A list of some films I particularly admire

I can't call it a bloody Top Ten because there are more than ten of them, and I couldn't ever settle on a definitive Top Ten if I tried.  So here's a random list of films I really admire.  Tonight.

I used to be able to reel lists like this off off so easily. See, I used to be pretentious. I used to be able to do Top 10s of nouvelle vague directors ... and now I'm not sure if I even managed to spell nouvelle vague correctly.

How times have changed. I used to be somebody ... I coulda been a contenduh ... now all I got is vintage wine and memories. And the sad thing is, I'm so out of touch with cinema my top 10 would probably looks pretty much the same as it did two decades ago. I stopped caring, you see, about new Scorcese films sometime between Brining Out The Dead and The Aviator.

Back then, it all seemed so important. I understood Jean Luc godard. Not his impossible movies, no-one, not even Jean Luc, understands them. But I understood the man. The urge to go and see half a dozen films in a day and argue endlessly about them with your equally intelligent and fixated friends in some cafe. Cinema seemed vital when I was in my 20s

But now ... I can barely find the time to watch a DVD and when I do, suddenly the desire to be challenged and puzzled by it seems so indulgent.

In no particular order ...

1. Touch of Evil. D: Orson Welles. Gargantuan film from the gargantuan Welles. Charleton Heston - cheekily blacked up as a Mexican drugs cop - investigates a murder while Janet Leigh lounges about in a bra that would make Madonna blush. Berserk, but brilliant. Or is it the other way round?
2. Sånger från andra våningen / Songs From The Second Floor. D: Roy Andersson. Brilliantly puzzling non-;inear story (sort of) about The End Of The World. Moments of unsurpassed beauty.
3. Simple Men. D: Hal Hartley. Wonderfully dry comedy about two brothers searching for their father and the meaning of life on Long Island. It's a terminal moraine, you know.
4. Raging Bull. D: Martin Scorcese. A grim tale of an athlete's attempt to escape the lower class drudgery and enjoy a brief stab at success. Peerless example of what cinema can be. Absolutely perfect in every regard.
5. Week-End. D: Jean Luc Godard. Simply because this changed my conceptions of what cinema meant. A middle class couple set off with murder in mind get caught up in the collapse of western soiety, and cannibal pig killing Maoists.
6. Mulholland Drive. D: David Lynch. Convuluted tale of desire, murder, corruption, revenge and some guy in a big cowboy hat. Horribly, perhaps the last truly remarkable film I saw in a cinema.
7. The Sporting Life. D: Lidsay Anderson. A grim tale of an athlete's attempt to escape the lower class drudgery and enjoy a brief stab at success. Another one.
8. Lone Star. D: John Sayles. A clever, low key film about a intergenerational murder mystery in small town Texas, from a director who liked to keep things simple so you could appreciate how complicated they really were.
9. Withnail & I. D: Bruce Robinson. Oh, come on. It's fantastic. I'm a trained actor, reduced to the status of a bum! An essential part of my student days, and still a fine meditation on growing up too late, unrequited love and oh, everything. My boys, my boys!
10. The Third Man. D: Carol Reed. I used to call this my favourite film, though it is currently out of favour. An inimitable setting, fine set pieces and performances. But would the police really not looked at Harry Lime's body before he was buried?
11. Fat City. D: John Huston. A grim tale of an athlete's attempt to ... Late, low key boxing drama from the great director. A washed up might-have-been gets a sniff of a second chance.
12. La Chinoise / The Chinese. D: Jean luc Godard. Godard renounces radical leftism in charactertistically off beat tale of student terrorists. Characteristically baffling and defiantly unhelpful, but contains many moments of Godardian genius.
13. Nackt Unter Wolfen / Naked Among Wolves. D: Frank Beyer. Concentration camp cat and mouse as prisoners conceal a Jewish child. A distant ancestor of the slushier Life is Beautiful, this film is stark, brilliant drama.
14. Oldboy. D: Park Chan-wook. Sick, brutal, nasty film about long delayed revenge. Redeemed only by the fact that it is brilliant in almost every way.
15. Darwin's Nightmare. D: Hubert Sauper. Jarring documentary about poverty, exploitation and pending ecological collapse around Lake Tanzania, where locals fish for invasive Nile Perch which are freighted to European restaurants while the fishermen subsist on rotting fish remains.
16. The Sweet Smell of Success. D: Alexander MacKendrick. Uber-louse Tony Curtis oils and weasels his way about the screen in a stupendous film about how vile people can be to each other.
17. A Night To Remember. D: Roy Ward Baker. The sinking of Titanic, the way it should have been told.

So, yeah. A top Seventeen. How stupid is that?

Reading list 2012

Slightly more cutting edge and here-and-now than the 2011 list:

1. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein. Archetypal adventure story that isn't quite as big or exciting as it was when you were young. ***
2. Monsieur by Lawrence Durrell. Deeply strange mess of narrators and characters, who may have all written each other into existance. *
3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Long, mostly good account of the rise of Thomas Cromwell. Complex, and lacks some dramatic vitality. ***
4. Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone by JK Rowling. Likeable enough child's fantasy about an orphan wizard. **
5. The Mercy Seat by Martin Waites. Rubbish modern noirish thriller set in the North of England. Obvious plot and crap characters. Less than No Star
6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Satire of celeb culture and reality TV as teens battle to the death for sport. What's not to like? **
7. The Devil's Footprints by John Burnside. Long-even-though-it-is-short novella about a middle aged plonker. No star
8. The Agenda by Bob Woodward. Intruiging account of the dealing and politics of Clinton's first few months. *
9. About A Boy by Nick Hornby. Smug and twee account a thirty something bloke and a miserable teenager. No star
10. The Hillicker Curse by James Ellroy. Brutally frank account of the author's sexual and social dysfunction, though perhaps too much. *
11. Falk by Joseph Conrad. Odd novella about romantic-sexual frustration, and cannibalism. Or was it the other way round? *
12. The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad by John Stape. Adequate introduction to the writer, but with little consideration of the writing. *
13. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. Second Hunger Games installment repeats the tropes of the first book while advancing the plot arc slightly. *
14. Other People's Wars by Nicky Hager. Interminable analysis of New Zealand's support of The War On Terror. Should have been interesting. Isn't. No star
15. Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. Pointless yarn about a kid who runs about a lot, has no family and brings people together. Spinelli has done better. No star
16. Bridge to Terabithia by Katharine Paterson. In progress.
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling. In progress.
18. Clockers by Richard Price. In progress.
19. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. In progress.
20. The Third Reich by Michael Burleigh. In progress.
21. Capital, Vol. 1 by Karl Marx. In (very slow) progress.

What I read in 2011

For the historical record ...

1. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. Remarkable account of the desert war in WW1. Long, doesn't suffer fools, but unique. ****
2. The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Samson. Lightweight cutesy mystery, irritatingly whimsical and obviously aimed at starting a franchise. No star
3. The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman. Elizabethan scientist Dr Dee investigates a murder with mythic and political resonances. Adequate. No star
4. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sprawling, unfocused tale about the gorgeous, flawed, Divers, whose beauty conceals murky secrets. **
5. Rommel by Desmond Young. Superb short biography of the field marshal, based on interviews with colleagues and family. ***
6. The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager. Interesting study of how the right tried to win power in New Zealand. Of moderate interest to denizens of other lands. **
7. Silas Marner by George Eliot. Slight and sentimental yarn about rural types. Not really very distinguished at all. No star
8. Out of Sight by Catherine Sampson. Dreary murder mystery that lurches from unlikely to absurd, with an "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo" feel to end. No star
9. The Dead Pool by Sue Walker. Very poor murder mystery marred obvious killer, predictable plot twists and some really clunky dialogue. Less Than No Star
10. Blood is Dirt by Robert Wilson. African tale of murder and corruption starts brilliantly, but loses its way. Great setting and first chapter. *
11. Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. Part one of famous children's fantasy series. Readable enough, but not great to revisit. No star
12. Angel Isle by Peter Dickinson. Massive late work by one of Britain's greats. Magic, adventure and ideas, but it is the characters that sustain it. **
13. Rain Dogs and Love Cats by Andrew Holmes. Crime novel that could have been interesting. Well written and observed, marred by whimsy. *
14. Out by Natsuo Kirino. Thriller about four women who conceal a murder, and the consequences. Dark and nasty but interesting and involving. **
15. 1974 by David Peace. Re-read. Ferocious murder shocker. Doesn't relent on the blood and depravity, but author's purpose isn't clear. *
16. The Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn. Class based history. Possibly a bit repetitive in the end. Zinn would argue this is because nothing's changed. *
17. Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin. A black actor grows up, confronting racism and his romantic travails. Great pages, dull chapters. No star
18. Aneurin Bevan by Michael Foot. Sympathetic, very detailed biography of the perennial Labour outsider. Part one of two. ***
19. The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Typically well written and interesting account of efforts to build an earth-to-orbit pulley system. *
20. City of Screams by John Brindley. Ambitious YA novel that has too much going on. Something about religion, evolution, violence and angels. No star
21. Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker. Overblown wannabe epic makes remarkable times - the New York draft riots - tiresome. *
22. Final Cut by Paul Thomas. Pacey mystery that loses its way halfway. Killer obvious, plot incoherent. No star
23. The Thin Man by Dashiell hammett. Entertaining whodunnit that perhaps has to work a bit too hard to gloss over its doubtful plot. **
24. The Man Who Went Up In Smoke by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Adequate policer marred by languid telling and clumsy denounement. We arrive there pages before the admirable Martin beck. *

My intended reading for 2009

I know it is midway through the year, but I've lost the papercopy of thislist and it's good to have it somewhere safe for reference.

FICTION

1. December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia Rosa. South American noir, apparently.
2. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Tragic, and American, going by the title. Because they do it differently over there.
3. The White Guard by Mikhail Bugalov. Shenanigans following the Bolshie revolution.
4. Becoming Madam Mao by Anchee Min. My token attempt to read a book my wife has read. She is sensible and doesn't return the compliment.
5. The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson. One of the authentic Big Beasts of British fantasy writing. So Harry Potter for grown-ups.
6. Purple America by Rick Moody. Purple, and American. Those crazy Yanks!
7. Quisante by Anthony Hope Hawkins. Swashbuckling nonsense, hopefully, from the author of The Prisoner of Zenda.

NON-FICTION

1. The History of the English Church and People by Bebe. Because its all true.
2. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock. Apparently the first full biography of Hitler.
3. For The Islands I Sing by George McKay Brown. A poet's autobiography. Hopefully more interesting than that sounds.
4. America in the Twenties by Geoffery Perrett. So I can wax knowledgable about the parallels between the last Economic Apocalypse and the current one.
5. All Too Human by George Stephanopolous. Clinton insider's account of the Salacious One.
6. Big Muddy by BC Hall and CT Wood. A book about the Mississippi. Why not?
7. The Hemingway Bookclub of Kosovo by Paula Huntly. Either an account of how literature brought some relief to those suffering in the horrors of ethnic cleansing, or a book soon to be adapted into a Stallone movie in which Hemingway takes out Milosevic.

RE-READS

1. Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. The Great Man's most difficult good book.
2. A Disaffection by James Kelman. I won't be re-reading Translated Accounts just yet.
3. Red Shift by Alan Garner. A totally mad fantasy jamboree, where the past and present and the bit in between get all mixed up. Hopefully I'll understand it better this time.
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Nuff said, surely.
5. The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. Faulkner's great. This novel is strange. But it is referenced in Godard's A Bout De Souffle. Which is cool.
6. From Bondage by Henry Roth. Part three of Roth's Harlem Quartet, written after a helf century of literary silence.
7. Germinal by Emile Zola. Grisly story of miners and anarchists.

The films I watched in 2009

In reverse order:

• Ice Age. D: Carlos Saldhana. Good fun animated creature caper. Production above average in all areas. **
• Sea of Love. D: Harold Becker. Pacino is great in an otherwise conventional murder mystery. Nice atmosphere. [DVD] *
• Cheri. D: Stephen Frears. Banal costume drama that eschews the groteque humour that might have saved it. [Cinema] No stars
• Tyson. D: James Toback. Superficial account of the boxer's rise and fall, about as incisive as a sofa. [Cinema] No stars
• Infernal Affairs. D: Wai Keung Lau, Alan Mak. Moderately impressive drama about moles in the police and triad. [Cinema] **
• Wild Side. D: Don Cammel. Camp caper about crime and lesbianism. Director's cut - Cammel killed himself after studio re-cut. [DVD] *
• The Big Easy. D: Jim McBride. New Orleans set police sex and slaying romp. What seemed sexy and cool when I was younger now just seems like camp fun. But still fun. [DVD] *
• We, The Living. D: Roy Anderssen. Bleak tablaeu of isolation and despair in Sweden. A feature from the genius behind Songs From The Second Story can not be uninteresting, but this effort contains about an equal number of hits and misses. [Cinema] *
  
• La Chinoise. D: Jean luc Godard. Godard renounces radical leftism in charactertistically off beat tale of student terrorists. Characteristically baffling and defiantly unhelpful, but contains many moments of Godardian genius. [DVD] ***
• Navigators. D: Ken Loach. Kitchen sinker about the effects of rail privaisation improves as it becomes less topical and the agitprop less grating. Still not exactly subtle and trapped in its reductive workers-bosses dialectic. [Cinema] *
  
• Inglourious Basterds. D: Quentin Tarantino. Grisly, messy botch of a war fantasy. Frequently spectacular, but incoherent and the two halves of the film never gel. Concscientiously nasty. [Cinema] *
  
• Paris. D: Agnes Varda. A selection Varda's short films from different decades. Ranges from irritating to embarrassing. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Russian Ark. D:Alexander Sokurov. Technically audacious single take film. In part, its main achievement is to remind us why we have editing. Visually spectacular, and the final sequence is very impressive, though the point of the whole exercise is elusive. [DVD] **
  
• Suburban Mayhem. D: Paul Goldman. Teen mega bitch terrorises her neighbourhood. A cigarette paper seperates this from reality. Very well done, brilliant performance from Emily Barclay as the monstrous Katrina. Like an Elizabethan comedy, it is essentially tragedy played for laughs. [DVD] **
  
• The In Crowd. D: Mary Lambert. Exploitative tosh about beautiful, heartless, underclad rich kids. A decent cast, competent direction and reasonable production can't redeem a witless, predictable script, where the twists are so obvious they look like red herrings. They aren't. [DVD] No stars
  
• Eternity. D: Wilhelm Leibenberg, Frederico Sanchez. Erotic horror about Elizabeth Bathory. Neither sexy or scary. Two credited directors fail to do the job of one mediocre one. [DVD] No stars
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird. D: Rober Mulligan. Mild adaptation. Good, but dated No excuse for not reading the book. Peck's Oscar winning performance seems mannered today, but Mary Badham as Scout and Philip Alford as Jem are good. [DVD] **
• Thirst. D:Park Chan-wook. The insane Korean auteur geleefully combines Therese Raquin, Zola's sleazy tale of adultrery and nemesis, with Kathryn Bigelow's modern vampire film, Near Dark. Inevitably weird, but more conventional than the majestically mad Oldboy. [Cinema] **
  
• Red Cliff. D: John Woo. Massive Chinese battle epic, but for seasoned Woo watchers, basically a remake of Hardboiled with swords. [Cinema] **
  
• Architekten. D: Peter Kahane. East German architects run up against institutional inertia. More interesting than it sounds. [Cinema] ***
  
• Wall-E. D: Andrew Stanton. Excellent film, brilliantly executed, lovely characters and a thankful lack of rubbish jokes aimed at adults. [DVD] ***
  
• Noi the Albino. D: Dagur Kari. Dull, wilfully offbeat tale of misfit youth. Iceland is presented as a sort of Scaninavian Lake Woebegon, without the humour. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Pierrepoint. D: Adrian Shergold. The life of Britain's premier hangman. A great idea, a great lead, but let down by the Coronation Street production values and a lack of visual, philisophical or narrative insight. [DVD] *
  
• Nackt Unter Wolfen. D: Frank Beyer. Concentration camp cat and mouse as prisoners conceal a Jewsih child. A distant ancestor of the slushier Life is Beautiful, this film is stark, brilliant drama. [Cinema] ****
  
• 2046. D: Wong Kar-Wai. Beautifully filmed meditation on love confounded, lacking only purpose and urgency. Which is, unfortunately, two things it really needs. A s with much of this director's work, it is like watching beautiful paint dry. [DVD] *
  
• Charade. D: Stanley Donnen. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in a comedy thriller with too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Directed with a bit of style, but nowhere near as charming as it thinks it is. [DVD] *
  
• Made in USA. D: Jean Luc Godard. A big, pretenious mess of a film by the master, stumbling badly between the brilliance been (Les Mepris) and to come (Weekend). Still, nothing by Godard is entirely worthless. Striking use of colour, visual audacity, and a the sheer gall of the project provokes something mid way between admiration and condemnation. [DVD] *
• Ich War Neunzehn. D: Konrad Wolf. The final days of WW2, from the point of view of Red Armyy soldiers always just behind or to one side of the main action. The Spandau sequence and the final scenes pack considerable wallop. [Cinema] **
  
• The Fast and the Furious (1955). D: John Ireland, Edward Sampson. Corman quickie with nothing to recommend it. The remake looks like Potemkin in comparison. [DVD] No stars
  
• Oldboy. D: Park Chan-wook. Sick, brutal, nasty film about long delayed revenge. Redeemed only by the fact that it is brilliant in almost every way. [DVD] ****
  
• Last Tango in Paris. D: Bernardo Berolucci. What is the worst aspect of this film? The script? Brando's performance? The turgid sex? The embarassing 'lets make a movie' sub-plot? The insufferable self importance of Bertolucci's direction? [DVD] No stars
  
• Elephant. D: Gus van Sant. A shooting at a school very like Columbine. The too clever, sleek cinematic technique ends up being exploitative, which, I assume, was not van Sant's intention. [DVD] *
  
• Days of being Wild. D: Wong Kar-Wai. An arrogant playboy takes his women for granted. His life falls apart as he seeks his birth mother. Beautifully done, but uneven. [DVD] **
• Moolade. D: Ousmane Sembene. In a traditional African vilalge, a woman gives four girls, facing female circumsion, sanctuary. This provokes a confrontation between her and the vilalge, progress and tradition, locals and outsiders, men and women. Simple, predictable but well done. [DVD] *
• Gaslight. D: George Cukor. Charles Boyer tries to drive Ingrid Bergman insane in this creaky, overwrought but still fun melodrama. Very quaint, it is strange to think that in the USA, Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon were already history. Joe Cotten made the not-dissimilar Shadow of a Doubt with Hithcock the year before, and must have found the change jarring. [Cinema] *
  
• They Drive by Night. D: Raoul Welsh. First half is great, blue collar drama, blessed with terrific dialogue as Bogey and Raft truck on. Second half is absurd melodrama, though Ida Lupino is obviously haveing fun. [DVD] *
• Mala Noche. D: Gus van Sant. Highly likeable tale of gay hustlers at the social fringes. Beautifully acted, wonderful freewheeling syle and densely composed sound track. Very good, though small scale means it feels slightly inessential. ***
  
• Infamous. D: Douglas McGrath. Covers same ground as the better known Capote. A more conventional, but perhaps better film with its own strengths and weaknesses. Toby Jones is superb. [DVD] ***
  
• Der Dritte. D: Egon Gunther. A woman seeks love amid the socialist realism. Stylish, very nouvelle vague winner from the GDR. [Cinema] ***
  
• Berlin-Schonhauser Corner. D: Gerhard Klein. It doesn't sound promising: 1950s East German teenage rebellion. The actual film is every bit as unconvincing as that summary sounds. [Cinema] *
• Lone Wolf & Cub 4: Baby Cart in Peril. D: Kenji Misumi. Frantic, preposterously bloody samurai fun. With a topless ninjette. [DVD] *
  
• Sleeping Dogs. D: Roger Donaldson. Feisty little film, chronicling the rise of fascism in 1970s New Zealand. No, really. Features a gaunt, youthful Sam Neill. [DVD] **
  
• Knafayim shvurot. D: Nir Bergman. Generic, but likeable, Israeli family drama. Offbeat setting and believeable cast are assets. [Cinema] *
  
• Capote. D: Bennett Miller. Well made account of the writing of In Cold Blood, though too self-consiously crafted and enigmatic. [DVD] **
  
• Manufactured Landscapes. D: Jennifer Baichwal. Profile of the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky. His photographs are astonishing, clinically objective illustrations of the impact of industrialisation on landscape, but the additional material is less interesting. [Cinema] **
  
• San Pietro. D: John Huston. Another supressed WW2 doco from Huston, detailing the cost of a single battle in the Italian campaign. [DVD] *
• Let There Be Light. D: John Huston. Long supressed WW2 doco, showing rehabilitation of shellshocked GIs. Somewhat dated. [DVD] No Stars
  
• Darwin's Nightmare. D: Hubert Sauper. Jarring documentary about poverty, exploitation and pending ecological collapse around Lake Tanzania, where locals fish for invasive Nile Perch which are freighted to European restaurants while the fishermen subsist on rotting fish remains. [Cinema] ****
  
• Zulu Dawn. D: Douglas Hickox. Prequel to the events described in the better known Zulu, this film is less jingoistic and more sympathetic to the Zulus. Merciless in exposing the blunders that lead up to the disaster at Isandlwana. [DVD] ***
  
• No Country for Old Men. D: Joel & Ethan Coen. Film noir in cowboy hats. Accomplished, polished and well turned out, but spoiled by a cartoon villan. Still, gave Tommy Lee Jones a chance to act, rather than chew the scenery. [DVD] ***
  
• Perfect Strangers. D: Gaylene Preston. He kidnaps her, she kills him, keeps him in the freezer, falls in love with him. So mad it almost works. Good performances and lovely locations. [Cinema] *
  
• March of the Penguins. D: Luc Jaquet. Let down by anthropomorphism, sentimental music and a lack of facts and data. Nice pictures. [DVD] No stars
  
• The Producers. D: Mel Smith. First half is superb, with Mostel and Wilder playing off each other. Opening number of 'Springtime' is brilliant, but the other musical scenes are flat, lacking the comedy or bad taste that made the first half great. [DVD] **
  
• Flandres. D: Bruno Dumont. Wilfully bleak, purposeless film about farms, mud, sex, war, only much less interesting than that sounds. Dumont tells us that life sucks, in every film he makes. He doesn't seem to be capable of saying why it sucks, or what we could do about it. [Cinema] *
  
• The Longest Day. D: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Elmo Williams. Still stirring war film. The pre-invasion scenes are often twee, but the staging of D-Day itself is impressive and gritty. Three 'official' directors, plus Elmo Williams is credited for co-ordinating 'battle scenes' and deserves directorial recognition. [DVD] ***
  
• Mauvais Sang. D: Leos Carax. Four things that ruin French films are here in condensed form: no plot, no urgency, stylistic excess, Juliette Binoche. [Cinema] No stars
• All the Kings Men. D: Robert Rossen. Triple Oscar winner from 1950 still works brilliantly, partly because politicians are still corrupt scum bags who lie, but mainly because the cscript, direction and cast - particularly Mercedes MacCambridge - are superb. Ends predictably, just missing out on that coveted fourth star. [DVD] ***
• King Lear. D: Brian Blessed. Blessed, as Lear, looks like a tetchy hobbit. Some good performances among minor players. A poor adaptation which looks like it was filmed on a mobile phone. [DVD] No stars
  
• Gospel According to Harry. D: Lech Majewski. A summary would make this banality seem more interesting than it is. A big disappointment from the director of the fascinating Angelus. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Diva. D: Jean-Jaques Beineix. Homage to Hollywood, Hitchcock (note the shameless MacGuffin driven plot, the lighthouse, and matters "disposed of from a great height"), Blow Up, Godard, Paris. Tres chic, but empty. [Cinema] **
• Toy Story 2. D: John Lasseter. An advantage of parenthood is that you get to watch films like this. Enjoyable, and possessed of an old fashioned, pre-Shrek innocence. [VHS - no, really, it does still exist] **
  
• La Science des Reves. D: Michael Gondry. Watery romantic comedy which tries too hard to be batty but is annoying and superficial. There are some very cute animations. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. D: Lian Lunson. By-the-numbers tribute concert, but does that matter with numbers like these? Some interesting commentary from Cohen. A pity Bono exists. [DVD] *
• Basquait. D: Julian Schnabel. An indulgent biography of the graffitti artist. There are some good performances, but the whole thing feels suspiciously like a highbrow Finding Forrester. [Cinema] *
• Mr Arkadin. D: Orson Welles. Mad, late period attempt to combine Kane, The Trial and The Third Man into one. Less than those mighty works, but like anything Welles did in his late phase, this film has baroque touches of near accidental genius. [DVD] **
• Hamlet. D: Mike Mundell. After a creaky opening segement, this is well done, though its low budget shows in almost every scene. A spirited presentation with a good cast that capturesd the 'feel' of the play more effectively than some mega-star and big budget vehicles. [DVD] **
• Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough. D: Jay Lowi. Sleazy, exploitative, and delightfully trashy, though pretty much worthless for anything other than lewd amusement. No stars
  
• Melissa P. D: Luca Guadagnino. Glossy, softcore Europorn. Hallmark erotica which pretends to be investigating the fraght topic of teenage sexual misadventure but is really just exploiting it. Avoid, no matter how base your motives. No stars
  
• Angelus. D: Lech Majewski. Weird fable about individuality and spirituality in communist Poland. Beautiful and successful on its own captivatingly strange terms. **
  
• MacBeth. D: Jeremy Freeston. A very poor attempt at the play, with Connery and Baxendale weak in the lead roles. The text has been hacked to pieces and the whole thing is poorly staged. Good Banquo and decent witches. [DVD] No stars
  
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. D: Mark Herman. Unsurprisingly bleak film which serves as a good introduction to the Holocaust. Yes, it is contrived and not very realistic, how much does that matter? [Cinema] *
• To Have and Have Not. D: Howard Hawks. Shameless clone of Casablanca. Bogey & Bacall exchange sardonic one liners. Hoagy Carmichael sings. William Faulkner writes. Nil resembleance to the Hemingway novel of the same name, apart from the involvement of boats. Daffy fun. [DVD] **
• The Sweet Smell of Success. D: Alexander MacKendrick. Uber-louse Tony Curtis oils and weasels his way about the screen in a stupendous film about how vile people can be to each other. [DVD] ****

The books I read in 2009

In reverse order:

• History of the English Church and People by Bede. Interesting history gives way to repetitivie lists of alleged miracles. *
• Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Swedish policer. Wry characters and painstakingly slow pace. Clumsy ending. *
• Germinal by Emile Zola. Raw, brutal tale of miners strike. Overwrought and bathetic, but retains some power and plenty rage. *
• Above Suspicion by Lynda la Plante. Girl cop can't decide to shag her boss or the chief suspect. Dismal. No stars
  
• Purple America by Rick Moody. Excess style failing to compensate for trivial plot and unconvincing characters. A lit fic sugar treat. *
  
• For The Islands I Sing by George MacKay Brown. The life of an Orcadian poet. Nicely written, but not exactly eventful. *
  
• The Third Murderer by Carrol John Daly. Clunky and clumsy pulp novella from the 30s, where it should have stayed. No stars
  
• Heresies by John Gray. Moderately interesting collection of essays by a contrarian philosopher that starts well but soon becomes repetitive. Good points, hammered home rather too hard. *
  
• Wolf in the Shadow by Marcia Muller. PI Sharon McCone tries to find her missing lover. Indifferent mystery. No stars
• Vodka Doesn't Freeze by Leah Giarratano. Aussie policer spoiled by nastiness, plot cheats and clumsy character exposition. No stars
  
• Red Blood by Heather Graham. Insipid, femme orientated scares'n'sex vampire novel. Doesn't really deliver either, but not offensively bad either. Keeps you reading, just about. No stars
  
• Bound by Fire by Anna Windsor. Adominable combination of eroticism and horror. Neither arousing or scary, and so badly written it left me feeling embarrassed for the author. No stars
  
• December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Rosa. Poorly plotted and dully writen (albeit in translation) police thriller. Unconvincing, uninteresting and makes Rio sound like a very dull place. The writer is compared to Chandler - trust me, he isn't. No stars
• The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. Two novellas - one about a convict forced into freedom against his will, the other about a couple cornered by reality - exploring freedom and compulsion. Initially unconvincing, particularly around the central relationsip, but ultimately riveting. **
• Baghdad Burning by Riverbend. Life in Iraq after the invasion, as told with wit and rage by a blogger who has been silent for almost 2 years. **
• The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley. An American teaching English in Kosova (sic) is impressed by her student's response to The Old Man and the Sea, and their courage in a dismal situation. Lacks the rigour needed to make it be than modestly interesting. No stars
• Vlad the Impaler by M.J. Trow. An attempt to examine the history of Dracula - the historical Impaler and the myth that has built up around him. Waffley and unfocused, even its grisly subject matter barely makes it interesting. No stars
• Big Muddy by B.C. Hall & C.T. Wood. A modern journey down the Mississippi. Tries hard to be worthy, but lacks the detail to match the scope of the project, and the crisis, faced by the river and the people living on it. *
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Revisiting Macondo reveals a reversal of prior experience. The first half drags, and the second half soars. Still one of the greats. ***
• The Steps to the Empty Throne by Nigel Tranter. The ascent of Robert the Bruce to the throne of Scotland, passably told. The prose is marred by touches of imperial purple. No Stars
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Apallingly long, ill written account of a tormented young man's motivation to commit murder. Dostoevsky this ain't. Perhaps the worst book I have ever read. Avoid. No Stars
• Quisante by Anthony Hope. No Ruritanian derring-do in this well written but underpowered novel of an ambitious, talented man who lacks any moral sense or qulaity of self reflection. *
• The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Coruscating, technically challenging, but perhaps too ambitious for its own good. Not for the faint hearted. ***
• All Too Human by George Stephanopolous. Pacey insider on Clinton's first term. Stephanopolous comes across as either dishonest, or incredibly naive. He is good company, however.
• Red Shift by Alan Garner. Brilliant little novel that defies simple description. Events and characters in Roman Britain, the English Civil War and the 20th century overlap and echo around the same locations. ****
• Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min. Tepid account of the life of Jiang Ching, wife of Mao and instigator of the Cultural Revolution. Not as interesting or as well written as it needed to be to do justice to its atrocious subject. No Stars
• From Bondage by Henry Roth. Third installment of Roth's semi-postumous, somewhat fictionalised autobiography about literature and depravity in 1920s New York. **
• Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. Off kilter tale of crime and punishment among Russian anarchists in Geneva. Uneven, but still interesting to Conradians. **
• America in the Twenties by Geoffrey Perrett. The last time the wheels came off the global economy in an excess of consumer credit and financial recklessness. Interesting, but long. **
• Hitler: a Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock. This was the first full length biography of Hitler pubslished after the war. Enthralling, though hardly uplifting. ***
• The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson. A rather disappointing novel from one of the greats of British fantasy. Young readers might over-look its schematic format but others are advised to seek out the Changes Trilogy to see Dickinson at his best. *
• Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame. Memories of Frame's childhood are conveyed with nightmarish intensity and dazzling skill, but the other half, an uneasy comedy of manners and errors, is much less satisfying. **
• The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. Strange late play, of mismatched parts, but possessed of its own strange magic. Includes the best stage direction ever - "Exit, pursued by a bear." *