End of Year Review

I'm sorry for not posting more often this year. Work piles up and writing more at the end of the day gets to be difficult. I did have time to review two shows of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. You can read those reviews in the August 2014 issue of RE/Search's newsletter. Here are a few other events, TV shows, and memorable moments I enjoyed over this past year (no order, just a list)

• Broad City Live (can't wait for Season 2)
• Swans
• Kelley Stoltz
• Alan Cumming (with book signing for I'm Not Your Father's Son)
• Frank Portman (with book signing for King Dork Approximately)
• James Ensor art exhibit at The Getty
• Visiting the graves of Sharon Tate, Bela Lugosi and Jackie Coogan
• "Frankenstein" production by The National Theatre of London (seen on screen with Benedict Cumberbatch as the Monster)
• 20,000 Days on Earth film
• final season and series finale of "Sons of Anarchy"
• final episode of "The Colbert Report"
• the debut of El Rey Network (launched December 2013, but was a main focal point of my TV viewing in 2014)
• the series "The Strain"
• final season of "True Blood" (the writing really suffered, but the slaughter was pretty awesome)
• the series "Penny Dreadful"
• From Inside with Gary Numan soundtrack
• film Heaven Adores You
• re-release and new print of Queen Margot: the 4K Director's Cut
• film Of Horses and Men
• film Trip to Italy
• film Boyhood (with Richard Linklater Q&A)
• "Hannibal" 2nd season
• book A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton
• TCM, the channel airing twice the movie The Man With the Cloak

In the coming year, I'll try to post a few words for each event, TV show or memorable moment for which I either view or attend just to keep the Korner active. One thing to look forward to (I miss "Pan Am") is the TV miniseries "Lizzie Borden: The Fall River Chronicles" on Lifetime coming in 2015 starring Christina Ricci. She starred in the Lifetime movie "Lizzie Borden Took an Ax" nearly a year ago. It was panned, so I don't understand the miniseries being picked up.

There's so much I could say about my favorite "guilty pleasure" TV shows which include The Mindy Project, The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, The Comeback, Homeland, The Affair, Veep, Castle, New Girl, American Horror Story, and Z Nation. I look forward to seeing more excellent writing in 2015.

Write in the comments what your favorite moments of 2014 included. Do we have anything in common?

video: Charlie Rose Interview with Guillermo del Toro

If you are nearly through with reading The Strain, by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro then watch the Charlie Rose Interview with Guillermo del Toro. It won't spoil it.

I really loved so many passages in this book. It's not as dense as I have seen some horror stories. The Strain makes for a great summer read if you just want some meaty vampire fiction.

Del Toro and Hogan's shrewdly chosen details of each scene is filmlike. You see the landscape, the toy that the child is touching and the food that they're eating as part of the physical setting and then, WHAM!, their entire fate comes into question in seconds and then its over.

Taking a slower pace at the beginning helps the reader grasp a sense of the characters whom are genuine humans they would personally know. The intro is a contrast to the faster paced action towards the middle and end of the book by its careful unfolding mysterious occurrence on a TransAtlantic Flight, following a planetary event, when suddenly chaos begins to develop on the tiny island of Manhattan. The beginning takes a little too long, for my short-attention mind wanting instant action. At first I became increasingly concerned I would not find it unpredictable, but it actually kept me really surprised and I loved even what I knew was about to happen.

"It's as sexy as rectal cancer," del Toro says to Charlie Rose. Yeah, there were definitely parts of the story that made me question if I should be reading during the part of lunch where I enjoy a snack. Somehow the gory images got to me. Milk is definitely a metaphor... pretty cool, too.

I hope it does have a sequel. Del Toro hints at it in the interview.

Caution, if you check out the book's trailer, you should have already gotten to the chapter titled "The Second Night" or what you see could dampen your own imagination from adding more to the image of the "beast" in the book.