Books You Should Read (or so I think)

Basically this is a list of my all time, extra special, favourite books, but more than that books that I want you to read because I hope that one day they can mean as much to you as they do to me and maybe they could change your life. That sounds like a grandiose claim and it’s rather clichéd but everything should change your life a little, I just hope these are good ones. (Also there are loose rules I am using on this list i.e. one book per author though I will list other recommendations by them too)

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (also The Scar, Iron Council, King Rat, Looking For Jake and Un Lun Dun)

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Diamond Dogs by Alastair Reynolds (also Revelation Space, Redemption Ark etc.)

Salt by Adam Roberts (also Polystom)

1984 by George Orwell (also Animal Farm)

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (also Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain etc.)

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (also Xenocide, Speaker for the Dead, Children of the Mind, Traitor)

The Truth by Terry Pratchett (also all Discworld novels)

Wilt by Tom Sharpe (also Wilt on High, The Wilt Alternative, Wilt in Nowhere)

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton (also The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God, Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained)

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

I will update this list as and when I think of more. You might notice a fairly heavy sci-fi leaning in the list but that’s because that’s a fair majority of what I read. Try it, you never know you might like it!

Gran Torino

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the film of the year, so far at least. As you might have guessed I liked this film. It is brilliant from start to finish and off the top of my head I can think of virtually nothing wrong with it. Clint Eastwood, as I believe I have already said on this blog, is a great director. I was going to say is proving to be great but I think it is now definitive. This man has a talent for film most people can only dream of.

His acting in this can’t really be said to be testing him outside of his normal roles. You can’t, for instance, imagine him in a romantic comedy (probably another thing to be said in his favour) but he’s very good in this, as is the entire rest of the cast. The story is powerful, though maybe be a little predictable, and it is wonderfully directed. The full range of emotions is covered without this often somber tale taking itself to seriously and with laugh out loud moments along the way. Basically this film has pretty much everything you’d want in a movie and should be manditory viewing for everyone.

Young Victoria

I have to admit I didn’t have high hopes of this film before I saw it. It looked like a film for girls in their early teens and the saturation coverage of Emily Blunt everywhere got a little wearing, lovely woman though she is. I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the film. Don’t get me wrong, it still clearly is a film primarily for young girls but that didn’t make it unwatchable, far from it. It is an enjoyable film in a costume drama kind of style but with less frilly excess storywise.
Emily Blunt is very good in the title role and while there is little doubt over the general outcome of the film for those with even basic historical knowledge the story hangs together well. This is a good film, and though not to everyone’s taste, if you’re interested in Victoria or even just pretty dresses this film is a good way to spend some time.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

CCBB, as I shall refer to it here, is another darling of the current awards judges. Even if I hadn’t known that before I went in it would soon have been obvious that it would be as you watch the film. There are the interesting and varied characters from all walks of life, who are still all have hearts of gold under their various rough exteriors. There is a tale of a life that was touched by others and touched back. A story of disability fought, of love overcoming great odds, courage in battle and life in general, all with great historic events as a back drop and some obscure tale unrelated tale running parallel as some kind of commentary.

This had multi-oscar winner written all over it and as such I was ready to lash out in hatred and bile just automatically. However I have to say that it wasn’t that bad really. It went on forever though, and for the majority of it Brad Pitt had minimal make-up on i.e. was between the ages of 25 to 50 and the fact he was living backwards could quite easily have been forgotten. Much of this section was a little dull, it must be said. The beginning 45 minutes or so were interesting up until he ended up in Russia when it went downhill and didn’t really pick up until the overly quick ending. Another problem I had was with the now overused and somewhat clunky use of the narrator reading a memoir in a hospital. This added virtually nothing to the story apart from 20 minutes or so which could happily have been cut from the mammoth running time.

However the film was good in parts and generally well acted. If you like the other sentimental films of similar genres, particularly the likes of Titanic, Forest Gump and other such you will like this film. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot better than Titanic but it’s not my kind of thing. Sorry.

Doubt

Before I describe in some detail why I disliked this film (which I guess should have a spoiler warning!!)  I should say some points in its favour. It is very well acted by everyone in the cast. There isn’t a single weak performance, though I found Amy Adams did slowly more unbelievable the more of her you saw. It is also fairly well directed which is why I can understand why it is up for awards, however I won’t be watching it ever again.

This is because I was bored. Really quite bored for the majority of the film. Obviously with a title like Doubt you expect uncertainty and unfinished business, but that kind of thing needs to be done very carefully and this just didn’t balance it well enough. As Mark Kermode pointed out in his review, the level of doubt shown in this film isn’t really particularly high. Quite soon in the film the main area of doubt is brought to light and, while there is no real proof either way, it seems quite obvious which side is right, and from then on the film seems to be more about a search for evidence. Fair enough you say, that’s often how detective stories run, but rarely in detective stories do they tell you in the title that the case won’t be solved!

Also for a film called Doubt and set in a religious setting there was basically no religious content. I’m not asking for evangelism or anything like that but doubt in a religious context can give a really powerful story on a human level. As it was there was basically no Christian content above being nice to people, and it portrayed Catholics as belonging to basically 3 groups. People who go to mass but don’t care otherwise, people who are anti-women and potentially homosexually kiddie fiddlers and people who believe all modern inventions are evil and that are so stuck in tradition that they won’t help others in danger except through the rigid channels provided by the church. Now there probably are these people in the church, particularly of the first catagory, but not a single character in this film, with the exception of Amy Adams, was likeable, and even Amy was all wishy-washy, ‘everyone’s nice really’.

Basically, if you’ve seen the trailer you know about the story, and unless you have an interest in behind the scenes life in a 1950’s American convent school I can think of little reason in the story to watch this film. Phillip Seymour Hoffmann is brilliant as always and the others no doubt deserve their nominations for awards, I only wish they could have been in a more interesting film.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

This film didn’t have much to live up to following the appalling rubbishness of Underworld: Evolution. I actually liked the first one quite a lot though repeated viewing has tired me. Rise of the Lycans explores the back story of the series and though someone told me they thought it was the best of the series so far I have to differ. It is certainly better than Evolution but the first one still reigns supreme for me.

The story of Rise of the Lycans is covered in a couple of small flashbacks in the original and frankly there wasn’t much more that needed to be said. Basically I think your choice of favourite Underworld film comes down to a very simple choice. If you prefer automatic weapons choose 1, for swords and crossbows choose 3. If you have severe bad taste in film problems then choose 2.

P.s. I recently found out the huge scary black guy who plays a werewolf in the films and only really grunts, actually wrote the scripts… weird!

Slumdog Millionaire

Ok so by now everyone knows this is not really a feel good film, at least not all the way through, though there are several light hearted sections. This film was great and I think probably the best film I have blogged about so far. The style of using who wants to be a millionaire to go through his life was well thought out and conveniently the questions linked into his life in a chronological order, but then thats films for you.

It certainly reminded me in places of City of God, an awesome film about life in Brazil’s favella slums, but Slumdog is certainly more upbeat, not that that would be hard. I know basically nothing about the life of the poor in India and from what I’ve heard there is a real basis of truth in the film’s depiction of this. This poverty running alongside the richness of certain individuals and the shiny cleanliness of the TV studio highlighted the suffering but also the happiness of the film. You have to see this if you haven’t already.

The Reader

Whoops. It’s catch up time again. I saw the Reader a couple of weeks ago and it’s now won awards and everything. I’m not surprised it’s won some awards really cos it was a pretty good film, though I think I would have expected the young man to win awards more than Kate “naked again” Winslet. The last film I saw her in I think was Titanic which sucked but won lots of awards and she was in the buff in that too… is there a link?

Frankly the scenes with Kate revealing all in the Reader are virtually pornographic full on sex scenes which I thought were unnecessary and could have been covered in a similar style to the old “hand on a steamy window” motif from her previous work. Really it’s the second half of the film which is best and that had me gripped, so overall its worth seeing though probably not with your parents.

Che and Defiance

So I’m running a little behind with my film reviews at the moment so here’s a catch on my recent viewing.

Che, Part 1: I thought this was really good. The cinematography was brilliant and Benecio Del Toro is fantastic as always and whoever was playing Fidel Castro was so like him I often forgot this was a film. I found it interesting and, from someone with little knowledge of precedings at that time, fair and balanced, though I was under the impression that Che had some more skeletons in his closet the way many former communist leaders tend too. A slight problem during the film was that after several months of fighting and living in jungle everyone looked the same and it got harder and harder to tell who was who. All in all though definitely worth a watch and I look forward to Part 2.

Defiance: Daniel Craig plays a leader of escaping Jews in Belorussia during the Nazi occupation based on a true story. This film was pretty solid with pretty good acting all round though I heard complaints that James Bond stuck out his jaw dramatically on a regular basis, but I didn’t really notice that myself. The film was tense and, ultimately, had a solid moral message but one that didn’t get in the way of the story telling and wasn’t afraid to admit the shortcomings of the characters involved. My main complaint with the film would be that after the first 15 minutes or so the story seemed to lose most of the horror of the Nazi’s actions and became just a film about hiding in the woods which could just as easily have been humans hiding from Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Basically what I’m saying is the film was almost too enjoyable as an adventure and lacked some of the edge that perhaps this subject deserves. Trouble is this is always going to be compared with the likes of Schindler’s List and it’s not in that class. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good film and worth seeing probably, but it  won’t change your life like Schindler’s List should.

Neon Horse

And now for some music.

Neon Horse are a band I discovered briefly about 18 months ago when their self-titled debut album was released. A music podcast, to which I subscribe, played a couple of their tracks and I was sufficiently impressed that I looked the up on the internet while the songs were playing. Sadly, as an America only release on an independent label it was fairly expensive to buy here and I wasn’t willing to splash the cash for only 2 quite good songs and I promptly forgot Neon Horse.

But a couple of weeks ago I again encountered them on the internet and this time followed through my interest. These guys are great. As someone who struggles to define music genres except in the widest possible terms I couldn’t tell you exactly what type of music they play, but, at least in my head, it sounds like a collaboration between Jack White and the Queens of the Stone Age. Some driving guitar with blues based riffs and some slightly odd vocals that really work.

From the opening track “Cuckoo!” they set out their stall of catchy rock with underlying occasional synth and growling vocals and they don’t let up all the way through. For a debut its very confident in its style. The band clearly know what they want to sound like and how to achieve it, not too surprising as they are all long time musicians from bands you probably never heard of ( Stavesacre, Starflyer 59 etc.) though this project sounds little like any of the other bands they each came from. My only worry about their sound would be that if they produce another album they’re going to have to be careful not to just pump out the same album again, which is always a potential problem for a band with such a defined sound.

Basically in summary I love this band and I think they deserve more recognition. Are they going to get it? Certainly not in this country I guess, but if you get the chance give it a try because these guys rock.