Actually, number 10 is a film I have fond-ish memories of. Mr Cusack’s teen films were always a notch or two above the standard fare, mainly because of the surreal elements. But that poster looks like a Vitalite advert.
Category: Fish In A Barrel Page 4 of 23
When the Thomas Harris book Hannibal came out in 1999, I was very keen to read it.
I’d enjoyed Red Dragon and The Silence Of The Lambs – even if they were essentially the same story twice (representative of the FBI reluctantly goes to imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter for insight into a current case), they were solid crime thrillers with a good sense of being a race against time, to stop a killer.
In Hannibal, on the other hand, Lecter has escaped, which removes the ticking clock element, and instead of the reality-based investigation, the tone of the book is more one of gothic melodrama, with an ending that left me speechless in the worst possible way (working from memory: Lecter digs up Clarice Starling’s dead dad, drugs her and confronts her with the corpse, and after a bit of her boss’s brains being eaten, she and Lecter become lovers). It was like I’d recorded LA Confidential and found that someone had taped Friday the 13th over the last third of it. Very disappointing. But I guess these things happen.
More strangely, though, there seemed to be a lot of very positive reviews of the book when it come out (as evinced here), often using words such as grand guignol, but hardly ever referring to the ending and making me suspect that they hadn’t actually read it all the way through before getting their reviews in. Anyway, it certainly made me less trustful of reviews, and blurbs and publicity material (I know, it’s appalling that I was 28 before that truth hit home; I like to think of it as a charming kind of naivete, but history will be the judge).
A very similar thing happened to me yesterday in relation to the new John Grisham paperback, The Associate; I used to like Grisham’s stuff a lot, though the further I went through the world of legal academia the less I enjoyed them, until I just stopped reading them.
But The Associate sounded more like The Firm, with its storyline about a newly-qualified lawyer in trouble, and I wondered if this might be a fun read. The print reviews certainly seem to suggest so – look at this gallery of praise taken from the Amazon page for the book:
It’s a damned good read. This is Grisham returning to what he knows best.
Scotland on SundayGrisham paints a fascinating picture. Vintage Grisham, with a really believable ending
The GuardianTense and exciting
Evening Standard
The suspense is there in what is easily his most recognisably ‘back to form’ novel since The Firm. Grisham has returned with a vengeance to his trademark territory: the grim world of corporate law and the sinister machinations of the men on its fringes.
The Times
In typical Grisham fashion it does hurtle along at a decent clip
London LiteDon’t wait for the film read the book first this time. The maestro of the legal thriller’s new one centres on a brilliant student with an unfortunate secret.
Daily Sport
A classic Grisham plot, similar to his first major success, The Firm, and told with the same elegance and elan.
The Daily MailGrisham never disappoints and this is another fantastic read
The Sun
In The Associate, John Grisham returns to the legal milieu he explored so vividly in The Firm. Grisham is such a storyteller that you want to turn the page
The Guardian
Grisham’s new book harks back to the one that made him famous, and effectively defined the legal thriller genre: The Firm. Grisham does a fine job of evoking the insanely competitive culture of a major New York law firm.
The Mail on Sunday
… so, lots of praise there, and many of them referring to the book of his which I’d enjoyed so much, which made me feel it could be one for me… until I went onto the Amazon page and saw that the vast majority of the reviews were negative, and repeatedly spoke about one particular failing: the story just ends without resolving anything.
Seriously, check out the customer reviews; over and over again, people say how much they were enjoying the book, wondering where the story was going and how he was going to tie up the loose ends, and over and over they say that he doesn’t, that the book just ends.
And so I don’t think this is a book I’ll be buying (probably for the best, I have a sizey book-queue already), but I find myself remembering the Hannibal experience and starting to wonder how it is that professional reviewers can overlook something so fundamental as a letdown, or an absent, ending.
I’m very keen on stories that reward you for time expended on reading them by showing that, yes, we were going somewhere all along (and even better if the seeds of the end were planted near the start – as in The Shining), and whilst that’d kind of a personal preference, the concept that ‘stories should have a beginning, middle and end’ is a fairly well-known one, and you’d expect that most reviews would refer to a weak or rubbish ending (as Marie did in this review on Wednesday).
Deadline problems aside, is there a good reason why this sort of thing happens? Is it seem as in some way gauche to address such fundamental elements of a novel?
And of course, the alleged absence of a climax certainly makes the Guardian quote (second in the list above) look pretty strange – unless they’re making the point that sometimes life just carries on without tricky situations being resolved, but that seems an odd thing to do in a thriller.
Rod was so proud as he showed off his dog’s ability to sit and stay for hours as he held a biscuit towards it, no-one had the heart to tell him that the dog and biscuit were both imaginary.
Available for a limited time, a boxed set containing a DVD which contains the highlights of two previously-released DVDs, one of which featured the same material as the other but performed in a different venue.
Buy early for Christmas!
I was interested to see that MP Keith Vaz criticised the recent video game release Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – specifically one bit of it in which undercover soldiers pose as terrorists and are asked to help shoot civilians. He was, apparently, “absolutely shocked” by the violence.
He must, I suppose, be absolutely horrified every time he turns on the TV news or reads a paper, what with their constant reports on the war in Iraq – a war which he voted in favour of. Funny, you would have thought that he’d be against conflicts in which civilians might die, given he’s so worried about their welfare.
I’m also a little bit unsure how he got to play the game in question ahead of its release date (he was appalled about it prior to its release on 10 November), but then again, since Keith’s expense claims from 2004-2007 include £480 on 22 cushions, £2,614 for a pair of leather armchairs and an accompanying foot stool, £1,000 on a dining table and leather chairs, I suppose it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude he’s also got a time machine and games console as well. Maybe the expense claims for those items are still in the system.
After all, there’s no other way he could have come to an informed conclusion on the issue.
Obviously, it’s fun for the papers to pretend that the youth of today invented disaffection and nonchalance (a stance which appears to forget the popularity of, say, Brando in The Wild One), and of course it means you can fill column inches with Why Oh Why Oh Why Are The Youth Of Today Impregnating Each Other And Causing House Prices To Collapse? and the like.
However, the shoulder-shrugging lack of interest which young people are often accused of displaying can be traced back many years – to my father’s generation, if not before that; here, for example, is Tommy Walls, a character who appeared in many issues of the classic comic Eagle, including its first edition in 1950:
Like so many of the young people on my television set in modern shows such as Police Camera Action Stop Or I’ll Shoot in HD, Master Walls appears to be showing a lack of respec’ for the official standing next to him, and he doesn’t seem in the least bothered that another member of his gang of street toughs is being put into a police van in the background.
Young people thenadays, eh? Tch.
As I mentioned last week, I’m not following The X-Factor, but of course that doesn’t mean I won’t make jokes about it.
Case in point:
Frequently Asked Questions: Why are the twins known as ‘Jedward’ when one is called John and the other Edward? Wouldn’t it be more fair if John got more than one letter of his name into the merged noun? And why is Edward’s name last?
Less Frequently Offered Answer: Because if a more equal approach was taken, their combined name would probably be ArdOhn.
Thanyew, laygennelmen, you’re very kind. I’m here all week.
That’s right, a Sunday many years into the future.
But, as with global warming and the heat-death of the universe, as a species we need to take a step back and think about the long-term view, otherwise a shocking and terrible fate will befall us all.
What fate, you ask?
The boffins at Popjustice have the details.
I don’t know about you, but when my time comes, I think the lycra’s going to prove a problem. I don’t think I could pull it off. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ll be able to pull it on, either.
Anyone else think this cover makes it look like Alex Cross is having trouble lighting a fag?
