She's back, and with a warning

We know how they feel

I return from my long silence to just make sure and warn off any of you who might have been thinking of seeing The Happening. Yeah, I know; the only two people who saw Lady in the Water should really know better. I thought it might at least be an interesting genre exercise, but unfortunately it's just too heavyhanded to be enjoyable. It's not even tense; the "shocking" moments fail to shock. If you go, bring a book. (Or, as Art Boy learned from the Guardian this morning, we could just be screaming racists.)

I can, however, vigorously recommend Scott Smith's The Ruins if anyone is looking for a summer thriller. Outstanding character-based horror. I didn't see the movie, but critics uniformly recommended the book (as did Stephen King), and by gum they were right.

Update: Had a lovely email from Jamie this evening to say she's been drinking the Blogger Kool-Aid. Check out her lovely new site, Spare Candy. Jamie's a fab writer so I'm very glad to have her out from behind the MySpace curtain. Not that there's anything wrong with MySpace... please, kids, don't all come and beat me up. I'm old and tired.