Reviews 2010 (books, TV, film)
I think I've done 3 reviews this year so will start with no.4
If anyone can tell me where the hash symbol is on a UK keyboard I'd be grateful. Also how to actually find anything by tag on LJ - I've tagged most posts for years but still haven't sussed how to use that to find them again! Answered! Anyway, onwards:
7) Mongrels - claymation comedy on BBC3, about a bunch of London animals (a couple foxes, dogs, pigeons, cats etc) and their soap-opera lives and pursuits of fame and sex, with voices that make them sound incredibly human. It is Bad, Wrong, more bad-taste than anything I have ever seen on telly (Chris Morris on paedophiles and drugs looks uncontroversial in comparison), and very, very, funny, to the extent that I had tears in my eyes from a section about babies being killed, and then ended up in hysterical laughter about the same subject while still crying.
Very highly recommended, but don't say I didn't warn you about the unpleasant side of it. You should have a decent idea if it's not your thing by the opening credits of the first episode...
8) My name is Modesty - film based on Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise comics. This was more a feature-length TV episode that should have been the intro of a series - IMDB says it was produced solely so Miramax could keep the rights to MB movies, which makes sense. It was clearly done on the cheap, with a cast of about 20 Eastern Europeans and all the action taking place in one casino. Alexandra Staden plays Modesty and is convincing until the final action sequences; Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a great criminal gang-leader, and the conversations between then which make up most of the film are oozing with sexual tension in perfect Blaise fashion. Turns out NCW is now a rather famous Danish actor; I'll be looking out for more with him in, not just because he's most decorative.
9) Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Pratchett does football and associated mania, along with fashion and celebrity. Not one of his best, but not one of the worst either, simply a bit repetitive compared to some of the recent Pratchett takes on the media, banking, political treaties, etc. And I've never been very fond of the wizards. But Glenda is a good new character and there's the odd fun bit with the Patrician and with the 'Old Sam' aka the Watch
10) The Algebraist - Iain M Banks. A non-Culture novel, set in and around a gas giant planet, where there's thousands of species, people can live for a few hundred years, and the gas giant hosts a species called the Dwellers, who live for billions of years. Many parts of this novel are excellent - the gas giant system and the incomprehension the Slow and Quick species have for each other are beautifully observed, but the characters and plot are rather lacking, in particular the pantomime supervillain, the Archimandrite Luciferous who would be much more at home in the Evil Empire from the book above. If you're squeamish, skip from page 16 to 18 - they add nothing to the book.
11) The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
I'd wanted to read this for ages, in particular after reading the BBC article recently that explained that Chandler and PG Wodehouse both went to Alleyn's School at the same time and had the same English teacher as well as resulting in very similar writing styles, albeit as English and American respectively as possible. I enjoyed it, but it felt rather familiar as all the ingredients have been re-used in so many novels, films, TV etc since. I suspect Marlowe got more developed as a character in the later novels so will seek them out.
12) The Book of Fours - Nancy Holder. A Buffy novel
Don't bother reading it - poorly researched stereotyped takes on Egyptian, Arabian, Jamaican and English cultures, huge amounts of italics for emphasis, and crap characterisation. Most fanfic is better than this.
If anyone can tell me where the hash symbol is on a UK keyboard I'd be grateful. Also how to actually find anything by tag on LJ - I've tagged most posts for years but still haven't sussed how to use that to find them again! Answered! Anyway, onwards:
7) Mongrels - claymation comedy on BBC3, about a bunch of London animals (a couple foxes, dogs, pigeons, cats etc) and their soap-opera lives and pursuits of fame and sex, with voices that make them sound incredibly human. It is Bad, Wrong, more bad-taste than anything I have ever seen on telly (Chris Morris on paedophiles and drugs looks uncontroversial in comparison), and very, very, funny, to the extent that I had tears in my eyes from a section about babies being killed, and then ended up in hysterical laughter about the same subject while still crying.
Very highly recommended, but don't say I didn't warn you about the unpleasant side of it. You should have a decent idea if it's not your thing by the opening credits of the first episode...
8) My name is Modesty - film based on Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise comics. This was more a feature-length TV episode that should have been the intro of a series - IMDB says it was produced solely so Miramax could keep the rights to MB movies, which makes sense. It was clearly done on the cheap, with a cast of about 20 Eastern Europeans and all the action taking place in one casino. Alexandra Staden plays Modesty and is convincing until the final action sequences; Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a great criminal gang-leader, and the conversations between then which make up most of the film are oozing with sexual tension in perfect Blaise fashion. Turns out NCW is now a rather famous Danish actor; I'll be looking out for more with him in, not just because he's most decorative.
9) Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Pratchett does football and associated mania, along with fashion and celebrity. Not one of his best, but not one of the worst either, simply a bit repetitive compared to some of the recent Pratchett takes on the media, banking, political treaties, etc. And I've never been very fond of the wizards. But Glenda is a good new character and there's the odd fun bit with the Patrician and with the 'Old Sam' aka the Watch
10) The Algebraist - Iain M Banks. A non-Culture novel, set in and around a gas giant planet, where there's thousands of species, people can live for a few hundred years, and the gas giant hosts a species called the Dwellers, who live for billions of years. Many parts of this novel are excellent - the gas giant system and the incomprehension the Slow and Quick species have for each other are beautifully observed, but the characters and plot are rather lacking, in particular the pantomime supervillain, the Archimandrite Luciferous who would be much more at home in the Evil Empire from the book above. If you're squeamish, skip from page 16 to 18 - they add nothing to the book.
11) The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
I'd wanted to read this for ages, in particular after reading the BBC article recently that explained that Chandler and PG Wodehouse both went to Alleyn's School at the same time and had the same English teacher as well as resulting in very similar writing styles, albeit as English and American respectively as possible. I enjoyed it, but it felt rather familiar as all the ingredients have been re-used in so many novels, films, TV etc since. I suspect Marlowe got more developed as a character in the later novels so will seek them out.
12) The Book of Fours - Nancy Holder. A Buffy novel
Don't bother reading it - poorly researched stereotyped takes on Egyptian, Arabian, Jamaican and English cultures, huge amounts of italics for emphasis, and crap characterisation. Most fanfic is better than this.