Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard and Dominic Cooper Tucson Weekly

11.11.09

For the most part, I don't like current horror movies, but then I may just be too sensitive to enjoy the pastoral image of a woman being fed into a food processor by a man in a clown mask. I undertake that this is a matter of taste, and that perfectly decent people who never compare universal health care to Nazi concentration camps can, and do, relish in spending evenings eating popcorn while looking at scenes of simulated and sexualized vivisection.

My biggest quandary with horror movies, though, is that I do like scary movies, and I just don't find horror films to be very scary. But An Course of study , which is ostensibly a cautionary romance/coming-of-age film, is terrifying. It's the most effectively frightening film I've seen since that Larry Sovereign/Tom DeLay sex video was accidentally shown on Oprah .

An Education is, nonetheless, not a horror movie. Rather, it's a disquisition of a few months in the life of Jenny Miller (Carey Mulligan), a 16-year-old girl living surface of London in the early 1960s. Her middle-class parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) fancy her to go to Oxford, because they think that's where you meet rich men who know how to pronounce "Alcibiades." Jenny follows along with their develop by studying hard, learning to play the cello so she'll have an outside interest to put on her college application, and avoiding England's most tired malady: Guinness-induced pregnancy.

Source:

Harlequin puts on the Evil Clown Mask

Religious Moly, do interesting things ever happen when you're off doing something else!

I just popped into (onto?) some of my favorite writing forums and communiqu boards, only to be confronted with the Harlequin Horizons thing.

What is this thing?

Romance giant Harlequin is putting out a new true, called Horizons. That itself odd (publishers run new lines all the time), but the details?

Harlequin has partnered with Author Solutions (that's self-importance press AuthorHouse, guys) and this ENTIRE line is going to be pay to play.

Hoo Boy!

For only $1500, give or take, any writer can now say they've been published by Harlequin, regardless of whether that manuscript is publishable, or even functionally literate. (That's the stunner/horror of vanity presses, innit?)

Of course, these books will not be on the shelf at your local bookstore - like any other vacuousness printed manuscript, all sales are left up to the writer.

Which is a HUGE stain on Harlequin's reputation. Do they want to balance a legitimate publisher, or become yet another vanity press?

Update: Apparently the backlash was violent enough that HH changed it's name to DellArt take in one's arms. Smart move guys - I bet the RWA would have had fits about a thousand vanity press writers claiming Harlequin publication!

For more conversations about the unalloyed mess:

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/want-to-self-publish-how-about-harlequin/

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162391&attendant=1

For the vanity site:

http://www.dellartepress.com/


They also seem to have taken a cue from other vanity presses by using a name that could be confused with a standard publisher (Dell) which is still incredibly underhanded - but at least Harlequin gets to try and dust off its status be known.


Update/Edit:

Even the New Yorker...

Read more...

Clown Mask News

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Joining the Sexual Overtones Xtra.ca - Dec 02, 2009 I cannot see anything — a horse keeps getting in my eyes, I am breathing heavily and feeling suffocated by my clown mask. My heart is competing with the

FIRST ON 5 UPDATE: Man Arrested For Saccorsi's Robbery WDTV - Nov 13, 2009 FIRST ON 5 UPDATE: Man Arrested For Saccorsi's RobberyState the cops say Dewitt went into the bar with a gun on October 6th wearing a clown mask, tied up the bartender, and got away with some cash. and more »

Students 'bedazzle' swine flu masks ASU The Appalachian Online - Nov 12, 2009 Students 'bedazzle' swine flu masksFlashing around in influentially decorative “clown masks,” a handful of White Residence Hall residents and assistants adorned an array of preventative masks as and more »

Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard and Dominic Cooper Tucson Weekly - Nov 11, 2009 but then I may reasonable be too sensitive to enjoy the pastoral image of a woman being fed into a food processor by a man in a clown mask. and more »