I know there's a certain amount of you who read the picks in advance for the "CCLaP 100" series of "classics" essays I do here, so I wanted to make a note of a small programming change; that after visiting the library and checking out his books for myself for the first time, I've decided to exchange Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (which had been scheduled for a week and a half from now) for his A Farewell to Arms, simply because it seems more interesting. I hope this doesn't put anyone out too badly, and I apologize if it does. And don't forget, this Friday's book under review is the Greek-American family epic Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides; I'll have my thoughts about that book up here in just a couple more days.

(Tired of seemingly all discussion of movies in this country anymore sliding towards poop fests and other kiddie fare? Me too, which is why I decided to dedicate my Netflix account to nothing but "grown-up" movies, and to write reviews here of each one I see. For a master list of all reviews, as well as the next movies on my "queue" list, click here.)

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Written by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Sidney Lumet

There's a grand irony about being an artist that we all know but rarely acknowledge; that at the same time that artist grows as a human into a deep maturity in their later years, most of their actual creative well ends up running dry, with most artists throughout human history usually peaking creatively between their thirties and fifties. And that's why it's always such a difficult thing to critically appraise the late-career work of older artists, because even as you wish to praise them for the overall contribution they've made to the arts, you still must acknowledge that that particular project usually is not very good at all unto itself. It's the number-one reason, after all, that so many awards get handed out to such artists for such pieces of crap at this point in their careers; not because the piece-of-crap projects deserved those awards, but that the artist themselves did much earlier in life, and now is the only chance left to actually give them the accolades they deserve.

Such could've easily been the case, for example, with Hollywood legend Sidney Lumet -- he whose directing career stretches all the way back to the 1940s (with television's old "Studio One"), he of such brainy early-career hits as 12 Angry Men and Long Day's Journey Into Night, he of such brilliant 1970s masterpieces as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus, and a lot more. Lumet's been continuing to regularly crank out work since his last bonafide big hit, 1982 Paul Newman vehicle The Verdict, but with no real big culture-changers like the most notorious of his films, and it'd be easy (and usually correct) to assume that any new movies he puts out anymore will be only middling to TV-worthy at best; but then bam, at the sweet freaking age of 83 last year, he puts out the tight, dark, and highly entertaining Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, eventually racking up 16 award nominations (including five wins) from around the industry, and a newfound retrospective interest in all his older work as well. And indeed, now that I've seen it myself, I can safely call the movie the product of Lumet working at, say, 85-percent of his full brilliant capacity, a standard noir that certainly works and works well but that is nothing too terribly special; in other words, a bit of a disappointment if he had made it in the '70s, but astonishing now, given that many of his peers are cranky obese invalids who can barely even sit through such movies, much less make them.

In fact, to understand Lumet's entire career in a nutshell, it's wise to pay attention to the DVD extras on display here, and listen to what person after person in this production has to say about him -- that he is a sincere believer and fan of the literary format known as "melodrama," and believes that the term got an unfair shake in the 20th century. After all, as he himself explains in the making-of documentary, melodrama is nothing more than the usual drama but oomphed up a little; the usual Big Issues that all of us humans grapple with, just a little more exciting or intense for the sake of dramatic entertainment. When mentioned this way, you can suddenly see a very clear running theme throughout all of Lumet's best work mentioned above, and it's certainly something to be applied to Devil as well; an inventive contemporary noir precisely because it takes place in such bland surroundings, the movie stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke (both delectably great here) as loser brothers in a suburb of New York, whose inept attempts at realizing their sad small dreams eventually result in mass carnage and psychic damage to the entire family in general.

In fact, just the setting of this movie brings up something worth talking about; because the fact is that just a few days ago here at CCLaP, I went off on a novel for being set in a similar milieu, within a drab northeast suburb among meek middle-class losers with petty dreams and minimal education. So what's the difference? Well, to me, the difference is this -- that in Devil (and indeed, most noirs), these bland uneducated losers are at least yearning for something grand, at least pining for a huge success or at least one big payoff, just that their own moral weaknesses always hold them back; in books like the one I was complaining about the other day, such characters never attempt anything great in the first place, instead merely accepting their mediocre fate and then spending the rest of their life whining and bitching about it to anyone who will listen. That's what makes Devil so intriguing from the outset, in my opinion, despite it being set among drab strip malls and sad little corporate parks in the middle of nowhere; because one of the brothers is nonetheless dreaming of a life of drugs and whores in South America, the other dreaming of stability and a better life for his child, and thus are willing to take bigger and bigger chances when life otherwise keeps handing them turd platters.

I'm not going to say too much else about the storyline, this being an inventive noir and all, but I'll say this since it's a pretty public part of the premise; that it is these unattainable yet sincere dreams of a better life that lead the brothers to cook up a heist scheme, and to have it take place at their parents' little suburban jewelry store for a whole host of reasons that seem good at the time -- because they know the layout, security and routines already, because neither of their parents will be there at the time of the robbery, because the parents' insurance will cover whatever is stolen. And this being a noir, of course, I think it's also safe for me to say that all of these plans go to hell when actually enacted, again for a variety of reasons -- because of these loser brothers not thinking ahead or planning for emergencies, because of a series of random coincidences, because of all of these characters' own natural weaknesses, their addictions and affairs and angry outbursts they seemingly can't control. And that's basically the film in a nutshell, without mentioning any of the interesting surprises or twists along the way; an unsettling look at one very screwed-up family, learning more and more about the simmering emotions under the surface with each passing minute of the movie itself.

And like I said, it's pretty amazing how Lumet handles all this, precisely because it's unremarkable; in fact, when all is said and done, Devil is not much more than an unusually good film noir, one that will now join the ranks of the hundreds of others that have been made in the last 75 or so years. And this of course is always the danger of a well-done yet small film coming out in these Hollywood-Nadir days that we're living through, something I like to call the "Sideways Syndrome" -- that that film will receive more hype than it deserves, simply for not being the unwatchable crap that Hollywood usually churns out these days, and thus people go into it thinking it will be a Life-Changing Masterpiece and eventually leave disappointed. Devil is certainly no masterpiece, and in fact might not be for people at all if they're not naturally into mysteries and noirs; it does, however, display an almost perfect balance of character and plot, and is extremely well-done for what it aims to be. And like I said, for a man who was 83 when the film came out, we should be applauding the fact that the movie is even that; after all, those are things that even a lot of directors in their twenties and thirties fail at in Hollywood anymore.

For those who like complex characters, dark stories, and a fair shake of sexual creepiness thrown in to boot, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is the one for you; it was a delightful surprise, to tell you the truth, given that I had been bracing myself for something not much better than a television movie.

Out of 10:
Writing: 9.2
Acting: 9.6
Directing: 8.6
Cinematography: 8.0
Overall: 9.0

Next on my queue list: "2007 Award Winners" week continues here tomorrow, with my review of the complex and elegant ethics drama Michael Clayton, an Oscar winner starring George Clooney and Tilda Swinton that was ZOMFG so freaking good I'm not sure where to even start.

Read even more about Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: Amazon | IMDb | Netflix | Wikipedia

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

Vatican: "It's okay to believe in space aliens"
Too funny to pass up: This week the Vatican officially announces that it's spiritually okay for Catholics to believe in space aliens, since after all they would still be God's creatures if they turn out to actually exist. Whew! Glad that's settled!

Onion: "It's true, Ministry's last Chicago shows really sucked"
I mentioned a couple of days ago how industrial-music veterans Ministry are about to disband, and how their last Chicago shows (where the band started) were apparently disappointing; the Onion AV Club today confirms this, in their usual devastatingly funny and smartass way.

How are modern Middle East youth dealing with their hormones?
A fascinating article in the New York Times looks at contemporary teens in the Middle East, and all the various games and rituals they've devised to combine their budding hormones with their Islamic faith. (Via Jon Taplin.)

Robert Rauschenberg has died
One of my favorite artists when I was in college, Robert Rauschenberg (most influential during the Mod and Pop movements of the '50s and '60s), died this week from heart failure at the age of 82. RIP.

US home forclosures rise 65 freaking percent in April
Looming national economic meltdown? What looming national economic meltdown? Where did you learn such big words, little boy?

Chicago cops hid fellow cop's on-the-clock cocaine addiction for three years
Unbelievable. No, wait, not unbelievable -- business as normal for Chicago cops, is what I mean. Business as normal.

Today's photo of the day is untitled, and is by Sebastien Kunert. Sebastien is based out of Paris, and has dedicated his Flickr account to only images he shoots on physical film; he also has an online gallery where you can see a lot more.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP publishes mini-reviews of both books and movies on a regular basis, none lasting more than a few hundred words. A full list of CCLaP's book-based mini-reviews can be found on its main book page, and movies on the main movie page.)

Lars and the Real Girl (movie; 2007)
Written by Nancy Oliver
Directed by Craig Gillespie

So let me ask you something -- what exactly do you think of quirky indie films set in the American Midwest, featuring borderline-retarded man-child shut-ins who eventually teach entire small towns about what is truly important in life? Because the answer to that question, see, is going to profoundly reflect what you think of Lars and the Real Girl, a 2007 small-budget film that is guilty of every single thing just mentioned, the directorial debut of Craig Gillespie from a tight but very precious script by "Six Feet Under" writer/producer Nancy Oliver. In fact, that's the very first thing to understand about this movie, long before you sit down to actually watch it; that although its premise could easily serve as the backbone of a raunchy sex comedy as well (man flips out and falls in love with one of those expensive full-sized "love dolls"), in this case it's used to tell a touching and very chaste character-based dramedy, one that like Chocolat uses a bizarre MacGuffin as an excuse to actually tell a story about an entire community, and of the way the community ends up learning something about itself because of that MacGuffin.

For the guy who flips out, see, turns out to have been not quite right in the head in the first place; played with an understated charm by Ryan Gosling, his Lars Lindstrom is only semi-intelligent, an obsessive churchgoer and daytime office worker, who has been slowly retreating from humanity since his sister-in-law first got pregnant a few months ago, presumably because it reminds him of his own mother's childbirth-related death. As the pressures in Lars' life mount, then -- including not only his increasing pregnancy worries but also an increasing pressure by his family to "be more social," not to mention a growing crush on nerdy co-worker Margo (Kelli Garner in an early-career breakout role) -- he suddenly does experience a legitimate break from reality, secretly ordering a love doll after a weasely co-worker brings the company's website to his attention one day, and then for all intents and purposes acting like she's an actual human once it arrives, to the point of asking his brother and sister-in-law if she can "sleep" over at their place as good Christians should.

After a blessedly short period of the film, then, where basically the entire town stands around slack-jawed at the sight of Lars sitting around talking to a sex doll (the only scenes, incidentally, used in the movie's commercials, thus proving once again that most movie marketers don't have even the slightest clue what the best thing is about the movies they're hired to market), the real crux of the movie finally starts coming out -- of just how this small, tight-knit, deeply religious community is going to deal with the ongoing mental illness of one of their own, this person who most of them already know and love for his simple-minded sweetness. (In fact, this is the biggest complaint I have about the film, is that an awful lot of script finessing had to go into why the town keeps letting him walk around talking to a sex doll like it's his girlfriend; basically, combine a lack of mental-health facilities in the area with a part-time psychiatrist in town who believes it healthy to let Lars "play out the entire fantasy," dubious medical advice at best but that you need to swallow in order to enjoy this movie.)

As the weeks progress, then, we as the audience come to understand the same thing the town does; that it's not about the wackiness of Lars' delusion, not about some creepy rubber mannequin that keeps getting dragged around the city, but rather about being a decent human being and going along with the "therapy" Lars is currently going through, of helping him maintain the delusion so that he doesn't risk a complete and utter breakdown, and along the way becoming a better person to even one's non-rubber neighbors. And that's...eh, it's okay, you know, a story that borders on cutesy and twee at all times but that thankfully rarely steps over the line. A big part of that can be attributed to the low-key, highly enjoyable performances by almost everyone involved; part of that can simply be chalked up to the movie's low budget, forcing a certain amount of cinematographic blandness that in this case actually works in the script's favor. It's one of those movies that's right on the cusp of people's opinions, as far as the relative benefits and drawbacks of quirky indie comedies; you're bound to find it either good but with a caveat, or bad but admirably so. It's not a movie I'd say to go out of your way to see, but definitely one worth your time if you ever happen to accidentally come across.

Out of 10: 8.0

So in my ongoing quest to find every cool piece of crap on the entire internet, I present today's obsession -- the trailer for the not-yet-existent action-thriller animated feature Iron Sky. It was created by Timo Vuorensola and Samuli Torssonen, the Finnish team behind Star Wreck, a series of "Star Trek" parodies which reportedly to this day is still the most popular fan-based online movie series in history, with a script by award-winning author Johanna Sinisalo; and it's a doozy of a potboiler too, a retro thriller based around the idea of Nazis inventing spaceflight at the end of World War II and secretly sending a group of Aryan warriors to live on the far side of the moon, with the film itself set in 2018 when this group of Nazi warriors decide to come back and invade Earth.

It's shocking how high the quality of this essentially homegrown trailer is; but hey, don't take my word for it, just check it out yourself above, if you're on a device that has Adobe Flash Player. The filmmakers are in fact raising money right this second in order to get the entire full-length movie made; you can stop by the official Iron Sky website for a lot more information on how you can help.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Solitude," and is by Chris Dessaigne. Chris is a graphic designer based out of Perpignan, France (near the Spanish border), and has lots more great images at his main account; if his name sounds familiar, it's because his work has been featured here before.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP publishes mini-reviews of both books and movies on a regular basis, none lasting more than a few hundred words. A full list of CCLaP's book-based mini-reviews can be found on its main book page, and movies on the main movie page.)

The Gravedigger's Daughter (book; 2007)
By Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco/HarperCollins / ISBN: 978-0-06-123682-2

So what's the dark fear that lies in the inner heart of all erudite nerds? Namely this -- that no matter how educated, intelligent or well-read you are, there are always going to be a certain amount of very well-known authors you have never read at all, not even one single page of, and that at any moment this fact might be discovered by your fellow erudite nerds. Just take me, for example, who can count among completely unread authors such stalwarts as (deep breath, Jason, deep breath) Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Augusten Burroughs, Dave Eggers, and dozens more embarrassing admissions. So needless to say that I was excited to recently come across the latest novel by Joyce Carol Oates at my local library, 2007's The Gravedigger's Daughter, because Oates is yet another of these classic "everyone has read at least one book by her" authors who I haven't read myself; and that's apparently a shame, according to my fellow book-loving geeks, given that Oates (a lit professor at Princeton) has been a multiple nominee over the years of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/Faulkner Award and Orange Prize, not to mention the actual winner of an NBA (in 1970), a Stoker Award and a dozen other accolades. And this is to say nothing of The Gravedigger's Daughter in particular, which made the New York Times' "10 Most Notable Books of the Year" list last year; and of course all of this is small potatoes compared to the greatest achievement of Oates' entire career so far, making it into the Revered And Blessed Oprah's Book Club Hallowed Be Her Name Amen.

So I checked it out and sat down a couple of weeks ago to read it; and then about a week later, found myself finally giving up on it for good around page 250 or so (or roughly halfway through), after two days of literally dreading the idea of even physically picking the book up again. So what happened? Well, to answer that, maybe it would be better for me to ask you a series of questions, questions I've been starting to wonder more and more about the longer CCLaP has been open. Ready?

--Why is it that almost all novels revered by the academic community principally feature characters who are constantly in a state of being slightly miserable? And not miserable as in "interesting" miserable, but miserable as in "that whiny professor in the corner of the room who ruins every godd-mn party they're invited to" miserable?

--Why is it that almost all award-winning novels go way out of their way, deliberately out of their way, to show off what pretty language that author knows, completely removing the reader from the natural pace and rhythm of the story itself? Why can no academically revered novel simply let the reader get lost in the actual story, which is the entire point of a novel even existing?*

--Why is it that academes are so fascinated by mediocre EveryPeople living in bland surroundings, who do nothing with their unremarkable lives and yet somehow still manage to make a whole series of terrible life decisions? Why do so many people in the academic community think that this makes for fascinating literature, and why do they think we should sympathize or even care about such oblivious, socially retarded chumps?

It's the great mystery of the arts, I'm beginning to understand, as CCLaP has me reading academically-revered award-winning novels on a regular basis for the first time in my life; that the exact novels most lauded by this community are the very ones least fitting the definition of an entertaining novel, the ones that instead most call attention to themselves as "precious works of art" more fit for years of overeducated analysis instead of simple pleasure. And in this I guess the so-called "mainstream literature" community is just like any community of genre fans as well, in that they are constantly in need of justifying their existence too, constantly in need of explaining why anyone should devote such time and energy doing delicate little analyses of barely readable books. It's disappointing to be sure, to realize that these revered prize lists are in actuality not a reliable way at all to simply find good books by good authors; it's a lesson about the arts I'm reminded of again by The Gravedigger's Daughter, a lesson I think I'll be paying more attention to in the future.

Out of 10: 4.8

*And since we're on the subject....Sheesh, Oates, will you please stop using exclamation marks! Over and over! In awkward places in your paragraphs! To make your point! Crazy you are driving me! Good literature this is not! Oh, and speaking of which, why like Yoda all your Jewish characters talk? Slightly offensive in a hazily defined way it is! UGH, this book drove me crazy.

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

Special "I spent the entire weekend on my computer because I have no life" edition!

Image: Hilariously wrong Swiss Airlines map of America
Spotted by a recent American customer of theirs; must be seen to be believed.

Editorial: "We should be thanking Hillary for not knowing when to drop out"
An editorial at the History News Network argues that Hillary Clinton's stubborn refusal to drop out of Prez race has actually helped Obama; gave him his first taste of hardball politics, convinced him to drop Wright and not ignore working-class whites. Thought-provoking article.

Schauenfreude Alert: "Speed Racer" sucks, also bombed at box office
It's official: Nearly every film critic in the US panned the new "Speed Racer," and this weekend it only made $20 million (from a reported budget and ad campaign of $200 million). Here, Capone's review at AintItCoolNews.com: "The first turd of the summer has arrived."

Eric Stoltz has been cast in "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff "Caprica"
He's playing the guy who actually creates the Cylons in this BSG-prequel family drama. Coooool.

Is Huckabee quietly comparing Obama to the Antichrist behind closed doors?
Did you know that a growing amount of US radical fundamentalists now believe Obama to literally be the actual Antichrist from Christian dogma? According to Robert Novak, Mike Huckabee might be quietly supporting this idea behind closed doors, and claiming that an Obama win is God's plan as a first step towards the Rapture.

Ron Paul's supporters are planning a big stink at GOP convention
Did you know that, even with no competition, McCain is still only receiving 75 percent of the vote in most recent GOP primaries? Ron Paul's supporters are planning on using this at the convention to embarrass him into a more conservative platform.

Chicago Trib: "Hell, let's put federal troops in the streets, maybe that'll work"
A tongue-in-cheek editorial in the Chicago Tribune, calling for federal troops in the streets in the wake of increased gang violence here, brings up a more serious question: Just how do you best respond to several thousand angry drunk teens who all own military-grade weapons?

Regarding the sad tenure of Rod Blagojevich
The NYT has a great long article up about Rod Blagojevich -- first liberal Illinois governor in half a century, once on the fast track to a Prez nom, but now mired in multiple corruption scandals and with enormous pressure to resign altogether.

Surprise election results move Serbia one step closer to EU membership
Boris Tadic's underdog pro-West party ends up winning parliamentary elections, despite anti-West sentiment these days over Kosovo; he has a very public EU-membership agenda, claiming that this win turns it into a national mandate.

New Firefox extension filters out only stupid, pointless blog comments
Brilliant: New Firefox extension looks at comments at YouTube, checks for things like misspellings, excessive punctuation and all-caps, then hides the comments it figures are most idiotic.

Teens arrested for turning human skull into pot pipe
Duuuuuude.

Owners of "Donnie Darko" to release crappy cheap direct-to-DVD sequel
Newmarket is releasing a quick, cheap slasher sequel to revered 2001 cult classic "Donnie Darko," directed by B-movie vet Chris Fisher ("Nightstalker," "Rampage"). Really? Well, okay, I guess.

Ministry to disband; last Chicago shows are apparently disappointing
Sad news for my fellow '80s industrial-music fans; legendary band Ministry is finally disbanding, as is its various side projects (RevCo, etc). The Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis attended the first of their four last Chicago shows (the city where they started); according to him, they're reportedly disappointing, and include not a single song from their first five albums.

Report: Heavy pot-smoking actually worsens depression, schizophrenia
This is not the first report to come to these findings, but definitely now the most prestigious (sponsored by the White House); that heavy marijuana usage actually makes depression, anxiety and schizophrenia worse, not better like thought in the past.

Worst tech-store chain in history to finally close
Seriously, did you ever try actually shopping at a Circuit City? It was a nightmare; no wonder they're out of money. Anyway, Blockbuster is buying their assets and starting a new franchise, combining tech equipment with DVD rentals.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Colonies," and is by Oliver Gilet. Olivier is based out of Brussels, Belgium, and has two different websites where you can see more; if his name sounds familiar, it's because his work has been featured here before.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

First seven minutes of "Speed Racer" are officially online
Save yourself ten bucks and get your "Speed Racer" fix this way instead.

Aint It Cool News: "New Indiana Jones movie is terrible, SO terrible"
The first official review on the planet of the new Indiana Jones movie is now online, courtesy of Harry Knowles' AintItCoolNews.com; and guess what? It sucks! Will it make back the $400 million Paramount is spending on budget and ads? Hmm...

Yet another Congressman busted for drunk driving and extramarital affairs
Vito Fossella, New York's only conservative Representative, is busted this week for drunk driving; and it turns out he was on his way over to his mistress's place! So how many corrupt Congress members does this make since Bush first took office in 2000?

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Valencia Science Museum," and is by Roland Ellison. Roland is based out of London, although this particular image was taken in Valencia, Spain; he also has a nice personal site, for those who would like to learn more.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.

(CCLaP publishes mini-reviews of both books and movies on a regular basis, none lasting more than a few hundred words. A full list of CCLaP's book-based mini-reviews can be found on its main book page, and movies on the main movie page.)

Heart-Shaped Box (book; 2007)
By Joe Hill
William Morrow / ISBN: 978-0-06-114793-7

Regular readers know that one of the subjects I'm often talking about here at CCLaP is that of so-called "genre fiction" versus "mainstream literature," and especially of the natural danger of the former; that many genre novels are as popular as they are simply because they deliver that genre's fetishistic details in spades, not necessarily because they're good at the building blocks behind all good literature (or in other words, character and plot and style, the same criteria off which CCLaP's reviews are based). So why bother reading genre pieces when you're not a natural fan of that genre? Well, because every so often, a genre novel will come out that is good at the literary ABCs, that does appeal to audience members besides those who naturally love that genre to begin with, and as a result become much more exciting and worthwhile projects than simple mainstream literature; to cite a good recent example, think of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning The Road, how on the surface it seems like any other post-apocalyptic science-fiction thriller but in reality actually tells a much deeper and more profound message than most other books of that genre.

That's what led me, frankly, to reading 2007's Heart-Shaped Box this week, the surprisingly popular debut novel by Joe Hill; because it's a genre novel itself, to tell you the truth, a genre I don't usually care for that much (horror, to be specific), but one that's been getting a lot of attention in the last year from places other than the horror community, a small-press novel that has nonetheless landed in the top 10 of the New York Times bestseller list and with a big-budget Hollywood adaptation by Neil Jordan coming out later this year. Ah, but then I actually read it, and am now even more confused than I was before; because to be perfectly frank, Heart-Shaped Box is an okay novel but certainly nothing better than most other horror books, or at least from the viewpoint of this non-fan who tends to lump all their storylines together. Because really, if you want to think of genre novels in a standardized, almost scientific way, you can really think of them like this -- that all genre novels basically start with a semi-hacky plotline full of easily-guessed cliches (which is why they're known as genre novels in the first place), and how good or bad that novel turns out to be hinges on where that author goes with that semi-hacky plotline, either upwards into unexpected territory or downwards to wallow in its hacky, cliched mess.

And that's the biggest problem with Heart-Shaped Box; unlike the best genre work out there, the stuff that legitimately breaks through to a general mainstream audience, here Hill chooses to wallow in the most predictable cliches available whenever given the choice, whenever given the chance to otherwise elevate his material into something truly unique. Because I mean, seriously, just how many more horror projects do we need that feature as its main villain a creepy horse-faced old man in an antique black suit and fedora hat who talks with a threatening southern drawl? Or dogs that can somehow preternaturally sense the looming evil around them long before the humans do? Or sassy grandmas who accidentally provide the key to the story's entire resolution, through their folksy sayin's spouted around their homey kitchen during a down moment in the plot? These are all bad cliches of the horror genre, the things that make me as a non-fan flee from most hackneyed books within that genre; the entire reason I picked up Heart-Shaped Box was because I thought it was going to be better than that, given the fanatical grassroots popularity the book has inspired since first coming out.

Unfortunately the book is not that; it's a decent horror story, don't get me wrong, but ultimately nothing better or even different than a typical Stephen King novel circa 1982 or so, all haunted cars and cheesy inner dialogue and badly dated rock lyrics and the whole bit. (And speaking of which, by the way, can I just get this off my chest, please? What self-respecting death-metal veteran would ever possibly consider Counting Crows and Coldplay among his favorite bands? Cheese And Rice, Joe Hill, pick a music style and stick with it already, or don't bother making your main character a grizzled death-metal veteran to begin with.) If you're already a fan of horror novels, by all means go ahead and pick it up if you haven't already; if you're like me, though, and tend to only tackle a handful of such projects per year, Heart-Shaped Box unfortunately should not be one of them.

Out of 10: 6.8, or 7.8 for horror fans

Below are simple links to other interesting stuff I've come across on the web in the last day or two; they may or may not concern literature or photography, or indeed the arts at all. You can click here to learn more about how I compile this list and what software I use, if you're interested.

"Grand Theft Auto IV" makes $500 million in its first freaking week
Holy f-cking God.

Here we go again: Negotiations with Screen Actors Guild suspended
Ready for another Hollywood shutdown? I guess the people in that industry think so; salary negotiations between producers and the Screen Actors Guild have officially broken down, with a strike a very real possibility.

Barbara Walters: "Rosie O'Donnell was angry and full of rage"
Man, Barbara Walters must be retiring soon or something, because she's dishing out the dirt this week: an affair with a senator in the '70s, the fact that Star Jones had weight-loss surgery then lied about it, and now the revelation that troubled "View" host Rosie O'Donnell was constantly angry and "full of rage."

Today's photo of the day is entitled "X," and is by a Flickr member known as twO®. twO® is a graffiti artist based out of Sourdun/Creteil, France; you can check out their main photo page for a lot more very cool graffiti-heavy images.

Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.