Eji, the previous commentator, gets it right on. The porch scene is horrendous. Virginia Madsen can’t act her way out of a paper bag. Paul Giamatti really is good in this movie, and he makes everyone else look that much worse because of it. This was better than a lot of stuff that came out next year, but it was nowhere near as good as people claimed.

I have to disagree with the last post. This is one of my favorite William Gibson novels. It’s very different than Neuromancer and the two other books in that “trilogy”, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In “Idoru”, Gibson’s still doing all of the things he does best.

I didn’t really know anything about this book when I started. The writing is more detailed than the Updike short stories I’ve read. I’m almost halfway through and nothing much has happened. I keep getting more and more drawn into it, though.

I didn’t see the Criterion version, just a VHS version. Godard is a genius. The computer has an unimaginably creepy voice. Great example of French New Wave Noir.

I’ve read Fight Club and Survivor. I listened to the audio book of Choke read by Chuck Palahniuk. I was really unimpressed. Huge similarities to Fight Club. The gross-out stuff isn’t terribly interesting. The main character didn’t have enough personality for me to find him interesting or identify with him.

Sublime. Múm(not to be confused with Mum)’s best album. I made everyone I know listen to it. It’s like a dream.

This gets a bad rap when it’s compared to Tarkovsky’s original adaptation. However, I’ve seen both versions and read the book and I think that they all have something to offer. Soderbergh’s version ponders the same themes as Tarkovsky’s, but from a more emotional, as opposed to psychological, viewpoint. Approach this with an open mind. Soderbergh is a very talented filmmaker.

Banish any memory of the movie from your mind. It really doesn’t deserve the same name. It really couldn’t be any more unlike the comic. This is the first graphic novel that I’ve read that is truly deserving of the name. It reminds me of 19th century Russian novels, especially Dostoevsky. Firstly because it’s huge (572 pages) and secondly because it delves deep into the psychology of the central characters. This isn’t a mystery. The identity of Jack the Ripper is no secret past the first couple of chapters. He even becomes the star of a few chapters himself. Moore uses the killer as metaphor and he overdoes it sometimes, along with sometimes drowning the reader in historical details, but From Hell is definitely an unmatched masterpiece.

Amazing.

This book is far better than the movie adaptation (aside from the brilliant Victor in Europe sequence) and is probably more approachable than American Psycho or Glamorama.