This brief telephone interview with Ed Brubaker, (of Captain America, Sleeper and Criminal fame), was conducted by the talented comedian Bill Hader. The audio is great, and works alone, but there’s another story, told with the still photography, that makes it worth watching.
Hader, incidentally, wrote the introduction to the Incognito trade paperback.
Posted by Jesse Willis
A recent episode of the normally ludicrous Coast To Coast AM features a fascinating and lengthy interview with Paul Bishop. Bishop is known to us from his excellent Bish’s Beat blog. In the interview Bish talks about his careers (crime writer, screenwriter and police interrogator). He also talks about his role on a bizarrely watchable new unscripted TV series called Take The Money And Run. Take The Money And Run is a kind of surreal reality game show that pits two American civilians against four American police detectives in a 48 hour competition to win $100,000. Here’s the Wikipedia description:
The contestants are given a car, cell phone, and one hour to hide the case. At the end of the hour, the contestants are taken into custody and questioned by interrogators in an attempt to locate the case. The detectives are given the GPS recordings of the route that the contestants took in the car, as well as phone records of who they called. If the detectives can locate the case within 48 hours, they are awarded the $100,000. If not, the contestants win the prize.
Bishop is one of only three recurring players on the show. His role is to interrogate the detained civilian contestants, find out what they are lying about and thus help the episodes’ guest detectives win.
I’ve seen the show, and I feel very strange after watching it. Bish’s interrogations are psychologically frightening. With so many people out of work in the U.S. it feels almost like a real life precursor to The Running Man!
Here’s the three part interview:
Promo for the TV series:
[via Bish’s Beat]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Lets assume that each medium offers its own best format. If that’s true, then on TV it is the limited series programme that is the least respected and most underrated. Take The Shadow Line, a BBC 2 television series, created written and directed by Hugo Blick and starring Chewitel Ejifor. The UK paper reviewers seem to want to compare it to The Wire or the Danish series The Killing. But that’s wrong. The Shadow Line isn’t much like either. Really it is just good old fashioned thriller, something the BBC TV has done before. It’s more in the vein of House Of Cards or Edge Of Darkness. But this time it comes primarily from a single creator’s vision. This give it an extended metaphor, the “shadow line” of the title, a thread that pops up in new ways in each episode. It is both a point of dialogue and a mass of ideas. Here’s the show’s premise:
A homicide detective, with partial amnesia, returns to the job to investigate the murder of a recently pardoned heroin importer.
The Shadow Line was aimed high, and it achieved many of its goals. Where it works, it works stunningly well. Where it fails, it fails in small ways, and then moves on. In the end it is an utterly noir thriller, a highly stylized television poem and meditation on life, death and society. The methodically slow paced, cryptic, surprisingly ruthless plot delivers its message in a persuasive form, as a limited series. Most refreshing of all, it does not play, as seems does most TV, to the stupidest person in the room. One commenter put it succinctly:
“This series reminds me why it is worth paying a licence fee. Only the BBC makes drama as good as this. Drama that doesn’t treat the audience like morons.”
Another said this:
“Superb series, and the first time for an awfully long time that I’ve seen a drama on TV that’s made my brain work.”
A third, this:
A sheer joy from start to finish, even with the odd line of clunky dialogue. It was crisp and weird, and the odd, crystal-clear delivery and stylised speech of the characters, from the police to the gangsters, made it stand out from a host of dirge that has been on the screens lately. Yes it had flaws, but the complexity, the suspense, the tension, the labyrinthine plotting and the odd-ball cast of characters made it the best British drama for years.
I agree completely.
Discussion of the programme:
TV.com UK Podcast |MP3|
BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review podcast |MP3|
British TV Podcast Show #89 |MP3|
Interviews:
Highlights From The Green Room (with Chewitel Ejifor) |MP3|
Posted by Jesse Willis
Unknown (A Special Edition of Out of My Head)
By Didier van Cauwelaert; Translated by Mark Polizzotti; Read by Bronson Pinchot
4 CDs – Approx. 4 Hours 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: December 2010
ISBN: 9781441759788
Themes: / Mystery / Identity / Amnesia / Identity Theft / Science / Botany / France /
This fast-paced thriller is the basis for the February 2011 film Unknown, starring Liam Neeson, Frank Langella, Diane Kruger, and Aidan Quinn. Martin Harris returns home after a short absence to find that his wife doesn’t know him, another man is living in his house under his name, and the neighbors think he’s a raving lunatic. Worse, not a single person — family, colleague, or doctor — can vouch for him. Worse still, the impostor shares all of Martin’s memories, experiences, and knowledge, down to the last detail. He is, in fact, a more convincing Martin than Martin himself. Is it a conspiracy? Amnesia? Is Martin the victim of an elaborate hoax, or of his own paranoid delusion? In his high-powered new novel, Didier van Cauwelaert, the award-winning author of One-Way, explores the illusory nature of identity and the instability of the things we take for granted. Dispossessed of his job, his family, his name, and his very past, Martin Harris is an Everyman caught in an absurd and yet disturbingly convincing nightmare, one that seems to have no exit and that resists every explanation. Part moral fable, part Robert Ludlum-style thriller, Unknown is a fast-paced tale of one man’s desperate attempt to reclaim his existence — even at the cost of his own life.
Unknown is an old fashioned mystery story with an amateur detective who is trying to solve the most important case of his life – his own. The narrative, told in first person, is brisk, fresh, and just slightly foreign. It was such a good for me to have a short novel like this, one that wrapped itself up in less than a day and a half of listening! It reminded me of such wonderful standalone novels as Ed McBain’s Downtown |READ OUR REVIEW| and Donald E. Westlake’s Memory. But unlike those two novels, which had passive protagonists, Martin Harris is competent and determined. He had me investigating and pondering right along with him. I, like he, was attentive to his dilemma, was constantly working through the possibilities of what might be going on, following the thought processes and tripping over the doubts he had in every scene. And, I did all this after seeing the film! I’m really kicking myself about that. Had I read the book, before watching the movie, I think I would have enjoyed the novel quite a bit more. That said, the novel isn’t the movie. The novel is different in tone and detail.
It’s cool to have an intelligent protagonist who thinks through dozens of possible scenarios despite being constantly bombarded by failure. The portrait Didier van Cauwelaert paints, of a distraught victim of identity theft, is full of the kinds of ambiguity and doubt that feels like a very European version of a Robert Ludlum novel. The protagonist may be American, but the novel feels French. The little things that might mean something are everywhere, all the characters seem to have a back story, all of which might be red herrings or just nothing at all and the focus on character and inner-space was surprising. Had the novel been twice the length I doubt I would have enjoyed it half as much.
Bronson Pinchot’s facility with accents is perfect for this novel set in Paris with an American hero. The audiobook is currently available at the Overstock 50% off discounted price (on CD). My thinking is that I did this all wrong, I should have watched the movie after reading the book. If you do it in the right order, let me know what you think of the book, and the movie.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The admirable Mark Douglas Nelson has completed his SFFaudio Challenge #5 project…
This Noir Masters series book is a “pseudo classic” was first published in 1941. It was later reprinted as a Penguin paperback and also as a Dell Mapback. The modern ebook edition comes courtesy of the Wonder Publishing (which has a great new Wonder Ebooks site). Here are the |PDF| and the |EPUB| editions.
See You At The Morgue
By Lawrence G. Blochman; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
14 MP3 Files (Podcast) – Approx. 6 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: August 15th, 2011
When a gigolo is shot to death in the bedroom of a beautiful girl, it raises some perplexing problems for Detective Kenny Kilkenny. Why, for example, would a man steal the license plates off his own car? Why should an innocent young professor come to the murder room … and then conceal a key to the crime? Why was a ‘phantom secretary’ hiding in the closet near the murdered man? Was there really money to be made selling glass eyes for stuffed ducks? Why would a beautiful girl ask her lover to kill her?
Podcast feed: http://www.podiobooks.com/title/see-you-at-the-morgue/feed/
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Here’s the illustration from the back of the Dell Mapback edition:
Posted by Jesse Willis
After doing a little online research about a low budget vampire movie called Stake Land (which could be set in the universe of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend), I stumbled over the Double Feature podcast. The hosts, hosts Eric Ingrum and Michael Koester, pair two movies that are somehow connected and bring to the discussion both interesting facts and intelligent analysis (or as they put it “blasphemy, skepticism, dirty words and bloodlust”).
In the case of the episode I heard (Die Hard + Man On Wire) the connection goes like this:
“Secret heist films that take place in famous buildings (and are based on books!)”
WOW! I didn’t know that Die Hard was based on a 1979 novel called Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp!
Did you?
Have a listen |MP3|.
I’m pretty damn impressed with this podcast. The next time I see a movie or two that they’ve covered I’m listening.
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/doublefeatureshow
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Posted by Jesse Willis