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© 1999-2009 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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June 30, 2009: Movie Reviews - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ● Imagine You and Me ● Outsourced |
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Friday, July 3, 2009 |
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Runner-Up - 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest "The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor--the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride."
Warren Blair Thanks to Mike Stamm |
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The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. |
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Dave Ross Commentary (07.01.09) Thanks to Janice Nunamaker |
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Jim, an 82-year-old man, went to the doctor to get a physical. A few days later, the doctor saw Jim walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm. "Boy," the doctor told him, "you're really doing great, aren't you?" Jim replied, "Just doing what you said, Doc. 'Get a hot mama and be cheerful.'" The doctor said, "I didn't say that! I said, 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful.'" |
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The Great American Bubble Machine The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. Matt Taibbi |
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More Soapbox |
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June 29, 2009: Movie Reviews - Juggernaut ● Murder on the Orient Express
June 18-22, 2009: Movie Reviews - O ● Othello ● Men in Black ● Ronin ● Seven Pounds ● Baraka ● Déjà Vu ● Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground ● The Celebration (Festen) ● The Party ● Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment ● The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) ● Titus
June 16-17, 2009: At the Drive In - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and X-Men Origins: Wolverine ● Land of the Lost and Drag Me to Hell
June 9-15, 2009: Movie Reviews - North by Northwest ● The Man on Lincoln's Nose ● Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round ● The Dish ● Taking Chance ● Up ● K-19: The Widowmaker ● The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) ● Defiance ● The Mouse on the Moon ● It's Trad, Dad!
June 6, 2009: Movie Reviews Charley Varrick ● Robin and Marian ● State of Play ● Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits) ● The President's Analyst
June 1, 2009: Movie Reviews: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ ● Ben-Hur ● The Birth of a Nation ● Hell's Angels ● Zack and Miri Make a Porno ● Last Chance Harvey
May 25, 2009: At the Drive-In - Terminator Salvation and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
May 20, 2009: Dismal Thoughts: Part 2 - The Little Helicopters That Couldn't
May 18, 2009: At the Drive-In: Angels & Demons ● Obsessed
May 11, 2009: Movie Reviews: At the Drive-In ● Star Trek (2009) ● Monsters vs. Aliens ● The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ● Destination Moon ● Nickelodeon
May 4, 2009: Movie Reviews: Christmas in July ● The More The Merrier ● Project Moon Base ● Tell No One ● Walk, Don’t Run ● Frost/Nixon ● Silk Stockings
April 30, 2009: VarleyYarn: Dismal Thoughts: Part 1. I started writing this two months ago, then I got distracted by other things … like writing my new novel! Hurray! But I’m done for the day, and have a little spare time here, so I thought I’d update it, and then post it.
April 20, 2009: Movie Reviews: Nude on the Moon ● The Palm Beach Story ● Priceless ● The Reader ● Grey Gardens (2009)
April 18, 2009: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where I made my first sale way back in 1974, is celebrating its 60th year by reprinting some of the classic stories it has published over the years. In the June/July issue one of those stories is my novelette, "Retrograde Summer." While it sort of makes me wince to think of any of my stories as "classic" (I'm not that old, am I? Yes, you are ...), I'm honored. There is also a very complimentary introduction by Keith Kahla. Be sure to pick up a copy!
April 16, 2009: George Harrison Gets a Star. We figured the crowds might be rather large for this one...
April 15, 2009: The Miracles Get a Star. It was the 50th anniversary of Motown... Movie Reviews: FTA ● I've Loved You So Long ● Ruthless People ● Sullivan's Travels
April 14, 2009: Ex-Spector-ated!!!! Finally, finally ... The Descanso Gardens. Easter Sunday, and it felt like a sin to try to work. It was 70 degrees outside, the sun was shining, the sky was blue as an Easter egg.
April 8, 2009: Movie Reviews: In the Electric Mist ● The Miracle of Morgan's Creek ● Strictly Ballroom
April 2, 2009: Movie Reviews: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency ● Religulous ● When Worlds Collide (1951) ● Like Water for Chocolate
March 27, 2009: Movie Reviews: Burnt by the Sun ● Happy-Go-Lucky ● Knowing ● Taken ● How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
March 20, 2009: Movie Reviews: Body Heat ● Extras (2005) ● Flash of Genius ● Four Weddings and a Funeral ● Rachel Getting Married ● Synecdoche, New York
March 10, 2009: Movie Reviews: Australia ● Extras ● The Hunting Party ● No Way Out ● West Side Story ● White Sands
February 25, 2009: The Alex. I seldom buy Los Angeles magazine. If you’re seeking a place where you can pay $100 for a plate of sushi, this slick mag rag is where to start looking. Movie Reviews: The Philadelphia Story ● Changeling ● Frozen River
February 20, 2009: Shorts! Every year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a one-night-only showing of all the Oscar-nominated short subjects, animated and live action, a few days before the ceremony.
February 19, 2009: I have just sold the German rights to Red Thunder to Verlagsgruppe Random House GMBH, in München. If any of you out there like the book and sprechen sie Deutsch, I’d be happy to send you a copy if you’ll read it and tell me if it’s a good translation! I don’t know when that will be, but they are obligated to publish the book within two years. 7 Movie Reviews: Doubt ● The Duchess ● Milk ● Vicky Christina Barcelona ● The Visitor ● The Wrestler ● Ghost Town
February 18, 2009: 2 Movie Reviews: The Bank Job ● Sleuth (2007)
February 6, 2009: 6 Movie Reviews: Becoming Jane ● Long Way Round ● Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium ● Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman ● The Uninvited ● Valkyrie
January 28, 2009: 5 Movie Reviews: Encounters at the End of the World ● The High Sign ● One Week ● The Saphead ● Slumdog Millionaire
January 25, 2009: 5 Movie Reviews: The Caine Mutiny ● Cassandra's Dream ● Eagle Eye ● Revolutionary Road ● Quick Change
January 19, 2009: Movie Reviews: Go West ● The Happening ● The Paleface ● The Scarecrow ● Talk To Me ● Traitor
January 13, 2009: Movie Reviews: The Diamond Arm ● Gran Torino ● Speed Racer ● Steelyard Blues ● Yes Man
December 30, 2008: Movie Reviews: Burn After Reading ● Monty Python and the Holy Grail ● Run, Fatboy, Run ● Scrooged
December 23, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Last Disneyland We decided to make one more visit to Disneyland before our passes expired. It will probably be our last one until some of the changes are made at California Adventure. 3 Movie Reviews: BURN-E ● Vanishing Point ● Without a Clue
December 14, 2008: Movie Reviews: Trafic ● The Closet ● The Driver ● Hancock ● L.A. Story ● The Shop on Main Street
December 8, 2008: Movie Reviews: CSNY Déjà Vu ● Expo: The Magic of the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 ● Twilight ● Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ● Clockwise
December 4, 2008: Movie Reviews: Bolt ● Beverly Hills Chihuahua ● Cops and Robbers
December 3, 2008: Headline at Boing Boing: Spider Robinson reads Varley's "Persistence of Vision" Cory Doctorow: "Spider Robinson's latest podcast installment is a reading of John Varley's towering and brilliant 1979 novella, 'The Persistence of Vision,' winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. I'm a gigantic John Varley fan (especially of his short fiction) and this story may be the best of the lot."
November 21, 2008: Movie Reviews: Advise and Consent ● The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing ● Get Smart ● Quantum of Solace ● Passengers ● Our Town ● The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
November 13, 2008: A Hallowood Hollyween We had a lot of fun last Halloween at the West Hollywood street party, which happens on about mile of Santa Monica Boulevard and features some of the wildest costumes you’ll ever see, some by make-up professionals, many by WH’s vast gay community.
Movie Reviews: Full Circle with Michael Palin ● Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure ● My Sister Maria (Meine Schwester Maria) ● The Savages ● Quarantine ● Lakeview Terrace
November 3, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Part 9 I guess I’m a wimp. It wasn’t actually that hot, mid to upper 80s. I used to be able to shrug that off. Heck, when I was in the 1st and 2nd grade in Fort Worth, I’d go out and play, and hunt for horned toads, when the thermometer was well over 100.
October 31, 2008: Happy Halloween from John and Lee
October 20, 2008: Movie Reviews: Body of Lies ● Righteous Kill ● Smart People ● Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day ● Shine a Light ● Twilight Miss P. is a governess down on her luck, and through comic misadventure and a bit of guile, she becomes the social secretary for an air-headed American actress-wannabe, Delysia Lafosse (real name, Sarah Grubb).... More reviews...
October 6, 2008: Movie Reviews: Confessions of a Superhero ● Hallelujah! ● Three Ages One of the pleasures of living maybe a mile and a half from Grauman’s Chinese Theater is that we get to drive by that two-block tourist stretch quite often. There’s always something going on; in fact, that street is closed off about as much as it’s open, for one thing or another, for as much as 10 days at Oscar time. One of the things that is always happening is the costumed characters that haunt the place, to the despair of the Grauman’s owners. More reviews...
September 29, 2008: Paul and Me A few days ago we lost a great American. Entrepreneur—seller of salad dressing, pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and wine among many other things—philanthropist, devoted husband, father, and grandfather, race car driver, owner, and sponsor, founder of a dozen camps for severely ill children … and, oh yes, he acted a bit.
September 25, 2008: The Gaean Trilogy is now available at Audible.com Just got an email from Allyson Johnson that she'd finished recording DEMON. Also available at Audible.com: The Persistence of Vision and Press Enter, narrated by Peter Ganim; and The Ophiuchi Hotline, narrated by Gabra Zackman.
September 17, 2008: SF Signal asked Varley (and others) two questions: What makes a successful sf/f book adaptation? Why do adaptations sometimes fail? Varley's answer follows Jennifer Pelland's.
September 15, 2008: Movie Reviews ● In Bruges ● Mad Hot Ballroom ● El Padrecito Try to remember what you were like in the 5th grade. You’d passed through that brief period when it didn’t much matter which sex you were; boys and girls played together, sometimes, though the boys were rougher. Then the segregation began, some regimented, and some self-enforced. All through elementary school girls stuck with girls and boys stuck with boys.
September 10, 2008: Kiss Your Ass Goodbye The first time I went to see the end of the world was June 14, 1968. The asteroid Icarus was going to come within four million miles of the Earth … or so they would have us believe. Four million miles is a gnat’s whisker in cosmic terms. There were those who said it was actually going to collide with our planet, and “they” were keeping that information from us to avoid panic.
September 6, 2008: St. Francis Dam William Mulholland was a colorful character. He was responsible for the Los Angeles Aqueduct, opened in 1913, which stole water from the Owens Valley, 233 miles to the north. It flows downhill all the way so it takes no power to operate. I was there. I didn’t get to hear much live music, other than that made by the people around me. In fact I made it to the stage only once, and didn’t stay long. I had other responsibilities, to my wife, who was on crutches and couldn’t make it through the mud, and my 18-month-old son.
September 2, 2008: Hollyweird - Rudolph ValentinoAugust 23 was the 81st anniversary of the death of Rudolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Piero Filibert Guglielmi De Valentina D’Antonguolla, in New York City, of peritonitis following a perforated ulcer. Movie Reviews ● Fosse ● Judgement at Nuremberg ● The Crusades
August 4, 2008: At the Drive In ● Hellboy II: The Golden Army ● Wanted
July 18, 2008: VarleyYarn - Hillside CemeteryIt’s been a while since we went on a celebrity body hunt, so when other business called us down to the lower reaches of Culver City, we decided to visit this graveyard, which is rich in famous bones. It’s also a Jewish cemetery, like Mount Sinai, which always affords a few surprises.
June 6, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Part 8: Walt Disney TreasuresIn 2001 the Disney company released four sets of DVDs in metal boxes, called Walt Disney Treasures, and has been bringing them out yearly ever since, in what they refer to as “waves.” There are now seven waves.
June 2-3, 2008: VarleyYarn: Land of 10,000 Plates - Part 1 & Part 2A few days ago we were driving around and I stopped at a red light behind a car with a South Carolina plate. In case you haven’t seen one, it is mostly light blue with a palmetto tree in the center (South Carolina is the Palmetto State). Across the top is this legend: “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places.”
July 2, 2008 - RECORDING HAS BEGUN - Last week Audible.com began the recording of the books they bought from me. Titan, Wizard, and Demon will be read by Allyson Johnson. Read more
May 26, 2008 - I'm a Martian Citizen! About an hour ago as I write this, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander successfully delivered my novella, "In the Hall of the Martian King," to a soft landing near the Martian north pole.
May 16, 2008 - Diary of a Male Fashion Model Friday, May 2nd, 2008, 6 AM: Up early for the Americana shoot. Spend a hour in the shower. Does the beard need a trim? Nah.
April 28, 2008 - The BCAM at the LACMA If the above acronym soup is confusing to you, let me translate: BCAM is the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, and LACMA is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (We Angelenos say it as “The Bee-cam at the Lackma.”) BCAM is a new building at LACMA, the first part of a three-phase expansion plan. It opened in February.
April 14, 2008 - The Shrub That Ate a House The sleepy little town of Sierra Madre is off the beaten trail, wedged as it is between Arcadia, Monrovia, and Pasadena, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. But not so very long ago it was at the center of a struggle for the very survival of humanity.
March 30, 2008 - ROLLING THUNDER now available at Diesel eBooks!
March 19, 2008: Hollyweird - St. Pat's Day at the Egyptian with the Rutles They had the 30th reunion of the Rutles at the Egyptian Theater on St. Patrick's Day. All four of the lads from Liverpool, together again for the first time. You remember the Rutles, don’t you? The Pre-Fab Four? Dirk McQuickly, Barry Wom, Stig O’Hara, and Ron Nasty? Ring any bells?
March 11, 2008 - io9 Talks to John Varley about Climate Disaster and Space Opera
March 4, 2008 - ROLLING THUNDER in books stores!
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One of Lee's favorite movie reviews "I was almost hoping this movie would really, really suck, so I could just leave it at that: my shortest review! Sadly, it's more complex than that, and I'm far too verbose and opinionated to leave this one without a few remarks."
“... this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean satire but a nicely traditional combination of bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure, and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ” Russell Letson, Locus
Quotes from some of Lee's favorite Varley
movie reviews...
"His own youth
was moderately well-off until he
was 12, when his father was thrown into debtors prison and he had to
go to work in awful conditions. I can imagine him slaving away,
thinking "I'm better than all this." I'm not putting him down; who
wouldn't think like that, in that situation? But it's a major flaw
in the story for me."
"There
are only three people
in the entire film: A middle-aged macho man, his
younger wife, and a young man. They are all in a small space, both
men have something to prove, and the sexual tensions escalate in
small, precise stages. You expect an explosion, you expect a
thriller, but it's a lot more than that."
"She
moved into her own brand of rock, then into
jazz, and what I love about her is that she never
much cared if
her audience followed her or not. If the music didn’t work out she
could always go back to painting, which was her first love anyway."
"You
don’t so much watch this movie as you drop it,
like a tab of
Owsley’s Finest Acid
back in the ‘60s."
"The
most heartbreaking moments are hearing this girl
tell her sad story, of how she thought she was being
taken to London for a better life, singing in
hotels. Right, honey, now spread your legs …"
"Jake
is a self-loathing
(though he'd never admit it,
even to himself), self-described "son of a long line
of slaves." Beth is his punching bag of 18 years,
from a good traditional Maori family, who blames
herself for getting the crap beaten out of her."
"The
dialogue here
is so sharp you can cut yourself
listening to it, particularly between Nick and his
only two friends: a lobbyist for guns and another
for alcohol who call themselves the MOD (Merchants
Of Death) Squad."
"Looting
his dead body, they find some money, a gun with
one bullet it in, and a video camera. Sipho takes
the gun and Madiba takes the camera. They return to
the squalid shantytown where they live, basically
nothing but sheet metal and scrap wood and
cardboard."
"So
let me start off
by saying it was well-made,
visually interesting, the costumes were fabulously
ugly, as if the designer had actually taken a field
trip to the most degenerate corners of Hell to do
research."
"I
do accept
their controversial (at the time)
notion that non-European, Hollywood directors
(gasp!) like
Hitchcock
and
Ford
were great artists."
"Two
Mexican teens, one very rich and one middle class, get involved
with a woman 10 years older and set out in an old car for the
beach."
"The
huge majority of posters
who blasted the movie with a 0, a 1, or a 2, were male. Fans were of
both sexes, but there seems to be a certain kind of male who is
threatened by this girl..."
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Read Varley
short story
online at SciFi.com
Varley's screensaver
Lee's screensaver
September 7, 1999.
Today at 2:45 PM we took our beloved dog, Cirocco, to the vet, where she
was given a lethal injection. She died in our arms and seemed to feel no
pain. I wish it was the same for myself.
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