REVIEWS: REAL DEALS AND SPOKELESS WHEELS

The first weeks of 2006 bring some real deals and spokeless wheels to my pop radar...

Real Deals
In books, there's Zanesville by Kris Saknussemm. Readers picking up this book looking for Ben Bova sci-fi will be in for a shock. Saknussemm is aiming higher, harder, louder, wider, farther, and deeper all at once. In a dystopic America controlled by the Vitessa Cultporation, an amnesiac named Clearfather wakes up in Central Park with a mysterious phrase carved on his back and apparent mental powers. Is he the key that will end Vitessa's reign on America? Or is he a timebomb that will destroy us all? As Clearfather journeys across middle America in search of his past, it becomes obvious that Saknussemm is questioning and redeeming the power of the individual in a chaotic America increasingly infatuated with groupthink. Think Murakami and Pynchon on juice. Ambition far too rare in today's literary fiction.

In film, the critics are saying that Match Point is Woody Allen's best film in years. I'm here to tell you that Match Point is the real deal. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers shines as a top man, a former tennis pro charming, volleying and marrying his way into the British high society. But that's precisely the dilemma for this top man. Charming, volleying and high society is all this guy wants. That is, until he meets a voluptuous fellow-social-leech-cum-struggling-actress named Nola (Scarlett Johansson). A torrid affair commences with high stakes and ugly consequences and our Hugo Boss must choose between nights with Nola and diapers or days with scotch and skeet-shooting on his father-in-law's estate. Well, maybe sex with Nola isn't everything. The supporting cast (Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox, Matthew Goode) shines big time and it's actually Johannson who ends up with little to do but whine as the movie progresses. But we gave Woody a second serve on that one, as we know how much he loves to write three-dimensional female characters. Forehand winner for Woody's scathing satire of a world where style reigns over substance and manners mean more than truth.

What I'm Reading Now
The Pathology of Lies, by Jonathon Keats. This little gem of a novel from local writer Jonathon Keats is tight like a tiger and sharp as ten-thousand year-old cheese. Gloria Greene is a young, ambitious San Francisco magazine editor who's hot-bodied, cold-blooded and in love with Daddy, yes, I mean that way. Oh, did I mention she might have chopped up her boss in little pieces and UPS'd him across country? I suspect I haven't. Will let you know how it ends.

SPOKELESS WHEELS
FILM
Fun with Dick and Jane: This thinly-veiled corporate farce based on the Enron scandal saddened me more than it made me laugh. Corporate crime has already lost its ability to outrage.

The Family Stone: The camoflauged Terms of Endearment is only intermittently a screwball comedy, with an emphasis on SCREWball. By the time they try to pass off girlfriend-swapping between brothers as a happy ending, I wanted my money and my tears back.

Rent: I walked away from this film (having liked the musical) wondering one thing: Does it suck more to get a job or to have AIDS? The makers of this film seem to think it's the former.