REVIEW | ‘MOVIEOLA’

Des Moines author John Domini takes us to the movies in his recent story collection, 'Movieola!” The 10 stories in the collection are largely driven by their narrative voices as Domini introduces us to actors, screenwriters and others who have skin in the Hollywood game. Much of the language of the collection is peppered with industry jargon and banter, often delivered rather frantically. The pervasiveness of this approach gives these stories a certain sameness that doesn't always serve the reader well.

That said, Domini can create cinematic moments on the page and he isn't afraid to take his stories in unexpected directions to achieve this effect. In 'Blinded by Paparazzi,” for example, he introduces two characters who are making a time travel film - and may well be time traveling in reality, too. Domini delivers the disorientation moviegoers might feel when watching a character wake up with amnesia or from a vivid dream that might not be a dream at all.

The book's final story, 'Closing Credits Fun & Counterforce,” may also be its oddest, but it opens with the kind of discernment into movies and movie-going that Domini offers with regularity throughout the book:

'(L)et's watch the fantasy die. Come the credits, everyone dies, even the assassin with half a dozen passports and a dusting of anthrax in each. Everyone collapses into a set of phonemes, white on black. The trickbag turns inside out: physical trainers and personal assistants and the crew in Wardrobe and Makeup. As for the zombies, these days there's a boutique operation out in the Valley. The fantasy falls into cemetery rows, names and brand names. Except, not this time.”

From there, the story is off in a strange and dark direction, but this description of the way the credits take us from the unreal to the real with lines of type on the screen is well-crafted, exploring something common and often ignored in a way that allows us to see it anew. 'Movieola!” includes a number of these flickering moments of insight.