Back whenever-it-was, when I had free time for a few days, I got a copy of Over to You, by Roald Dahl. It's a collection of short stories, the first he wrote, about World War 2. It includes "A Piece of Cake" which is the very first story he wrote, and he didn't know he was writing a story at the time -- but that became yet another story that I'll get to in a minute. Anyway. WW2 fighter pilots. Some of the stories are surreal, some are funny, and as you'd expect, most of them are sad. "Katina" is absolutely heartbreaking. It was interesting to read them after Parade's End (which I still haven't talked about, I know, but there's so much to say...) because they have what we think of as a modernist feel -- war is surreal and ridiculous and bureaucratic, and not a glorious quest for righteousness for anyone involved.

So after that, I felt like rereading The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, which is a different collection of short stories by Dahl, from later in his career. Although it does also include "A Piece of Cake," along with "Lucky Break," which is a nonfiction piece about how he happened to discover that he could write. It's also a bit of a reminiscence, and he talks about his school days and I think it's the first story I read that described English Public Schools (I've had this book since elementary school), which made it tricky later when I read more romantic/nostalgic descriptions of them in other books. "Where are the horrible beatings?" I'd wonder. Well, okay, not really. Not then, anyway.

Anyway, Henry Sugar is a very fun set of stories that I've read many, many times over the years. Oddly enough, I've never read Charlie & the Chocolate Factory or James and the Giant Peach. I honestly don't set out to be contrary all the time; sometimes it just happens. So I don't know the stuff Dahl is most beloved for. But these stories are good. I skipped around a little, since I have read the stories so very much. I skipped "The Swan" entirely. I love that story but it's horribly sad. It's basically about a kid who is tortured by some bullies. I mean, the entire story is one long, brutal torture scene. It's not depressing because of the ending, but it is upsetting, and so, yeah, I just couldn't read it that night. The title story is just fun, so I zipped through that. I'm not making much of a point here, but it's a good collection, and since I haven't read the well-known stuff, maybe those of you who have read that but haven't read this collection should look for it.

But wait, there's more. Because then I thought, "I have another Dahl book that I haven't even read yet!" So I read My Uncle Oswald. It's very, very funny porn. Without the explicit pornography, I guess, but it's... well. It's set in the 1940's or 50's. Oswald first gets a hold of an aphrodisiac, and then finds someone who's invented artificial insemination. And then, logically, he figures that if he can use these items to get the sperm of famous men, and sell it to women who want to have, say, Einstein's child. It's not explicit, but it is very dirty, and very funny. About half the book is setting up the premise (with some gratuitous sex along the way) and then the second half is just Yasmin, the seductress, collecting the sperm of well-known men in a series of very funny scenes. And lines. And pseudo-Victorian metaphors. "He went at her as if she was an uneven road surface and he was trying to flatten out the bumps."

The descriptions of the sexual encounters, and Yasmin's comments about them, are the selling points. Not because they're salacious; they're just funny.

Oh, and both Henry Sugar and Oswald share the same family motto: "It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task." I like that.

I should really be working on the recap right now. Or sleeping. But, quickly... or quickly-ish:

Saw Kill Bill at a matinee. I thought there'd be more people -- it was a 4 PM show, and I wanted to beat the mad Friday-night rush, but I thought the earlier shows would be a little more crowded that they were, so I'd still get that contact high from a crowd. So that didn't happen, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. I am sort of amused that it's a cross between Charlie's Angels and I Spit On Your Grave . Except the more disturbing parts of the latter aren't actually shown on-screen. The violence is, of course, excessive. It wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't. There was one bit where my hand just flew up in front of my eyes involuntarily, which is strange because I don't usually do that. And as far as I know that part wasn't gory (I'm talking about the bit with the door, if you've seen it) but apparently I just couldn't watch it. Whereas the parts that were actually gory were funny. But y'know, I laughed when that kid's head was blown apart in Pulp Fiction.

There's a lot of senseless violence. Like you need me to tell you that. The aftermath of the battle at the House of Blue Leaves is so god damn funny. And the biggest, bloodiest battle is in black & white for a while because I guess it would have gotten an NC-17 if it were in color. (In the TV ads, there's at least one shot in color that's in black & white in the movie, so I'm wondering if the DVD will have the option of seeing it all in full Technicolor blood-o-rama.) And I assume the anime sequence is anime at least partly because if it had been live action, there'd be an NC-17 just for putting a young girl in those situations.

I think it's strange that in many of the reviews I've seen, critics have mostly liked the movie but complained about the lack of character development. I mean, there are plenty of reasons to say it's not good, so character development seems like an odd thing to focus on, given that it is an action movie. I sort of wonder if those critics are struggling with the fact that they liked it even though it's a B-movie. But it's meant to be. It's a revenge flick. As far as I'm concerned, The Crow fell apart when it tried to include some character development and plot complications: the first half is just a series of violent, cool deaths, and that's the part that works. And that's what Kill Bill is. I understand that that the second "volume" is pretty different, and I'm certainly okay with that. But I liked this all on its own (I mean, with the understanding that if I didn't know there was a second part, I'd wonder why it ended before she was done). Some of the other comments I've seen online have been fascinating, just from a sociological point of view. Mind you, if you see it and don't like it, or don't see it because you know you won't like it, or just don't care, that's all fine. It's not The Greatest Thing Ever and you're not a tasteless moron if you don't want to see it. But things online tend to get so polarized and reactionary in the oddest ways, and that's just an ongoing trend that I find interesting. Anyway.

Tarantino's movies have always been style over substance. And there are directors like that I can't stand. But he's really, really good at style. It's like this: I can see why people don't like Kubrick, but I love him. I enjoyed Eyes Wide Shut. No, I really did. Yeah, I'm the one. I should write about that movie sometime, but not now. I think that maybe I dislike style over substance when the style is meant to hide the lack of substance. See The Matrix. But with Kubrick and Tarantino, in very different ways, the style is the point. You're not being tricked into thinking something is more than it is, because the point certainly isn't just on storytelling. Kubrick is meditative and removed, and Tarantino is hyperkinetic and subjective, but creating that effect on the audience is the goal; they make the movie an experience, not just a story you could have told some other way. It's probably not a coincidence that both of them use music so memorably -- I saw one critic talking about Tarantino's ability to use music to create a mood, which is phenomenal. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction on opening night, knowing almost nothing about it, before I'd seen Reservoir Dogs, and then "Misirlou" started and I thought, "Oh, this is going to be fun."

Oh, and here's a clip in one of the TV ads of a fight scene that's shown in silhouette, which had a shot I loved so much it gave me chills. Uma, advancing on a cowering man with her sword raised, against a deep blue background. Don't know why I loved it, it just seemed like an instantly iconic image.

Anyway. It feels long, even though it's only ninety minutes. Not boringly long, but just longer than it is. I think that might be because we've been trained by movies to think that if there's a climactic battle scene, the movie is almost over. With this movie, the last third is a series of climactic battle scenes, so my brain kept clicking in with "ah, must be about done." Also, I drank too much Coke beforehand and really had to go to the bathroom, which may have made me a little more focused on wondering when the movie would end.

Let's see. There were some trailers. The Matrix Revolutions looks like ass, but we've established that I hated the first one, and I didn't see the second (although I was pleased that it disappointed people, because I felt like maybe I wasn't totally crazy after all). But yeah: ass. Bad Santa is a heartwarming movie about a kid and Billy Bob Thorton learning some kind of heartwarming lesson. Ew. Oh, there was a trailer for Die, Mommy, Die (as part of some Sundance film festival thing at this theater) which appeared to confuse the hell out of people. Understandably, but I'd heard about it before, so I was entertained by the bewildered silence that greeted the trailer. And there was probably something else, but I've forgotten what.

My recap of Angel's crappy season premiere is up at TWoP. Which means I have an evening free. Except for the work I'm not doing. And the DVDs I haven't had time to watch, and the books I haven't touched. Free-ish.

Sure enough, Jim Thompson's The Killer in Me is strange. I enjoyed it. I'd wanted to check it out anyway, but when I saw a blurb describing the main character as a psychopathic deputy who likes to torture people with cliches, I was even more intrigued. Turns out he's not tying people to a chair and reading bad fiction to them, though. But it is accurate: in the first chapter, he spews out a string of cliches in a conversation because he knows they hate hearing things like "It's not the heat, but the humidity" and "Every cloud has a silver lining" and "If we didn't have the rain, we wouldn't have the rainbows." Apparently hurting people with bad prose is almost satisfying as hurting them physically. So, yeah, it's a strange book, and follows the deputy, Lou, as he commits one somewhat impulsive crime, and then more and more murders follow as he tries to cover it up. Which is somewhat standard, except that Lou starts to wonder if it isn't so much that he's digging himself in deeper as he's finally getting free. It's creepy. And funny. Both.

I finished the Parade's End tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford. Really and truly finished, this time, even the last book. I really would like to talk about it at length but that may have to wait till the weekend because there's a lot to say about it. For now: it's good.

And I also reread The Book of Illusions on a random impulse, but I talked about that already.

Of course, there are always comics:

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Endless Nights is lovely. Sometimes I feel a little Gaiman-ed out, and this was a nice reminder that there's a reason he's awfully popular. I mean, he's good. I particularly liked Desire's story; I also like Manara, but the way the character narrates the story is excellent. One of those "that shouldn't work, but it does" things. Dream's story, which is the only one that spends a lot of time on the Endless, is probably the least interesting. It felt a bit... obligatory. Not bad, but... I dunno. Oh, and I desperately want there to be a big coffee-table edition of the "Fifteen Portraits of Despair" so all of the panels in the first few pages can be full-page size. I promise I would buy it. Sienkiewicz's Delirium story is also beautifully illustrated, although the story didn't grab me as much.

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, vol. 2, #6 is finally out. I know! Fun. Find out what really killed the Martians. Hyde continues to behave shockingly.

Also, Planetary #16 is finally out. It's like a trend or something. I think there have been enough issues for me to try rereading it to see if I understand what the hell is going on.

I picked up Human Target: The Unshredded Man because it's by Peter Milligan. He did some of my favorite things to come out of the Vertigo line: the odd Enigma, the disturbing The Extremist, and the beyond fucked-up Face. This is considerably less strange than those were, but it is pretty dark. Plus, I got issue #2, so once again, I'm not entirely sure I know what the hell is going on. That's another trend.

And I finally grabbed Sam Keith's The Maxx in TPB. I have most, if not all, of the MTV show scattered around on a few old videotapes. The strange thing is that I feel as if the story was easier to follow in that show. But it's neat to see this version.