[books 2012] The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex

Dear me, I've got behind with this again.

21. The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex: What's wrong with modern movies? by Mark Kermode

Kermode is one of the few British film critics who's not up against the wall come the revolution.

I thought I was going to manage to read it all in one sitting but sleep overtook me and I had to continue on a second evening.

Though there are a few things I don't agree with him on (I don't think the Exorcist is all that great and I did truly enjoy Johnny Depp's performance in the first POTC film), but for the most part he hits the nail squarely on the head.  He shows how modern blockbusters can't lose money, no matter how bad they are (If you want to lose money, make a mid-budget film).   He argues that the lack of money-losing capacity should mean studios try to make better blockbusters (Inception is the example he uses, which which I totally agree), but by and large they don't.

I adored his rants about 3D - admittedly part of my problem with 3D is that I physically probably can't see it given that I see two of everything most of the time without 3D glasses, but mostly, like Kermode, I'm aware of the history, and nobody can name a film where 3D enhances the plot or characterisation.  The history?  Every time the studios are trying to manufacture a "we're losing money and nobody's going to the movies" scare (I say manufacture because it is not and never has been true), they wheel out 3D again.  This has been going on since the invention of moving pictures.

If you have more than a passing interest in film at all, do read this book!  It does not take long.  

He has a previous effort.  I'll be looking into that at some point.

[books 2012] Wallander

22. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

The first Wallander book, but the third that I've read.

I loved this a lot more than the other two[1]; whether because it's shorter and more tightly plotted, or because it's a different translator (I checked - the Wallander books have been translated by different people in random order at random dates), I'm not sure.  I think the latter, because I really enjoyed the language and flow of this one.

It's heartening to read that a lot of Swedes hate winter as much as I do.

I will be moving the rest of the series up my list of priorities.

[1] For the record, The White Lionness and Firewall.

[books 2012] Of Bees and Mist

23. Of Bees and Mist by Eric Setiawan 

See?  I do get out of my comfort zone.  Occasionally.  I never would have touched this book normally - it sounded too girly, and whimsical, to appeal to me, but when I read that the author is an American born in Indonesia, I was interested.

He combines magical realism as we understand it with an Oriental world-view where the supernatural is an accepted part of daily life (something Kermode writes about in his assessment of Asian horror films, see review above) in a really clever way.  

At its core it's a story about three strong women and their struggles when they come up against each other, over 10 years in an un-named Indonesian town.  Unfortunately this means that the men in the story are all quite pathetic and easily influenced.  Except for the one who is outright evil.

Plus, it's domestic, family stuff.  Aside from reading it as a warning against being a woman in a society where you're one step above property and have to go live with the in-laws when you get married (well, DUH!) I didn't take much away from this book.

This is a really well-written, good, culturally interesting book, but just not for me.  

I bought this, but won't be keeping it - if anybody wants it, please shout and it's yours.  Like I said, it's really good, just So Not Me.

[books 2012] Eugene Oneigin

24. Eugene Oneigin by Alexander Pushkin, translated by Stanley Mitchell

I spent a lot of my early to mid 20s obsessively reading Russian literature, yet somehow never got around to this.  

It's absolutely lovely.  The reason I include the translator in the title at top is the accessibility and beauty of it is entirely down to the translation.  He tells the story yet uses the same verse forms (the interplay between different forms depending on whether it's narrative or digression is essential), which can't be easy with a language like Russian whose structure is quite different from English.

It's largely an homage to Byron, but also a commentary on the state of Russian literature.  It is Very Russian - in short, very tragic and quite political.  

Accessible yet complex in all types of ways, and just gorgeous.  Definitely a keeper.

My next Russian Lit project is War and Peace, which my mother kindly bought me for Christmas.  I've leafed through it and think I'm very much NOT in love with the translation, so if anyone has any better suggestions, I'm interested.  Interestingly, my edition of Anna Karenina is a hardcover from 1947, and I really hated the translation of that too.  I'm beginning to wonder if it's a Tolstoy thing.