Films LVI and LVII

This ought to be the place to mourn that this isn't

LVI: Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings, 2008)

The combination of working and not working or perhaps the wrong kind of avoiding work meant that none of the four screenings across the weekend suited me. Instead we accentuate the positive and note that two-three years ago the general OCD/depression/overwork/apathy/lack of time would not have allowed this many visits to the cinema, if any.

So we come instead to two films I approached with the sense of having already seen them, one of which was to a large degree Canadian. It's another randomly programmed Monday night double bill at the Carbuncle.

( LVI: Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) )

( LVII: Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007) )

Totals: 57 (Cinema: 21; DVD: 34; TV: 2)

Book XXVII

Ian Rankin, Mortal Causes

I thought it would be odd to dispose of Mr Big so quickly after fully introducing him in The Black Book. He's back - in jail at the start of the book.

A body is discovered in one of the underground streets of Edinburgh, and it appears that he has been executed IRA style - however it seems more as if an off-shoot of the Orange order has been responsibility, and as the Edinburgh Festival is underway, the police fear sectarian gangs are going to run out of control. Rebus is seconded to a unit examining loyalist gun-running whilst he tries to solve the murder - which becomes doubly urgent when he discovers whose son the body is.

I suspect it would be difficult to guess the murderers' identities in a Rankin novel, it depends too much on withheld knowledge about this imaginary Edinburgh, and hiding in plain sight where we are told that Rebus has asked for some information but not what he has asked for. He also owes a little to the Continental Op in which the tactic is to go in heavy handed on an interrogation, not to get information from the questioning, but to see what the subject does afterwards.

Interesting take on a conflict we more often associate with Northern Ireland - and Rebus's past in Ulster is aluded to.

A break from Rebus now, not because I've run out of books (I have two more before the Two Pound Rule has so far let me down; I also have books up to #15) but because I need to re-read Philip K. Dick and about films based on his work.

Film LVIII

( LVIII: Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007) )

Totals: 58 (Cinema: 21; DVD: 35; TV: 2)

Then again, maybe not

I was planning a trip to the US next year, for research purposes. Perhaps I'll go to Toronto instead. This - http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/03/terrorismandtravel.terrorism - is apparently a softly softly approach to what the US authorities really really want.

At least you only have to do it once then you're registered for two years.

H'mm - can one do research on a tourist visa? It's sorta work and I'm sorta paid, but I'd be paid anyway. For ICFA I've always said convention not conference.

Hurrah

"tinkering with a generator while handling a sausage" is legal!

Film LIX

Well, it had to happen...

( LIX: La Règle du Jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) )

Totals: 59 (Cinema: 21; DVD: 36; TV: 2)