Fave Books of 2007: Part One

I'll be getting into my fave DVDs and movies of 2007 in the next few days, but reckoned it best to kick off with my favorite books of the year. After all, we're all readers in this tribe, yes?

It's been a great year for reading and books, and this off-the-top-of-my-head list of my fave book experiences of the year shouldn't be taken as a 'best of' list -- I've not stayed abreast of the new fiction out this year, and though I'm omnivorous as a non-fiction reader, my interests are too peculiar and personal to even pretend I could possibly generate a "best of" reading list most readers would recognize.

But having read two-to-three books per week this past year, I can say with certainty that these were among my favorite reads, revisits and discoveries of the year!

New Works

Book of the Year! Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark

Book of the Year? It sure is to this diehard fan! Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark is Tim Lucas's valentine to cinema, and among the most stunning movie books of this or any year.

As Mark Martin commented on this blog after my umpteenth enthusiastic post about its pending arrival and revelatory publication, "You're gonna make that book pregnant." Knock it up, baby! I couldn't have been more excited about a book than I was about Tim Lucas's long-awaited Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, and I couldn't have been more satisfied with the book itself, which somehow exceeded all expectations -- and that's saying a lot, since I've been waiting for a book like this for at least 40 of my 52 years of life.

It's literally a dream book -- I mean, one of those books I had dreamed all my life might, should, someday had to exist -- and that's just what it was for Tim, too. Thankfully, Tim and Donna (who designed this masterpiece) Lucas made Tim's dream come true, and by doing so created the book of the year!

As I've discussed here ad infinitum, Bava's films had a potent, indelible impact on my own life, and definitely impacted my creative life in more ways that I can count. It's somehow appropriate that Tim's expansive biography has arrived at a time when almost the whole of Bava's directorial work is available on DVD, and for the first time as it was intended to be seen: uncut, widescreen, and in their original language(s) rather than cut, dubbed and pan-and-scanned. I Vampiri/The Devil's Commandment, Caltiki The Immortal Monster, Black Sunday, Gli Invasori/Erik the Conqueror, Black Sabbath, The Whip and the Body/What!, Blood and Black Lace, Planet of the Vampires, Operazione Paura/Kill, Baby.... Kill!, Knives of the Avenger, Diabolik/Danger: Diabolik, Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve, Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism -- these and others have been central cinematic experiences for those of us who scoured TV Guide, Castle of Frankenstein, drive-ins, nabes, grindhouses, 16mm catalogues, conventions and video stores for decades, seeking any nugget of Bava gold that might surface, under any number of titles, languages or versions.

Mario Bava's life and times covers the whole of Italian cinema from its inception (via the pioneer work of his father Eugenio Bava) to the present (via the work of Mario's son Lamberto and grandson Roberto), and is so much more than the scope of Mario's films as a director, marvelous as many of those films were and are when screened today. As Tim points out (and chronicles in loving detail), Mario was a cinematographer and special effects magician for as many years before he began his directorial career as he was involved in film after his 'official' directorial debut with Black Sunday (1960) -- and it's the rich illumination of Mario's family and personal life, as well as the cinema achievements and the films themselves, that makes All the Colors of the Dark such a powerful, moving read. And the illustrations, the eye-candy -- astounding! Astonishing! Intoxicating! From the rare family and behind-the-scenes photos to the abundance of fotobustas, lobby cards, inserts and one-sheets from around the world, this tome is a feast for the eyes on every single turn of the page. A more delicious, delirium-inducing treat for lovers of Bava's work, of Italian horror (and all genre) films, cannot be imagined; Bravo, Tim and Donna!

Like Ulrich Merkl's Winsor McCay Rarebit Fiend tome (see below), Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark is simply stunning as an art object and book -- it could not be more comprehensive, beautiful, or worthy of revisiting endlessly. Also like Merkl's comparable masterwork, Tim and Donna have elevated the realm of self-publishing, of following one's most heartfelt interests and obsessions to ultimate fruition, to a new level. Like Merkl's book, Tim's Mario Bava book simply would not exist had it been left to the vagaries of traditional author/agent/publisher economy: no publisher would have gone for this ride. They would have had a million reasons not to, if an agent managed to find a home for this book in the first place (highly unlikely, if not impossible). Publishers who do produce similar labors of love (FAB Press) weren't an option; Tim really had to do this himself, and Donna (his beloved wife) was the ideal partner in every imaginable support in the venture.

Hands down, book of the year -- perhaps the decade.

"R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P -- Ragmop!"

Rob Walton's Ragmop: A sadly overlooked graphic novel classic, revised, expanded, completed and the funniest comic of the year!

There were lots of stellar graphic novels out this year, but one of my personal favorites barely earned a nod from the wasteland that passes for the comics marketplace these days. Rob Walton's Ragmop -- another self-published magnum opus of 2007 -- was launched as a comic series back in the 1990s, and suffered a premature termination in the wake of the direct market distribution implosion, just shy of Rob's planned finish line. But now it's complete, in print, and highly recommended to one and all.

Taking up the challenge anew in 2005, Rob got back to work on his sf political/theological comedic epic, and thank God he did! In its final published form, Ragmop stands as the most hilarious graphic novel of 2007 in a sea of predominantly somber works, as well as a crazyquilt guerrilla attack on the whole of Western Civilization. The scope, breadth, heart and gutbuster audaciousness of Rob's antic epic bowls me over. That he sustains this giddy highwire (and absolutely savage) social satire over almost 500 pages is truly a feat of brilliance, and it's as current to 2007 -- more relevant, in fact -- as it was when Rob launched this Bob Clampett-like space-and-time voyage in the 1990s.

What else can I say? Hell, I love Ragmop!

Get Bit While You Can: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

Get your copy while you can -- soon to be sold out forever! Ulrich Merkl's phenomenal, definitive Winsor McCayRarebit Fiend collection, another knockout example of the power of self-publishing in the 21st Century.

Ulrich Merkl's ravishing, absolutely definitive Dream of the Rarebit Fiend collection is jam-packed with much, much more than "just" the most complete collection of Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip available anywhere on Earth. It's also a comprehensive overview of McCay's life, career and the context of the times in which one of our greatest cartoonists created this still-amazing strip, which essentially poured the foundation for the whole of 20th Century comics (and, as Merkl demonstrates, much of its art, cinema and visionary works).

I covered this marvelous book in-depth -- including an exclusive interview with Dr. Merkl! -- back in July of this year; revisit that post, please, for more info and a peek at the art.

If you've the time and inclination, here's the link to a lively audio slideshow, based on the book, demonstrating the influence of McCay's work on many famous films (covered in further detail in the book, folks)!

But -- the book is almost gone! Quick, get yourself a copy while you can -- exclusively available from this link -- you won't want to miss this, if you can afford this once-in-a-lifetime book.

The book was announced as 'sold out' around Christmas, but I wrote Dr. Merkl and he replied:
"My U.S. stock will last until March, and when it is sold out, I'll still have 100 books here in Europe, if someone needs it badly, but the shipping cost is terrible, about $80.00 per copy (rather than $19.00 now from the U.S. stock).... The regular price to the U.S. is $114.00 + $19.00 packaging, handling, shipping = $133.00... Many thanks!" You've been alerted -- a Myrant service to those who care -- good luck!

Don't Flinch: Interrogation Dues

If you've the chops, here's a book excerpt and a powerful interview with Fear Up Harsh's author/soldier -- recommended listening.

Fear Up Harsh by Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian was the most human, disturbing, confrontational US military Iraq War account of the year, and that's a sobering thought given the clusterfuck of books on the subject that hit the shelves (and my reading table) in the past 12 months. "Something really bad happened here" -- understatement of the decade -- is what baby-faced U.S. Army interrogator Lagouranis was first told in his initial briefing at Abu Ghraib, and so begins this snapshot of the ordeal: for Lagouranis and his notion of self and God and country, for the 'detainees' and prisoners in his grasp (and worse still for those others 'worked on'). So begins this harrowing insider's account of perhaps the grossest "miscalculation" of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Rice new foreign policy paradigms, post 9/11.

Forced by circumstance, duty and the call of his commanders (and Commander in Chief) to think and act in ways once unthinkable, Lagouranis was soon under direct orders to join forces with his fellow soldiers to terrorize detainees and prisoners with increasingly abusive psychological tactics -- "fear up harsh," indeed. "If I'd gone ahead and cut Khalid's fingers off, where would that have led? What else would I have been capable of?" -- this is one of our new veterans of an unprovoked, preemptive war confronting the worst instincts of himself, of our tactics, our country's use of terror to wage a "war on terror." Under constant mortar fire themselves and trapped in the hellish hotbox complex that had once been Saddam's most infamous torture complex, Lagouranis and his countrymen used all means at their disposal to extract "information" from their brutalized, disoriented (and, Lagouranis acknowledges throughout, often innocent) Iraqis, settling into a methodical daily ruthlessness he ultimately found intolerable. It's the banality, the utter wrong-headed stupidity of these tactics ("...The result was that we were just inept. It was so typical of the army that is was laughable...") that rings loud and clear, alongside the wrenching depravity and desperation of our new national policy. It seeps deep, deep under the skin, into the marrow; what more don't we even suspect about what's being done in our name?

Hence, this book: essential reading for every American citizen, particularly those most likely to refuse to do so and most likely to support such policies, sans an ounce of Lagouranis's courage and patriotism.

Get Flocked!

Fave new sf and prehistoric novel of the year: James Robert Smith's The Flock, the high-octane killer novel from our own 'Hemlock Man'!

Technically, The Flock surfaced in the summer of 2006, but I didn't sink my teeth into it until after Marge and I moved into our new digs in Windsor (in fact, the hubbub of the major life change that culminated in the move kept this book off my reading table for months), so it's on my 2007 list, and long overdue some attention on the Myrant forum.

It's Blackwater vs. tribal prehistoric birds -- the carnivorous Pleistocenian phorusrhacid Titanis walleri -- in the wilds of Florida, and it's a hoot. I've been a fan of James Robert Smith's writing longer than almost anyone on Earth outside of his immediate circle, having read much of his short fiction since the late 1980s (and back in the Taboo years, as an editor scouring Bob's submissions; I think I paid Bob for his first pro sale, for that matter, which I can also say about novelist Tom Sniegoski and a few cartoonists). This, his first published novel, is superficially in the Jaws and Carnosaur mold; if it's ever adapted to film, that's how it'll be taken, no doubt. But that misses the point, really.

But what Bob accomplishes here (and the aspect that will be toughest of all to capture in any other media, save perhaps comics if it's ever adapted to that medium) is persuasively steeping the reader in the mindset of a pack animal's culture, ecology and literal pecking order amid life-altering conflict and crisis, and he does so with straightforward, yet always imaginative, efficiency. To my tastes, Bob's accomplishment ranks up there with my favorite Robert F. Jones adventure novels (Bloodsport, Slade's Glacier, The Diamond Bogo, etc.), but with (yum, yum) monsters. It's the unwavering intelligence, insight and empathy for the feral intelligence and ferocity of his predatory creatures that places The Flock amid my fave reads of 2007. I read a lot of fiction, little of it sticking to the mental ribs, but The Flock delivered and will be one of those I revisit down the road, for sure. Give it a read, you won't be sorry!

[Note: Bob did his homework! Florida indeed was the home of the Pleistocene giant flightless raptor Titanus walleri, which paleontologist Pierce Brodkarb described as "larger than the African ostrich and more than twice the size of the South American rhea", and which Alan Feduccia speculated "probably arrived in North America from South America during or slightly before the Ice Age, crossing over the Central American land bridge" (both quotes from Feduccia, The Age of Birds, 1980, Harvard University Press, pp. 105-106).]

Next installment: Zdenak Burian, Joe Hill, G. Michael Dobbs's Escape, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls, Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters, Jon Savage's Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture and Jodi Picoult -- more fave books of 2007!

Thursday Lull:
This and That, Comics, Books, and Hostel: Part II

Well, as I wait for some of the ongoing CCS interviews to reach completion -- hey, guys and gals, get me your answers ASAP! -- and work on my own last couple of comics project for MoCCA debut projects, I'll take advantage of this Thursday AM lull in interview action to do a little morning catching up on odds and ends.

_______________

"Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!"

Rick Veitch sent me this link to Army Times.com's online review of Rick's new Vertigo series, Army@Love, which is well worth a read.

The comic and the review, I mean, are worth a read.

This is some of Rick's most pointed satire to date, and oddly non-partisan in its ravaging of every aspect of the new face of 21st Century warfare. Who'da thunk it -- Rick Veitch as the Terry Southern of 21st Century mainstream comics?

The Army Times piece is especially worth a look for having interviewed Joe Kubert, too, and getting his reaction to Rick's latest opus. Check it out!

________________

I've been talking with the CCS grads/seniors/artists in the Myrant interviews about their perceptions of the potential future (and their futures) in comics, and coincidentally

Alan David Doane just posted his own musings on the topic, here.

I'll add, though, that like broadband internet, the sad fact of the matter is that most rural pockets simply aren't being served -- that is, there are no comics shops or venues offering comics in any reasonable driving distance.

When I was a kid, every small town had someplace in biking distance to buy comics off a spinner rack, usually in some quantity. Drug Stores had 'em, Mom and Pop grocery stores had 'em, and even a boy in backwoods Duxbury, VT could find comics in Vincent's Pharmacy across the Winooski River in Waterbury (a 20-minute bike ride) or in the village markets in Moretown, Middlesex or Waitesfield.

Today, Border's or some other chain book store in a nearby mall may be the only access to anything, save for the Archie Digest(s) and Disney Adventures (also digest format) sold at the supermarket impulse-buy checkout counter racks. This means there are precious few entry-level comics for young readers; thankfully, libraries are aggressively racking graphic novels; sadly, more and more communities are ceasing funding of libraries, and we're seeing some surprising local community libraries scaling back their purchases, their weekly schedules (open fewer and shorter hours), and moving toward closing their doors once and for all. This will cut off many young readers from entry-level graphic novels and, of course, reading, period -- another sad sign of the times.

Anyhoot, read Alan's post, and weigh in with your opinion there; the CCSers and I will continue to air our views here via the interview series.

_________________

Another oddly timely sharing of info from Mirage Studios amigo Mike Dooney arrived this week, strangely attuned to both the memories I've just shared of '50s/'60s/'early '70s comics availability and, coincidentally, my ongoing work on the second part of my Star-Spangled War Stories "War That Time Forgot" reveries and my N-Man and Fury pet projects.

Mike sent me links to two sites that "allow you to see what comics were on the stands in a given week in the '60's etc." -- Wow, thanks, Mike, these sites are big fun!

Here's the DC cover site, and

here's the Marvel comics site!

Enjoy, and thanks, Mike.

__________________

Another odd coincidence this week is my reading US Army Specialist Tony Lagouranis's harrowing account of his own experiences as an Iraq War interrogator, Fear Up Harsh (just out in bookstores everywhere) and catching a matinee of Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II (2007) this week. This isn't "pleasant" reading or viewing, but essential, each in their own way.

I'm sure some will object to my placing these two works side-by-side in this manner, but as noted numerous times here, I see obvious and timely parallels in our current political and military policies and the new wave of 'strap 'em to a chair/confined horror' films, and these are the two most prominent incarnations of the literature and cinematic streams of the genre.

I'm only half-way through Lagouranis's book, co-authored by Allen Mikaelian, but it's heartfelt and heartbreaking stuff, to say the least. Like many who have come home from serving in Iraq, and particularly those implementing the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture-by-another-name interrogation of often-innocent Iraq citizens, Lagouranis is speaking out about his extreme misgivings about this reprehensible new age of US military occupation sans Geneva Convention restraints. Unlike other pundits, articles and books on the subject, Lagouranis's views are rooted firmly in first-person experience, making this absolutely essential reading where ever you currently seat yourself on this controversial issue.

If you can't access the book or can't be bothered to read it,

Lagouranis's interview last week on The Diane Rehm Show is absolutely essential listening (Susan Page is the interviewer, filling in for Rehm), in part for the confrontational nature of some of the exchanges with skeptical and/or outraged listeners that may answer some of your concerns or questions, too.

If you can't be bothered with either, and still somehow support and/or stomach this US policy as "justified," you're hopeless.
_____________________

Sadly, more Americans -- particularly those more likely to end up serving in Iraq and/or Afghanistan than their older compatriots less likely to serve -- vicariously toyed with these hot-button issues (to torture or not to torture?) this week via the wide theatrical opening of Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II.

In the best of all worlds, these increasingly pressing real-world issues would be hotly debated in public venues all Americans would be tuned in to, and books like Fear Up Harsh would be reaching more voting citizens than Hostel: Part II, but that's la-la land, folks.

Let's face facts. Television and movies reach far, far more eyes and ears than books ever will in 2007, and Hostel: Part II will no doubt comprise the deepest thinking on torture most Americans will ever give the subject. So, I'll engage with my thoughts on the film in that context, folks.

More disturbing than anything in Hostel: Part II is the complacent indifference the film has been greeted with. The TV and radio spots and promo have been omnipresent, and it was surprising to hear an NPR radio program adopt Chas Balun's term 'gornography' (which Chas coined to sum up his personal revulsion for Aftermath when he was a guest at Montreal's FantAsia Fest in the '90s) in reference to Hostel: Part II. Even the outrage has reflected a sad overload mentality, from

those villifying the movie -- "You live in a free country, you put up with crud like Hostel Part II", writes Michael Phillips in The Chicago Tribune (here's the best online link to sample the yays and the nays, including Phillips's review) -- and

easily bored gorehounds who blithely note, "All in all I thought that Hostel 2 was sort of a 'meh' film" and "At least with the Saw movies there was a purpose for the torture."

Huh. Well, that's not the movie I saw.

First, I'll talk about this movie as a movie, period, and on its own terms.

Hostel: Part II is easily the best of Roth's films, manifesting a maturation of writing and directorial skills that were barely suggested by the earnest crudities of Cabin Fever. Roth is still willfully fusing intelligence and pop cultural debris -- the calling card of his dog pack, as Grindhouse lovingly demonstrated -- wearing his trash chic (copyright G. Michael Dobbs!) credentials on his sleeve without derailing the narrative thrust or drive of this, his tightest and best-crafted script. Roth succinctly ties up the loose ends of the original Hostel in an opener most reminiscent of Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981) -- there's crap movie street cred for ya, bunkie -- before jumping into an equally succinct and effective expansion of all that Hostel implied.

Unlike the ballyhoo for the notorious Snuff ("Made in South America -- Where Life is Cheap!"), life isn't cheap in Hostel: Part II -- it's in fact tres expensive, as we quickly see when the smarmy young desk manager scans the passports of our trio of American female tourist (Roth inverting the gender issues of Hostel), setting off an international online bidding war for the option to execute. In about three minutes of screentime, Roth crosscuts between a global sampler of business elite and aristocracies, bidding on their laptops, cell phones and text messagers while at/in their respective desks, meetings, lunches, family outings, pools and golf courses.

This is deft, creepy, cruel and funny stuff, the first American cinematic fruition of all that Ellis delineated in his then-scandalous novel American Psycho. The rich yuppies of the '80s were only the tip of the iceberg. Moneyed sociopaths rule, and it's Hostel: Part II's effortless shorthand cartography of class warfare as a covert dungeon-room conflation of instant-connection 21st Century global economies and medieval European aristocratic abuses of power that sets Roth's sites higher than any of this subgenre to date.

Roth's cinematic chops are up to the challenge his own conceit presents. Hostel: Part II evokes The Most Dangerous Game (the venerable wellspring of this entire genre, quite explicitly referenced when the heroine stumbles into the hidden lair -- the headquarters -- of the implacable overseer of the conspiratorial network of youth hostels and subterranean torture chambers) and a range of now-celebrated European genre permutations, from '60s German-made medieval horrors (e.g., Tomb of Torture, etc.), Jess Franco (specifically La Comtesse Perverse) and gialli (note Edwige Fenech's role here as an art teacher, though the narrative echoes a few giallo, specifically Perfume of the Lady in Black) to far more aggressive '80s Euro-trash fare (none other than Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust, cameos as "Italian cannibal," dining on one of the actors from the last Harry Potter film!). The very first onscreen atrocity recreates Elizabeth Bathory's historic literal bloodbaths, tapping (pun intended) the most ancient of predatory aristocratic abuses -- vampirism, both genuine (Bathory) or metaphoric (Stoker's Dracula), has always been the most pervasive of all 'rich cannibalizing the poor' horror tales. Roth gets that out of the way quickly (in a grueling setpiece) to get to deeper, rawer nerves.

In an underground economy where money trumps all -- even life -- the macho craving for obscene masculine 'rites of passage' (to increase one's personal power in corporate office arenas) is presented as the explicit motive for the two American businessmen buying Hostel's favors. This sociopathology may meet its match when it's a rich heiress tied to the hot seat. That's it, in a nutshell, and that's enough for an effective horror story. This truly is nightmare turf, for plankton-level peasants like ourselves and aspiring plutocratic whales alike, and kudos to Roth for upping the conceptual ante along with the gore quotient.

Hostel: Part II isn't art -- in that context, it's unlikely any filmmaker will ever match or top Pasolini's Salo in this reviled genre that by its very nature ghettoizes itself -- but it's a strong piece of work. Roth's script and direction are lean, mean and effective, his writing skills are head-and-shoulders above those demonstrated in his first two films, and the cast is uniformly solid and engaging. The location filming (in Prague and Iceland) enhances the story and experience considerably, and Hostel: Part II is the best of its ilk.

That's still likely to keep most of you away from the film; it fascinates me how many passionate practitioners of the genre still belittle and dismiss these films with a contemptuous turn of the lip or wave of the hand, as if "these kinds of films" were beneath them, sight unseen. I don't know, it's the same old shit -- just because the title The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is calculated to upset or offend, or George Romero's zombies seem silly out of context, doesn't mean there isn't much more, and something of real value, going on in "these kinds of films." I'm sick of the haughty contempt other artists -- including my friends! -- show for "these kinds of films," while they expect others to take their work seriously. (When I got into the topic of the current horror films briefly with Rick V during a chat, his eyes glazed and that "poor, sad Bissette" look came over his face (familiar since the Dawn of the Dead conversation, circa 1978) -- well, Rick, you've got Army@Love, Roth has Hostel: Part II. You're both aiming at the same underbellies, amigo. Ah, well, Rick always hated horror movies, anyway, particularly the ones with the most aggressive exploitation elements.)

"These kinds of films" are about something other than simply reveling in the spectacle of pain. They're actually quite complex in the moral issues and emotions they tap, explore (and, yes, exploit). With Hostel: Part II, Roth realizes, with unflinching clarity, a potent parable concerning the pathologies and hidden economies which manifest the ravages of NAFTA/European Union global corporate era plutocracies and the bottom-dollar cash uber alle shared cultures.

And by 'hidden economies,' I'm not referring to the underground snuff-chambers Roth mythologizes -- no, I'm referring to the film's most politically barbed subplot and most truthful aspect: the two American businessmen who bid, win and wind themselves up for the torture fest they crave. One is as macho as Rudy Giuliani (whom he resembles) in his 'bring it on' swagger and bluster, the other reluctantly involved. The dialogue these two wanna-be-American Psychos share during their morning jog before their day in the chambers is the black heart of the film; it may have run false a month ago, but after hearing the macho, compassionless posturing of the Republican debates in May and early June, it rings absolutely true. How their two stories play out, how their characters meet their respective fates, is the meat of this movie.

It ain't pretty, but it speaks volumes about the male fantasies that have launched us, as a nation, into interminable war, and what promises to keep us there. It also speaks volumes about the human capacity for objectification, projection, demonizing and scape-goating, and the need many have for victims to objectify, project upon, demonize and destroy -- the be-all and end-all of our current foreign policies.

It's also the closest most American teenage and twenty-something viewers are going to get to the grim realities of Tony Lagouranis's Fear Up Harsh, a book most Americans will knee-jerk avoid, dismiss and/or revile without reading it.

Please note, I'm not celebrating this sick function of the pop culture, just acknowledging the reality, and identifying how it functions.

I don't mean to lionize Roth, either -- I don't know him, but as the first horror movie director to make it into The New York Times 'Style' section (writing about his antics in the Manhattan club scene post-Hostel), Roth is indeed of a new breed, and he comes across as as an egotistical brat at times, but hey, what do I know. He's making horror movies that are honest in their way and he's getting better with every movie, so I'm on board for the duration. Bring 'em on, Eli. In the age of sick powerbrokers like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Gonzales redirecting American military operations into squalid cement dungeons in remote corners of the globe to exercise their respective power fantasies rendered flesh, directed toward innocents as well as the terrorists they target, if Eli Roth's brand of pop meditation on the issues is all we get, I'll embrace it.

It is some form of deterrent, some counter to Fox News's cheering on of the destructive Bush doctrines and status quo (ya, I know, O'Reilly et al have finally become more critical of late, but they actively campaigend for and promoted these policies, this war). It's at least offering some snapshot of what it feels like when someone (even wealthy American tourists) are 'rendered' (read: kidnapped) to awaken imprisoned, stripped of their rights, dignity and reduced to pointless interrogation fodder (in these films, the only point of the 'interrogation' is the primal power of victimizer over victim, the basest dynamic at work in any such scenario) -- and mind you, the Hostel films do locate the audience sympathies with the victims, not the perpetrators (it's the Saw franchise that vicariously engages with the more complex victim/victimizer issues).

To paraphrase one of the key architects of the current American clusterfuck, "We'll work with the pop culture army we have, not the one we'd wish for" -- until we can, ourselves, manifest a better one (I did my best & my part to do so in the '80s and '90s, folks).

Fear Up Harsh is the more legitimate, essential, necessary experience, but it's not going to reach many people. But what would a mass-market film that "legitimately" engaged with these volatile issues look like, and who would go see it? We have plenty of pro-torture media (24) and revenge fantasies (pick your recent action movie hit of choice); anti-torture movies are mighty hard to come by. What fictionalized equivalent of Fear Up Harsh would, or could, exist? What studio would finance it, what theater would show it?

The reality is this: Films like Saw and Hostel, in all their incarnations, are being financed by the studios and distributed to thousands of theaters because their genre structures overly depoliticize the content -- if the 'extraordinary renditions' of both of Roth's Hostel films were linked to the interminable-by-definition 'War on Terror', these films would not exist; if they existed, they would not be seen. Period.

How many of you saw, or even wanted to see, Gitmo: The New Rules of War, The Road to Guantanamo, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib or Death in Gaza? No more than saw Winter Soldier and Sir! No Sir! (the two best and most accesible documentaries on the Vietnam War soldiers-against-the-war movement), I'm willing to bet. Go ahead, try to find any of those films for rent in your local DVD store -- even if you have no intention of seeing them, see if you can find them to view. But you'll find every installment of Saw, along with Wolf Creek, Hostel, etc. This is not a passive dynamic at work; for you free-market advocates, this is the so-called free market quite actively at work (as if the myth of 'free market' is even sustainable in the most addled of minds when only six major studios call the shots in American movie theaters). The new studio in town, Lions Gate, has built its entire empire on "these films"!

Hell, for just daring to review one of the films I've just cited, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib -- scroll down to his June 5th post -- and give it a positive review, Mike Dobbs is taking heat (see his June 11th post, and comments).

Too many Americans don't just tune out, they either don't want to acknowledge the realities, or increasingly refuse to tolerate any objection to these horrendous abuses. However you shake the latter stance, it's still pro-torture (see the comments on Mike's June 11th post for the sorry and all-too-familiar rationale). But Americans tolerate horror movies -- they're fantasies, after all, however brutal they may be -- so, Hostel: Part II reaches the masses.

Hostel: Part II has already reached a lot of people, and more every day -- and it is better than no mediation on the issues. It's 93 somber minutes more than most teenagers, adults and TV shows give to the issues, and it's a hell of a lot more honest than anything Rush Limbaugh (remember his "our boys just letting off a little steam" comment about Abu Ghraib?), Bill O'Reilly, Rice or Rumsfeld or Cheney or that miserable fuckwad Gonzales have said on the matter.

It's a sad, sorry, worse-than-tragic state of affairs, but it's also a very American state of affairs, given the same pop culture dynamic that was at work and play in the late '60s and early '70s during Vietnam and Nixon's reign.

Given the grim realities of Bush Administration policies as a context for the macho strutting and crowing at the core of Hostel: Part II, Roth distills it to its primal essence. Thankfully, he's a sharp enough writer this time around to play his narrative trump cards with candor and finesse (even if that 'finesse' does include the most graphic onscreen castration since Make Them Die Slowly and Emanuelle in America, and the most graphic ever in mainstream American cinema; in narrative and metaphoric terms, though, that onscreen castration is central).

We're an utterly numb nation, and the old arguments about the fantasy pop culture's plethora of violence being responsible for desensitizing the populace simply can't hold water any longer in the face of reality. The horrors of Hostel: Part II, horrific though they may be, are as paled by reality as the Universal horror films of the 1940s were in the wake of the revelations of the Death Camps and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Choose your poison: the GOPs stonewalling of any censure of Gonzales; the brutalizing rhetoric of the Republican debates; the most recent court refute of the Administration's ongoing maladroit prosecution of Guantanamo prisoners; General Colin Powell's public statements against both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; the Italian legal prosecution (and attempted prosecutions) of a CIA-managed 'extraordinary rendition' operation which subverted more efficient international police operations targeting terrorist suspects; the list is interminable, and that's only this and last week's news!

It's all evidence of a proud, arrogant plutocratic culture gone pathologically insane, lacking even minimal human compassion while boasting, bragging and strutting its stuff as the most willfully "Christian" of all nations.

Hostel: Part II isn't the problem. Hostel: Part II isn't just the kind of movies we deserve; it's a kind of movie we, oddly enough, need.

Have a great Thursday, one and all...