BilmBlog500

Blindness; seen Tuesday evening September 23, 2008 at the Landmark Sunshine, Auditorium #1.  0 slithy toads. & many comic books, some read during this awful awful movie. Going to see a "free" screening of the forthcoming movie Blindness, courtesty of the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the Variety Screening Series, is an excellent example of the economic concept of opportunity cost . I had walked out of the director's (Fernando Meirelles) earlier, wildly overpraised and stunningly bad movie City of God.  I hate to walk out of movies, but not only was it very bad, but it was in a foreign language so I couldn't kind of rest my eyes and maybe listen a little to it even if I didn't care about what was on the screen.  This one was in English, so even though I knew I was in for a long night after the first half hour, I decided there was just enough light at my seat (which was on the aisle, near one of the lights in the aisle that didn't go down all the way...

In light of recent events, I thought I would share with you a small excerpt from an e-mail I sent about my trip to Alaska for Bouchercon in September 2007: The next morning, I watched one of Charlaine Harris' panels, and then met up again with my author friend for a sightseeing expedition.  The usual thing is to go South toward Portage Glacier, Homer, Seward, Girdwood.  I suggested we head the other way to Wasilla, Alaska.  Because there was a Waldenbooks there!  It was another gorgeous day, and we drove along with the Chugach Mountains on one side of us, and the Alaska Range lurking off a little in the distance, with some fall foliage maybe just the tiniest tinge past its peak.  Wasilla/Porter Alaska have around 70K of the 350K people that live in the "Anchorage Bowl," which in turn has around half of the population of Alaska.  When we were driving along the main drag and passed by a strip mall with a sign for the "Alaska Cheesecake Company," I said we had to s...

The one thing  I couldn't do on a car-less visit to LA was head out to the suburbs to visit bookstores.  So I decided on this visit to pursue a costly but pleasant alternative, hiring a media escort to join me for 8 hours of exploration.  What is a media escort?  When an author goes on tour, the escort is the person the publisher hires to meet an author at the airport, get an author to the hotel, to the event, to any media that might be planned in the market, and as time permits to do drive-by stock signings at stores besides the one where the event is taking place.  Ann Binney was recommended to me by Tina Anderson, the wonderful publicist at Penguin who recently, and sadly, departed after offering a lot of assistance to Charlaine Harris and other authors of mine. We agreed to meet at the Mission St. stop on the Gold Line light rail, so I started the morning walking from the Marriott to Union Station to catch the train.  I went a few blocks the other way to walk along 7th St., and...

When I visited Los Angeles two years ago for the World SF Convention in Anaheim, I was fascinated by the fact that I was able to use mass transit to Do Something.  It was a small something, but I was able to walk from my hotel by LAX down to the Metro Light Rail, take it to downtown Long Beach, and visit a new-ish Borders on the beach.  This got me to thinking what I could and could not do if I tried a future trip without renting a car, and I decided to try and see.  And the answer is that you can kind of get away with it, though the occasional cab ride or friend with car of the like is probably still extremely helpful. Flying in, I went to Burbank's Bob Hope Airport for the first time, and I am inclined to do so again. The pedestrian-friendly airport is around 3 miles from the North Hollywood stop on the Metro Red Line subway, which is not far for a backpacker, not too far for me except it's in the valley, the heat can be high, the sun high in the sky, so it's feasible but...

So I confess that I've been a little jealous of Peter V. Brett , who had some wonderful experiences the past week going to London for the British launch of his excellent debut fantasy THE PAINTED MAN (US, THE WARDED MAN, March 2009).  I love the picture here , and would loved to have been there. But I've also got to confess that I had a pretty cool time myself at the gala premiere of True Blood on Thursday night, and I can't really think what experience I'd possibly trade for that very very special evening. Now, for those of you who don't know, True Blood is the new HBO series  based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris .  It is created by Alan Ball, the award-winning creator of Six Feet Under and screenwriter for American Beauty.  It has the biggest-ever marketing campaign for HBO , and it is a big thing.   Getting invited to the premiere is no sure thing.  The first draft of a film agreement will rarely contain anything about the author being invite...

OK, so have any of you seen Transsiberian? A friend and I are having a debate about the ending. When the money is retrieved at the end is it because she's the mastermind (& doesn't the Ben Kingsley character say she is, though the US consul might say other) and when told where body is knows her on own to look for money, or does she go because Harrelson's wife is told where the money is and then tells his girlfriend what reward she might find?