“If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it… then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.” -Aristotle

Heath and Hathaway are marvelous. Great script, even if - or because - it’s mostly mumbled. Still can’t tell if its rambling disjointedness helps or hurts.

Stephen Elliott is one of a tiny handful of writers whose work feels like it’s on fire. Like it’s so full of life and pain and beauty that you burst into flames, just reading it. His novel Happy Baby was easily the best book I read of 2004. I read his story “Where I Slept” (originally published in Tin House ) one rainy day in the reading room of the Mid-Manhattan Library, and when it was done I just stared at the dozens of people sitting around me, feeling special and alone, knowing that none of them could possibly have been so shaken and excited and moved by whatever it was they were reading. And he has this fab new online journal called The Rumpus, which is publishing a lot of really fresh stuff and feels poised to reinvigorate this weird slippery messy concept called online journals. And their Daily Rumpus newsletter lets me get a daily email from my hero Stephen.

There’s a great new essay by him at the Rumpus right now, entitled “Why I Write,” and as I was reading it I got the same sense of excitement I get from his fiction. Excitement, and vulnerability. Like I’m reading something I myself don’t have the courage to say. Like he’s saying the things I want to believe, but don’t. Above all - like he’s saying the things I tell myself. About being a writer, and why I do it, and what I get out of the deal compared to what I put in, and how it doesn’t make any sense, and how I can’t stop. Like I said, his work is on fire - it’s so alive, so vibrant, that it takes you out of yourself. Mattilda does that; James Baldwin did that. Nan Goldin’s photography.

Here’s some of it:

“The urge to publish is a hunger. The drive to write and the drive to publish are virtually the same thing, at least for me. They both come from somewhere deep. Like the drive for sex, they can be explained but the explanation is always incomplete.”

And because I think he’s a cool-looking dude, here’s a picture of Stephen Elliott, taken by Lydia Lunch, taken off his website.

Milos Forman must have advanced Alzheimer’s, and everyone associated with the film was too polite to say how dumb and wretched it was.

“You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it?s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong….

I don?t feel frightened by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell ? possibly. It doesn?t frighten me.” [smiles]

Godric’s arc was too short; its end should have made me weep. Is Sookie and Bill’s storyline the weakest one? Loved Maryanne’s speech.

Richly-imagined, fresh gritty sci-fi. At first it’s a very special Office episode.* Engaging and unconventional even when conventional. Smartly political. Brilliant last shot.

*”very special Office episode” is a quote from my genius friend Kathy Rodriguez.

Not half bad, even if Chris Evans inexplicably keeps his shirt on. Neat ambient score and a nice look. Dakota Fanning’s fun as a drunk.

Fresh characters; some great scares smartly done. But it’s all about the payoff in a flick like this, and the end felt easy and unimaginative.

Same amazing characters and great story as the movie, but super-detailed and rich where the film was stark and bare. Lovely observations. Sweet; horrifying.

[For my 25-word review of the film version, head over here:]

http://samjmiller.com/2009/02/27/let-the-right-one-in-25-word-movie-review/

Godric is so hot! And wise! Every other plotline felt tangential and weak. Although Michelle Forbes is so frakking scary/sexy/awesome.

Here’s what I’ve deemed worthy of tagging on my Delicious in the past week…

Remembering Hiroshima

- Photo-essay on the before and the after of Hiroshima, from Boston.com

64 years ago today, my government used a nuclear bomb against a civilian population - not to cripple her military resources, which many generals believed were already depleted (Eisenhower told the Secretary of War in July of 1945 that “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”), but to devastate and terrorize Japan to the extent that they would be forced to surrender. (And incidentally, the U.S. Code of Law defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets…” which seems like an awful apt description of Hiroshima).

So on this anniversary of atrocity, to remind myself of our bottomless capacity to inflict suffering on other people, I will post my favorite Oppenheimer quote.

J. Robert Oppenheimer headed up the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb. In mid-July of 1945, the first successful test detonation was carried out; the test bomb was called Trinity (Oppenheimer had bet ten dollars it wouldn’t detonate at all; Enrico Fermi was taking bets on “whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world”). Years later, plagued by conscience about the thing he had helped to unleash on the world, Oppenheimer would remember the aftermath of Trinity:

“A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that one way or another.”

When I was fourteen years old my family visited Los Alamos, where there’s a museum about the Manhattan Project - complete with sand fused into glass by the detonation of Trinity, and endless video loops of mushroom clouds spreading into the sky. In a corner a small TV was set into the wall, where an interview with Oppenheimer played perpetually. The sadness in his voice as he recited that quote was scarier than all the radioactive scrap metal and naked bomb casings and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs that adorned the air-conditioned quiet of the converted bunker.

Video: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Movies/Movie8.shtml