Showing posts with label CRIME. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CRIME. Show all posts
Killer Covers
Great collection of vintage crime paperbacks from KILLER COVERS. Many high resolution images. Lots to see. Check out their archive and dig into the older posts. Companion blog to RAP SHEET a news and features resource for crime-fiction fans.
Winter’s Bone
Directed by Debra Granik
Roadside Attractions
In my review of 2009’s Oscar-nominated film Precious I stated that it was incredibly difficult to objectively review the film because the realism that is presented is so detached from my own circumstances. After seeing Debra Granik’s gritty Winter’s Bone I find myself faced with a similar conundrum, although not to such an extreme.
For people living in the rural areas of the Ozark mountains a fulfilled life is not one of luxury. The goal for an individual is simply to survive rather than thrive in the harsh natural and social environment. The world presented in Granik’s dark thriller seems desolate and cold, but through the female protagonist it manages to glimmer with hope. Brilliantly filmed against the poetic landscapes of the Ozark mountains, Winter’s Bone is a glimpse into rural morality and the emergence of an unlikely hero.
Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old with a lot of responsibility. She is the chief caregiver of her two younger siblings, she lives with her nearly catatonic mother, and she only occasionally shows up for school. Her meth-dealing father has been arrested, posted the family’s house as bail, and vanished. If he does not show up at court, the family will lose their house and be thrown into a world where they have more enemies than friends.
The narrative is essentially straight forward, which allows Granik to lace the film with tension. Granik brilliantly proves that action does not equal tension and most scenes start and end on high notes with an anticipated release that never comes. At its heart, Winter’s Bone is a film noir with a missing person chase, a look into an underground crime world, and a feeling of constant danger. Lawrence successfully creates a new feminist hero that also harkens back to the great noir detectives of the 1940s.
In a low populated area like the rural Ozarks, the morality that is presented does not fit the mold that urban and suburban dwellers have become accustomed to. When a significant portion of the workforce consists of unskilled laborers, the job market is incredibly volatile. In one scene Ree sees her only two possible futures in two separate school rooms: join the army and escape or become a mother and join her miserable relatives.
Nobody appears content with their existence in Winter’s Bone except for the children who only appear in the film in brief segments where they can be seen jumping on a trampoline or playing in hay. The fact that the children get such joy out of such meager circumstances shows that Ree’s fight is worth it.
Review by Alex Carlson
Cross-posted from Film Misery
Roadside Attractions
In my review of 2009’s Oscar-nominated film Precious I stated that it was incredibly difficult to objectively review the film because the realism that is presented is so detached from my own circumstances. After seeing Debra Granik’s gritty Winter’s Bone I find myself faced with a similar conundrum, although not to such an extreme.
For people living in the rural areas of the Ozark mountains a fulfilled life is not one of luxury. The goal for an individual is simply to survive rather than thrive in the harsh natural and social environment. The world presented in Granik’s dark thriller seems desolate and cold, but through the female protagonist it manages to glimmer with hope. Brilliantly filmed against the poetic landscapes of the Ozark mountains, Winter’s Bone is a glimpse into rural morality and the emergence of an unlikely hero.
Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old with a lot of responsibility. She is the chief caregiver of her two younger siblings, she lives with her nearly catatonic mother, and she only occasionally shows up for school. Her meth-dealing father has been arrested, posted the family’s house as bail, and vanished. If he does not show up at court, the family will lose their house and be thrown into a world where they have more enemies than friends.
The narrative is essentially straight forward, which allows Granik to lace the film with tension. Granik brilliantly proves that action does not equal tension and most scenes start and end on high notes with an anticipated release that never comes. At its heart, Winter’s Bone is a film noir with a missing person chase, a look into an underground crime world, and a feeling of constant danger. Lawrence successfully creates a new feminist hero that also harkens back to the great noir detectives of the 1940s.
In a low populated area like the rural Ozarks, the morality that is presented does not fit the mold that urban and suburban dwellers have become accustomed to. When a significant portion of the workforce consists of unskilled laborers, the job market is incredibly volatile. In one scene Ree sees her only two possible futures in two separate school rooms: join the army and escape or become a mother and join her miserable relatives.
Nobody appears content with their existence in Winter’s Bone except for the children who only appear in the film in brief segments where they can be seen jumping on a trampoline or playing in hay. The fact that the children get such joy out of such meager circumstances shows that Ree’s fight is worth it.
Review by Alex Carlson
Cross-posted from Film Misery
The Red Riding Trilogy
Directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, and Anand Tucker
Channel Four Film; Studio Yorkshire
Movies about rape, murder, and child abuse should not be photographed this beautifully. Channel Four Film’s Red Riding Trilogy, shown as a miniseries in the UK but as three movies here, is one larger story connected by characters, place and the unrepentant horror of Yorkshire, in the northern England. In the north, as the characters say, they do what they want.
The three films are set in three years, 1974, 1980, and 1983, respectively. The first, 1974, directed by Julian Jarrold, focuses on Andrew Garfield’s Eddie Dunford, the new crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post, and his investigation into the disappearance of three young girls, the most recent found with wings sewn into her back. The second, 1980, directed by James Marsh, focuses on Paddy Considine’s Peter Hunter, a Manchester detective brought to Yorkshire to review the police’s handling of the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer. The third, 1983, directed by Anand Tucker, has two focuses: the first is on David Morrisey’s Maurice Jacbson, a corrupt detective having second thoughts, and the second is Mark Addy’s Eddie Pigford, a local boy turned lawyer who returns home to close his mother’s affairs and gets tangled up in the crimes, and becomes an unlikely hero. Characters appear and reappear in each story, changing in significance depending on who is seeing them.
The overarching mystery of the films is intriguing, if not original. Much of the joy from watching them comes from witnessing the characters move the pieces into place. As I watched 1983, I gasped out loud at certain parts. Waiting between the movies was legitimately frustrating, as I wanted to know what would happen almost more than I could stand, even though I knew it couldn’t be good. However, 1980 felt a bit disconnected from the other two. The timeline, fractured by the style of the movie, made some parts of all three hard to follow, but 1980 was all over the place. Ultimately, the story carried beyond the confusion.
The direction is amazing. All three parts are incredibly vivid, with powerful, dreamlike scenes haunting me well after the credits. All three employ dreamlike touches, with slow motion, flashbacks, time skips, and nontraditional camera angles. The movies looked like 1970s horror movies, and this gave the whole proceedings an eerie undertone. 1974, in particular, is gorgeous, and that beauty is used in such wonderfully unsettling ways. 1980 is a bit more straightforward, to mirror Peter’s traditional views. 1983, though, loses a bit of its power by having two main characters, diluting the style choices to very different men.
The entire cast is incredible. The standout is Andrew Garfield, who carries 1974 with ease, giving Eddie the believability of a cocky young investigative reporter and runs the gamut of emotions, making his ending both shocking and inevitable. Paddy Considine carries the conflicted nature of 1980’s Peter Hunter like a second skin-does actor carry sorrow better? Mark Addy is a pleasant addition to 1983, but isn’t around enough to make a big impact. David Morrisey’s Maurice Jobson has the strength to hold his character’s honor while doing terrible things, and still make you pity him. There were few female characters, but Rebecca Hall, as the mother of one of the lost girls in 1974, makes a strong impression. Secondary characters, including Sean Bean, Sean Harris, Richard Sheehan, and Daniel Mays, are wonderful. No one fits a false note.
If you like thrillers, horror movies, or mysteries, you aren’t going to do any better than the Red Riding Trilogy.
Review by Taylor Rhodes
Channel Four Film; Studio Yorkshire
Movies about rape, murder, and child abuse should not be photographed this beautifully. Channel Four Film’s Red Riding Trilogy, shown as a miniseries in the UK but as three movies here, is one larger story connected by characters, place and the unrepentant horror of Yorkshire, in the northern England. In the north, as the characters say, they do what they want.
The three films are set in three years, 1974, 1980, and 1983, respectively. The first, 1974, directed by Julian Jarrold, focuses on Andrew Garfield’s Eddie Dunford, the new crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post, and his investigation into the disappearance of three young girls, the most recent found with wings sewn into her back. The second, 1980, directed by James Marsh, focuses on Paddy Considine’s Peter Hunter, a Manchester detective brought to Yorkshire to review the police’s handling of the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer. The third, 1983, directed by Anand Tucker, has two focuses: the first is on David Morrisey’s Maurice Jacbson, a corrupt detective having second thoughts, and the second is Mark Addy’s Eddie Pigford, a local boy turned lawyer who returns home to close his mother’s affairs and gets tangled up in the crimes, and becomes an unlikely hero. Characters appear and reappear in each story, changing in significance depending on who is seeing them.
The overarching mystery of the films is intriguing, if not original. Much of the joy from watching them comes from witnessing the characters move the pieces into place. As I watched 1983, I gasped out loud at certain parts. Waiting between the movies was legitimately frustrating, as I wanted to know what would happen almost more than I could stand, even though I knew it couldn’t be good. However, 1980 felt a bit disconnected from the other two. The timeline, fractured by the style of the movie, made some parts of all three hard to follow, but 1980 was all over the place. Ultimately, the story carried beyond the confusion.
The direction is amazing. All three parts are incredibly vivid, with powerful, dreamlike scenes haunting me well after the credits. All three employ dreamlike touches, with slow motion, flashbacks, time skips, and nontraditional camera angles. The movies looked like 1970s horror movies, and this gave the whole proceedings an eerie undertone. 1974, in particular, is gorgeous, and that beauty is used in such wonderfully unsettling ways. 1980 is a bit more straightforward, to mirror Peter’s traditional views. 1983, though, loses a bit of its power by having two main characters, diluting the style choices to very different men.
The entire cast is incredible. The standout is Andrew Garfield, who carries 1974 with ease, giving Eddie the believability of a cocky young investigative reporter and runs the gamut of emotions, making his ending both shocking and inevitable. Paddy Considine carries the conflicted nature of 1980’s Peter Hunter like a second skin-does actor carry sorrow better? Mark Addy is a pleasant addition to 1983, but isn’t around enough to make a big impact. David Morrisey’s Maurice Jobson has the strength to hold his character’s honor while doing terrible things, and still make you pity him. There were few female characters, but Rebecca Hall, as the mother of one of the lost girls in 1974, makes a strong impression. Secondary characters, including Sean Bean, Sean Harris, Richard Sheehan, and Daniel Mays, are wonderful. No one fits a false note.
If you like thrillers, horror movies, or mysteries, you aren’t going to do any better than the Red Riding Trilogy.
Review by Taylor Rhodes
Hello Kitty Must Die
By Angela S. ChoiTyrus Books
To many, Hello Kitty is a mouthless cat in blue overalls who’s never spotted without her signature red bow, but to twenty-eight-year-old Chinese-American Fiona Yu, the feline is an embodiment of everything she hates and willing to kill for. Author Angela S. Choi makes her publishing debut with the crime novel Hello Kitty Must Die, and while it attacks nearly every stereotype that Asian American women face daily, it leaves a bad aftertaste that not even the saccharine sweet pop culture icon can cure.
Yu is that character readers will love to hate, but it’s not because of her cringing pessimistic personality or how she seems to despise everything that comes her way. Rather, Choi’s book is an unconvincing collection of bland one-liners and exasperating contradictions that fail to depict a tale of family values gone bad.
“My virginity will always be mine,” declares Yu in the first few pages of Hello Kitty Must Die as she decides to eliminate her hymen with a Lidocaine-coated dildo. Yet after making this bold choice that would have empowered some not wanting to wait for Mr. Right, she realizes that there’s no cherry to pop. As a result, Yu decides to have her hymen replaced solely to tear apart her “family honor.” It’s difficult to continue moving forward in the story as this is a poor attempt in showing readers that Yu wants complete control of her body, including the right to take her own virginity.
While it’s acceptable for any female to feel that she shouldn’t have a man just to “make her a woman," it isn’t believable that Yu would go through all this trouble simply to get rid of human tissue. Why would a woman purposely tear her hymen and then spend thousands of dollars to have it replaced just to prove she has full control of her womanhood? Choi doesn’t attempt to convince readers the purpose of making a sudden and very expensive decision, which leaves us wondering if embarking on Yu’s confusing journey is worth it.
Yu complains of her family’s desires to wed her off, yet she, a Yale graduate and corporate lawyer, chooses to live with them. Is this Choi’s way of showing her audience that Yu is just an American girl who won’t leave the bird’s nest and isn’t as independent as she implies? These issues are troubling, yet they’re tossed aside, like the family-picked suitors Yu secretly gets rid of because they’re too fat, hideous, or unable to pay for dinner. There’s one leading man who’s more serial killer than prince charming that does get Vuitton-loving Yu’s heart racing, but even he can’t close this Pandora’s box of problems.
Childhood friend Sean Killroy may relish the hunt for unsuspecting victims, but it’s Yu, not the psychopath she secretly admires, that hits reader’s nerves. It’s difficult to believe that she feels no remorse for the poor “Hello Kitties” in her life, all because they merely represent a fate she refuses to accept. For example, when readers discover that her skin bleaching obsessed cousin Katie was found dead from a broken neck, all Yu could think of was how she saved herself from an unwanted marriage because the morgue isn’t “a good place. They don’t serve fifteen-dollar bellinis there.” She later wonders if “morticians gave their clients pedicures. After all, no one would ever know.”
Yu despises getting set up on blind dates just to walk down the aisle faster and comments how Katie “fainted all the time” because she was 90 pounds, but didn’t mind “the modern version of Chinese foot binding” with Prada, Dior, and Blahnik. We couldn’t help but wonder why she’s willing to stay single, yet goes on tangents over every designer label she owns just to flaunt her looks, which are meant to show her poor excuses for suitors why she’s the catch they’ll never have? This is one major flaw that’s never solved in Hello Kitty Must Die, only displaying Choi’s inability to produce a heart-stopping murder mystery for those seeking a bad ass Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw. We’ll stick with cutesy cartoons any day.
Review by Stephanie Nolasco
Secrets of Eden
By Chris BohjalianShaye Areheart Books
Like Midwives and The Double Bind, Chris Bohjalian's newest suspense novel, Secrets of Eden, was (no exaggeration) nearly impossible for me to put down.
Set against the beautiful backdrop of a small town in rural Vermont is the horrific murder-suicide of a local couple. Businessman George Hayward, who has a history of abusing his wife Alice, murders her while their teenage daughter, Katie, is out at a concert, and then turns the gun on himself. Holding the family—and the town—together immediately after the tragedy is Reverend Steven Drew, who baptized Alice the day she died and suspects that she foresaw her own death.
Enter Heather Laurent, the author of a book on angels who also lost her parents in a murder-suicide. Heather tries, along with Steven, to befriend the orphan Katie, and they all try to pick up the pieces. Having his own crisis of faith after the tragedy, Steven buries himself in Heather (literally) in an attempt to escape his own grief at the loss of Alice. The twist: shortly after Steven and Heather begin their affair, Steven becomes a suspect in George's death, which police believe was not a suicide after all.
To reveal more would be a spoiler. Although there is plenty of violence and sex in this novel—including within the church congregation—Bohjalian writes about it in both realistic and tasteful ways. Each section of the book is written from a major character's point of view (including the tough-as-nails county prosecutor, Catherine Benincasa), and it's difficult not to sympathize with each of them because they're so realistically human. Bohjalian excels at writing about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Although Heather's new age persona got on my nerves, she was one of several strong female characters that Bohjalian is never afraid to include in his novels, and I find that to be gratifying. Even Alice, who was a victim, is revealed to have had secret and brave parts of her story.
As in life, nothing in Secrets of Eden is neatly resolved or as clear-cut as it initially seems. When the book ends, you're still left wondering who deserves the label of hero or villain. For this reader, that's part of Bohjalian's genius as a writer.
Review by M.L. Madison
The Legend of COLTON HARRIS-MOORE !!!
From The Times On line
In the forests and remote islands around Seattle, police are setting traps for a barefoot teenage outlaw who has eluded them for nearly two years.
Police say 18-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, whose escapades are turning him into a folk legend, is a one-man crime wave, responsible for 50 burglaries as well as stealing light aircraft, which he taught himself to fly from video games, and several speedboats.
He lives in the woods, shuns shoes and catches his own food. His only technological aid is a pair of thermal-imaging goggles to hunt at night and his weakness is pizzas, which he asks to be delivered at the edge of the woods.
For some Harris-Moore is a modern Butch Cassidy: a surprisingly agile 6ft 5in cat burglar who thanks his victims by leaving them notes and cheeky photographs of himself, which have sold for £300 on eBay.
Thousands subscribe to his Facebook page and his image appears on T-shirts with the logo “Fly, Colton, Fly!”. Local rock groups have penned songs about him.
Hollywood producers have lodged lucrative film deals with his family and offered to pay for lawyers if he gives himself up.
Raised in a caravan on Camano Island, an isolated community in the Puget Sound, Harris-Moore started living wild at the age of seven. He would break into holiday homes, steal blankets and food and vanish into the woods for days.
In April 2008, after being sent to a juvenile detention centre, he complained that the beds were too short for his lanky frame and went on the run.
Police believe he fled to Canada and then, a few weeks ago, came back across the border to Idaho where he stole a Cessna 182 and flew to Seattle. He crash-landed in a forest clearing and walked away with cuts and bruises.
Since then he has been accused of stealing other planes for hops around the islands in the Puget Sound, including another Cessna belonging to a disc jockey who vented his frustration on radio, saying: “He still doesn’t know how to land a plane in one piece.”
He evaded a police pursuit by crashing a Mercedes-Benz into a roadside gas storage tank, using the explosion as a diversion to escape back into the woods where, he says, he feels like a Native American.
This was followed by the largest manhunt in recent memory. Three dozen sheriffs, aided by specialist armed units and an FBI helicopter, fanned out across Camano Island but failed to capture him. “We saw him, we think, but it’s like he disappeared in front of our eyes,” said one sheriff.
His luck may be about to run out. During a recent sweep a rifle shot was fired at police, raising his status to “armed and dangerous”. His mother, Pamela Kohler, now fears that even if he did not fire the shot he will be held responsible.
Kohler said she was proud her son had stolen the aircraft because he had never had a flying lesson in his life. “I was going to send him to flight school, but I guess I don’t have to,” she said. “I’d tell him the next time he took a plane: wear a parachute and practise your landing.
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