In memory of Natasha Richardson & Ronald Tavel

NEW BOOK

THE BEATS, a graphic history (Hill and Wang) edited by Paul Buhle Text by Harvey Pekar, Nancy J. Peters, Penelope Rosemont, Joyce Brabner, Trina Robbins, Tuli Kupferberg Art by Ed Piskor, Jay Kinney, Nick Thorkelson, Summer McClinton, Peter Kuper, Mary Fleener, Jerome Neukirch, Anne Timmons, Gary Dumm, Lance Tooks, Jeffrey Lewis

Since the Big Top is burning down, what better time to bring back the mad and beautiful voices in the wind that predicted much of the firestorm? A history of the Beats and later edges bohemia Post-WW2 /1950s highlighted with biographical portraits of three standup guys: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S.Burroughs. Except for Neal Cassady the depictions aren't that well drawn (John Clellon Holmes with beret and goatee?) but the heart is right. The drawings pick up wonderfully in the spirit for Kenneth Patchen, Gary Snyder and the "Beat Chicks". We're missing a likewise two-page spread for Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline and Lew Welch, but at least they nabbed Philip Whalen, Lamantia and Tuli Kupferberg! If it takes a comic book for a new audience to discover On the Road, Howl and Naked Lunch then so be it. As Pekar says, gazing out at us from a frame, "We all tried to imitate it."


FILM

IN BRUGES (D: Martin McDonagh)



Making a way — hands down, there is no film like Sexy Beast. None before and none perhaps ever, until In Bruges came around. I won't go into it all now, though I'm passionate about the film. It's an Irish gamer and has a winning side (one of a handful of Irish films that nails-it) and cinematically it is a thrill ride of everything technically astute while the entire film is running backwards, forwards, sideways at once. Perhaps? Who cares, it's a wonder, an absolute wonder toy of movie making. The actors, the main three, are supreme. As with Psycho, no one should give away the gist of a film — In Bruges is much the same. It was made to be opened up, meaning you opened up, your whole being while watching. There is a third film, in a short list of: never-been-made-before, and that would be Withnail and I. Blow my mind all three films hail from the same British Isles, a fighting term, I know, but I'm using it anyway just to point to a location. Most often these films are detested at first run. By the second and third viewing you're defending them with every inch of your life.