june book and film review

Apologies for being a day late with my monthly review. The reasons may be found in yesterday's blog, kindly provided by Mrs Pelagius. I am pleased to report some improvement today. Yesterday saw 10 bouts of diarrhoea and 12 of vomiting, and though the symptoms receded somewhere around 10 PM, I now find myself feeling weak and shaky; hardly surprising in the circumstances. I shall take tomorrow off work too; hopefully by Monday I should be fully recovered.

BOOKS

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Some call it the ultimate example of "magic realism"; certainly this is a uniquely hypnotic and wonderfully strange book, where the dead come back to tantalise the living and statues rise into the air to make a point. Marvellous.
EMMA, by Jane Austen. Tremendously famous icon of English literature, but to my mind not as satisfying as either Pride and Prejudice or especially Persuasion, for me her most divine offering.
THE MAN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE, by Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo. Number 2 in a series of 10 police stories written in 1960's Sweden. Paying tribute to the genre created by Ed McBain in their emphasis on authentic police techniques, they create an understated but powerful atmosphere which anticipated Wallander by 30 years. Highly recommended.

FILMS

JUNO,(2007) directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody. Beautifully written and acted tale of a teenager who gets pregnant, puts the child up for adoption, but then finds things getting complicated. As well she might. Excellent! Hollywood can still make exceptionally good, low-budget films sometimes,it seems.
PUNLIC ENEMIES (2009), written and directed by Michael Mann. John Dillinger (played by Depp) was a folk hero of 1930s America, known for his laconic sense of humour and his reluctance to shoot people. Yet with the one actor ideally placed to portray that kind of charcter, what do they do but make him a nasty, violent gangster who people might fear and respect, but certainly not like. See the original film, "Dillinger" with one of Warren Oate's finest performances as the man himself, for how to treat this subject properly.
FIREWALL (2006), directed by Richard Loncraine. Harrison Ford does another one of his "ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances becomes superhero" and really it is all getting a bit tired. Paul Bettany as his evil nemesis is scarcely credible either. Probably needn't bother.