Isabel Huggan. The Elizabeth Stories (1984)

 

    Isabel Huggan. The Elizabeth Stories (1984) As far as I can tell, Huggan is what is sometimes called a “one-book author”. Not that she wrote only this book, but that she hasn’t written much else. But this is a very good book, and deservedly gained her an international audience and reputation. The stories follow Elizabeth Kessler growing up in Garten from about age eight to eighteen. Huggan has the gift of conveying what it was like to be a child, and she has no qualms about revealing the intended and unintended evil that children can do. The result is intense stories than are not exactly comfortable to read, but which leave you with a sense of having met a real person, and knowing her somewhat better than you know almost every real person in your life. That includes you, because we tend to avoid remembering events and actions that damage our amour propre. The stories also show how adults misinterpret and misunderstand children, and how some children take advantage of this failing to cause trouble for their enemies.
     No one story stands out, they are all at a high level. I first encountered Jack of Hearts as a movie (Alliance Atlantis and National Film Board Canada co-production, not available). It tells how Elizabeth's aunt, a glamorous single “career girl”, visits and introduces Elizabeth to poker. Her sister and brother-in-law don’t approve, but it confirms Elizabeth’s desire to escape from Garten.
     Recommended. ***

The movie Jack of Hearts is available on YouTube. It's scanned from a 16mm print, and flickers annoyingly.

Peter Johnson. Isle of Man Steam Railway in Colour (1998)

    

  

Peter Johnson. Isle of Man Steam Railway in Colour (1998) Most of the photos (one per page) feature the steam engines; the captions provide all kinds of history and other information. Technically excellent, a few include people (staff, tourists), or a bit of landscape. As far as I can tell, the colours are accurate. A very well done album for the fan, and of more than passing interest to the casual reader recalling or planning a visit to the Island. Looking through it, I decided we should go there on our next visit. ***

Peter Lovesey. The Circle (2005)

     Peter Lovesey. The Circle (2005) Bob Naylor, widower father of a 14-year-old, driver for a parcel delivery company, and inveterate composer of verses, attends a writer’s circle just before a previous guest, publisher Edgar Blacker, dies in an arson. The police nick Maurice, chair of the group, and a couple of others wanting to clear him snag Naylor’s help. Meanwhile, DI Henrietta Mallin takes over the case when the local DI commits a booboo. An attempt on Naylor’s life and two more arson murders, a photo that points to the deep past, tensions among the circle’s members, and budding affection between Naylor and Thomasine, all make for a nicely complex story told mostly through dialogue.
    The effect is oddly visual, because I think we’re accustomed to TV mysteries with long stretches of dialogue punctuated with short scenes of almost silent action. A book written in this mode reads like a TV script. Whatever, the story moves along fast enough that any creaks in the logic can be ignored, the wrap-up arrest and confession are a bit hurried, but all in all this is a pleasant entertainment. **½

Peter Robinson. Dead Right (1997)

     Peter Robinson. Dead Right (1997) A well done police procedural. DCI Alan Banks and sidekicks DC Susan Gay and DS Jim Hatchley investigate a beating death that quickly complicates into racial tensions, neo-Nazis, and drug trafficking. Office politics and personal relationships mix in for a satisfyingly complex plot with well-drawn characters that we care about. The crime puzzle’s solution does not, however, resolve Banks personal difficulties, which means the sequel(s) will have guaranteed soap-opera interest. One should not downplay this: people’s private and work lives always intersect. To leave that intersection out of a story diminishes it. For that matter, the crime itself has a far more complicated  motivation and context than at first appears. Robinson is good at showing the inevitable: a crime’s effects ripple outward and damage many more people than the victim, often including the perpetrators.
     I’d never noticed Robinson before this, but “Alan Banks” triggered interest when I spotted the book in the discard rack at the library. WGBH’s channel 44 runs the DCI Banks TV series, and so his name was stored somewhere in my internal database. The paperback cost 50 cents, worth it. I’ve already found another book at Value Village, but they charge a good deal more. ***

August: Osage County (2013)

     August: Osage County (2013) [D: John Wells. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney] Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts received several nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. The film was nominated for other awards and won a few round the world. If I cared about the characters, I’d care about these awards and nominations. But the main characters are nasty, mean, self-centred, self-pitying, self-justifying, callous – after watching this film, you’ll no doubt be able to add to this list. They really don’t know what they are living for. People without a sense of meaning in their lives aren’t likely to behave well. Maybe that’s the lesson of this movie. 

     Story-line: A family gets together when the father (Beverly Weston, an alcoholic academic poet) kills himself after putting up with his awful wife (Violet) for too many years. There’s a lot of “truth-telling”, but not the kind that leads to self-discovery and through that to healing. I can see that for many viewers, the portrayal of severe family dysfunction will have its awful attraction, and for some will recall painful memories. I’m not in either of those groups. The movie began to bore me almost at once. 

     Watching Streep and Roberts do their bravura performances had a certain interest, in fact all the actors (and director) did an amazing job with what is an awful script. This showed especially in Streep's performance, in which you could often see her pulling the strings of the puppet. She's a great actor, but this time her technique was showing. The movie’s adapted from a play, the kind that some theatre buffs mistake for “serious” drama because it shows ugly people doing ugly things to each other using ugly language. It left me with a couple questions: Who is Tracy Letts, and why does he think that profanity makes for a strong script?

     Should you watch this film? Only if you like to see people torture each other. *

The Life of Python (2000)

     The Life of Python (2000) A compilation of clips and interviews, plus an English version of one of the two German episodes for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, made in 1972. The interviews are strictly for Python fans, the selected clips will raise a Huh? Or a chuckle or a guffaw, depending on your fan status. The Dead Parrot is missing, and none of the clips is complete. The German episode includes a long sketch based on a mix of Grimm fairy tales, suitably messed up and parodied, and a real treat for fans. I’m a fan, I thought this three-video set was worth watching, but non-fans will no doubt find it merely average. It’s from Jon’s collection. ***

The Talk of the Town (1942)

     The Talk of the Town (1942) D: George Stevens. Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Coleman] One of the great Hollywood comedies when Hollywood made great comedies. Leonard Dilg (Cary Grant), a falsely accused prisoner escapee, holes up in the house that a stuffy law prof, Michael Lightcap (Ronald Coleman), is renting for the summer, and Nora Shelly (Jean Arthur), the teacher who owns the house, becomes the prof’s secretary/cook. The three develop a nice relationship, and when mob-violence and obvious corruption become too much for the prof to ignore, he takes the case, finds the man whose supposed death has earned Dilg the murder rap, and makes a Grand Speech when he interrupts the trial, which is about to turn into a lynching. Lightcap gets his seat on the Supreme Court, the crooked factory owner and bent judge who concocted the plot against Dilg are indicted, and Dilg and Shelley end up in each other’s arms.
     As you can see, a preposterous plot, but it doesn’t harm a well-directed, fast-paced, well-acted and photographed movie. The three stars are pros, they act their parts with just enough conviction to make us believe the silly story. The supporting actors are pros, too, and every one does at least a workman-like job. The centre of the movie is Nora Shelley: Jean Arthur is an under-rated actor, I think. The situations sometimes reach the absurdist heights of a Laurel & Hardy, and the second ending showing Shelley choosing Dilg over Lightcap is contrived. But so’s the whole movie, really, so a shift in tone is as logical as all the other plot twists.
     We enjoyed this movie, it holds up well. ***