Word: cranes
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...film, after all, is seen through the eyes of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a quiet small-town barber who manages to remain taciturn even as the film’s narrator. Instead of talking, he observes and listens. In this way, he learns that his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini). And by listening to an entrepreneur (Jon Polito) seeking funding for a dry cleaning venture, Ed decides to break out of his hair-cutting rut and put up the money...
Affectlessness is not a quality much prized in movie protagonists, but Billy Bob Thornton, that splendid actor, does it perfectly as Ed Crane, a taciturn small-town barber, circa 1949. Everyone cheats on him--his wife, his business partner, his teen lover, his hotshot lawyer. By the movie's end, he is facing his final comeuppance, deadpan sangfroid still miraculously intact. The ever astonishing Coen brothers say their film was inspired by the spirit of James M. Cain's novels about ill-fated dopes. But the Coens transcend Cain. If this were not such great American-vernacular moviemaking--hilarious...
...comes from California's Red Ink Press. Like the East Coast's Highwater Books, with which it has an affiliation, Red Ink amounts to one guy, Jordan Crane, who has discovered the gospel of high-end, handcrafted comicbooks. This issue's silk-screened cover wraps completely around and under the nearly two-inch thick contents. When completely unfolded it turns into a 30-inch long pink and yellow panorama. Underneath the cover sits a thick book with a simple, geometrical patterned cover. Pick it up and you discover underneath, nestled in a cutout hollow of thick cardboard, a smaller book...
...with a simply-drawn parable of death as a lonely houseguest whose hosts keep dying. Following that are a variety of humorous, often open-ended stories by Brian Biggs, Megan Kelso, Paul Pope and about twenty others. Each of the smaller books contains a single story, one by Jordan Crane, the other, wordless, by Kurt Wolfgang...
...Well, that’s a long question. Starting off with the early American modernists: Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane and William Carlos Williams. I would say my great loves which I can read with infinite, infinite pleasure would be Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson...