Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Nethers Tingling

Over at Ransom Notes I got a bit into the differences between last weeks' Edgar award winners and the Spinetingler Award noms and how this year there was zero overlap. Then Spinetingler goes ahead and announces its winners today and showed some love for N@B folks. Thanks to everybody at Spinetingler and everybody who voted and most of all everybody who got themselves down to one of our  disreputable events. You rock.

The results: Best Cover winner - Matt Kindt for Noir at the Bar (Lawrence Block deserves a piece of this honor too - as well as congratulations on his own win for Best Novel: Legend with A Drop of the Hard Stuff). Hey, Kindt's brand new comic Mind Mgmt, hits stands later this month. Pick it up.

Best Short Story on the Web winner - David James Keaton for Either Way it Ends With a Shovel from Crime Factory, plus nominees Matthew C. Funk and Hilary Davidson

Best Novel: Legend - nominee Les Edgerton for The Bitch

Best Novel: Rising Star winner - Anthony Neil Smith for All the Young Warriors, plus John Rector for Already Gone


Thanks again.

Just started J.J. Connolly's Viva La Madness, the sequel to Layer Cake and it's got me kinda jazzed on Brit crime shits. I was a bit confused when I first saw there was another book coming that was a continuation of his nameless protagonist's story as those who've read Layer Cake (as I admit - I have not, but probably should) or seen Matthew Vaughn's film (which I have - a couple of times) will remember - there are very good reasons for thinking that his story is... um, over. It's not. He's trying to live it up in Barbados now. Failing, but trying. I admit further that when I read the synopsis it brought to mind that scene from The Three Amigos where Joe Montegna explains the failure of the most recent Amigo film Those Darn Amigos "Nobody went to see it because nobody cares about three wealthy Spanish land owners on a weekend in Manhattan. We strayed from the formula and paid the price." Well, I don't think Viva La Madness is gonna be Those Darn Amigos by a long shot. In fact, it's got me pretty good. I'm finding myself popping in flicks like The Long Good Friday, Get Carter, Sexy Beast, The Limey, Gangster No. 1, Mona Lisa, and even Down Terrace - a seriously subversive genre picture from Ben Wheatley. (Read more at Ransom Notes)Peter Dragovich wrote 'bout Wheatley's latest Kill List over at the Crime Factory blog and man oh man, I can't wait to see it. It's gonna fuck me up, I think.

Speaking of fucked up - man, when Dave Keaton recommends you take a moment to read a story that'll do that, you can trust his judgement. On his say so, I checked out John Everson's story Mouth from the Cheryl Mullenax edited anthology The Death Panel, and... heh, yeah, fucked up. So far, I've also read stories in that book from Keaton, Fred Venturini and Tom Piccirilli - based on those selections, it's a kick-ass horror/crime collection.

Saw the trailer for the new John Hillcoat movie Lawless with Shia the beef and Tom Hardy, and I gotta say it looks like nothing so much as Young Guns in prohibition. But that shouldn't be a slight. I hold a real special place in my heart for, hell, for both Young Guns pics, and I don't care who knows it. Lawless doesn't look to have anywhere near the weight of Hillcoat's previous films, but then those were written by a coupla blokes you may've heard of before: Nick Cave (The Proposition) and Cormac McCarthy (The Road), and wait... what's this? Cave wrote the screenplay for this one too (based on Matt Bondurant's novel The Wettest County in the World)? Oh holy fuck, I'm in. Alright, I mean, you should never judge a film by its trailer anyhow, right? Hell, look at that cast - Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska. At the very least this one'll be a shit ton better than Richard Linklater's own Young Guns rob banks picture The Newton Boys, right?


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to The Wettest County in the World. Nick Cave's writing really is something special. Of course, I knew that long ago when I first listened to his album Murder Ballads. He's just applying that talent to the screen these days and I love it.