Keeping on Keeping Smiling

It's snowing in Oslo and another page of Untrue Tales is up:

Keep Smiling page 3

This week I read Stephen King's latest - Under The Dome.
























This is good stuff. King's best in a long while. King is my favorite author and almost never fails to be massively entertaining (except maybe for Gerald's Game, that one never really did it for me), but with Under the Dome he's working near his peak. This one's probably in my top ten favorites of King's books, up there with Desperation and The Shining although not quite scaling the delirious heights of IT, The Talisman or The Stand (my favorite book of all time). Of his recent stuff, I really liked Cell and Duma Key but Lisey's Story was a bit of a letdown as it seemed like King was treading old ground with that one. Interstingly (to me at least), I thought Lisey's Story would have been a better book if King had actually excised all the supernatural stuff which just seemed like another riff on Rose Madder (which I liked).

But back to Under the Dome; the title is right on the nose - the plot concerns a small town in Maine that is suddenly and inexplicably encased in a transparent forcefield that follows all the town's borders, cutting it off from the outside world. What follows is a spin on Lord of the Flies as the town's second selectman Big Jim Rennie manipulates the fears of the populace to conslidate power. Rennie is a great villain, truly a guy you love to hate. Terrible things happen, most of which can be laid squarely at Big Jim's feet. King does a masterful job of setting up the situation and characters like a big apocalyptic chess board and I found myself writhing on the couch in horrid anticipation as inevitable doom mvoes inexorably foreward. Lots of good folks to root for and plenty of bad guys to fear in this one. And King sure isn't getting sentimental in his later years. A lot of very bad things happen to a lot of good people here, and as per usual King makes you really care about his characters before he ruthlessly cuts them down. A really great, entertaining book.

On the movie front, against my better judgment I went ahead and saw 2012, the latest disaster spectacle from Roland Emmerich.
























As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it is magnificently stupid, but since I was expecting that going in, the ridiculousness of John Cusack outracing earthquakes and volcanoes in various limousines, buses and small planes was more entertaining than annoying. And the effects are truly spectacular. The destruction of Los Angeles was particularly breathtaking. Cusack is a pretty reliable actor and makes an engaging hero here. I'd actually say this might be Emmerich's best film as it manages to stay generally entertaining throughout the running time. Usually I find that his film's have a great set-up (the first hour of Independence Day is terrific) but collapse under massive stupidity and cliche in the second half (again Indepence Day). 2012 is pure stupid right from the beginning, so as long as you check your brain at the door and have a taste for spectacular end of the world destruction it's a grand old time at the movies.

Finally, here's a sketch from a little something I'm kicking around these days:



















Have a good one!