Saved!

I haven't had near enough opportunity to see movies at the grandest of the LA movie theatres. It's about the one thing I've envied about Angelenos, that while we in New York have pretty much no place left to see a movie in grand traditional style, LA still had movie palaces showing first run movies. But since I don't live in LA, it's hard to take advantage.

So I was really happy in 2008 when the Season 1 premiere for True Blood was held in the Cinerama Dome. But the Chinese? Not yet. The Egyptian? Not yet.

Last summer, I had a chance to walk around the outside of the Village and the Bruin, 2 theatres in Westwood that have hosted many premieres, and the Village in particular was wonderful just to walk around. They are also near a really good donut store, a Whole Foods, and it turns out not a long bus ride down Wilshire from Beverly Hills. I have really been looking forward to someday finding the right movie to see.

So I got really antsy in recent months when I read that the operator of the two theatres wasn't planning to renew its leases, and hence the news in Variety this week was a pleasant surprise. Another chain, a small CA chain named Regency, is going to pick up the lease. Now, I just have to hope next time I'm in LA that the theatres are having movies I want to see (even if it requires extra credit because of the venue), which I haven't seen, at times when I can go and see them.

The lease on the Chinese is up as well, however, so it's possible if that situation is still unsettled that I'll have to try and see something there with the belief that the Westwood theatres are a little more secure.

Comedy Not

Busy times ahead, so I tried to get in two movies tonight before the crunch time hits and really wish I hadn't. AMC Loews Lincoln Square, two movies on two of their biggest screens (#2, The Kings; and #1, the Loews), on Tuesday 30 March.

Noah Baumbach did a great film several years ago called The Squid and the Whale. Wonderful performances by Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Laura Linney. Incisive, knowing, brutal. Saw it twice and it held up. He followed that up with the dreary Margot at the Wedding, which got much worse reviews and deservedly so. His new movie Greenberg with Ben Stiller got much better reviews. Not deservedly. Many of the reviews made it sound like the movie was some kind of quintessential LA movie. Not. Any of you see LA Story? Much better. This could have been set anywhere where there are pools, and people who spend lots of money on pets. Which is to say anywhere. Ben Stiller is kind of interesting, there's something going on with his eyes where you kind of get the sense that he's marching to the beat of his own drummer in a way that's very appropriate for the character. But it's the same look for the whole movie, to where you wonder if it's a real performance or a low-key stunt trying to be Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man without the funny edge to it. Yes, it's better than Margot at the Wedding. That doesn't make it good. Shopgirl. That was overrated, too. This is Ben Stiller's Shopgirl.

Then I popped in and walked out of Hot Tub Time Machine. The reviews for this were all over the map, some people saying it was cheap and chintzy and bad, and some saying it was better than Hangover. I left around halfway through, so you can guess whose side I'm taking on that.

Required Viewing

I just finished catching up on the last two weeks of The Simpsons. This season is shaping up to be a very good one. Earlier in the season, there was "I was one Uday who didn't need a Qusay." This past Sunday, Homer pays a visit to Israel, and the episode is wonderful. There's Homer ordering a falafel with extra cheese, being asked to say that latkes are better than American pancakes in order to enter the country, a teaching opportunity if you watch with your family to tell your children what a tagine is, and more. Some of it, I assure you, is in quite bad taste. The week before that, there was an extended sequence called Koyani-Scratchy, which is classic Simpsons. If you're at all familiar with the movie Koyaanisqatsi it's hilarious on one level, and if you are 14 and can't tell the difference between Glass, Philip and Glass Plus -- well, it is Itchy and Scratchy and works on another level entirely. That episode also has a montage of great kiss scenes from various film and TV shows, how many of these can you identify? You've got to hulu or fox.com and watch these episodes.

Let me also say a brief word about 24. I'm glad this season will be the show's last, but at the same time, I'm not glad to see the show go. I've watched almost every single episode. And yes, some seasons have been better than others and some episodes just plain silly. Some things keep happening season after season which is why it's good they need not happen again in 2011. Moles in CTU. Prisoners lost in custody. CTU being bombed. If it's happened once, it's happened eight times, and every so often this season I've gotten a little tired of seeing the same thing happen yet again. But for all that, it's been a well-crafted show, well-made and most importantly of all well cast. Really well cast. And that makes all the difference. This season, the cast includes Anil Kapoor, who was the host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in Slumdog Millionaire. Cherry Jones is back again as the President. She's a veteran actor who's done lots and lots of roles in theatre, with two Tony Awards to her credit. Her chief of staff is played by Bob Gunton, who was on Broadway in Evita and Sweeney Todd and has two Tony nominations. Mkelti Williamson is giving a slightly different spin to his role as the head of CTU. These are all real actors, and they fill their roles with real authority, real conviction, real talent, and this year is the rule, not the exception. OK, Freddie Prinze Jr. isn't in Bob Gunton's league. But more often than not it works. I've spent this season waiting in the best Star Trek tradition for the demise of the young CTU agent who we know will get his by the final reel just like the young Lt. who Kirk sees in the first five minutes in the Enterprise hallway, but while we wait for that to happen, and for all of the other things we know will happen because they've always happened, we get to watch some of the consistently best acting in TV. So thank you, for sparing me the need to watch a 9th season, but don't think I'm that happy about it.

behind closed doors

So Borders has a big loan coming due this week, as Publishers Weekly pointed out in their e-mail newsletter today. And they also point out, which I'd noticed as well, that they were getting well along without announcing the timing of their earnings report for 2010. Will there be news before the end of the week on all manner of things?

There are a couple other things that I have noticed. I think Borders got a little tighter in their initial orders early in the year. Their orders for Peter V. Brett and for the Simon Green books coming out in June are a little lower than I might have expected, while there were some other books earlier in the year on the higher end of expectations. It's kind of like they went back to the very conservative ordering that was in place for several months following the September 2008 Lehman/economy taking thing.

That's the kind of thing I don't want to read too much into, because B&N and Borders can both go through phases when the're being conservative or aggresive and relying more or less on reorders vs. initials.

Early in March, Borders was slower than usual getting the new issue of RT Book Reviews, which I was eager to lay hands on since it had a very good review of Peter Brett's Desert Spear, and I ended up giving my $4.99 for that to Barnes & Noble. I was out on Long Island for I-Con this past weekend and on my way home from the convention on Saturday, I did some bookstore visits. The Borders in Syosset and Westbury were very light on magazines. Not quite as glaring when I went to the Columbus Circle store in Manhattan on Sunday, but even there, the magazine racks weren't as thick with periodicals as usual. There's clearly a major reduction in their inventory spend on magazines right now.

Sneak Previews

After 35 years, At the Movies nee Ebert & Roeper nee Siskel & Ebert nee Sneak Previews has been cancelled and will air its final episode in mid-August.

Way back then, my parents and I might often watch together on PBS, which was where the show started. It was a clever idea, to take two critics from rival newspapers in Chicago, and have them hash out the new film releases on air. The opening with Siskel and Ebert picking up their rival papers freshly delivered at a newsstand is a relic of a day when newspapers were a lot more relevant than they are now, and when you still had a lot of two newspaper cities where the whole idea of rival papers resonated.

And this is the show that introduced (or at least in a big way) the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down idea to the world.

After around ten years Siskel and Ebert decided to make real money doing the show and it moved to syndication under the Disney auspices. Gene Siskel passed away, and after trying out an awful lot of people he was replaced with Richard Roeper, a Chicago Sun Times columnist. Ebert got cancer which effected his speaking. He still goes strong writing excellent film reviews but gave up the show, and then Roeper did the tryout thing settling on reviewer Michael Phillips. Then Disney decided to modernize the show and the 2008-09 season was unwatchable. Realizing their mistake they reverted to form with Phillips and NY Times critic AO Scott this year, and it's at least been a good final season. Because of intellectual property issues with Siskel and Ebert and their trademark for the Two Thumbs Up thing, it will leave with a See It/Skip It/Rent It kind of thing going on.

As the show moved around on the dial, it got harder and harder sometimes to find where it went when a syndication contract with Channel 11 would end and off it would go Channel 7. In its most recent years on Channel 5 is was subject to delays and preemption from Fox football and basketball games. So it isn't something I watched faithfully every week, but other than the one Bad Year in 2008-09 it's something I've always enjoyed, and I'll miss it.

Roger Ebert is planning some new show of similar like, and we'll see if/how that comes together.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I accompanied Peter V. Brett on shelf stock signing of his debut fantasy The Warded Man.

It was a good day. Counting every small hobbit cave book location in Penn Station we visited 20 stores. Peter signed over 100 books. We had 100%ish compliance at Borders on putting the book on the FOS (front of store) mass market table except that the copies due in to Columbus Circle may have been cross-shipped to another store. The FOS placement at B&N doesn't start for a couple weeks, but all of their stores had the book out, on a shelving cart, or poised to come out of the back room. We made very good time, better I think than last year when we did this for the hardcover. After we'd done our work for the day, we had a nice celebratory dinner in Brooklyn, and then I decided to visit the Forest Hills B&N since I had a one-day Metrocard pass, and was pleased to see they had sold a copy of the book very quickly.

Two sad notes on the day. The Uno Chicago Grill at 6th Ave. and 8th St. in Greenwich Village is gone. This was a 6th Ave. mainstay for 25 years, and where I celebrated the weekend I moved out of my parents house and to New York City, I think it would have been only the 2nd Unos I ate at. Manhattan still has 3 Unos, Queens 3, the Bronx and Brooklyn 1 each, but the Greenwich Village location is a special one in my heart.

And I detoured off of our bookstore itinerary one block to check in with doorman at a friend's apartment building since he hadn't shown up for Scrabble. He had a tumor operated on, I found out, and was in rehab. Some people have pride issues and don't like to be seen at their best, so do you not visit if somebody might not want visitors even though it seems the righter thing to do than to not be there for someone? This is one of those awkward things where nothing you do seems right, either doing or doing nothing.

And another sad thing today, that Robert Culp passed away. I remember him from Greatest American Hero, which was a lot of fun for five or six episodes and a theme song much much better than that. Robert Culp is "walking on air."

Lunacon

Blog posts may be shorter and less frequent over the next several weeks, because it's a very busy time for both the business and for me.

This past weekend, I was off at Lunacon, along with Jabberwocky VP Eddie Schneider and two of our clients, the Author Guest of Honor Tanya Huff and fantasy author Peter V. Brett.

There's history to Lunacon, which like most of the major sf conventions in the Northeast has been held for fifty or sixty years, with roots dating back to the dawn of sf fandom. The convention has been held in Westchester in recent years. It has a decent attendance, a decent dealer's room, maybe too many program tracks. It didn't seem this year to have a lot of aspiring authors. Neither Eddie nor I passed out many business cards. Old-fashioned authors can sometimes get lost in the cross-platform Long Island convention I-Con that is upcoming this weekend where the media guests are more central, but that's also a much larger convention that does seem to have more people with interest in JABberwocky wares. I've historically gone to I-Con which is further away but an easy one-seat ride on the LIRR. So that's ahead this weekend, and we'll see how the two compare.

As to Lunacon, I was on six panels. I added at the con to one on financial planning for writers and creative professionals, did a panel on contracts that was good experience for an upcoming workshop I'll be doing at Dallas Ft. Worth Writer's Conference, Tanya and I spoke on the author/agent relationship, something on Marvel/comics in a post-Disney age, romance and sf, and a Blood Ties/vampire panel. Attendance ranged from a handful of people to 35 people for the vampire panel.

The hotel is a little desolately located in corporate Westchester, though you can get to downtown Port Chester in a few minutes by car or a half hour walk. It's called the Escher hotel not entirely inaccurately because the various wings from various add-ons join in some interesting ways. I hate eating hotel meals, and not much choice at this con. There was a $24 dinner buffet that wasn't bad, interesting that on Friday when likely to have fewer people than on Saturday there were some creative maybe not so cheap dishes like a lamb stew and coconut rice with pigeon peas, then Saturday's it's very cafeteria chicken, mac 'n' cheese etc. Tasted OK, but you can tell they're keeping an eye out for the profit margin.