http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 5 Apr 2003 12:01:39 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/05/120139.php Eric MeansIt's been eleven years since Mike Resnick published Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future. The original was a galaxy-sized frontier tale, the Wild West set among the swirling spiral arms of the Milky Way. This year Resnick published the sequel, The Return of Santiago. The question is whether the author can live up to the vivid characters and style of the first book.Sadly, the answer is "not really". Santiago's best features were its unique characters; from the Angel to Altair of Altair to the Jolly Swagman, Father William, and the Songbird himself, each character was distinct. Characters seemed to feel real, complex emotions, and there was real growth. The depredations of the Democracy, and the life of an Inner Frontier bounty hunter, seemed fully realized.Most of this seems to be lacking in Return. In fact, many of the characters seem to be caricatures or carbon copies of the first book's characters. Tyrannosaur Bailey seems a pale shadow of ManMountain Bates; the One-Armed Bandit holds nothing of the Angel's mesmerizing lethality. The Twins are a far cry from the creative alien menace of Altair of Altair, and the protagonist's alien-loving bodyguard is a mere shadow of Jonathan Jeremy Jacobar Stern, the alien-loving fellow in Santiago. Even the Democracy is a cardboard cutout.Intertwined with the desultory, derivative characters is the predictable, disjointed plot. The protagonist, a petty thief, stumbles on a forgotten box containing the entirety of Black Orpheus' writings. Over a matter of days he reads the complete saga, and comes to the realization that Santiago was not a criminal, but a revolutionary. In a flash, he decides to become the successor to Black Orpheus—naming himself Dante Alighieri, or The Rhymer—and search out a successor to the long-dead Santiago. He meets up with the aforementioned bodyguard after a flat, unsatisfying escape from his home planet (in which Democracy police forces inexplicably kill a companion of his), then a woman who is described as the Inner Frontier's most successful thief—who coincidentally is Santiago's last surviving relative. Unfortunately for her, she's nowhere near as interesting a person as Virtue McKenzie was. Barely a quarter of the way through the book, Resnick has used enough deus ex machinas to populate an entire Roman theatre company, but he's not done. Every time the plot seems to be settling into a comprehensible story arc, Resnick yanks out another disjointed quest to send his heroes on. Somehow, in spite of this, the story is entirely predictable—if you haven't figured out the ending within a hundred and fifty pages, you're not paying attention.Time and again Resnick tries to evoke the size and variety of the Inner Frontier, and time and again he falls short. Santiago had a hundred times the scope and heart of this book. If you're looking for a simple science-fiction cowboy story to while away an afternoon, The Return of Santiago might be worth your while. Just don't go expecting Resnick to match the living, breathing Frontier he created eleven years ago. Books4363@blogcritics.org Sat, 5 Apr 2003 12:01:39 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/18/011414.php Eric MeansDar Williams, one of the best-known modern singer-songwriters, released her 6th solo album, The Beauty of the Rain, on February 18th. This album is an interesting mix of symbol and story, solo effort and collaboration, though it continues Dar's gradual sidle towards a more mainstream sound. The first thing to note about this album is its length. At 11 songs and just over 37 minutes, the album is almost exactly half the maximum capacity of a CD. While I embrace the ideal of quality over quantity, it's somewhat disappointing to have the CD contain so little new material—particularly when compared to other recent releases, such as Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk, which weighs in at a more satisfying 74 minutes. Length aside, the album is interesting in several ways. This is Dar's most collaborative solo album yet (leaving aside 1998's Cry Cry Cry). People Dar invited into the studio for this album include such notables as Bela Fleck, Dave Matthews Band's Stefan Lessard, Alison Krauss, John Popper, Michael Kang of String Cheese Incident, John Medeski, Chris Botti, and Cliff Eberhardt. The track "Closer to Me" (a beautiful song about being parted) is described in the liner notes as "one of [Dar's] first successful collaborations with another musician [Rob Hyman]". This unprecedented level of collaboration brings a more mainstream band sound to Dar's work; there's not so much of the "girl with a guitar in her bedroom" feel. In many ways that's okay; it makes her work more interesting to a larger audience, and there's always plenty of acoustic work at a Dar concert if you like that. That's not to say that this album isn't Dar's own. There's still a layer of the same woman who wrote "Play the Greed", as well as more contemplative songs in the vein of "If I Wrote You". Whether you like Dar's activist side ("Your Fire Your Soul", "The World's Not Falling Apart"), her sad contemplative side ("The Beauty of the Rain"), or her upbeat cheerful songs ("I Saw A Bird Fly Away"), there's likely something for you on this album. Personally I think the title track and "Closer To Me" are the best songs on the album, but there's plenty of room for disagreement. For those who aren't sure Dar is for them, or who aren't sure the new album is worth the price of admission (though I think it is), you can preview several of the album songs through the Flash Player at Dar's official website, as well as get information on tour dates and subscribe to Dar's e-mail newsletter. It doesn't cost a dime, and you just might discover a new and wonderful artist. Music3884@blogcritics.org Tue, 18 Mar 2003 01:14:14 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/17/185303.php Eric MeansStart with a trite, shallow plot. Add Steve Martin as every other role you've ever seen him play. Mix in a little Eugene Levy working those bushy eyebrows to reprise the wannabe hipster we saw in American Pie 1 and 2. Stir vigorously with a Queen Latifah playing a role which, after her work in Chicago, can only be described as "meh". That's pretty much Bringing Down the House in a nutshell.I wanted to like this movie. Steve Martin can be one of the funniest actors on the screen. And after her role in the Broadway-cum-Blockbuster musical extravaganza Chicago, I had high hopes for Queen Latifah. Eugene Levy... well, I didn't know he was in the movie.Unfortunately, the movie is shackled by its plot from the very beginning. Peter Sanderson (Martin), our protagonist, is a high-powered tax attorney defending his place in the pecking order from a snide up-and-comer. You can pretty much pull out every stereotype of a high-powered tax attorney and wave it about, as the movie certainly does. Peter is divorced; he breaks promises to his kids; he drives a very expensive car, and lives in a very expensive and very exclusive (and very stereotypically white upper middle class, or WUMC) community. The screenwriter(s) and director seem to have gotten quite a bit of mileage out of their cookie-cutters for this film; there are, in fact, no three-dimensional characters in the film at all.Obviously this is, to an extent, forgivable in a light comedy. But when you can describe every character in the movie in a single sentence, well, that's not good.Even a tremendously shallow movie could, in some respect, have been rescued by good comedy. Indeed, some of the bits are fairly funny. Steve Martin playing an uptight WUMC guy practicing seduction with QL's cookie-cutter "smart sistah from the hood" has several comic moments. The major scene between QL and Peter's ex-wife's blonde gold-digger sister (see, I told you -- one sentence per character) is amusing for its unpredictability. And Peter's scene in the club is the best of the movie.Unfortunately, none of these things are new. And when the final credits roll, and you get up out of the movie seat, you find yourself feeling that you've just paid good money to see Steve Martin, Eugene Levy, and Queen Latifah do the same old same old one more time. Video3875@blogcritics.org Mon, 17 Mar 2003 18:53:03 EST