Ever watch a movie, and find yourself completely unsure whether you thought it was amazing or terrible?

I’d been wanting to see Brotherhood of the Wolf ever since I missed it in theaters back in ‘01. It looked like a pretty cool foreign period piece/horror flick about werewolves. I was bummed to keep checking Netflix and finding the movie’s DVD release status to be unknown, though, and eventually forgot it was in my queue.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I noticed it had been marked available, and immediately moved it to the top of my queue. It came, and last Friday Rebecca and I threw it into the player, kicked back … and were completely confounded.

It turns out Le pacte des loups isn’t a werewolf flick, or even really a horror flick, at all. It’s more of a brooding, existential detective story set in 18th century France, a character study of a man whose ahead-of-their-time beliefs and attitudes pit him against the unenlightened denizens of a village far from the science and scholarship of Paris. There’s a monster, sure, but for the vast majority of the movie, it’s just an unseen plot device, a reason for this educated man to find himself butting heads with ignorant peasants and backwoods religious freaks.

The film is slow, and rife with symbolism so obvious it’s clunky. It’s also gorgeous, and the climax, when it finally comes, is thrilling – more thrilling than it has any right to be, actually, after you’ve waited for it, gotten tired of waiting for it, and started to actually become interested in the story itself.

I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since, and still can’t decide how I feel about it. But I think these days, that in itself is a reason to recommend it – because it’s still sitting there, in my imagination, demanding to be considered.

Yes, I’m completely psyched that So You Think You Can Dance is back.

Why? Because it’s pretty much the only “reality competition” in existence that actually showcases and rewards the talents of its participants. American Idol is just looking for product; America’s Got Talent is just looking for freaks. (Bring back Project Greenlight, and I’ll praise that one, too. Gulager! Gulager! Gulager!)

And it’s not just that Dance hinges on creative passion and real chops. The show also celebrates a niche art form about which most consumers of pop culture above the age of, oh, let’s say thirteen couldn’t care less – unless, of course, it’s on a major network during prime time. So for a few years, kids and their parents will remember that dance is inspired, and rich in tradition, and freakin’ HARD, and the kids will want to dance and their parents will support them. After that, most of ‘em will lose interest (did I mention it’s freakin’ HARD?), and the show’s numbers will drop, and it will be canceled. But for that time, the gifted contestants will get exposure, and work. And not all of the kids will forget – a few of ‘em will get hooked, and keep the art alive.

Somebody should produce a reality competition for aspiring novelists. Yeah, I know, it sounds boring – but so is sitting around a failing campfire in the rain on the other side of some island from the resort, in theory. You’ve got to spice it up, with the drinking and the raging battles of ego and the crippling bouts of depression, and when a contestant is voted off each week, they’ll be dispatched in a manner from classic or pop or cult lit, like being eaten by a clown or a shark, or being shot by a double-crossing femme fatale, or being walled up inside a wine cellar alive, or whatever.

Some of you guys know – and by “some of you,” I mean those of you who are either married to or play in a band with one of us – that Lakeland tattoo artist Jack “J.R.” Sprouse and I have been working on an idea for a series of children’s books for a while now.

They’re not really standard children’s books, per se. They’re readers, meant to be shared by the parents who are fans of the material with their kids from the time they’re old enough to hear ‘em and ask questions until the kids can enjoy the stories and illustrations and vocabulary themselves. We’re really psyched, the main idea came from J.R. and his wife Cindy one night over cocktails a couple of years ago and I was immediately motivated to do something with it.

Well, the first story and part of the second are done, and J.R. has settled on a great, stark, evocative drawing style to use, and the first few drafts of illustrations have flown back and forth, and I think we’re just about ready to roll with pitching this thing. Not sure exactly where it will end up, our dream is to do the whole series of nine books – a school year’s worth of stories for the characters – with a publisher that will go whole hog, with reading-comprehension games, let us read in schools and get the kids to play the parts of the characters, totally do it up. But if it doesn’t happen, we’ll definitely find a way to get the stories and the fun out there.

Not my opinion. Fact. The Best. THE BEST. You can’t argue with science:

1. Haute Tension, 2003

This is why you shouldn’t repress your feelings.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006

Somebody said Guillermo Del Toro’s gorgeous, heartbreaking tale of cold realities, and the lengths an imaginative young girl goes to in order to escape them, isn’t a horror film. Somebody is thinking way too literally.

3. Let The Right One In, 2008

Have you met ANYONE yet who’s seen it, and wasn’t completely floored? Apparently, there’s an American remake in the works. Obviously, it’s going to suck donkey bladder.

4. Otis, 2008

Horror-comedy actually done right, which is to say with a mix of wit both super-broad and bone dry.

5. The Descent, 2005

Yeah, they should’ve gone with Marshall’s clearer downer ending, but still, the tension and the fight scenes are aces.

6. The Ring, 2002

The ONLY PG-13 horror film worth a damn so far. (I haven’t seen Drag Me to Hell yet. Fingees crossed.)

7. Dark Water (Honoguarai mizu no soko kara), 2002

The remake, featuring Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth and Pete “Kobayashi” Postlethwaite, isn’t bad, but it can’t touch the climax of the original.

8. Slither, 2006

Another example of how deft writing, acting and direction can produce something that rides the line between horror and comedy, and not come off as obvious, self-conscious suckage.

9. The Orphanage, 2007

Producer Del Toro’s influential fingerprints are all over director Juan Antonio Bayona’s heart-wrencher, and that’s totally fine.

10. Coraline, 2009

Not a horror movie? What? Sure it is – it’s a horror movie for kids. Some of the best fairy tales are. Unnerving and absolutely stunning.

Looking forward to Pontypool and Raimi’s Return more than anything else right now.

1. “Radio,” Alkaline Trio

2. “Mr. November,” The National

3. “Love Removal Machine,” The Cult

4. Anything by The Deadly Fists of Kung Fu

5. “Waiting Room,” Fugazi

6. “I Got Drunk,” Uncle Tupelo

7. “One-Armed Scissor,” At The Drive-In

8. “Gimme Back My Dog,” Slobberbone

9. “Anodyne,” Military Junior

10. “Gun,” Soundgarden

Yeah, so what’s Nightflowers? It’s an e-book of short stories I’ve been working on for a while now. Nine stories or so, ranging from the old, short and somewhat goofy “Midnight in The Garden of Goods & Eatin’” up now on the free reads page to longer and newer stuff like “The Knife Salesman,” which is about, erm, a knife salesman, and “Cards,” which is about, erm, immortality.

Hoping to have it up here exclusively in a couple of months for five bucks, PayPal only, and two dollars of each sale will go to a literacy charity to be named as soon as I decide which one. The idea is to try out a little grassroots DIY thing; ideally, we’ll make enough to publish a limited-edition trade paperback of the book, and a cool non-profit that promotes reading will get a nice chunk of change along the way.

Thanks to the genius friends I abuse and depend upon to get tech-style stuff done, the Free Reads page is up and running, with a couple of things for you to check out while I get back to work finishing up Nightflowers. More on that later, in the meantime, please enjoy and comment.

Welcome.

I’m Ravis. I’m a writer. This is my new website. We’re still in beta right now, but what the hell, the damn thing’s up, so why not let’s use it. Come back often for news, new writing, news of new writing, and whatever else I have the time/inclination to prattle on about/support/impugn.

Thanks

EditRed is a great online writer’s workshop/networking site upon which I stumbled a few years ago. I generally don’t go in for those things – time suckage, petty squabbles and all that – but I immediately made some friends and got some pretty insightful feedback from members, so I hung around. (It didn’t hurt that I read some really great short stories for free on the site.)

The site tries to put out a couple of books a year when the funds are available, and a flash-fiction piece I submitted for one of their themed competitions made it into the collection that resulted. The anthology is a collection of short stories, poetry and nonfiction called City Smells; my story is called “The Ferryman.” It’s about … barter, I guess, and how when it comes down to it, all we really have to fall back on are our talents.

Anyway, if you’re down, you can order a copy of City Smells through this site’s BUY link. It’s up there on the right.