as my sidebar and earlier entries show, i've been on a mystery tear lately. actually, i'll freely admit that mystery is my favorite genre. things coincided badly: because i was mid-Blacklist, G grabbed John Le Carré's Absolute Friends before i could get to it. this is going to mean a lot of library fines. she has so little time to read. but she's loving it.
things i said i'd talk about: House of Sand and Fog. pretty good movie, all things considered. really good casting, good acting, especially from Kingsley. a little too much ponderous pompous camera panning of fog rolling in over the hills (how subtle can they be?), WAY too much crashing swelling pompous music all through the film, something that always annoys me. a good soundtrack can make a film, a bad one seriously detracts. the story is just as ghastly as it was in the book, and i have to say i felt far more emotionally involved by the movie than the book. as the film was moving towards its grisly end, G shuddered and whispered to me "this is unbearable." all i could say was "it's going to get worse." i'd recommend seeing it, on the basis of Ben Kingsley's performance alone. he's nominated for Best Actor, so if you're an Oscar groupie you might want to see what you think.
6 comments:
Sorry, but I'll probably skip House of Sand and Fog, in spite of my admiration for Ben Kingsley. Two weeks ago our film series in Acapulco screened Ken Park's "Perversion", a film I doubt will receive any kind of distribution in the USA (at least not in Ashcroft's USA). It's a brilliant, disturbing, unsettling film -- and it will take me at least two months to recover before I venture onto anything other than comedy. Which begs the question: do they still make real comedies anymore?
I can't wait to tear into Absolute Friends, specially after reading the critical drubbing it's getting from all our jingoist reviewers. I figure any novel so reviled by our right-wing media has got to be really effective, really well-crafted and, probably, really insightful. Tell G to hurry up; I want YOUR reactions pronto.
Let me know what G thinks of Absolute Friends. I've been dying to read it since I saw that Buzzflash has offered it as a premium. Theirs is the only good review I've read, but that's good enough for me! My local libray doesn't have it yet :(
See:
http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/absolutefriends.html
Great detour! I just heard a talk last night where LeCarre's Absolute Friends was mentioned...Any p lans to read it yourself, then?! I will anxiously await your comments on it!! As for Sand and Fog, as soon as I find my netflix password, I'm adding it to my queue!
you bet i'm going to read it! that's why there'll be a large library fine debt before we get it turned back in.
Interesting to read that you were more emotionally involved in the movie than the book, because I thought the book was riveting. I suppose that means I will be seeing the movie soon, although I dread the ending. Kingsley is good in everything he does, is he better here than in Sexy Beast? He should've been nominated for that one.
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