Out from Under Probation and Back on the Shelf

Before I get into what the title is about, I thought I'd get this off my chest first:

You ever have a movie or song or book that you keep having to tell others that "you want to watch, but you just haven't gotten around to it". Oddly, one of the movies like that for me was The Transporter—which I've finally seen.

Probably not what you were expecting, was it?

But that's okay.  Because I didn't realize it was that kind of movie for me until I finally saw it.  Not that it's so phenomenal.  Rather, it's that I can understand why people kept asking me if I'd seen it.

To start with, you have my boy, Jason Statham.  Now obviously he's not really "my boy”—either biologically or socially.  But what our relationship lacks in personal interaction is more than made up with a deep and abiding desire to hang out with this guy and let his coolness wash over me.

Now I'm not under any illusions about his acting ability.  I used to bemoan the fact that he'd be a bigger star if he got better roles and didn't spend his time making movies like Crank and War.

But then I realized something--it's exactly those kind of roles that he is best suited for.

And how I realized that was by finally getting around to The Transporter. It's not a a good movie, by any stretch. But it's a fun movie, and that's all it tries to be. Statham is his normal awesome self (see above—my man-crush on him hasn't abated; he's number 2 on the “Would I...” List only after Ryan Reynolds). But everything else, from the plot to the co-actors to the dialogue is pretty much spectacularly bad.

Except for the action—which is great, and the whole reason you'd watch such a movie in the first place.

Now I don't know if I'll ever watch the sequels, but I will say I'm no longer quite as disappointed that every movie Mr. Statham is in isn't a gem like Snatch or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

I'm also glad I finally got around to seeing The Transporter.

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Just finished Stephen King's latest novel, Under the Dome, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not because I'm a King-hater (although if I saw George III walking down the street, I'd punch him in the face—because he'd be a zombie), but because I'd kind of given up on him, just as it seemed he had given up on us.

Growing up in the Eighties, King was the at the height of his powers, and I loved every minute of it. I must have read It five or six times, The Stand a few times, and Misery more than once, not to mention some of his lesser known novels. And I loved The Bachman Books (still considering “The Long Walk” to be one of my favorite novellas/short stories ever), and will still go back to it maybe once a year.

But then I read Insomnia...and the fascination stopped. A thousand pages of what basically was the movie Dark City--but with senior citizen protagonists—and I was done.

And yet I've returned, and I'm glad I did. Under the Dome does what I think King knows best: the dark side of human nature. The premise is pretty “Twilight Zone”-basic: What would happen if, for no explainable reason, an impenetrable dome covered a small town in Maine?

What ensues are power grabs, riots, panic, murders, and the exposure of secrets—it's “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” writ large. And I'm completely okay with that.

Because, if I've said anything about where science fiction is going this past year, my prediction has been towards dystopia.

King—no stranger to this realm—comes back to it in a big way, and although he still has his usual “King problems” (Umm, I just wrote a really long book, and I don't feel like I can be bothered with anything called satisfying resolution), I love the characters and how they interact with each other—particularly the main Barbie/Big Jim Rennie dynamic, but also the Andy/Chef relationship at the end—I love the way King gets around the “easy” solutions, and I love the plausibility of the situation (despite the fact that it's based on a completely implausible idea).

I think if you're a fan of Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery,” MJ Engh's Arslan, or even King's own The Stand, I'd check out Under the Dome. While not his greatest book, it's definitely the best thing he's done in a long, long time.