Thomas Burchfield's Blog
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May.11.2013
It took some months before amiable Wyomingite Craig Johnson, who friended me out of the Twitter/Facebook blue (as have David Morrell and Peter Straub), emerged to me from the Internet’s blizzard as the novelist Craig Johnson, the one behind Longmire, the very popular, well-regarded, A&E...
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May.03.2013
When I read fiction, I’m seeking experience apart from mine; an island, a ship, afloat from everyday life (wondrous as the everyday can be in its own terms.) I want a trip to the other side of what I know.
I’m on a quest for adventures that I wouldn’t otherwise have (or even want to have)....
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Apr.16.2013
Heavens to Bilbo, Peter Jackson does go on, doesn’t he? Ever since his masterful Heavenly Creatures (1994), he seems to resist the idea that brevity might be the soul of excitement. Take, for now, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (now available on DVD).
I like parts of many of Jackson’s...
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Apr.09.2013
[Spoilers ahead.]
It happened last year, and it has happened again this year: I have stumbled on a book by a favorite author that stumbles; a book that’s not as good as other of his works that I’ve read so far; a narrative that, for a few reasons, did not work for me, and I suspect may not...
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Apr.02.2013
It was time for my annual trip through Western literature’s canon, and so, because its settings and themes are similar to those smoldering under my work-in-progress, Butchertown,
I pulled on my reading boots and took an epic hike through The Inferno of Dante (or Dante’s Inferno as it’s more...
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Mar.26.2013
For research into my next novel, Butchertown, I recently read Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 by Ann Hagedorn. It’s an often exciting and moving book about America during the year after World War I ended, when American troops returned to an even more turbulent country than the...
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Mar.05.2013
The Master, the acclaimed Paul Thomas Anderson film (newly available on DVD), stoked my gray cells without really stoking my enthusiasm when I saw it last Fall. I admired the movie but didn’t embrace it. You may also feel gnawed by dissatisfaction, but this movie is certainly worth your...
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Feb.24.2013
Right after this, I switched over to PBS . . . .
I AM NOT WATCHING THE OSCARS
(and You Can’t Make Me!)
By Thomas Burchfield
I said it last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.
And I will say it again:
I am not watching the Oscars.
...
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Feb.02.2013
When the fresh-faced kid behind the box-office window offered him the matinee senior discount, Burchfield told him to go to hell.
“Screw you, buddy!” the cashier yelled. Burchfield took the ticket, spat on the window and entered the theater lobby.
Burchfield stopped at the snack counter,...
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Jan.26.2013
The Spirit of the Beehive
Do your soul a favor and watch this eerie, touching, and beautiful Spanish drama from 1973, a film I have been pursuing for years and have only recently caught up with.
Set in 1940 after the end of the Spanish Civil War, The Spirit of the Beehive spins a strange, unique...
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Jan.11.2013
Watching The Dark Knight Rises (now out on DVD) the other night, I flashed on a more precise understanding of what we mean by the term “comic book movie.”
I also understood a little more why these movies fail to enchant many critics and moviegoers, including me (who may find...
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Jan.05.2013
A PROMISE UNKEPT
One of the resolutions I made at the end of 2011 was to read and review more contemporary novels. It wasn’t so much a matter of shunning the old and the great: I was facing the fact that, as my audience has grown (by over 100%; my page views totaled more than 55,000...
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Dec.21.2012
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Dec.08.2012
It’s a green time for the espionage genre (at least to me: I read more spy novels these days than I do the other genres.) Another James Bond film romps across screens to friendly applause on that venerable figure’s 50th cinematic anniversary. TV and cable networks are streaming spy sagas on...
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Dec.01.2012
HEADHUNTERS
Hollywood—meaning the industry located in Southern California—long ago lost its touch with genre movies, the kind of films at which the system once excelled. Since 1991’s Total Recall, the Big Studio approach to genre films has too often been: “Make ‘em loud, make ‘em...
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"Dragon's Ark" is not a book to read just before nodding off. Unless you're on very good terms with your nightmares.”
—David Corbett, Author of "Do They Know I'm Running?"
About Thomas
I'm a professional freelance editor now living in Oakland, California. I've written many articles, essays and reviews for such publications as Swing Time Magazine and Posthoc.com. My first novel Dragon's Ark, a contemporary Dracula tale set...
Connections
Causes Thomas Burchfield Supports
The Nature Conservancy; Africare; Capitol Public Radio
Thomas’s Favorite Books
Ghost Story, Gravity's Rainbow, Pale Fire, Dracula, The Richard Stark novels, Red Harvest, the short fiction of Ramsey Campbell, The Grapes of Wrath, Conjure...
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