Coming Soon:

'COMING SOON' - THE BESTIALITY-RIGHTS MOVIE (NTSC Version)
$19.99
This film is SHOCKING, HILARIOUS AND BRILLIANT!

I've seen critics and fans compare it to David Lynch, South Park, Nietzsche, Svankmajer or Pasolini, but this film is absolutely original and groundbreaking!

COMING SOON is definitely going to be discussed for years to come, and not only because of the "Bestiality-Rights revolution" it has apparently sparked (that's a good reason too :-)) but because of the new genre this film establishes. It can't be described in words - and I've read about 30 reviewers who've tried - it simply must be experienced. The way I see it, Sir Tijn Po introduces a new way of using cinema and comedy to deal with deep, controversial issues. I eagerly await future films from this young (?) maestro!

It's also available through VIDEO ON DEMAND: 'COMING SOON' by Sir Tijn Po (NTSC)

If you have a PAL-compatible player I'd recommend the PAL DVD since it also features the original Czech version of the film with English subtitles - which some may find more emotionally accessible: 'COMING SOON' by Sir Tijn Po (PAL Version).

Once you've seen COMING SOON, I'd recommend Pasolini's SALO Salo - Criterion Collection as well as CALIGULA Caligula (The Unrated Edition).

Is Jesus Coming Soon?
$9.95
For the record I'm pretty sure that Amazon.com's listing of the page numbers is wrong, this book is more than 48 pages.

In any case, this book is great and I think everyone should read it. It's a fairly basic introduction to eschatology based mostly on Matthew 24, but what you read here may very well totally change your thinking on the subject. This book is completely different than the "Left Behind" / "Late, Great Planet Earth" type sensationalism that unfortunately dominates eschatology these days.

Maybe this book should be titled (or subtitled) "Why Everything you Know about Eschatology is Wrong" or something to that effect because there's so much confusion on the topic. In any case, DeMar's answer to the title question is "no, Jesus is probably NOT returning soon." He shows that the Bible doesn't give us ANY signs leading up to the Second Coming (so not even Hal Lindsay knows the day or the hour, or even the week or month!), that Matthew 24 has absolutely nothing to do with the Second Coming, and that the Great Tribulation already happened. Not only does he show these from Matthew 24, he shows that his position is actually more in sync with church history than the "Left Behind" type eschatology (which can only be traced back to the 1830's; partial preterism, however, can be traced back way further. I've traced it back at least as far as Eusebius and it probably predated him).

I strongly recommend this little book, especially for those who are confused about eschatology. Or for those who think they know what the Bible teaches about eschatology or are absolutely convinced that those things I listed above are wrong. I would still suggest you read the book, as, even if you don't agree with the conclusion in the end, you will still find it challenging.

I found this book a great alternative to the fanciful and speculative end-time sensationalism that so dominate eschatology today. DeMar's main concern here is how dispensational eschatology is crippling Christianity by destroying peoples' willingness to do long-term planning and engage the culture in any meaningful way, not to mention how dispensationalism's constant date-setting continues to undermine Christianity's credibility. Keep this in mind: every date set up this point has one thing in common - THEY HAVE ALL BEEN WRONG. Dispensationalist prophecy "experts" have CONSISTENTLY been getting it wrong for a VERY long time, and yet people still listen to them in spite of their bad track record. Not only have they always been wrong, but every generation has been using the exact same Bible verses to justify the idea that Jesus is returning in their generation.

In any case, read this book. You won't regret it.

Game, Set - Muuurder?
$0.99

Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative
$14.00

Generally speaking, you know you're in dangerous territory when an author, ((especially one who breaks narrative illusion and addresses the reader directly)), takes up the theme of writer's block. Lots of times it really does mean that a writer has nothing to write about. That said, novels about writing novels--or not writing them--are usually only of interest to other novelists. So *Coming Soon* was of some interest to me. But for the most part *Coming Soon* reads like a novel written by an author who never quite did get over his writer's block--but managed to turn out 400 pages all the same.

Don't get me wrong. I wanted to like this book--there being all too few "literary," not to mention experimental, authors getting widespread publishing opportunities in the current American publishing scene. And I am quite a fan of Barth's *Lost in the Funhouse*--see my review for details. So *Coming Soon* was a great disappointment to me. It's certainly not--in the oft-used phrased--a novel by a master at the height of his powers.

Barth employs a favorite postmodern device in *Coming Soon* --the story within the story within the story. But when the core story isn't all that interesting it's only four time less interesting to have it told on four different levels. The plot, in short, is this: An old writer approaching the millennial year 2000, John Barth himself, and a young aspiring writer who reminds the old Barth of a young Barth find themselves racing each other--and the millennium--to write a novel that takes up the theme of old Barth's first novel as a young writer, *The Floating Opera.* At the same time, a local Chesapeake theater troupe mounts a musical about the old days of the showboat which was the basis for Barth's first novel and now, ironically, his last. So it is that Barth at the same time parodies and comments upon postmodernism and its tendency to loot the past and make a pastiche of the present, forming an intricate web of references and cross-references that in themselves seem to mean something...but what? The fact that Barth is looting his own past--both fictional and nonfictional--only adds to the irony, significance, brilliance, confusion?

Well, that all depends. In the case of *Coming Soon* the result is what I found to be rather a lot of unwelcome detail about the showboats that plied the Chesapeake in days-gone-by, as well as the history behind the novel-turned-Broadway hit-turned Hollywood film that originally celebrated these showboats--Showboat!--and that inspired Barth's first--and now his last--novel, *The Floating Opera.* There's a purposely over-obvious and ironically ham-handed Biblical link between the showboat and Noah's Ark, Y2K and Revelation, but its no less over-obvious and ham-handed just because it's supposed to be. There's a lot of doubling of characters and conflicts of past and present, of young Barth and old Barth, all of it way too inextricably tangled to untangle, the typical postmodern Moebius strip type of storytelling that can be so enchanting if its about anything you remotely care about. Here it isn't.

The overall Ur-theme of *Coming Soon* is the dying of the old--showboats, live theater, novels, celebrated novelists--and the morphing of the new forms--TV, internet, electronic fiction, brash new literary provocateurs. Old Barth and his print novel vs. Young Barth and his e-fiction. This is a potentially fruitful subject, but here it's so blighted by interminable discussions of sailing, of the history of the showboat, of matters so tangential and of so little interest or necessity that it's as if Barth were doing a kind of authorial version of pacing to and fro while waiting for ideas to come, as if, for instance, in the middle of this review I started to describe in minute detail the chair I was sitting upon while writing this review as if by doing so I were making my point. There are huge barren stretches of *Coming Soon* that read in exactly this way.

There was a moment at around page 350 when I actually thought, okay give it another star, Barth is going to pull tight all the loose strings of this story and really make something powerful out of it, but then his grip faltered and it all sort of unraveled again into the same rather rambling mess it was before.

Barth is at his best when he writes wistfully of his own mortality--he's turning 70 in *Coming Soon* --but then he's back to his "rollicking" plot and the tedium practically crushes the interest out of you. Oh there are some sparkling moments, a few laughs, but, for the most part, the hallmark clever wordplay and literary jokes are flaccid and fall flat. *Coming Soon*? I'd say, that like the Y2K apocalypse, it never quite arrived.