Loretta Chase, The Devil's Delilah

I actually had a bit of a hard time getting into the book at first, because I wasn't really accustomed to the narrative voice. After only having read one Loretta Chase, I wasn't sure if the narrator was being funny or not. I mean, I could tell, but I don't think I was in the right mindset or something to immediately fall into it.

That said, I had giant amounts of fun, and I adore the narrative voice and all the "meanwhile.."'s.

I also adore the Devil... does he have his own book?

And finally we have a nice, bookish hero who is decidedly not rakish or anything of the sort, a rather hoyden-ish Delilah, and assorted mishaps trying to recover her father (the Devil)'s memoirs, which, if published, may ruin her chance at a respectable marriage.

Links:
- rilina's review

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His Girl Friday is awesome ^_^. I want to watch more old movies now. I wish people still made romantic comedies like this, in which there's not much action going on physically, but the dialogue is just wonderful.

Cary Grant's character is a total sleaze, but somehow still lovable, and I really, really love the first dialogue/argument/talk between him and Hildy. And it's not actually that romantic -- it definitely falls more heavily on the comedy side of the scale, but I really do wish that the romantic comedies they have now were remotely like this.

I loved the verbal sparring and how completely Hildy knew Walter (Cary Grant) so she kept trying to spoil his little schemes.

I hate doing the whole "everything in the past was so much better!" route, but from what I've seen of the older romantic comedies, it kind of seems true. I don't know. I think it's because they somehow show that the people falling in love are smart and have some knowledge about themselves, and they're funny because the people who made them understood that no matter how smart a person is, love makes them do incredibly stupid things. It's almost more about the wonderful folly of love than about love itself.

I think that's where a lot of the romantic comedies today (esp. the teenage ones) go wrong -- it's almost as though the people making them assume only stupid people fall in love! Either that, or they don't show falling in love as this crazy, fun thing in which you lose all control. And yes, it cuts both ways, but still. For some, it's as though they go through so much trouble trying to prove that the love in question makes sense and is rational (demonstrating the sharing of the same interests, demonstrating that the guy is as feminist as the girl, etc.) that they forget that most of the time, it doesn't make any sense, and it just happens. I think some current romance novels forget about that too in the interest of trying to show why the two people would fall in love.

Maybe that's a bit of a backlash from all the why would she fall for him? He's an abusive bastard! type things.

Hellboy

Keep in mind that I have never read or even heard of the comic prior to this.

I thought that it was an absolutely gorgeous movie, and I adore Hellboy the character completely. He reminds me of Buffy. I mean, if Buffy were big and red and demony and smoked a cigar.

It was such a pretty movie -- the cinematography, the colors. Liz Sherman on fire. Some of the shots looked like they were taken from comic panels in the best possible way. And I loved loved loved the world of Hellboy, the whole occult thing. Plus, evil magic Nazis! I think one of my bulletproof kinks is magic mixed with technology set before the technological age. Or magic in the post-industrialist, pre-urban fantasy stage. Or retro-technology, like the robot in Iron Giant. Anyway, I like that hazy period between the past and the present, when things are still being modernized.

It was also a really frustrating movie too. It was so gorgeous, but the plot was pretty dumb. I think in general self-replicating demon thingys are not scary, because scariness is not really reliant upon sheer number (see: S7 Buffy and the ubervamps of doom). And I got this sense that there was so much more, that there were acres of mythology about the Gods of Chaos and of other dimensions and of men whose blood dried up to sand, and all I got to see was the hunting down and exploding of some monsters!

( Spoilers )

So my main problem was with the plot, which I felt was too fast and not that thought out. I adored the characters -- loved small moments between Hellboy and Liz at the asylum, loved the masked evil Nazi, loved Hellboy's relationship with his dad. I also loved Hellboy and the director of the FBI finally kind of accepting each other.

So now I really want to read the comic, because I think it can go more into the world and the mythology, and it has lots more space to develop the characters. Except it's driving me nuts because I can't find a single fan site! Every time I google, only movie sites come up!

I found the official site, except they don't even have something like pictures of the characters and a small synopsis! I can't figure out what's going on at all, and I have no idea where to start looking. And right now I am too cheap to buy the comic -- may end up camping out in a bookstore to read it and see if I like it.