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© 1999-2010 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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War's dirty little secret is that some men love it. I'm trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat. |
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You Might Be From New York City If... You live in a building with a larger population than most American towns. |
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Knut Should be Castrated, Animal Rights Group Says As if Berlin Zoo's polar bear star Knut hasn't had enough upheaval in his life, animal rights group PETA demanded on Tuesday that he should be castrated to avoid him inbreeding with his girlfriend Giovanna. The two apparently share the same grandfather. The demand is likely to outrage his many fans. David Crossland |
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March 2010: Movie Reviews - The Jungle Book ● The AristoCats ● Downhill Racer ● Shutter Island ● Up in the Air
February 2010: Movie Reviews - Mary Poppins ● Gold Diggers of 1933 ● The Lady in the Lake ● Phffft! ● Temple Grandin ● One Hundred and One Dalmatians ● The Sword in the Stone ● The Dam Busters ● Michael Palin: Great Railway Journeys ● New York: A Documentary Film ● Lady and the Tramp ● Sleeping Beauty ● Departures (Okuribito) ● Operation Mad Ball ● Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) ● Alice in Wonderland ● Peter Pan (1953) ● Army of Shadows ● Broadway Melody of 1936 ● The Out-of-Towners
January 2010: Movie Reviews - Blockheads ● The Freshman (1925) ● Mr. Toad's Wild Ride ● Night Must Fall ● Under the Yum Yum Tree ● Cinderella ● Breezy ● The Hurt Locker ● A Thousand Clowns ● Vitus ● So Dear To My Heart ● The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ● The Americanization of Emily ● Darling ● Home From the Hill ● The Informer ● The Major and the Minor ● Nine ● The Women (1939) ● World's Greatest Dad ● Fun and Fancy Free ● Melody Time ● It's Complicated ● The Twilight Sage: New Moon ● 2010 ● American Violet ● Little Dieter Needs to Fly ● The Women (2008)
December 2009: Movie Reviews - Song of the South ● Is Anybody There? ● Sherlock Holmes (2009) ● Invictus ● Avatar ● Sherlock Holmes ● The Ref ● Singin' in the Rain ● The Three Caballeros ● Make Mine Music ● A Woman in Berlin ● Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans ● An American in Paris ● Joe Versus the Volcano ● Bambi ● Saludos Amigos ● Victory Through Air Power ● Transsiberian ● The American Friend (Der amerikanische freund) ● In the Good Old Summertime ● The Shop Around the Corner ● You've Got Mail ● 12 ● A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) ● The Navigator ● The Reluctant Dragon ● Dumbo ● Purple Noon (Plein soleil) ● Things to Come ● Fantasia ● The Blind Side ● The Box ● I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále) ● The International ● Pieces of April ● Trains, Planes, and Automobiles ● A Song Is Born
November 22, 2009: VarleyNews: Winners of the 2009 Robert A. Heinlein Award for "Outstanding body of work in the field of literature": John Varley and Joe Haldeman!
November 16, 2009: Saturday Night at the Toons! Lee and I have decided to make our way through my collection of every Walt Disney animated feature beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
November 7, 2009: WESTERCON 63: Lee and I have just bought our memberships to Westercon 63, and we plan to attend. Westercon is the oldest science fiction convention in the west, and is a lot of fun. It will be held at the Pasadena Hilton on July 1-4, 2010. See you there!
November 2009: Movie Reviews - Pinocchio ● 2012 ● Camille ● Helvetica ● Strike (Strajk - Die Heldin von Danzig) ● Ball of Fire ● Adventureland ● The Bad News Bears (2005) ● Mr. Baseball ● The Final Season ● The Scout ● Astro Boy ● A Christmas Carol (2009) ● The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) ● Assassination of a High School President ● O'Horton ● Sherlock Holmes ● Taking Woodstock ● Paranormal Activity ● Law Abiding Citizen ● Damn Yankees ● Eight Men Out ● Major League ● The Bad News Bears ● A League of Their Own ● Game 6
October 27, 2009: VarleyNews: IRONTOWN BLUES by John Varley is #3 on io9's list of 12 Unfinished SF Novels We Wish We Could Read
October 19, 2009: Hollyweird: Trailer Trash - When we went to see Julie & Julia, we were treated to the usual trailers before the movie.
October 2009: Movie Reviews - Bull Durham ● The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings ● Field of Dreams ● The War ● Every Little Step ● The Pride of the Yankees ● Bang the Drum Slowly ● Take Me Out to the Ball Game ● The Stepfather (2009) ● Zombieland ● Where the Wild Things Are ● The Invention of Lying ● The National Parks: America's Best Idea
September 8, 2009: VarleyYarn - Old Dogs I recently read a story about the death of what her owner had proclaimed to be the “World’s Oldest Dog.” She was a 21-year-old wire-haired dachshund named Chanel, and for a while she’d been quite the celebrity, awarded a certificate by Guinness, appearing on television shows, the subject of a large number of newspaper articles.
September 2009: Movie Reviews - Surrogates ● The Proposal ● All About Eve ● The Black Book (Zwartboek) ● Easy Virtue ● In Which We Serve ● Jennifer's Body ● Whiteout ● Near Dark ● Paris 36 (Faubourg 36) ● Red Road ● Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies ● The Last Picture Show ● Texasville ● The Soloist ● Thief ● Alien Trespass ● Bedazzled ● Sunshine Cleaning ● The Final Destination ● District 9 ● State of Play (2009) ● Final Destination ● Final Destination 2 ● Final Destination 3
August 2009: Movie Reviews - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ● My Sister's Keeper ● Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth ● The Mouse That Roared ● The Ugly Truth ● The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) ● The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite ) ● The Great Buck Howard ● Hail the Conquering Hero ● The Lady Eve ● Julie & Julia ● Coraline ● Dead Like Me: Life After Death ● Aliens in the Attic ● Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ● The Great McGinty ● Inkheart ● The Life of Birds ● Life in Cold Blood ● The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu ● The Two Jakes ● Hobson's Choice ● Big Man Japan ● Inglourious Basterds ● A Perfect Getaway ● The Garden ● Buck Privates ● Cabaret ● Houdini ● Some Like It Hot
August 3, 2009: Hollyweird: Jules Verne in the Last Remaining Seats
July 17, 2009: Movie Reviews - Son of Rambow ● The Terrorist (Theeviravaathi) ● Waltz With Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) ● Public Enemies ● The Hangover
July 12, 2009: We are really going to miss Charles N. Brown.
July 6, 2009: VarleyNews - How Shall We Honor Thee, O Michael?
June 2009: Movie Reviews - Juggernaut ● Murder on the Orient Express ● The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ● Imagine You and Me ● Outsourced ● O ● Othello ● Men in Black ● Ronin ● Seven Pounds ● Baraka ● Déjà Vu ● Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground ● The Celebration (Festen) ● The Party ● Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment ● The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) ● Titus ● Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and X-Men Origins: Wolverine ● Land of the Lost and Drag Me to Hell ● North by Northwest ● The Man on Lincoln's Nose ● Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round ● The Dish ● Taking Chance ● Up ● K-19: The Widowmaker ● The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) ● Defiance ● The Mouse on the Moon ● It's Trad, Dad! ● Charley Varrick ● Robin and Marian ● State of Play ● Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits) ● The President's Analyst ● Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ ● Ben-Hur ● The Birth of a Nation ● Hell's Angels ● Zack and Miri Make a Porno ● Last Chance Harvey
May 2009: At the Drive-In - Terminator Salvation and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past ● Angels & Demons ● Obsessed ● Star Trek (2009) ● Monsters vs. Aliens ● The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ● Destination Moon ● Nickelodeon ● Christmas in July ● The More The Merrier ● Project Moon Base ● Tell No One ● Walk, Don’t Run ● Frost/Nixon ● Silk Stockings
May 20, 2009: Dismal Thoughts: Part 2 - The Little Helicopters That Couldn't
April 30, 2009: VarleyYarn: Dismal Thoughts: Part 1. I started writing this two months ago, then I got distracted by other things … like writing my new novel! Hurray! But I’m done for the day, and have a little spare time here, so I thought I’d update it, and then post it.
April 2009: Movie Reviews: Nude on the Moon ● The Palm Beach Story ● Priceless ● The Reader ● Grey Gardens (2009) ● FTA ● I've Loved You So Long ● Ruthless People ● Sullivan's Travels ● In the Electric Mist ● The Miracle of Morgan's Creek ● Strictly Ballroom ● The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency ● Religulous ● When Worlds Collide (1951) ● Like Water for Chocolate
April 18, 2009: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where I made my first sale way back in 1974, is celebrating its 60th year by reprinting some of the classic stories it has published over the years. In the June/July issue one of those stories is my novelette, "Retrograde Summer." While it sort of makes me wince to think of any of my stories as "classic" (I'm not that old, am I? Yes, you are ...), I'm honored. There is also a very complimentary introduction by Keith Kahla. Be sure to pick up a copy!
April 16, 2009: George Harrison Gets a Star. We figured the crowds might be rather large for this one...
April 15, 2009: The Miracles Get a Star. It was the 50th anniversary of Motown...
April 14, 2009: Ex-Spector-ated!!!! Finally, finally ... The Descanso Gardens. Easter Sunday, and it felt like a sin to try to work. It was 70 degrees outside, the sun was shining, the sky was blue as an Easter egg.
March 2009: Movie Reviews: Burnt by the Sun ● Happy-Go-Lucky ● Knowing ● Taken ● How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ● Body Heat ● Extras (2005) ● Flash of Genius ● Four Weddings and a Funeral ● Rachel Getting Married ● Synecdoche, New York ● Australia ● Extras ● The Hunting Party ● No Way Out ● West Side Story ● White Sands
February 25, 2009: The Alex. I seldom buy Los Angeles magazine. If you’re seeking a place where you can pay $100 for a plate of sushi, this slick mag rag is where to start looking. Movie Reviews: The Philadelphia Story ● Changeling ● Frozen River
February 20, 2009: Shorts! Every year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a one-night-only showing of all the Oscar-nominated short subjects, animated and live action, a few days before the ceremony.
February 19, 2009: I have just sold the German rights to Red Thunder to Verlagsgruppe Random House GMBH, in München. If any of you out there like the book and sprechen sie Deutsch, I’d be happy to send you a copy if you’ll read it and tell me if it’s a good translation! I don’t know when that will be, but they are obligated to publish the book within two years. 7 Movie Reviews: Doubt ● The Duchess ● Milk ● Vicky Christina Barcelona ● The Visitor ● The Wrestler ● Ghost Town
February 18, 2009: 2 Movie Reviews: The Bank Job ● Sleuth (2007)
February 6, 2009: 6 Movie Reviews: Becoming Jane ● Long Way Round ● Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium ● Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman ● The Uninvited ● Valkyrie
January 2009: 5 Movie Reviews: Encounters at the End of the World ● The High Sign ● One Week ● The Saphead ● Slumdog Millionaire ● The Caine Mutiny ● Cassandra's Dream ● Eagle Eye ● Revolutionary Road ● Quick Change ● Go West ● The Happening ● The Paleface ● The Scarecrow ● Talk To Me ● Traitor ● The Diamond Arm ● Gran Torino ● Speed Racer ● Steelyard Blues ● Yes Man
December 2008: Movie Reviews: Burn After Reading ● Monty Python and the Holy Grail ● Run, Fatboy, Run ● Scrooged ● BURN-E ● Vanishing Point ● Without a Clue ● Trafic ● The Closet ● The Driver ● Hancock ● L.A. Story ● The Shop on Main Street ● CSNY Déjà Vu ● Expo: The Magic of the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 ● Twilight ● Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ● Clockwise ● Bolt ● Beverly Hills Chihuahua ● Cops and Robbers
December 23, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Last Disneyland We decided to make one more visit to Disneyland before our passes expired. It will probably be our last one until some of the changes are made at California Adventure.
December 3, 2008: Headline at Boing Boing: Spider Robinson reads Varley's "Persistence of Vision" Cory Doctorow: "Spider Robinson's latest podcast installment is a reading of John Varley's towering and brilliant 1979 novella, 'The Persistence of Vision,' winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. I'm a gigantic John Varley fan (especially of his short fiction) and this story may be the best of the lot."
November 21, 2008: Movie Reviews: Advise and Consent ● The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing ● Get Smart ● Quantum of Solace ● Passengers ● Our Town ● The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
November 13, 2008: A Hallowood Hollyween We had a lot of fun last Halloween at the West Hollywood street party, which happens on about mile of Santa Monica Boulevard and features some of the wildest costumes you’ll ever see, some by make-up professionals, many by WH’s vast gay community.
Movie Reviews: Full Circle with Michael Palin ● Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure ● My Sister Maria (Meine Schwester Maria) ● The Savages ● Quarantine ● Lakeview Terrace
November 3, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Part 9 I guess I’m a wimp. It wasn’t actually that hot, mid to upper 80s. I used to be able to shrug that off. Heck, when I was in the 1st and 2nd grade in Fort Worth, I’d go out and play, and hunt for horned toads, when the thermometer was well over 100.
October 31, 2008: Happy Halloween from John and Lee
October 20, 2008: Movie Reviews: Body of Lies ● Righteous Kill ● Smart People ● Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day ● Shine a Light ● Twilight Miss P. is a governess down on her luck, and through comic misadventure and a bit of guile, she becomes the social secretary for an air-headed American actress-wannabe, Delysia Lafosse (real name, Sarah Grubb).... More reviews...
October 6, 2008: Movie Reviews: Confessions of a Superhero ● Hallelujah! ● Three Ages One of the pleasures of living maybe a mile and a half from Grauman’s Chinese Theater is that we get to drive by that two-block tourist stretch quite often. There’s always something going on; in fact, that street is closed off about as much as it’s open, for one thing or another, for as much as 10 days at Oscar time. One of the things that is always happening is the costumed characters that haunt the place, to the despair of the Grauman’s owners. More reviews...
September 29, 2008: Paul and Me A few days ago we lost a great American. Entrepreneur—seller of salad dressing, pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and wine among many other things—philanthropist, devoted husband, father, and grandfather, race car driver, owner, and sponsor, founder of a dozen camps for severely ill children … and, oh yes, he acted a bit.
September 25, 2008: The Gaean Trilogy is now available at Audible.com Just got an email from Allyson Johnson that she'd finished recording DEMON. Also available at Audible.com: The Persistence of Vision and Press Enter, narrated by Peter Ganim; and The Ophiuchi Hotline, narrated by Gabra Zackman.
September 17, 2008: SF Signal asked Varley (and others) two questions: What makes a successful sf/f book adaptation? Why do adaptations sometimes fail? Varley's answer follows Jennifer Pelland's.
September 2008: Movie Reviews ● In Bruges ● Mad Hot Ballroom ● El Padrecito ● Woodstock ● Fosse ● Judgement at Nuremberg ● The Crusades
September 10, 2008: Kiss Your Ass Goodbye The first time I went to see the end of the world was June 14, 1968. The asteroid Icarus was going to come within four million miles of the Earth … or so they would have us believe. Four million miles is a gnat’s whisker in cosmic terms. There were those who said it was actually going to collide with our planet, and “they” were keeping that information from us to avoid panic.
September 6, 2008: St. Francis Dam William Mulholland was a colorful character. He was responsible for the Los Angeles Aqueduct, opened in 1913, which stole water from the Owens Valley, 233 miles to the north. It flows downhill all the way so it takes no power to operate.
September 2, 2008: Hollyweird - Rudolph ValentinoAugust 23 was the 81st anniversary of the death of Rudolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Piero Filibert Guglielmi De Valentina D’Antonguolla, in New York City, of peritonitis following a perforated ulcer.
August 4, 2008: At the Drive In ● Hellboy II: The Golden Army ● Wanted
July 18, 2008: VarleyYarn - Hillside CemeteryIt’s been a while since we went on a celebrity body hunt, so when other business called us down to the lower reaches of Culver City, we decided to visit this graveyard, which is rich in famous bones. It’s also a Jewish cemetery, like Mount Sinai, which always affords a few surprises.
June 6, 2008: John and Lee’s Guide to Disneyland - Part 8: Walt Disney TreasuresIn 2001 the Disney company released four sets of DVDs in metal boxes, called Walt Disney Treasures, and has been bringing them out yearly ever since, in what they refer to as “waves.” There are now seven waves.
June 2-3, 2008: VarleyYarn: Land of 10,000 Plates - Part 1 & Part 2A few days ago we were driving around and I stopped at a red light behind a car with a South Carolina plate. In case you haven’t seen one, it is mostly light blue with a palmetto tree in the center (South Carolina is the Palmetto State). Across the top is this legend: “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places.”
July 2, 2008 - RECORDING HAS BEGUN - Last week Audible.com began the recording of the books they bought from me. Titan, Wizard, and Demon will be read by Allyson Johnson. Read more
May 26, 2008 - I'm a Martian Citizen! About an hour ago as I write this, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander successfully delivered my novella, "In the Hall of the Martian King," to a soft landing near the Martian north pole.
May 16, 2008 - Diary of a Male Fashion Model Friday, May 2nd, 2008, 6 AM: Up early for the Americana shoot. Spend a hour in the shower. Does the beard need a trim? Nah.
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One of Lee's favorite movie reviews "I was almost hoping this movie would really, really suck, so I could just leave it at that: my shortest review! Sadly, it's more complex than that, and I'm far too verbose and opinionated to leave this one without a few remarks."
“... this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean satire but a nicely traditional combination of bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure, and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ” Russell Letson, Locus
Quotes from some of Lee's favorite Varley
movie reviews...
"His own youth
was moderately well-off until he
was 12, when his father was thrown into debtors prison and he had to
go to work in awful conditions. I can imagine him slaving away,
thinking "I'm better than all this." I'm not putting him down; who
wouldn't think like that, in that situation? But it's a major flaw
in the story for me."
"There
are only three people
in the entire film: A middle-aged macho man, his
younger wife, and a young man. They are all in a small space, both
men have something to prove, and the sexual tensions escalate in
small, precise stages. You expect an explosion, you expect a
thriller, but it's a lot more than that."
"She
moved into her own brand of rock, then into
jazz, and what I love about her is that she never
much cared if
her audience followed her or not. If the music didn’t work out she
could always go back to painting, which was her first love anyway."
"You
don’t so much watch this movie as you drop it,
like a tab of
Owsley’s Finest Acid
back in the ‘60s."
"The
most heartbreaking moments are hearing this girl
tell her sad story, of how she thought she was being
taken to London for a better life, singing in
hotels. Right, honey, now spread your legs …"
"Jake
is a self-loathing
(though he'd never admit it,
even to himself), self-described "son of a long line
of slaves." Beth is his punching bag of 18 years,
from a good traditional Maori family, who blames
herself for getting the crap beaten out of her."
"The
dialogue here
is so sharp you can cut yourself
listening to it, particularly between Nick and his
only two friends: a lobbyist for guns and another
for alcohol who call themselves the MOD (Merchants
Of Death) Squad."
"Looting
his dead body, they find some money, a gun with
one bullet it in, and a video camera. Sipho takes
the gun and Madiba takes the camera. They return to
the squalid shantytown where they live, basically
nothing but sheet metal and scrap wood and
cardboard."
"So
let me start off
by saying it was well-made,
visually interesting, the costumes were fabulously
ugly, as if the designer had actually taken a field
trip to the most degenerate corners of Hell to do
research."
"I
do accept
their controversial (at the time)
notion that non-European, Hollywood directors
(gasp!) like
Hitchcock
and
Ford
were great artists."
"Two
Mexican teens, one very rich and one middle class, get involved
with a woman 10 years older and set out in an old car for the
beach."
"The
huge majority of posters
who blasted the movie with a 0, a 1, or a 2, were male. Fans were of
both sexes, but there seems to be a certain kind of male who is
threatened by this girl..."
"
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"
"
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Read Varley
short story
online at SciFi.com
Varley's screensaver
Lee's screensaver
September 7, 1999.
Today at 2:45 PM we took our beloved dog, Cirocco, to the vet, where she
was given a lethal injection. She died in our arms and seemed to feel no
pain. I wish it was the same for myself.
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