News for week ending 2012-07-21

Without wanting to hijack the Parker blog too much, I thought I’d share a bit of info that might interest you. I’m the editor of a new magazine called ‘Contrappasso’ with a particular emphasis on hardboiled/crime writing. It’s available in print-on-demand and e-book form, and much of the material is also appearing online at our website in the coming weeks.

No Westlake/Stark material this time around, but for issue 1 we have Noel King’s long and never-before-published interview with the late crime novelist James Crumley. If Westlake/Stark fans don’t know Crumley, all I can say is – you ought to discover him. A transcript of the complete interview (plus a couple of audio clips and a memoir by Noel King), is here:

http://www.contrappasso.com

We’re also running a prison memoir by Floyd Salas, fiction by Peter Doyle, and much more…

best wishes
Matthew Asprey

Thanks Matthew, I am going to click the link and head over there now. I’m a huge Crumley fan. I’m more of a Milo guy than a Sughrue, but they’re both great.

Trent: If you’ve only read Last Kiss, man, have you got some great novels ahead of you. You really need to try Crumley’s Milo Milodragovitch novels: The Wrong Case, Dancing Bear, Bordersnakes (where he teams up with C.W. Sughrue) and The Final Country (where Milo relocates to Texas–as a Texas guy, you might get a kick out of his observations of the state). I think Milo’s a more realistic and complex character than C.W. And Crumley’s subsequent solo Sughrue novels are just not as good as the Milos ( Milo makes a brief appearance in The Mexican Tree Duck). Crumley is in the same league as DEW and JDM–he’s THAT good. I can’t heap any higher praise than that!

Here’s my Amazon review of The Final Country:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2C7VEJL03J8JN/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B001RW10UE&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

This is apropos of nothing, but I thought I’d drop this comment here, since most of us here are into this sort of film:

The Dark Knight Rises: I saw it a few days ago. I thought it was actually the best of the three. Hardy was incredible as Bane, and I would hope he’d at least be considered for an Oscar. Bale was great as an older, almost crippled Bruce Wayne. Didn’t care for Ann Hathaway too much but Marion Cotillard was freaking HOT! Man, she is a sexy wench.;-) lol

Mythic, epic film. I think Nolan made some underlying comments on our economic meltdown of a few years ago, by having Bane attack the Stock Market, having Wayne lose his fortune, having Batman be defeated and put in a hellish prison and have him recover, break out and (ahem) Rise to the ocassion. Maybe saying perservere, America, perservere, World? Maybe I just read too much into that but without a question, wonderful film. Wonderful trilogy. Best “superhero” film I’ve ever seen.

I was particularly impressed by how … well, impressive Tom Hardy was. In the film I thought he was huge, I thought he would easily be my size or bigger–I’m 6’2″ and 235 lbs.–but when I checked his profile on IMDB I was shocked to learn he’s only 5’10” and 198 lbs. He seemed HUGE in the film. I also can’t help but think that if Christopher Nolan ever decided to make a Parker film he’d most likely hit the ball out of the stadium. His take on Batman is absolutely spot-on. You could see he read many Batman comics and culled the best parts from them and left out the more goofy aspects.

I’ve been seeing the so-called Summer Blockbusters while they’ve come out, Avengers, Prometheus, etc. and the only two films so far I’d actually recommend are Oliver Stone’s Savages and The Dark Knight Rises. These films restored my faith in modern American cinema and prove films of lasting quality are still being made here in the USA. Now, if Parker with Statham is even near as good as these two, mainly Savages, as it’s more similiar in genre, I’ll be ecstatic.