Movies and books

EAST OF EDEN (1955) is Elia Kazan’s powerful adaptation of the “last eighty pages” (according to one of the documentaries on the special-edition DVD) of John Steinbeck’s novel. James Dean plays a restlessly nervous son attempting to win the love of his impossibly virtuous father (Raymond Massey) while coming to grips with the fact his mother (Jo Van Fleet in an Oscar winning performance) runs a whorehouse on the other side of the mountains. The documentaries discuss Dean’s life, the creation of the novel and the making of the film (Massey and Dean really were at each others’ throats a lot). “Did you really shoot my father?”

VELLUM: The Book of Hours by Hal Duncan, is a great concept marred by clunky execution as various twentysomethings finding themselves walking out of our world across the omniverse known as the Vellum and right into a War in Heaven between would-be individual Satans and Metatron, who wants to see all “unkin” united in one celestial government under himself. While the elements aren’t knew, Duncan handles them well, but his writing style is far too murky for a story in which every character is actually several people in different times (and he consistently refuses to identify the new narrator when he switches POV). Even more annoying, as the book goes on he shifts away from interesting characters to the dull ones. A regretful thumb down.
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORINARY GENTLEMEN: Century: 1969 is the second in Alan Moore’s “Century” trilogy for his series, this time set in swinging London where Alan Quatermain, Mina Murray and Orlando discover their old foe Haddo is alive and well (“He just tried and failed to sire the Antichrist on a woman named Rosemary in New York.”) and set out to stop him despite Mina’s growing distress over her immortality and the slow fracturing of the trio. The usual array of in-jokes and references (“This is the same club where the Ruttles got their start.”) though if some of the unofficial annotations are right, Moore drops in a few real people (British SF author Michael Moorcock) for a change. This is a weaker entry in the series, partly because the League are mostly bystanders rather than active here——and I must admit, it’s harder to maintain Moore’s alt.history the further along it goes (would a Britain that’s been under Big Brother and reached outer space look this much like the sixties we know?).
GIRL GENIUS: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse is Phil and Kata Foglio’s latest installment in the steampunk adventures of the title super-scientist. In this entry, Agatha’s efforts to resurrect her ancestor’s castle run afoul of her mother’s efforts to take over her body, the need to resurrect quasi-boyfriend Gil Wulfenbach and multiple others scheming their own agendas. Lively fun, though I think I need to go back and reread the series——I’m starting to lose track of who’s who.
HELLBOY: The Bride of Hell and Others is an anthology chronicling Hellboy’s encounters with a Satanic cult, vampire-slaying luchadores, a kid who unleashes a demon and a creepy story abut a rather sinister family of vampires. Good, though I’d sooner have seen a follow-up to the developments in Hellboy’s last present-day adventure.