(Think that you can't rent movies at Netflix that contain legitimately explicit sexuality? Think again, my frustrated friend! In this special essay series, I look at a total of thirty mainstream films made over the last forty years, all of which contain scenes of such actual graphic sex acts as fellatio and penetration, reviewing them not in only in terms of the movie's quality itself but also the amount of sex it portrays, and whether this sex is any fun or not to actually watch. For more about how these movies were chosen, as well as the full list of all thirty titles, you can click here; and don't forget, these reviews are also mixed into the master list of all movies reviewed here, over at CCLaP's main movie page.)

Today's movie: I Love You Too, 2001 (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia)

The story in a nutshell: As is typical for a European straight-to-video erotic thriller by a middle-aged white dude, the plot of I Love You Too is fairly straightforward, if not a tad misogynistic: it's the story of a sweetly innocent young man who is seduced by the sexual charms of a completely batsh-t insane woman, getting dragged deeper and deeper into her dysfunctional web until nearly every aspect of his life is ruined. Yeah, funny how many European erotic thrillers by middle-aged white dudes share this storyline, isn't it?

(CAUTION: The fan-edited clip reel above will be a little too racy for some work environments.)

What I thought: Ugh. This unfortunately turned out to be the exact kind of cheesy softcore hotel-adult-channel pornography I'm expressly trying to avoid with this "Naughty Netflix" series, all the way down to the main hero who's supposed to be a fresh-faced 22-year-old virgin, but who in reality looks exactly like the washed-up 35-year-old soap-opera veteran the actor actually was when this film was made. It just proves once again that you can't always rely on the consensus judgement at places like Netflix or the IMDB to give you a fair and accurate estimate of a film's quality.

What makes it an explicit movie? Almost nothing; except for a few fleeting shots of genitalia, everything else seen here is the same extreme-T&A stuff seen on Cinemax in the middle of the night.

Is the sex actually fun to watch? I suppose if you're a 14-year-old boy, or a grown man who still beats off to "Victoria's Secret" catalogs, then perhaps. The rest of you will unfortunately be laughing through the majority of the sex scenes instead of getting turned on.

Worth your time? No. Oh, noooooo.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Higashi-ginza Sta.," and is by Hidehiro Kigawa. Hidehiro is a graphic designer based out of Tokyo, Japan; unsurprisingly, this particular image was taken in that city, at the front entrance of the Higash-ginza train station. Hidehiro also has a nice personal website, for those who would like to see 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 is dedicated to reviewing as many contemporary books as possible, including self-published volumes; click here to learn how to submit your own book for possible review, although be warned that it needs to have been published within the last 18 months to be considered. For the complete list of all books reviewed here, as well as the next books scheduled to be read, click here.)

The Quiet War
By Paul McAuley
Pyr

The more genre books I do critical reviews of, the more I'm coming to realize that one of the biggest things genre fans crave is the sort of consensual cloud of topics that all the writers in that genre will form at any given time, and how indeed this cloud eventually coalesces as to define an entire era in that genre's history -- just to cite one example, I in particular am a big fan of science-fiction from the 1950s and '60s (a.k.a. that genre's "Silver Age"), and love that nearly every SF title from that period tends to touch on one or more of roughly a dozen common subjects, from nuclear fears to moon colonization to the growing civil rights movement. But this is also the curse of most genre fiction, in that those who aren't natural fans of that genre tend to look at these books as hacky endless reshuffles of the same old tired cliches, over and over again -- to cite another example, I am not much of a fan of crime novels, and tend to look at titles in that genre as a never-ending mishmash of crazed serial killers, cynical detectives, weasely low-level henchmen and the like. It's this dichotomy that so fascinates me about genre work, and why it is that such titles make up the vast majority of all books sold in a given year, yet are constantly struggling for respect from anyone outside of that particular cliquey circle.

I got to thinking about all this again last week while reading through veteran SF author and multiple award-winner Paul McAuley's latest, 2008's The Quiet War (itself a nominee for the 2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award); because it's essentially a textbook example of a well-put-together genre novel, one where every topic being explored can be traced back to multiple novels in the past that have already given that subject a whirl, yet with McAuley putting them together here in an utterly original way that makes the book stand on its own. And in fact, just the basic premise underlying the entire story as a whole is almost as "ripped from the headlines" as you can get; set 200 years in the future, it posits a post-disaster Earth where unchecked climate change ended up wrecking a huge swath of the industrialized world (the US bearing most of the brunt), leaving the charred remains mostly in the hands of the planet's former third-world countries, who themselves are now governed by radically green political philosophies. (In fact, in McAuley's universe, it's the government of Brazil that now manages almost the entirety of both South and North America, where the barely civilized remains of the US population are forced to live in a handful of crowded urban centers, while allowing the majority of the environmentally destroyed continent to "go to seed" and essentially revert back to its natural state.)

Ah, but also like many post-apocalyptic novels, these surviving governments are not actually run in the way we think of it, but are rather controlled by a series of all-powerful royal-family corporations, those ruthless individuals who rose up as warlords in the wake of the "Overturn" (as it's known in the book), whose Mad-Max fiefdoms a century later have evolved into entire private city-states, territory most famously explored in the "cyberpunk" books of the 1980s and early '90s. But then McAuley adds yet another SF cliche to this speculative world, by building into its history the fact that humans had already started colonizing the solar system long before the Overturn, leading to an entire "Outer" culture that has long been at odds with Earth's, freedom-loving societies predicated on a radical form of direct democracy (in other words, electronic town halls for each and every decision their community makes); and in this you can see a direct parallel to, say, Adam Roberts' Gradisil which was reviewed here last year, with of course both books heavily indebted to the work of Robert Heinlein, who many credit as the inventor of the entire "libertarians in space" meme now so popular in SF. And so are there both liberals and conservatives in both these societies, who alternately wish to create alliances or go to war with the other, which is what mostly drives the complex, politically dense plotline actually fueling the three acts of this traditional "space opera."

And this isn't even all the well-known themes that McAuley pulls into The Quiet War: he also touches on the Strossian idea of using genetic engineering to usher in a transhuman age, riffs on Cory Doctorow's concept of a reputation-based economy in a post-scarcity society, and even borrows heavily from Orson Scott Card's idea of cruel, spartan compounds designed to turn children into unstoppable warriors. And this is why those who aren't natural SF fans can easily complain about a book like this, and why McAuley has never reached the kind of mainstream recognition of, say, his peers William Gibson or Neal Stephenson, because this book is essentially a regurgitation of topics that have already been explored in better and deeper ways in other books; but this is also what makes McAuley such a favorite among hardcore SF fans who are "in the know," because he's able to magically weave together a nicely unique and original story out of these well-known elements, one worth sitting and reading even if you've already read the dozen older books that inform this one. (And on a related yet side note, let me mention my pleasure in watching the pure glee that McAuley [a biologist during the day] takes in exploring the issue of terraforming, of how there are literally now "artists" in this post-disaster future who know how to mix together just the exact right combination of minerals, bacteria and other organic compounds in order to, say, "reboot" a former wetlands area.)

It adds up by the end to something that will be a real treat for existing genre fans, but mostly likely not for those who have to be talked into every science-fiction novel they read; and that of course is why it's receiving a score of 8.9 today, because as regular readers know, that's the highest a book can score here without appealing to a wide general audience, no matter how well that particular book is written. It comes highly recommended to fans of any of the other authors mentioned today.

Out of 10: 8.9

Read even more about The Quiet War: Official site | Amazon | GoodReads | LibraryThing | Shelfari | Wikipedia

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Railway station, Debrecen," and is by Attila Hupjan. Attila is based out of Hungary, and in fact this particular image was taken in a railway station in Debrecen, that country's second-largest city. Attila has a nice personal site as well, for those who would like to see 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.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "de noite.," and is by Débora Paghi. Débora is based out of Sao Paolo, Brazil, but doesn't mention whether this particular image was also taken there or not. Do make sure to stop by her main photostream for a lot more great 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.

Regular readers know that I'm now maintaining a second blog (kidlit4adults.blogspot.com) specifically just for reviews of children's books; a friend here in Chicago has in fact convinced me to try my hand for the first time at writing such books myself, except that I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process merely by reading a stack of existing books and then breaking them down analytically. I'm generally not mentioning them at CCLaP since they're off-topic to what's usually discussed here, although I thought it'd be fun to occasionally make a mention of a write-up you grown-ups might find interesting; today, for example, I tackled my first re-read of a book I myself enjoyed as a child, in order to figure out why I connected with it so profoundly back then, which in this case happens to be 1971's Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Gen-X hero Judy Blume, which at the time was my second-favorite book by her. (For the record, my number-one favorite was Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, with number three being Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and number four Blubber.) All my fellow slackers should feel free to click over to it, if you have an interest in seeing how my adult re-reading of it stacked up to my thirty-year memories of this apparently salacious book (it talks about boners!), and what kinds of lessons I took away from it as an aspiring kid-lit author myself.

Today's photo of the day is entitled "light in a dark world," and is by a Flickr member who goes just by his first name, Dave. Dave is based out of Northern Ireland, but this particular image happens to be of Clifton Bridge in Bristol, England. Do make sure to stop by Dave's main photostream for a lot more great 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.

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.

Poll: FOX is most trusted "news" organization in US
And thus does the United States officially take one more giant step towards being Germany in 1932.

Disney finally runs Miramax into the ground
The studio that single-handedly made indie films commercially viable is finally being closed, after being taken over by Disney several years ago and literally run into the ground through the gross incompetence of their corporate executives. What a shame.

Chicago's transit system approves crazy conceptual art project
It's been the project all the Chicago hipsters have been talking about the last six months -- the "Mobile Garden," that is, a plan to convert a CTA "el" train car into a flatbed garden, and to hook it up to trains and drive it around the city each day to remind the populace of various green issues. Well, guess what? This week the CTA actually approved the proposal, as long as the Mobile Garden people can pay for the entire thing themselves. Hey, locals, help this conceptual art project become a reality!

California school district bans dictionary for "age-inappropriate words"
Wow. I...I don't know where to even begin.

Brown: "John Edwards and Andrew Young - two worms who deserve each other"
Have you READ yet this blistering new memoir of the John Edwards presidential campaign, from his former toady Andrew Young? The allegations are so ridiculous to almost be unreal: that Edwards had "Made in the USA" labels sewn into his custom Italian suits; that his mistress thought their love child was a reincarnated Buddhist monk; that his wife was the one to suggest that her cancer could be used for political purposes; that he has special shampoo flown in, and spends $800 a month on haircuts; that he never once said "I love you" out loud to his mistress, so that he could legally testify to that fact if later caught. Here, a nice editorial from The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, on how he and the boot-licker who cleaned up all his messes are two toads who utterly deserved each other.

Dutch crack down on "marijuana tourism"
I didn't know this, but apparently many Dutch border towns are the marijuana equivalent of those cities you sometimes see in America, where right across the border cigarettes will be much cheaper or fireworks are illegal -- in other words, big giant warehouse stores a couple of feet away from, say, Belgium, where thousands of Belgians a day will stop by for the joints that are illegal in their own country. Here, a fascinating article from the always great GlobalPost.com, on the ways the ever-more conservative Dutch justice system is trying to bring a halt to such pot superstores, as well as create more and more hassles for such places as tourist "coffeeshops" in the Amsterdam red-light district.

Chicago's first post-Blago election has lowest turnout in decades
This week was Chicago's first public election since the complete and utter breakdown of our former governor, Rod "F-ckin' Gold" Blagoevitch; and unsurprisingly, only 26 percent of eligible voters turned out to it, which has all the pols nervously wringing their hands this week. I don't know about anywhere else, but here in Chicago there seems to be a pervasive sense of nihilism about politics in the air, this attitude that seems to assume that ALL political candidates are criminals, so why bother voting for one of them in the first place? I don't think it's any surprise that voter turnout was so low here this week, and I believe is a troubling sign of things to come too. (Why troubling? Because it's always easiest for ultra-conservative fringe groups to win elections when turnout is low, which means that the teabaggers are probably going to do a lot better in this year's mid-terms than anyone expected.)

Warner thinking of doing a "Watchmen" sequel
Seriously. Yeah, "uh-oh" is right.

(Like many Netflix customers, I too can get quite lax with the timely watching and returning of my movies, which of course defeats the entire purpose of having a flat-rate rental plan in the first place. To combat that, I am now writing standardized mini-reviews of each and every movie I end up watching through Netflix, both instantly and on DVD. Don't forget, all previous 'Justify My Netflix' reviews can be found on CCLaP's main movie page.)

Today's movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2009 (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia)

Why I added it to my queue: Because like the rest of the planet, I have by now become an unthinking, sheeplike fan of the Harry Potter movies, and so must dutifully line up each year for my annual dose of The Most Lucrative Franchise In Human History.

The reality: Oh...you know, it was fine. There's not much to even say about these films anymore, frankly, that hasn't already been said a thousand times about the earlier ones; and given that a billion people were destined to see this no matter what, it also makes a critical review of this film literally pointless. That said, I still get up every morning and thank God that Chris Columbus ended up dropping out of this series two films in.

Strangest piece of trivia: The actor hired to play the young Voldemort is the real-life nephew of Ralph Fiennes, who plays the character as an adult.

Worth your time? Eat it up, sheep!

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Sunset," and is by a Flickr member who goes by "nautiljon." Nautiljon is based out of Angers in northwest France, which is where this particular image was taken as well; they also have a personal blog, for those who would like to know 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.

(Because I make my way through so many books and movies for CCLaP, I regularly come across projects that are interesting enough unto themselves but that I simply don't have much to say about, or at least not enough to warrant an entire entry. I thought, then, that on occasional weekends I would gather up such "micro-reviews" and post them all in one large entry; they can also be found on CCLaP's main book and main movie archive pages.)

There Never Was a Better Time: Toronto's Yesterdays
By Doug Taylor
iUniverse

I've said here many times already what I think one of the greatest strengths of the print-on-demand, self-publishing format is -- namely, the chance for part-time writers to pen a story specific to their family and situation, so to make the book easily available to the several hundred other relatives and historians who would be interested in such a book. Take for a good example the recent There Never Was a Better Time by Doug Taylor, a slightly fictionalized narrative account of his own family's migration from a small fishing village in Canada to the bustling city of Toronto in the early 20th century; because the simple fact is that this is destined to just never be a big seller, between the extremely narrow subject matter and Taylor's only so-so skills as a writer. But it's also a lively and very readable account of one family's struggles to adapt to the modern age, penned with the kind of eye for historical detail that you would expect from a retired professor like Taylor; and that makes this perfect for people like Canadian history buffs and friends of the family, even if that's admittedly a small crowd. Such manuscripts used to have to be distributed via grimy, expensive stacks of xeroxes handed out at family get-togethers; so how nice, I always think, that we live in an age where it can instead be purchased in a good-looking bound form and sent straight to your home whenever you want. As always, I urge you to take this mindset yourself when it comes to most print-on-demand volumes, instead of comparing them directly to someone like Malcolm Gladwell and always being disappointed.

Out of 10: 7.6

The Vikings: A History
By Robert Ferguson
Viking / Penguin

Regulars know that I'm a big fan of the so-called "NPR-worthy" history book, in which academic research is combined with a narrative framework and engaging personal style; and for a perfect example of why this deserves a special new term in the first place, look no further than Robert Ferguson's old-skool history book The Vikings, which admittedly has a kickass cover* but whose interior is as dry as the brittle bones of a New England classics professor. Now, admittedly, this is not entirely Ferguson's fault; as he himself admits in the introduction, a big part of why so little is factually known about the Vikings is that this medieval warrior society was largely a non-literate one, resulting not only in a dearth of written records but with most surviving artifacts being stone pictographs, and therefore open to wildly different interpretations. So to fill his 400-page manuscript, then, Ferguson unfortunately has to rely on the trick that most older history books had to as well -- namely, to concentrate mostly on unending lists of minor battles and fiefdom takeovers that happened in the 300 years of the so-called "Viking Era" (roughly 700 to 1000 A.D.), taking place in an endless series of ancient villages you've never heard of and led by an endless series of chieftains whose names you can't pronounce. This is the way most of our childhood history textbooks were, which is why so many people end up despising the entire subject of history by adulthood; how "NPR-worthy" books differ, and why they've suddenly flowered in popularity among the mainstream public in the last ten years, is that they incorporate sections on the culture of that age too, and the ways that normal average random people back then quietly lived their daily lives, nearly impossible to do here because of there being almost no direct evidence to illuminate us. Although a noble effort, and of course perfect for those who don't mind history books that read like doctoral theses, I found myself bored to tears throughout large sections of this book, and suspect that many others will as well.

*Yes, my guilty secret is finally out -- I often pick books based on their covers. I know, as a book critic I should be ashamed of myself for doing this; I know, I know.

Out of 10: 7.2

Animals and Objects In and Out of Water: Posters by Jay Ryan, 2005-2008
Edited by Fred Sasaki
Akashic Books

So when do you know that you've really made it as a book critic? Why, when you start receiving free review copies of lush art books, that's when, chump! I just recently received my first, in fact, Akashic's Animals and Objects In and Out of Water, a late-'00s overview of Chicago-based graphic designer and indie-rock stalwart Jay Ryan; and I was already a big fan of Ryan's work (it's hard to live in Chicago and not be, frankly -- his work is everywhere), so this book turned out to be an extra-big pleasure in my case. Featuring beautiful reprints of over 120 of his best designs, all of them from 2005 to '08, and a series of essays from artists he's done work for (including our old pal Joe Meno), this is a perfect gift for any creative hipster in your life; and with it coming out as an oversized paperback, it's one that everyone can afford too.

Out of 10: 9.0

(IMPORTANT UPDATE AND DISCLOSURE: Since writing this review, I've learned that my cousin Nathan Keay was part of the production team for this book. Rest assured that this didn't influence my opinion, in that I wrote my review before finding this out.)

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Friched boat...," and is by a Flickr member who goes by the online handle ".MISTER T." Mr. T doesn't mention much about himself, either, but does say that this particular photo was taken in the Fiji islands. Do make sure to stop by Mr. T's main photostream for a lot more great 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.

Hooray! CCLaP's starting a new project today! It is in fact CCLaP Publishing's first-ever short-story series, which I call "TwitLit" (cclapcenter.com/twitlit), inspired by that recent similar experiment by Rick Moody that was kind of a disaster, and me of course reading about it and thinking that CCLaP could do better. They're essentially stories that have been written as a series of haiku-like chapters, each of them no more than 140 characters apiece; they then first run serially at CCLaP's brand-new Twitter account (twitter.com/cclapcenter; @cclapcenter for responses), then afterwards are published here as high-quality printable poster versions. What's different about these, then, versus the growing amount of "Twitter literature" starting to be available out there, is that CCLaP's authors are instructed to write stories that both have a narrative thread and can stand alone as a series of short little poetic pieces; I'm convinced that this is one of the biggest problems right now with other Twitter experiments, that missing simply a few updates in the middle of the day will often make the rest of the story nearly worthless. TwitLit stories are designed specifically so that people who only catch maybe 75 percent of the live version will still have a good reading experience anyway, then of course have a whole different experience when downloading and printing out the complete poster version afterwards.

Anyway, the series kicks off in two weeks, on Wednesday, February 10th, with the story "Jack and Jill" by JA Tyler, owner of the great small press Mudluscious; that should give you existing Twitter members plenty of time to start following the CCLaP Twitter feed, and curious non-members time to join. The live version will run for two consecutive days, with chapters published hourly between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. Chicago time (3 p.m. to 1 a.m. GMT); then the poster version (a small sneak preview of which you're seeing above) will be posted in its printable form on Friday, February 12th, at the TwitLit web headquarters. Then two weeks after that, starting Tuesday, February 23rd, will come the story "Angels" by Josh Spilker, one of the runners of the hot lit-and-music blog Deckfight. Yes, CCLaP is currently seeking other intriguing TwitLit projects! Simply email me directly (Jason Pettus) at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com with your submission. I look forward to starting this series, and hope that you end up enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying putting it together.

(Like many Netflix customers, I too can get quite lax with the timely watching and returning of my movies, which of course defeats the entire purpose of having a flat-rate rental plan in the first place. To combat that, I am now writing standardized mini-reviews of each and every movie I end up watching through Netflix, both instantly and on DVD. Don't forget, all previous 'Justify My Netflix' reviews can be found on CCLaP's main movie page.)

Today's movie: The Brood, 1979 (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia)

Why I added it to my queue: Because this was the first non-underground hit in the career of "body horror" director David Cronenberg; and regulars know that I'm trying to become a completist these days of Cronenberg's work. (See for example my previous reviews of Eastern Promises and Dead Ringers; today's movie now makes it eleven Cronenberg titles I've seen, out of the seventeen feature films spanning his entire career.)

The reality: Wow, talk about the ultimate ex-wife revenge movie! Because for those who don't know, Cronenberg has admitted in interviews many times that this was largely inspired by a bitter divorce and custody battle he went through with his own ex in real life, which turns this into a sorta sickening horror version of similar '70s divorce classic Kramer vs. Kramer. See, it's all about this controversial psychologist (Oliver Reed, always good for a little scenery-chewing) who's invented a new therapy technique called "psychoplasmics," in which the negative emotions we store up over our past literally manifest themselves as physical ailments through the process of intense roleplaying; typical manifestations are things like the welts that a childhood abuse survivor develops or the lymphatic cancer that a self-hating weirdo gives himself, but in the case of our antagonist Nola Carveth, her psychotic rage over her current divorce and custody battle causes her to literally give birth to these horrible little monstrous creatures of pure evil, which then get loose and wreak havoc in the streets of '70s Toronto. (Oh, and just wait until you get to the scene near the end where we watch her actually birth one of these creatures, one of the early catastrof-cks of Cronenberg's career which was to so securely establish his reputation among horror fans.) As such, then, The Brood is not just an inventive metaphorical film but also accidentally a great historical document concerning loony countercultural psychologists, the dubious self-esteem group "encounters" from that period, and incidentally '70s urban architecture -- why, just the shots of the funky, Helvetica-covered, wood-and-glass compound serving as the doctor's clinic is worth the rental price alone. A great genre exercise if not a guilty pleasure, and pretty much direct evidence of the misogyny charges Cronenberg has regularly received throughout his career.

Strangest piece of trivia: This was the first film to be scored by Howard Shore, who of course would go on to create the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

Worth your time? Yes, although you may watch half of it with your eyes covered

Today's photo of the day is entitled "Museum Guard," and is by Mike Watson. Mike is an engineering cartographer during the day (!); this particular image is from New York's Museum of Modern Art, or MOMA. Do make sure to stop by Mike's main photostream for a lot more great 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.