More recent reading: Home, the second of Matthew Costello’s books about an apocalyptic world where most of the population has turned into rabid cannibals. The books are written at a million miles an hour with lots of action and their fair share of gore, but with a very believable family at the core. Home is much less tidy than Vacation, and, if anything, even more bleak. But with a heart. It sounds like Costello plans for a third book to wrap up the trilogy. And after all the unanswered questions in Home, I certainly hope he gets around to it soon…
Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock.
Clearly, on the set of Suspicion. What a great shot.
I’ll be speaking at Game Design Expo Vancouver this coming Saturday (January 19th) on the subject “More than Fun - Balancing Meaning and Game Design”. My point? In short, fun’s important, but it’s not everything. Read more about it here. Those interested should be there bright and early (I’m on at 10:05 - yes they appear to be very precise on starting times in Vancouver). I’m not goin to talk about X-Com as I originally thought, but to make up for it Patrick Plourde has agreed to help me talk about Far Cry 3. Should be interesting.
Holiday reading part 1: picked up Zero Cool by Paul Lange (aka pre-fame Michael Crichton) at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. My eye caught the distinctive Hard Case Crime spine on the shelf, but there next to it was a copy printed in 1973 (in substantially better condition than the photo above, taken after I read it). Sorry Hard Case folks, I bought the old one, partly because its cover definitely dates it to the ‘70s. But I must say, the Hard Case cover is better in all ways.
As for the book… it’s alright. A high-speed thriller, fun and a bit dumb, increasingly cooky the further you get into it. By the time they got to the attack birds, it had lost me. But I liked the velocity of the first 100 pages quite a bit…
Vera Miles as Lila Crane in Psycho - not quite a Hitchcock Woman
Looking at Vera Miles’ role in Psycho, it’s hard to call the character of Lila Crane more than a plot device. Miles brings everything she can to it, but Lila’s so busy chasing the ghost of her sister Marion and revealing the twisted secrets of Norman Bates that she doesn’t have time to develop much character of her own. Certainly, she has the determination and cold allure of a Hitchcock woman, but there’s not enough unique person there to latch onto. Of course, a story like Psycho can only have so many main characters.
But compare that with the amazing work she does in The Wrong Man, where she plays a very real character, yet a non-typical one by Hitchcock standards. Looking at The Wrong Man in conjunction with Psycho makes Vera Miles a true Hitchcock woman. More on Vera’s other Hitchcock role in a later post.
It’s that time of year again - Turner Classic Movies is running its always moving TCM Remembers segment. On a personal note there’s Michael Clarke Duncan (I got to work with him on The Suffering Ties That Bind) . But on an even more personal note, there’s Ray Bradbury, who as I’ve mentioned in talks in the past, was hugely influential on me. For a moment there, I almost forgot that he was gone.
Old Hollywood Questions
1. Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly?
2. Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?
3. Sunset Blvd or All About Eve?
4. Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield?
5. Cary Grant or Clark Gable?
6. Bringing Up Baby or My Man Godfrey?
7. Bette Davis or Joan Crawford?
8. James Dean or Marlon Brando?
9. Carole Lombard or Myrna Loy?
10. Joan Fontaine or Olivia DeHavilland?
11. James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart?
12. Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder?
13. Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich?
14. Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby?
15. Casablanca or Gone With the Wind?
16. Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges?
Of course, the answers are: Grace, Gene, Sunset (by a hair), Monroe, Cary, Godfrey, Davis, Brando, Lombard, tie, Bogart, Wilder, Dietrich, Sinatra (for Manchurian), Casablanca (by a mile), the one and only Howard Hawks (because he survived for the long haul)
