Nick Cave + The Road = Legendary

Nick Cave (of Bad Seeds fame), has been tapped to score the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The film, directed by John Hillcoat (who also lensed Cave's writing debut, The Proposition), and starring Viggo Mortensen, has been in film release purgatory ever since it was handed to Miramax.

The book is phenomenal, and follows a father and son (think Lone Wolf here) as they traipse across the burnt carcass of a post-apocalyptic America. It's dystopic, but believable. McCarthy's sentences are curt, yet brutal, and the novel is absolutely harrowing.

Cave, who scored The Proposition, and the equally underrated The Assassination of Jesse James, has a knack for under-produced but nonetheless haunting scores. I'm hoping he combines what he did on Jesse with something like the nails-on-chalkboard sounds that Johnny Greenwood accomplished on last year's There Will be Blood.

Below are a few of my favorites.

The Keys to NBC’s Kingdom

Well, actually, NBC doesn’t have much of a Kingdom anymore, so to speak. They’re more like a war-torn Kandahar. Come to think of it, I don’t even think they have a serviceable drama on-air. Heroes has turned into a walking punch-line (two of the top stars are looking to break their contracts), ER is done this year, Night Rider got a full season pick up (?!?!) and next year, the Monday through Thursday 10 PM block is going to be usurped by Jay Leno. Could this be the end of an era? It certainly looks like a possibility, especially with the quality dramas shifting more and more to pay and cable channels (Mad Men, Damages, and Breaking Bad, just to name a few).

I’ve recently come across a number of viral marketing posters for a new NBC show called Kings, and they’ve intrigued me enough to do some digging (the posters described a new government, complete with a butterfly logo, which I assume symbolizes said country). After some digging, I’m cautiously optimistic. The pilot to Kings is directed by Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend), a technically adequate filmmaker, who has a knack for directing Manhattan (which is a good thing, since it’s where the show is filmed). The stellar Ian McShane (who played the fabulously foul-mouthed Al Swearengen on HBO’s Deadwood) plays Silas, the king of a world not dissimilar to our own, but with some rather large tweaks. Shiloh (a city, which, from the previews, looks an awful lot like Manhattan), has been at war with a rival nation for years, and when the King’s son is rescued by David Sheppard (Christopher Egan), the David-and-Goliath tale begins. I’ve also read that Bryan Cox has been cast (for a four episode arc, as the rival country’s king), as well as Macaulay Culkin, so the show looks to be shaping up quite nicely. This sort of alternate timeline type story can contain a wealth of potential, and while doing my research I found myself thinking back to when I heard about LOST’s high concept before its initial airing (and look how well that turned out).

At least it’s a risk; something, that lately, NBC has taken very few of. I know serialized dramas are a tough sell, but I hope, in the end, that the gamble pays off.

Multiple Pulitzer Prize Winning Novelists Say the Darndest Things

Micheal Chabon. Oh how you confound me. After reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, and The Final Solution, I thought you might become one of my favorite authors. Your flowery, lavish, 19th-century language, angered yet intrigued me.

But then I read Gentlemen of the Road. I get that you’re delving into different genres (with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union it was speculative fiction), and here you’re doing it wholeheartedly, and clearly with a great deal of joy. I enjoyed the book quite a bit – a swashbuckling adventure, filled with sword fights, double crosses, and a good deal of humor. My only problem is the afterward, which reads like a good old fashioned smack in the face. I’m going to quote you directly here:

“And if you still think there’s something funny in the idea of Jews with swords, look at yourself, right now: sitting in your seat on a jet airplane, let’s say, in your un-earthly orange polyester and neoprene shoes, listening to digital music, crawling across the sky from Charlotte to Las Vegas, and hoping to lose yourself – your home, your certainties, the borders and barriers of your life – by means of a bundle of wood pulp, sewn and glued and stained with blobs of pigment and resin. People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that. It makes me want to laugh.”

The only thing I can think here is that Mr. Chabon is somehow embarrassed to be writing a genre novel. It’s something he discusses in detail in his book of essays (in regards to science fiction in general), and it constantly seems as if he's defending himself.

Why he feels the need, after two Pulitzers, astounds me. The paragraph I cited, which ends Gentlemen, is akin to a server at McDonald’s calling you a fat ass after you order a Big Mac.

I feel a little used.