Ellen Datlow's Blog, page 88

Last night I watched Lara Croft: Cradle of Life, a guilty pleasure. Angeline Jolie and Gerard Butler are great to watch and although some of the cgi doesn't quite work, it was fast moving and enjoyable if you're not looking for brain food.

The War Zone, the first movie directed by Tim Roth and adapted by Alexander Stuart from his amazing novel, this is a very dark movie about a family that has moved from London to Devon. The great Ray Winstone and Tilda Swinton play the parents (she's pregnant)

Getting boys to read and continue reading into adulthood is in our whole society's interest (not just authors and editors).

GLW is the site Colleen Mondor co-created along with a couple of dozen bloggers to recommend books for teenage boys. We've partnered up with InsideOut Writers in LA to build a wish list at Powells for the teenage boys held in the LA County juvenile justice system.

You can read about the ongoing project and its two week long special book drive here Putting our Money where o

Here is the TOC and the tentative jacket --please note that the names on the front of the jacket are not final. There will be more/others. Not sure about the back cover, but we may put all the names there. I'm also assuming the snake will show up more than it does here. The book will be out from Tachyon February 2010.

Darkness: 25 Years of Modern Horror


Jacqueline Ess: Her Will And Testament Clive Barker 1984

Dancing Chickens Edward Bryant 1984

The Greater Festival of Masks Thoma

Tenebre by Dario Argenti--I realized that I've only seen a couple of his movies previously: Suspiria, which I liked a lot and Four Flies on Gray Velvet, which I saw in Hanover, Germany and thought was absorbing but utterly silly. Alas, although there were some scares in Tenebre it too is pretty silly overall. In fact, I'm surprised that it was made as late as 1982 as it had a more 70s feel to me. I'm afraid that I just don't get Argenti's appeal. Maybe I'll try a few more--or not.

Charlie Wilson'

Announced this evening:
News: 2009 Ditmar Award finalists

The Ditmar sub-committee has released the Australian SF ("Ditmar") Awards finalists for 2009. This ballot honours the best works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror published by Australians in 2008 as nominated by members of Australian fandom.

Best Novel

* Fivefold, Nathan Burrage (Random House)
* Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, Simon Haynes (Fremantle Press)
* Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
* How to Ditch Your F

Thank you Ursula,
You've summed up everything wrong with what Robert Weil (a former colleague of mine at OMNI during the period I published a Ballard story) said about J.G. Ballard in the article.


Calling Utopia a Utopia
Ursula K. Le Guin

Writing about the death of J.G. Ballard for the New York Times (21 April 09), Bruce Weber spoke to Ballard’s American editor at Norton, Robert Weil. Mr Weil said of Ballard: “His fabulistic style led people to review his work as science fiction. But that’s like ca

Loved it--I know I've seen it at least once in the mid-70s, danced by a friend's troupe, but cannot remember if I've seen it as a play.

All four actors were wonderful: Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin (see him in Rachel Getting Married), John Goodman, and John Glover. A comedy--has it always been acted as comedy? I don't know. What surprised me was the pronunciation of "Godot" with the accent on the first syllable rather than the second, which I'd never hear before.

Just now I looked this up and found thi

I've been busy and nothing very interesting has been happening (just life) but as a break how about these vacation ideas:

The Genuine Crime and Punishment Experience
Outward Bound: Lord of the Flies
Death in Venice Walking Tour
Grow Your Own Flowers in the Attic!

Four vacation packages we'd like to take

Feel free to make up your own ;-)

via jezebel

Watched The Sheltering Sky, based on the Paul Bowles novel, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Debra Winger, John Malkovich, and Campbell Scott. Bowles has a small role in it-- Disaffected American couple travel to North Africa with an acquaintance, get into bad situations, sometimes their own fault (Port doesn't want to stop traveling and Kit has no real will of her own). They're dissatisfied and unhappy but don't really know why.

Some spoilers to don't read on if you want to avoid th

Michael de Kler interviewed me for the May issue of Nossa Morte .