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I realise I haven't been doing much on this blog lately. I have a friend interested in taking Old Movies.net.au for a spin, so maybe I'll let him post in it for a while. Just thought I better post something about it so people don't think it's me! (especially as he has appalling taste in movies)
I'll probably be back at some point but life has been cuntish lately so breaths shouldn't be held.
I just watched There Will Be Blood... fuuuuuuuuck. Daniel Day-Lewis is like a massive dick in everyone's arse, that's how good he is. Should this film have beaten No Country for Old Men to the best picture gong in the Oscars? I'm not sure, but if there was ever cause for a tie, this was it. Here, let me sum up the movie for you...
14 minutes of no dialogue. Daniel Day-Lewis strikes oil. He becomes a mad cunt, takes on a son, goes head to head with a local evangelical preacher (played by manchild Paul Dano), and basically amasses the beginnings of a business empire soaked and dripping in the blackest sheen of oil you could possibly imagine. Day-Lewis's eyes shine with this blackness, he embodies the evil of greed like no one else on screen ever has - not Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra-Madre, not Michael Douglas in Wall Street - these guys are chumps next to this cold-hearted sociopath.
The strange thing is, thinking back on what I just saw, this movie isn't exactly filled with mayhem or gangster-style violence or any of the other hallmarks that populate today's films dealing with base emotions or the concept of evil. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, has achieved something incredibly impressive... he's built a film of atmosphere and dread without resorting to cheap tricks or laboured psychological ponderings. Armed with the twin arsenal of Day-Lewis's event horizon of a performance and a wonderfully ominous musical score, Anderson has crafted a deceptively simplistic film that stands out amongst it's peers as a unique, one-of-a-kind experience. I'm gobsmacked that this film even got made, and incredibly grateful that it did - it reassures film fans everywhere that a director's non-studio friendly vision can make it to the screen unmolested. (Provided Daniel Day-Lewis has agreed to star in it, LOL)
Scenes that stick out in my mind...
- Day-Lewis dragging himself through the scrub to stake his claim, ignoring his broken leg the whole time.
- Paul Dano striding alongside a lake of oil, like Christ walking on water as black as the hearts of men.
- Day-Lewis rejoicing in the flames cast by an erupted oil well, a stark silhouette in the dusk.
- Day-Lewis calmly getting off the train before it rolls away, probably one of the coldest things he does in the whole film.
- Of course, the final scene between Day-Lewis and Dano.
Go watch a piece of film history.
'The Wandering Fire' is the second and shortest novel in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, and is the fifth book I've read this year. This review will most likely be fairly short (but who can tell these things) as a lot of what I have to say about Kay's writing I've probably already said in my review of the first book in the trilogy, The Summer Tree. Mild spoilers ahead.
Picking up where the first novel left off, our five intrepid Earth heroes are back in Canada and unable to return to Fionavar. The book jumps right in regards to Jennifer's fate after her traumatic ordeal in The Summer Tree's last chapters and allows for some exciting developments early on. Obviously, our heroes don't remain on Earth for too long as this would be a fairly dull book if they did, and with the help of the group's seer, Kim, they travel to England and use the ancient power of Stonehenge to transport back to Fionavar. But not before Kim reawakens a hero from Earth's own past to bring back to fight the terrible war that is shaping up between the forces of light and dark.
It's hard to write a summation of the second book of a series for two reasons... 1) you don't really want to give anything away to anyone who hasn't read the first book but it's hard to say anything interesting without doing so (hence the mild spoilers warning - I've tried to avoid anything that really spoils it), and 2) it sounds crap and uninspiring because it requires a working knowledge of what has gone on before it in the first book. Hmmm... maybe that's just one big reason. Anyway, I'm unenthusiastic about this review and that's why. So from here on in I'll just kinda list what this entry in the trilogy seems to be about...
As the novel progresses it starts to become clear that this is more about each of the five Earth heroes finding their place in this new world they have been thrust upon. The previous novel tied up the fates of Kim as a seer and Paul as some kind of Jesus-like walking legend, whereas this novel delves more into the other three and what part they will play in the fate of the war, as well as their own fate and fate as a general idea in itself. Frequently we'll hear about what is meant to happen and then we'll see events scrambling forth in an attempt to adhere to some kind of structure of destiny, but it never really pans out the way it's foretold. Which is just as well, as it would be a boring book otherwise. The only major thing that seems to grate with me is how important all five of our heroes have become... perhaps some kind of prophecy at the beginning of the first book might have prepared me for this, but having five barely-capable students become God-shagging titans of myth seems to stretch credibility a bit. Yes, even in a fantasy novel. Another minor gripe is that Kay kills off a character at the book's climax only to drammatically bring him back to life. This would have been fine if he hadn't already done the same trick in the first book.
On the up side, 'The Wandering Fire' opens out the world of Fionavar a bit more. We learn further details of Cathal, a middle eastern-like garden kingdom to the south, and more is revealed of the twilight world of the various Gods who walk amongst the people of Fionavar - powerful beings who are (mostly) unable to interact with events. The only major group still left unexplored is the kingdom of Eridu in the far north, which I'm hoping will feature in the third novel. Kay also manages to keep things cracking along at a fair pace and things are never predictable, though the climactic battle between the forces of light and dark comes across as an almost unforgiveable pastiche of the two major battles from The Lord of the Rings... Kay rips off the dramatic arrival of the elves at Helm's Deep and the calling of the spirits from big battle in 'The Return of the King'. I just needed to say that as it was unbearably obvious to me when I read it.
Anyhow, this book was a nice read but I have to admit that I'm starting to tire of Fionavar a little. I'm about to wade into the third and final novel tomorrow so a review of that and the series as a whole should be soon pending.
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A while ago I wrote an article about Randa Abdel-Fattah, click here to see what I had to say and how much I've back-peddled with this review. It's not that I disagree with my optimistic appraisal of Abdel-Fattah or her inspiring status as a potential role-model for young Australians, but what I am at odds with is how excited I sound at the end of said article in regards to reading her debut novel, Does My Head Look Big in This?. I was wrong to be excited. The book sounded good, and Abdel-Fattah's skills as a public speaker (no doubt honed by her dayjob as a lawyer) helped sell the book to me. In light of now having read the actual thing I have to admit that the book isn't actually all that good. Which is a shame, especially as so many people recommended it to me
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Book 3 of my almighty slog of 2008 is 'The Summer Tree', the first in a trilogy of fantasy novels by Guy Gavriel Kay, published in the 1980s, and collectively referred to as 'The Fionavar Tapestry'. Gavriel Kay (or just Kay - why do some people insist on having three names? It makes it hard to refer to them correctly in reviews like this and it makes it equally annoying if you have to arrange their books alongside other books in alphabetical order. Be damned!) is probably best known for this trilogy, but his enduring legacy will be his editorial work on J. R. R. Tolkein's 'The Silmarillion', which he helped Christopher Tolkein put together. Gavriel Kay originally trained as a lawyer before turning to writing, and is based in Canada. He can be largely viewed as carrying on Tolkein's legacy, and is amongst the first to tap into the second wave of interest that Lord of the Rings generated (mostly amongst university students in the 1970s - check your dad's bookcase for proof
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Anyone who knows me well will know that I am obsessed with the Oscars. This year is really no different... I've been racing against time to watch all the nominees. Unfortunately, I have been without a TV for well over a year, so I am not sure if I will actually get to watch the Academy Awards this time around. Oh well. As usual, there seems to be a pattern to this kind of thing, but these Oscars are however looking like the best round of nominees in a long time.
Today I'm just gonna look at the nominees for Best Film
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This isn't a proper review. There's no point. Everyone knows this movie straight-out rules so hard that your testicles get bigger from watching it. It's a fact. Yes, this applies to women as well
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The 2nd book I've read this year is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, a pre-eminent Jewish writer and possible all-round genius of literature. This book was awesome. I read it in two days flat... which is no mean feat, but I happened to be working both days and I had other stuff on so in order to read it all so quickly I had to use every spare moment in those two days to breathe this book in like it was the stuff of life. I didn't plan it this way, it just happened. It's that kind of book
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It's official, 'Coming Home' has the greatest soundtrack of all time. I don't know how much money was spent in securing these songs for use in the film, but I doubt you will ever see such a soundtrack assembled for a film ever again... for example, Beatles song are notoriously expensive to use because Michael Jackson owns the rights, and the executives of Jimmi Hendrix are very particular about what kinds of films they allow his music to be used in. Anyway, check out this great soundtrack
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Last year I read an appalling 37 books... about two thirds of what I had achieved the year before that. This year I am aiming to knock over a clean 50 novels, and so it is with great satisfaction that I kick off 2008 (which should, hopefully, see this book blog resurrected properly) with the first novel of the season, a Canadian crime-mystery called Sucker Punch, sent to me by one of the lads from Dundurn Press
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Comment by Luke
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