HEEEEERRRRRRRRRRE'S......HUGO??.......STAYING UP WITH "STAY UP WITH HUGO BEST"

Stay Up With Hugo Best by Erin Somers (2019)    I wish I could say I liked this book as much as the authors who wrote glowing blurbs for its back cover.........

                  Not even close.

                  Comedic?  Nope. A martini-dry wit does run through the length of this thing..........but never enough to even make me crack a smile.

                   Ultimately, it finishes up as a sad, sad observation of that well-worn showbiz tale........how desperate, hungry ambition leads to a life of bitter regret, dreams unfulfilled and loves lost........

                   So I don't know how or why the blurb-a-holics found any of this funny.......it's like 'Citizen Kane' for stand-up comics.......complete with its own Xanadu.

                   Hugo Best is the author's goulash mixmaster blending of Letterman, Leno, Carson, and few others........with a dash of Lenny Bruce to add some flavor. He's a late-night TV talk show host-comedian who's just been kicked off the air cause he's old, tired and way past his expiration date.

                  For a weekend bash at his plush Connecticut estate, he invites one of his underlings, June Bloom  a former network page who toiled as an assistant to his writers' staff.

                  June, an under-employed and now freshly unemployed millennial who struggles as a fledgling stand-up comedienne.  accepts the invitation.........somewhere in the back of her mind thinking Hugo might offer a career boost...….along with inevitable sex.......

                   What follows isn't funny........a nasty, lifestyles of the rich and infamous weekend.  And it's capped off by Hugo's ill-fated attempt to throw an end-of-show catered bash.......

                   In her favor, Erin Somers' prose is dense with laser sharp observations of people driven by success but who find little joy in it.   Not good: her labored tries at simulating  actual stand up comedy......it reeks of creative-writing-class overreaching.

                   If nothing else, the book provides a fairly accurate explanation of why some of the world's most beloved comedians are in fact, miserable, angry, resentful human beings.

                  Sorry, I didn't need another literary fictioneer to clue me in on the asshole-ness of the guys who made me laugh......been there, seen that.

                   Pay no attention to the blurbs on the books.........maybe those folks watched Kimmel while reading and got the book and TV mixed up. 1 & 1/2 stars.....(* 1/2)    Pick  it up only if simply must read anything with a show-bizzy vibe........

                 

WEEKEND MADNESS UPDATE!......SPECIAL "MY OLD KENTUCKY MOAN" EDITION

                  The Kentucky Derby     This is why my primary encounters with horse racing are watching "Secretariat" and "Seabiscuit".  (At least you know who's gonna win.....)   But let's think about this.......a whole slew of 1000 pound animals running about 40 miles an hour......all of them jammed close together on slippery mud.  What could possibly go wrong?

                  Baby Orange weighs in on the Derby.......probably cause Saturday Night Live cut him some slack this week, since even their writers are too nauseated by current events. By the way, did anyone mention to him that his sweet little North Korean boytoy is firing off more missiles?   You'd think that might occupy him for moment........but then Kim  said "what missiles?" and Baby Orange took him at his word.......

                   Memo to everyone posting news, reviews and articles about "Avengers Endgame" and "Game Of Thrones"............SHUT THE **** UP ALREADY ABOUT THIS!!!   STOP! PLEASE STOP!  WILL YOU STOP!!!!!!  YOU MUST STOP!!!!!!!!
   
                     'Daisy......Daisy.......give me your answer do......."

DEPT. OF CRY-ME-A-RIVER........."THE BOOKSHOP OF THE BROKEN-HEARTED"....

The Bookshop Of The Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman (2019)    Here's another area BQ rarely delves into..........pure literary fiction........

                Why?  You need to tread carefully........it's a minefield of pretension and ego-inflated poseurs........with hordes of creative writing graduate students disgorging indigestible prose, impenetrable plotting and pages sprinkled with words they mined from their 50 pound Thesauruses....(Thesauri??)

                   But this one's a goodie.

                   If I were a crude Hollywood spin-meister searching for an easy description.......the book falls somewhere between 'Crocodile Dundee' and 'Sophie's Choice'........

                   It's 1968 out in Australia farmland and sheep farmer Tom Hope's mercurial wife has fled the marriage, taking along her adorable little boy Peter.....who was fathered by another man.

                  Having established a deep father-son bond with Peter, Tom's left lonely and crushed.......until he falls in love with Hannah Babel, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, who's arrived to open an unlikely bookshop in a community that barely reads........

                   Do I even have to describe how deep the emotions run here?   While Tom slowly rediscovers life and love, Hannah, haunted and destroyed by the concentration camp death of her own young son, can only give so much of herself to him......

                   Not enough angst for you?  Tom's ex-wife and Peter have landed in a frightening, hellish evangelical Christian commune........where the little boy so beloved by Tom is now being regularly beaten by the commune's vile, cruel Pastor.

                   Get the drift?   You'll choke up, tear up and you won't be able to flip the pages fast enough. The pacing may strike you as a bit measured, but you'll want to stay with it.........in its Dickensian turns of plot, you'll want to hang in to see everyone get what's coming to them.......both good and bad.

                   Not the kind of book BQ usually cracks open, but well, well worth it.........say 'G'Day Mate' to this one for sure. 4 stars (****)

DREAD-OPHELIA..........HUNTING DOWN THE 1951 "M"........

M (1951)     This strange item, a remake of Fritz Lang's classic  1931 thriller with Peter Lorre, never had a chance in hell........

                      Two strikes against it........#1 -  In no way would 1951 America flock to a film about a psychotic, fetishistic murderer of little girls.........no matter how skilled the filmmaking.

                       Mr. and Mrs. Moviegoer weren't havin' any of that, thank you.........though 5 years later they'd happily munch their popcorn watching "The Bad Seed".......about a little girl who's a murderer.....so you figure it out.....

                        Strike #2 - the director, Joseph Losey, was already well on his way to blacklisted exile from the USA........marked for career extinction by the hounds of HUAC, he was soon to take up residence in Europe where he reigned for decades as a premier expatriate high-art director ("The Servant", "Accident", "The Go-Between")

                       Left behind to languish in obscurity.......this little oddball item......a nasty, unpleasant piece of work from start to finish, but featuring a cream-of-the-crop cast..........

                        As opposed to the decidedly creepy Peter Lorre, Losey uses the gentle, unassuming, ordinary David Wayne as the film's killer. And it's brilliant casting.........Wayne, who spent a lifetime in thankless, best-friend supporting roles, really rises to the occasion here........delivering a brutal portrait of a tortured, tormented soul, living in his own hell while bringing death to his victims and untold grief to their families.   Sadly for cinema, he never got anywhere close to a role this juicy ever again......

                       But let's now move on to the other fascinating half of this movie..........the efforts of the big city's gangland population to hunt down Wayne and dole out their own swift,  lethal punishment.......so their ordinary, usual criminal lives can go back to ordinary.......

                       What a crew.........it's like 'Guys And Dolls', only without the laughs and songs.

                      Martin Gabel as the Kingpin, lording it over a prime collection of all your favorite movie thugs.......including plus-sized Raymond Burr affecting a raspy growl, Norman Lloyd, Walter Burke, Luther Adler.......and on the side of law and order, Howard DaSilva and Steve Brodie.

                       This mob of cops and crooks finally converge on the sniveling, pathetic pedophile in an almost operatic kangaroo court held in a parking garage  Overwritten, overheated and wildly overacted, it's one helluva piece of old-fashioned theatrical melodrama........

                       You can debate whether this movie holds together as a combo thriller-drama.........even if you don't think it does, it's damn watchable all the way through. So BQ says 3 stars (***)

                       

DEPT. OF HOLD-YOU-CAPTIVE............."COME AND GET ME"

Come And Get Me by August Norman (2019)    BQ doesn't dive into too many investigative thrillers (or 'procedurals'   they say)........'cause......well, they're so.....procedural......

             I know loads of people love these books where the slow, dogged uncovering of clues gradually leads to the killer.......BQ's not among 'em.....

             But surprise!   This one's awesome, a zippy page-turner about a rape-damaged journalist who returns to her college alma mater (and scene of the crime committed upon her)......she ends up tracking down a serial rapist kidnapper who enslaves his victims.

               All the expected multiple twists and reversals of fortune follow.......done in a fast-paced style that relies on dialogue rather than lengthy exposition......(and that''s a big BQ plus)......

                This being fiction instead of inconclusive, unsatisfying real life, the creepizoid villain here gets the kind of spectacular, cinematic fate that you wish was doled out to real life demons.......... like the couple who abducted Elizabeth Smart and the slug who held those three women in Cleveland for years on end.

                 Top of the line thrills 'n chills.......BQ says bump it hight up on your "to read" list.
4 stars (****)

SET THE BARR LOW........WHO SHOULD PLAY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL??

             I might never live to see it, but if the voters choose to rescue democracy and the USA from the horrors inflicted by Trump and his mob........a film might one day be made depicting all this misery and chaos........

              So who on earth could play William Barr,  the bloated toad now masquerading as Attorney General.....(but in reality, Trump's very own mob mouthpiece)???

                BQ offers some suggestions..........

                The Overgrown Frog From "The Maze"  .......grunting and slurping as it crawls up the stairs, it's a dead ringer for Barr.........

                 LeFou from "Beauty And The Beast".........a simpering minion serving a narcissistic idiot......what perfect casting.......

                 Any frog from "Frogs"......a little on the small side, but nothing CGI can't correct........

                 Fraulein Irma Bunt from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"........a gender switch, yes.....but superb at playing a loathsome toady utterly devoted to the Boss Villian........

                 The Blob from "The Blob"..........enveloping and destroying everything it comes in contact with......oh, wait.......no, that's more appropriate casting for Trump........

               

TATS ENTERTAINMENT!........FUMIGATING "THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB"

The Girl In The Spider's Web (2018)    What a dreary waste of time this is.........

                The James-Bond-ish main titles give you a clue as to what's ahead......

                 That badass hacker and scourge of all women abusers, Lisabeth Salander returns........only drained of all nuance, character or anything that made her a singularly unique fiction and film icon.......

                   Now, she's just another faceless, colorless action babe.......a black leather Bourne zippin' along on motorcycles and tasering guys' balls........Atomic Brunette, only less fun......

                    And the film plays like a cheaper, shorter knockoff of "Spectre"........with Salander confronting an evil bad apple that fell off her twisted family tree. 

                   I don't know why they went to the trouble of hiring a way over-qualified classy Brit actress like Claire Foy to play this part..........the way it's underwritten, they might as well have recruited one of the stunt girls from "Game Of Thrones".......

                    All the tropes of the last three dozen crappy action movies you watched are all in place here........even a ludicrous "nuke-the-fridge" episode borrowed from that last terrible Indiana Jones movie.......

                     1 star (*)......if you must have an action fix, wait'll it's on basic cable.......BQ advises don't pay anything extra for it.