainly because I've not read the last three having found the fourth, Wizard and Glass, rather dull. Yikes!)

The premise is simple: what would happen if a small town suddenly became encased - exactly along its borders as they would appear on a map - in an invisible, impenetrable bubble? As you may have noticed, and much to King's surprise, this is the exact same plot device used in The Simpsons Movie, and so the publisher has been at great pains to promote the fact that he first attempted the novel in 1976 and, according to the author himself, subsequently "crept away from it with my tail between my legs". The Dome, you see, is big.

The inside back-cover trumpets that it took over 25 years to write (erroneously, if he first attempted it in 1976, but anyway), as if King had been working on it all that time. God knows what sort of gargantuan manuscript we'd have on our hands if that really were the case because as it is the thing clocks in at a very weighty 877 pages - more than the original, edited version of The Stand, in fact, and it is that previous epic concerning the good and evil within mankind that Under The Dome most resembles.

To call it a companion piece is, I think, correct: both books deal with the idea of a complete breakdown of recognised structure and what might occur thereafter, though the scales of each differ completely - one takes place in a single small town, the other an entire continent. Both, though, feature the rise of evil in the aftermath - although unlike Randall Flagg in The Stand, Big Jim Rennie, the town of Chester's Mill's Second Selectman, is all too human. He plays the situation for his own political gain and - like Flagg - wants absolute power. Rennie is "Born Again", and the theme of fundamentalism that runs throughout may invite some to imagine King is in allegorical mode here: Chester's Mill is the U.S.; Rennie is Dick Cheney to First Selectman Andy Sanders's George W. - Sanders is a puppet, an incompetent who Rennie controls in order to get what he wants from the town, without ever having to stick his own neck on the line. Sound familiar? If that doesn't convince you that King was thinking of a certain presidential administration of recent vintage, he has an airliner crash into the Dome just to ram the point home. No-one ever said subtlety was the author's strong point.

To say King's prose has gotten tighter as his career has progressed is not exactly news; it would be a bigger surprise if it hadn't. But I've always felt that the charm of his earlier novels - besides demonstrably being the work of an author who has yet to become "Stephen King: Cash Cow" - lay in the somewhat loose approach to narrative. His attitude seemed to be, why write a scene in three pages when you can easily do it in ten? This was of course a stick his lazier critics often used to beat him with, but I've missed it myself as his work has become pacier and more direct. Having said that, Under The Dome fairly rockets along and is all the better for it. Particularly when it comes to the book's big set-pieces, of which there are many - one in particular rivals the blistering opening chapter of Cell for adrenalin-fuelled savagery on an apocalyptic scale, and another involving a simultaneous prison break and the mother of all town meetings would have Michael Mann twitching uncontrollably in appreciation.

King has stated that he expects to continue writing until he is physically incapable (and even then he'll probably start using a Dictaphone), but he may only continue to publish for another ten years. I don't know if Under The Dome will in time be regarded as one of his absolute classics - we'll decide on that in a couple of years, shall we? But if this is the start of an Indian summer in the man's career, I hope that prediction is conservative. There's no-one to fill the void, you see... not on this kind of form.

Test cricket and pants

See below:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/sittinginpants.html

Bad Lieutenant (2009)

The following is an industry standard-style review for the purpose of demonstrating my professionalism. Please note I don't suddenly think I'm better than you.

BAD LIEUTENANT

Synopsis:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Detective Terence McDonagh investigates the murder of six illegal immigrants. Prescribed Vicodin for a chronic back injury, he detours regularly from the case to procure illegal narcotics for himself and his prostitute girlfriend Frankie. As he gets deeper into debt with his bookie, and his drug-take increases, he becomes personally involved with those under investigation. Soon, his fate and theirs are intertwined.

Review:

As one phoned-in blockbuster performance followed another, we started to fear for Nicolas Cage. Like a once-incendiary comedian now happy to headline a never-ending succession of Disney family films, he appeared increasingly content to grab the cash and slip smoothly and without fuss into the role of Hollywood elder statesman. He had even started voicing cartoons. Would we never again see on-screen the hungry wild man David Lynch once turned to when he needed an actor capable of anchoring his crackpot fairytale Wild At Heart? And speaking of peckish, was the commitment that compelled him to eat a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss gone forever? Well, not quite. Judging by his enjoyably feverish portrayal of Det. Terence McDonagh in this update of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult original, there’s life in the crazy old dog yet. Not that he didn’t have help. In Werner Herzog the actor has the perfect accomplice: turns out the cheerfully crazed stalwart director is the perfect conduit for channelling Cage’s hyperkinetic tendencies. Who’d have thought?

Set in the months after Hurricane Katrina wreaked such devastation in New Orleans, the story follows McDonagh as he trawls through the city’s underworld in search of those responsible for a multiple homicide, but in truth Herzog doesn’t allow the plot to get in the way of the action. In fact, the police procedural genre is merely a hanger on which the director gleefully drapes such oddities as a stakeout seen from the point of view of an (apparently tripping) iguana, and - in a scene which in the hands of a lesser (saner?) director would have been laughable for all the wrong reasons - the sight of a recently dead man’s soul exiting his body and proceeding to break dance. Indeed, more than anything it’s a faintly black comedy, and often a pretty broad one at that - the ridiculously large .44 Magnum that Cage habitually wears tucked down the front of his trousers makes him look as if he’s wandered in from a lost Laurel and Hardy sketch.

And much of the fun does come from watching Cage turn in his most convincingly loopy performance in years. Sometimes when the actor goes off the deep end you just wish someone would throw a net over him - here, Herzog instead gives him a rope and dares him to hang himself, and the results are often hilarious. The intensity and regularity of his manic outbursts increase throughout the film as Herzog lessens the slack, but there is some nuance to be admired here, too. At one point a fellow cop accuses him of being high, to which he deadpans, “Whatever I took is prescription… except for the heroin.” And a scene in which he recollects a childhood fantasy to his prostitute girlfriend - played with a noble sensitivity by Eva Mendes - is surprisingly touching amidst the surrounding tomfoolery. The character’s actual physicality is important to Cage, too - McDonagh’s chronic back condition is in fact the catalyst for much of this bad behaviour (the Vicodin he is prescribed for the pain soon leads to the cocaine and heroin he swipes from the police evidence room) and Cage wants us to know it. His posture deteriorates throughout until by the conclusion he is practically bent double. It looks painful, and shows a dedication that perhaps has been lacking in recent times.

A welcome return to form for Cage then, in collaboration with a director who has the good sense and instinct to point him the right way and “let the whore loose“, as Herzog calls it. The pairing seems so obvious you wonder why they never thought of it before. Who knows… perhaps the director has found his new Klaus Kinski?

Verdict:

Bad is best for Cage as his Lieutenant cuts a swath through one of the most entertaining films of the year.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon - Sam Bicke is not the the man in the Cadillac

This right here is a link to an article I wrote about a little known gem, up on www.butnu.co.uk - a veritable smorgasbord of things that are not boring:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/assassinationrichardnixonreview.html