Film Review: Son of Rambow (2007)

Directed by: Garth Jennings

This charming coming-of-age drama was quite a surprise, an interesting story of two unlikely friends finding common ground in their estranged parents and coming together over the filming of a sequel to Rambo that they undertake (not bad for 11-year-olds). The arrival of a French exchange student and his new-found entouarge creates a seam between the two, only for it to be healed by a handful of altruistic acts. The film is delicately produced, not relying on cheap editing and heavy conflict to bring the drama, and the characters, though quite light in the plot, are colourful, interesting and have well-developed arcs. In a similar way to Slumdog Millionaire, the film never seemed to reach the deep emotional levels that it could have, but was colourful with interesting interjections (such as Will's imagination finding its way into the mise-en-scene). This may, I'm beginning to feel, be a symptom of British understatement, and perhaps I'm too seasoned to the empathy-enforcing Hollywood machine, but it takes a while to feel the sentiment. Overall an enjoyable film and well worth watching.

100 Collectible Modern Firsts

Below is a list of my most-wanted Modern First Editions.

2001 A Space Odyssey – Arthur C Clarke
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
A is for Alibi – Sue Grafton
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
A Passage to India – E M Forster
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
A Room with a View – E M Forster
A Touch of Frost – R D Wingfield
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami
A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin
After Hours / Carlito’s Way – Edwin Torres
Alexandria Quartet – Lawrence Durrell
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Anthem – Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugges – Ayn Rand
Babbling April – Graham Greene
Being and Nothingness – Jean-Paul Sartre
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
Carrie – Stephen King
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Childhood’s End – Arthur C Clarke
Crash – J G Ballard
Cup of Gold – John Steinbeck
Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
Disgrace – J M Coetzee
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K Dick
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
Dune – Frank Herbert
Dusklands – J M Coetzee
Early Japanese Stories – Kazuo Ishiguro
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Fatherland – Robert Harris
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
First Love, Last Rites – Ian McEwan
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
Hear the Wind Sing – Haruki Murakami
I am Legend – Richard Matheson
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller – Italo Calvino
In Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D H Lawrence
Last Bus To Woodstock – Colin Dexter
Laughter in the Dark – Vladimir Nabokov
Legend – David Gemmell
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Metamorphosis and Other Stories – Franz Kafka
Metroland – Julian Barnes
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
Northern Lights – Philip Pullman
Of Human Bondage – W Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
On The Beach – Nevil Shute
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Out of Africa – Isak Dinesen
P D James – Touch My Face
Pinball, 1973 – Haruki Murakami
Psycho – Robert Bloch
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson
Ringworld – Larry Niven
Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A Heinlein
Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
The Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
The Bridge – Iain Banks
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye – J D Salinger
The Collector – John Fowles
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Colour of Magic – Terry Pratchett
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
The Girl at Lion D’or – Sebastian Faulks
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
The Gormenghast Trilogy – Mervyn Peake
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
The Gunslinger – Stephen King
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula Le Guin
The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett
The Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A Heinlein
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Orchard Keeper – Cormac McCarthy
The Outsider – Albert Camus
The Plague – Albert Camus
The Plant – Stephen King
The Rachel Papers – Martin Amis
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Shining – Stephen King
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
The Stamboul Train – Graham Greene
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K Dick
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
The Wasp Factor – Iain Banks
The World According to Garp – John Irving
The World Jones Made – Philip K Dick
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Two Stories – Salman Rushdie
Ulysses – James Joyce
V – Thomas Pynchon
White Noise – Don Delillo
World of Chance – Philip K Dick

Book Review: Disgrace by J M Coetzee

J M Coetzee's 1999 Booker-winning novel about the often brutal life in South Africa is deservedly one of the major influences on his endowment of the Nobel prize. The story takes place in Cape Town and on the Eastern Cape and revolves around a university professor his later-life sexual encounters and the grissly side of African life. But it is also a message about the sociohistorical legacy of European settlement and it's fallout. Delicately written with many levels and intricacies, this is one of the best novels I have read for a long time. A detailed and wonderfully designed piece of work, describing the brutality of African settlement with the most brutal aspects of the European legacy. An excellent read.

Book Review: John Steinbeck: The Red Pony

The Red Pony is a novella broken down into four episodes outlining the maturing of a young adolescent boy. The stories all take place on the ranch belonging to the child's father. Each episode presents the child with a challenge, be it phyiscal or emotional. And with each challenge the child adjusts and responds in an independent manner and not just in reflection of his father. It's a delicately written story, with not much in the way of detail, rather it is a story with a moral. Within the space of a hundred pages we see the young child develop into a young man. An interesting read with some rarely examined growing pains. Beautifully written in Steinbeck's inimmitable prose and a stark outline of the hardships of growing up in a young California.

A Small Part

Six billion people inhabit earth. Or thereabouts. Solomon was only one person and average in all respects. He represented one six-billionth of the collective conscience of humanity. He was the guy who filled the inkpads with ink; all the inkpads in the world. The only guy. That was the part he played in it all.

Film Review: Vantage Point (2008)

Director: Pete Travis



I admit that I was not giving this film my full attention, but then it never demanded it. The film revolves around an assassination attempt of the US president in Salamanca, Spain. It's an interesting concept revolving around vieiwng the event from the perspective of several different people. The concept itself is nothing new, but it always makes for an interesting whodunnit. But whodonewhat? The individual stories each tell a certain part of the story, however this is never fully exploited, we rarely see alternate angles revealing something previously unknown or assumed, timelines seem staggered and the story really just unfolds in a linear fashion. This is nothing like the sublimity of Christopher Nolan's Memento. So, that's the primary selling point out of the way, what else is there? Well, unfortunately, very little. The film plays like an episode of 24, or Lost or Prison Break. It has that same feel, only you know you aren't in it for the long run and you don't really care, so tension is never built (except the car chase, which was pretty good.) And when characters are in an unfortunate situation, you don't really care. In fact I wanted it to end like The Departed, with Forest Whitaker in shoe covers instead of Marky Mark. Whilst I'm talking about characters I should really mention that this film has none. The film was so much about this vantage point concept that all (and I mean all) characters are flat, uninteresting and lacking in context, and their personalities are revealed only fleetingly. That, coupled with the simple plot, issues of believablility and cut and paste character traits, make this film one to miss.

Words: Chimerical

chimerical [ki-mer-i-kuhl, -meer-, kahy-]
–adjective

1. unreal; imaginary; visionary: a chimerical terrestrial paradise.
2. wildly fanciful; highly unrealistic: a chimerical plan.

Also, chimeric.

Origin:
1630–40; chimer(a) + -ical

Related forms:
chimerically, adverb

Synonyms:
1. illusory, fantastic.

Antonyms:
1. real.

In My Head

As a child, it was always nursery rhymes. And then it was pop music, for a short time it was rock. Then, as I moved from my teens, it was jazz, with a slow tendency toward classical, and ever so briefly opera. Now I find myself back once more with nursery rhymes in my head.

Children's First Edition Collection

Excellent collection here of collectible children's books. This is by far the best collection of children's books I have ever seen.

Words: Dilettante

[dil-i-tahnt, dil-i-tahnt, -tahn-tey, -tan-tee] noun, plural -tantes, -tanti
[-tahn-tee] adjective

–noun
1. a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler.
2. a lover of an art or science, esp. of a fine art.

–adjective
3. of or pertaining to dilettantes.

Origin:
1725–35; < It, n. use of prp. of dilettare < L dēlectāre to delight

Related forms:
dilettantish, dilettanteish, adjective

Synonyms:
1. amateur.

Books: Reif Larsen: The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet

This book has been receiving a fair bit of media attention at the moment. It is published next month and the hype is mounting. The book is about a 12-year-old genius with a penchant for cartography and I'm sure the story must be a good one as it sold for over $1m US at auction. From the view of a collector, this looks like an interesting item and possibly a good investment. I'm told that the book, much like Steven Hall's Raw Shark Texts is illustrated throughout, but not in the usual manner, rather it has margin illustrations and other unusual diagrammatica. There is a limited edition appearing in the UK, in one of the major chains.

Film Review: Belleville Rendez-vous

This French film (directed by Sylvain Chomet) has always roused my curiosity. The animation style reminded me of the kind of art work that was always on late night Channel Four programs in the early nineties (I seem to remember an program called Animation Now). It was different, exaggerated and comic. There were even some ventures into an entirely different style for the occasional interstice. This widely-respected film, however, didn't quite sit well with me. There were parts of it that disgusted me on some level, the buttock-like calf muscles that made me grimace each time I looked, the disgusting meal the characters ate consisting of stewed frogs, the excessively obese pet dog - all grotesque. I think it's perhaps just me looking subjectively, rather than with a critic's eye, but occasionally animation makes me feel ill (Fritz the cat did similar). It may be some deep-seated psychological issue I have with abstraction of human physiology, but it's not something I'm interested in exploring; I'd rather just turn a blind eye. So I cut this film short, partly for the above reason, or perhaps instigated by the above, but also because it was boring. I'm no expert in animation, but I'm not sure what was so great about this - the exaggeration of physical characteristics? But isn't that what most art does. In conclusion, I cannot recommend this film, however iconic the scenes of the protagonists climbing a near-vertical hill may be.

Book Review: Jonathan Barnes: The Somnambulist

I'm not entirely sure what drew me to this book or even if I'd heard of it before I bought it, but I'm sure it was probably the cover and the title. And the cover reeked of Victoriana - it was in the guise of a poster for a magic show and outlined how bereft of literary merit the book was. It was a promising start.

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is an outstanding book, it's a tome, a work of epic proportions delicately planned and intricately detailed. Anything set in Victorian times will remind me vaguely of that. That and Mr Dickens. The somnambulist had a lot to live upto, and Jonathan Barnes, a first-class honours student from Cambridge in English Literature makes a good attempt.

The book has all that you would expect of this genre, interesting characters and scenarios, the dark, grimness of 19th Century London, unsavoury characters and a perpetual influx of beautifully crafted sentences. But it never really quite makes it. The characters are intentionally unlikeable, written with bizarre physical characteristics and odd penchants. And though interesting and varied, I just don't like them, and don't really care if they win or lose. Another obvious comparison would be with Sherlock Holmes who on occasion was an absolute bugger to Watson, but I still liked him, and I liked Watson, and there was always that element of respect to be garnered. The Somnambulist himself is somewhat of an enigma, but also an entirely unnecessary addition, he plays no significant part specific to his character traits and certainly is not the worthy eponym of the novel. Looking from the character arc angle, most are colourful but irrelevant, interesting but fleeting, perhaps needfully so and I do welcome the variety, but I feel that perhaps these could have been fleshed out a little and perhaps had a longer, more useful part in the novel rather than just a series of brief appearences; often they had the air of a new idea that just had to be added to the manuscript, as though the novel grew organically without much redrafting.

Onto the plot. I like the plot, but that is again because of the variety and colour that Barnes has painted it with. There so much to keep you interested. But events and the characters therein are tenuously related, there are a number of loose threads and dead ends that really could've been tied up. The mystery element to the story were never fully realised because the plot moved at such a pace that it never seems to give you that moment to think "what's going on?" or "ahh, that explains that." There were very few mysteries in the first chapters that were tied up in the later chapters and so on. There were some interesting twists, but these were primarily a post-modern angle wherein one was reminded of the fact that this was a story and a patchwork of ideas.

To summarise, I think Mr Barnes is an exceptional wordsmith. His vocabulary is better than most writers and he can build such vivid imagery that I've rarely seen elsewhere. The imaginative aspects of the book are excellent and had this been a 600-page epic I think it would've been a masterpiece. I'd like to draw a comparison to a Victorian freakshow, as that's what this book reminded me off, somewhat fantastical but segmented and non-contiguous, jumping from one colourful scene to the next without that current underlying it; a series of junkie highs. I had the same problem with the recent Danny Boyle film, Slumdog Millionaire, it was an excellent film with a great story but was poorly bound together and paced like a set of long steps puncuated by bland flat landings. I liked The Somnambulist, I found it very readable and enjoyable and criticise it only because there is so much potential. Jonathan Barnes will, I'm sure, mature into an exceptional writer and I will watch his career closely.

Film Review: Ringu (1998)

Director: Hideo Nakata

I was drawn to this film from the moment I saw the US film adaptation of the Koji Suzuki novel, wondering how that further abstraction from my milieu (i.e. Japanese Culture vs Western Culture) would affect the trope and artistic merit of this film. Surely the parent from whom 'The Ring' was born had as much, if not more, to offer in the way of bizarreness and terror-inducing visuals. Unfortunately, it was not good. Those elements of The Ring that, for me, made it terrifying, entertaining and actually a very good film were all missing. The strange video (tame, boring and uninspired in comparison to The Ring's almost art house visual), the desaturated landscapes, the crazy, inexplicable events (the horse, the photos), even the creepy house under which our emoesque antagonist spluttered away her final breathes and chipped a nail was about as creepy as Butlins.

But perhaps I'm being unfair, I'm making a comparison and could never see Ringu for what it is. It has elements that I think are very respectable, especially the cut-frames and the emergence from the television reminding us that we're watching a horror movie but not actually in it - they impressed me and worked quite well. Remakes are almost always bad, a fair and oft-chanted mantra, but occasionally it works the other way too.

Words: Lurid

This is the first post from a list of words I've been compiling, that I like (some of which I don't know the meaning). Most definitions courtesy of dictionary.com

lurid

[loor-id]
–adjective
1. gruesome; horrible; revolting: the lurid details of an accident.
2. glaringly vivid or sensational; shocking: the lurid tales of pulp magazines.
3. terrible in intensity, fierce passion, or unrestraint: lurid crimes.
4. lighted or shining with an unnatural, fiery glow; wildly or garishly red: a lurid sunset.
5. wan, pallid, or ghastly in hue; livid.

Origin:
1650–60; lūridus sallow, ghastly

Related forms:
luridly, adverb
luridness, noun

Synonyms:
dismal, pale, murky.

Books Read in 2009

Obama, Barack: Dreams From My Father
Barnes, Johnathan: The Somnambulist
Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man
Palahniuk, Chuck: Non-Fiction
Hesse, Hermann: The Steppenwolf
McCarthy, Cormac: The Road
Ellis, Bret Easton: American Psycho

Words: Beguile

beguile

[bi-gahyl]
–verb (used with object), -guiled, -guiling.
1. to influence by trickery, flattery, etc.; mislead; delude.
2. to take away from by cheating or deceiving (usually fol. by of): to be beguiled of money.
3. to charm or divert: a multitude of attractions to beguile the tourist.
4. to pass (time) pleasantly: beguiling the long afternoon with a good book.

Origin:
1175–1225; ME bigilen. See be-, guile

Related forms:
beguilement, noun
beguiler, noun

Synonyms:
1. deceive, cheat. 3. amuse, entertain.