february book and film review

As promised, here follows my book and film review for February.

MURDER MUST ADVERTISE, by Dorothy L Sayers. An immaculate little book featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, who goes under cover in an advertising agency to expose a murderer. The part where he becomes so fascinated by his work as a copywriter that it threatens to impede his criminal investigation is priceless.
GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL, illustrated and abridged edition. I read the unexpurgated version in 2008 and pronounced it one of the great books in the English language. I was looking forward to looking at this lavishly illustrated edition, but was dismayed to discover it only actually covered the fall of the Western Empire, leaving out the glories of the Byzantines and even more amazingly the Crusades, which formed one of the most exciting parts of the original. Very disappointing.
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. To be fair, I haven't quite finished this yet; I have about 150 pages to go (out of 900) so I still don't know who dunnit. What I do know is that this is one of the great novels of the 19th century and speaks eloquently to us here in the 21st. Strongly recommended.

FILMS

THE ORPHANAGE, 2007 (D-Guillermo del Toro). Del Toro set himself a very high bar with Pan's Labyrinth, perhaps the best film of 2007. Pity, then,that this doesn't attain that lofty standard.
TRANSFORMERS, 2007 (D-Michael Bay) Strangely enjoyable hocum, in spite of its ludicrous concept; Michael Bay I would suggest does this sort of thing as well as it can be done.
IRON MAN,2008 (D-Jon Favraeau) Again, I probably shouldn't have enjoyed this, but Robert Downey Jnr's performance kept me watching. Whatever else you can say about him, he's certainly got a great screen presence.
FANTASTIC FOUR, 2005 (D-Peter Story) OK, I haven't exactly reached for the heights of world cinema this month. Nonetheless, I kind of got on with this fairly pleasurably. And Ms Alba is extremely decorative, n'est pas?
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT,2009 (D-Jean Francois Richet) A French TV movie about the life of one their most notorious gangsters, who, a little like John Dillinger, won the affections of the public despite the nastiness of his crimes, and again, like Dillinger, was eventually assassinated by a police force frustrated with his exploits and multiple escapes from prison. A highly skilled offering in the "violent thriller" mould, equal to anything that's come out of Hollywood in the last few years, and indeed, better than most.