The Greatest Show on Earth?

Tomorrow Water for Elephants--the life-under-the-Big-Top depression-era movie with Reese Witherspoon and Edward Cullen--will be released on DVD. 

As a real life primer to the animal cruelty depicted in the film and book, check out this this investigation from Mother Jones about the disturbing practices that are still rampant at Ringling Brothers and the USDA's inability to charge the company with any violations.

Book Review: The Abbey (2011)

The Abbey, by first-time author Chris Culver, is one of those less-than-a-buck-from-Amazon-ebooks. I wasn't expecting much. What I got was a taut thriller that, despite a few missteps in the third act, could give Michael Connelly or Jeffrey Deaver a run for their money.

The book opens with Detective Sergeant Ash Rashid heading to the family home of a recent murder victim to deliver the bad news. He's gone through this scene dozens of times before. It never gets any easier--especially now that the victim is his 16-year-old niece, whose body was found in the guest house of one of the city's most wealthy families.

Ash, who happens to be Muslim, left homicide some time before (his back story is hinted at and would make an interesting story on its own) but is fed information about his niece's case from an old partner. When the head of the homicide division closes the case with a resolution that's a bit too neat for Ash to stomach, he opens his own off-the-books investigation revealing crooked cops, a vampire club that may be a front for a drug den, and a crazed doctor who takes a personal interest in Ash.

Culver does a good job of fleshing out Ash as more than just a cop, but as a devoted husband and father and a semi-devout, but trying, Muslim. Ash is constantly at odds trying to balance his faith with what he must sometimes so to get through his days on the job. He's a person with real flaws that don't hinder his work and home life, but do hint at a darker future.

The book moves at a fairly brisk and believable pace for the first two acts. In the third, things falter as the story begins to fold under the weight of its subplots becoming a bit convoluted and wrapping up the main action a little too neatly.

The main selling point of The Abbey is the writing. The Abbey, like the best books in the genre, isn't lyrical--the writing is crisp and efficient, making it easy to fall into and travel with the story.

The Abbey is an impressive debut novel. It's proof that, perhaps, some of the more interesting new writers are eschewing the traditional publishing model for self-distribution.

I'm looking forward to Cullver's follow-up (supposedly featuring the same characters), which is due out later this year.

Buy The Abbey for the Kindle

New to Theaters: 9/16/2011

Major releases this week include:

Drive
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston

Although, at first glance, it looks like a movie that might star Nicholas Cage in his post-Oscar action picture cash grab or as a soon-to-be cancelled series on Fox, Drive--starring Ryan Gosling as the Driver--is getting great reviews.

Gosling stars as an stuntman who spends his evenings as a getaway driver for armed heists. When his boss (played by Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad") gets in over his head to the local tough guys, the Driver gets involved with one of those "big score" jobs that define movies like this.

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: Very Fresh (sitting at 93%)

I Don't Know How She Does It
Directed by Douglas McGrath
Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Kelsey Grammer

I read this book! I didn't care for the story much, but the writing was great so.... That doesn't help us here, does it?

Sarah Jessica Parker takes time off from looking disappointed with Matthew Broderick and lobbying for Sex in the City 3: Nudist Colony to star as Kate, a 30-something (who's SJP kidding?) wife, mother, and financial analyst. To the rest of the world, Kate looks like the perfect everything, but she's drowning in a sea of her own stress. It's supposed to be a comedy. I think.

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: Really Rotten (20% as of this writing)

Straw Dogs 
Directed by Rod Lurie
Starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard

The original Straw Dogs (1971; directed by Sam Peckinpah) is one of the more challenging movies I've ever seen. Love it or hate it, it uses violence deliberately to challenge the viewer's ideas on morality and vengeance. It's a film that every burgeoning movie buff should seek out.

That's why this remake puzzles me. There's absolutely no need for it. I'll acquiesce that there's little need for most remakes, but this one befuddles me. Peckinpah's film is near perfect and Dustin Hoffman, in the main role as a timid man pushed over the edge, is absolutely brilliant. I just don't buy that this version, from the director/writer of the short-lived TV series "Commander in Chief" (remember? Geena Davis as the first female President?) and starring the hot vampire from "True Blood", will be much to remember. I sort of hope I'm wrong. The premise alone deserves a storyteller's respect and I would hate for a younger generation to know it only through a deflated remake.

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: Rotten (Turns out I'm not wrong. Rent the original.)

My newest obsession: Desperate Housewives

Ever since I cancelled cable, I find myself becoming obsessed with TV shows I couldn't have been bothered to watch before. So now I don't engage in the brainless clicking that comes along with having cable, but rather focus on the long-game story of watching seasons of TV shows on Hulu or Netflix. I can't say I watch less TV, but I enjoy it more.

Over the last year, I've watched the entire run of "Bones", "Eureka", and "Haven." My husband and I are working our way through the new version of Battlestar Galactica (excellent). My not-so-secret current obsession is with "Desperate Housewives."

When Desperate Housewives premiered (around the time of LOST, I believe) I dismissed it. Not sure why. Maybe I thought it was one of those shows where whiny women sit around and complain about all that is wrong with their lives--as long as those problems focus on their weight or love lives.

To be sure, there's plenty of love life talk on Desperate Housewives--making it the soap opera it is--but it's what else it offers that makes the show so much fun and kind of meaningful.

The show begins with a mystery. On Wisteria Lane in Fairview, USA, there are six women--all friends and, often, enemies. In the first moments of the first episode, one of those women, Mary Alice, commits suicide. Her friends--former model Gabrielle, perfect wife and mother Bree, neurotic Susan, stressed-out stay-at-home mom Lynette, and town harlot Evie--are left wondering why and through the season work out the secrets their seemingly happy friend kept buried.

Thus begins the formula and theme of Desperate Housewives: everyone has secrets and the residents of Wisteria Lane have more than their fair share: murderous mothers-in-law, sex fetishes, kidnapped babies, fake pregnancies, sociopathic siblings....

During summers as a child, my mom and I would watch Young and the Restless. She loved her soaps and as much as I pretended to loathe them, it wasn't true. Everyone was rich and looked perfect, but was far from it. There was something about that that seemed almost...honest.

Desperate Housewives, like the Young and the Restless, takes "reality" and pumps it up to 11. As an adult, I can appreciate that even more. Day-to-day life can seem so mundane, but we all have things we're dealing with: careers, kids, relationships, personal issues. Most of the time we keep these bits about ourselves under wraps, sometimes even suffering in silence. Soapy shows, like Desperate Housewives, put these issues (admittedly exaggerated for effect) front and center. Some may watch and feel better that their own lives aren't as complicated; others may even take some level of comfort in seeing a version of life where the facade is stripped down.

While the people of Wisteria Lane are flawed, the show also does a good job of showing people at their best. A hand to hold. A shoulder to cry on. A hug from a friend.

Yup, Desperate Housewives is often silly. Convoluted. Teetering on desperate. But what keeps it from falling over the edge are main ladies of Wisteria Lane--all incredibly different, but in them attributes every woman can relate to.

PR Pro Tip: Don't lie to me.

This goes for clients to their publicists and publicists to the press and/or public. There's "spin" (a term I hate, by the way) and then there's lying. If you have to think about which you're doing, I assure you what's tripping off the tongue is an outright fabrication. Eventually the truth will be found out and we'll all end up looking untrustworthy (not to mention more than a little stupid).