Have you read Book of the New Sun? Can't really recommend it, since it's on my nightstand waiting to be read at the moment (which I will do right after I finish the last 200 pages of LotR) but I hear/hope it's great.

I remember walking along after I got that book from the library, reading that first part and repeating "what the fuck?" to myself.

Dude, animal bones? I mean, I don't want to shame anyone for their preferences or whatever, but sheesh…

Dinosaur bones ain't free, man.

You're talking about the book, right?

That's not metafiction, though.

Huh. I did not know that.

I don't know TPB really qualifies. A lot of films/books, especially fantasy-leaning ones, utilize a framework of someone telling the story to someone else, with occasional cuts back to the story being told, but they're not necessarily about storytelling (/literature/film making).

I can come up with at least one film that did a metafiction novel well: Tristram Shandy. Although the novel it was based on was a lot more free-form and the film used it as a very broad outline, throwing in a lot of stuff about film and its adaptation.

So, let me just get this straight: the naked pictures are also in the book?

"There are vampires living in modern-day New Zealand."

My favorite thing from that episode is when Bret gets a bluetooth without knowing what it is and says "Just sue them!" to no one, because that's what other people with suits and travel mugs do.

It was so flipping good!

Uh… non.

All future negative Dowd reviews:

Not a huge Miller scholar, so I wouldn't know about his other works. I've only read Sin City and most of 300.

Yeah but in the world of Sin City (the film) basically no protagonist character (or even positively depicted side character) can live. That lessens the punch for me.

It's the end result of Miller's loony, neocon moral philosophy: crime is the result of some people being evil and the best way to deal with crime is to start killing the evil people and not stop until there's none left.

He does get revenge, though, and very neat and tidy revenge at that. A lot of protagonists in Sin City don't ride to the sunset, they either die or are more or less dead, it doesn't really mean that they haven't won.

But that scene in the car where a dead, rubber-nosed Benicio del Toro is mocking him is so good. Maybe Owen's blandness grounds the scene a little so del Toro can really go to town?