I also watched a couple of movies, including The Night Listener, The Prestige, and Pan's Labyrinth. I've been a fan of Armistead Maupin since Tales of the City was shown over here, and I enjoyed the mildly sinister tension of the movie. The Prestige was a terrific Victoriana sci-fi tale of prestidigitation, in which everyone was terrific and David Bowie, with his few moments on screen, as Alan Turing, was electrifying - literally. By the way, isn't it ironic that Britain's first Super Casino (the Labour party and Bliar wanted to build 40 Casinos) is being buit in Manchester and will be reached by walking alon Alan Turing Way? Because as any mathematical genius will tell you, the Casinos never win!
Pan's Labyrinth knocked me out though. I'm a fan of Guillermo Del Toro's work and I have Cronos on dvd, but it won't stop me getting the collection which includes Pan's Labyrinth, Cronos, and The Devil's Backbone.
But, I'm back to work and I've rattled off some cartoons and put two pages of Lepertown up on Webcomics Nation. These two pages have a dual role, as they also appear in my book, Tommy Apple.
3 comments:
I'm probably one of the few people in the world who didn't enjoy Pan's Labyrinth. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood at the time.
As for The Prestige, I found it so entertaining and engrossing that I had to find out lots more about it. I just finished listening to Jonathan Priest's book on audiotape, and it was almost as if I were listening to another story, that's how different the book is from the film. Yes, I do READ books also, but in this case it was more convenient to listen to it. I highly recommend both the film and the novel.
Eli Stein
Hi Eli.
I am a fan of his earlier work, Cronos. So I was prepared for some of the themes that he repeats in Pan's Labyrinth, and some of the ickyness and brutality. It was a pretty downbeat ending for me (I like upbeat), but an apt one, I think.
This might have something to do with the movie-scene in the US. Take a really horrible movie to sit through, The Vanishing. It is a horrible experience and you wouldn't do it twice - but I think it is worth facing up to it. The US remake has a happy ending because the original ending is so bleak. On the other hand the US studios made the unremittingly bleak Seven. So go figure.
As a father, I find the movie Leon disturbing, and that's by a Frenchman working in Hollywood.
I'll look up the book. I have no moral objections to audiobooks, Eli. It's the best way to read Woodehouse and Damon Runyon.
Hmmm . . . Wodehouse on audio . . . I never tried it. But since I read most of his stuff about 40-50 years ago, I don't think I missed too much. A lot of the enjoyment is also determined by who is doing the reading, and I imagine that's very true of P.G.
About three years ago my wife and I paid a visit to PG's gravesite (it's in Remsenberg, on Long Island). I wrote it up and you can probably find it somewhere on the internet, maybe under "Wodehouse".
Eli
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