mardi 13 janvier 2004

'Lost in Translation': delectable understatement 'Lost in Translation,' written and directed by Sofia Coppola for a splendid Bill Murray, perfectly teamed up with a very bright young Scarlett Johansson, is a touching, intelligent, melancholic comedy about a brief encounter far from home. The centre of the opening shot is Johansson's pretty backside wearing knickers on a bed and for some reason the girl spends quite a large part of the film bare-legged, staring at one point out of a hotel window so high some would get vertigo! She, as Charlotte, has been married for two years, and Murray, as actor Bob Harris spending a week in Japan to make whisky commercials, for 25. Their ships-in-the-night time together mainly in ultra-modern Tokyo is wonderfully acted. Some of the reviews at the IMDb are among the most brainless I have read in a long time! First, the bit about mid-life crisis and buying a Porsche was a joke. Joke! Irony, it's called. Secondly, the movie was not in the least bit "racist" against the Japanese, as somebody else thought. It was partly about culture shock and amazement, in a lovely, low-key kind of way. And whoever wrote that must have been snoring through the several scenes where Charlotte visits temples and "old Japan". Others found that there "wasn't a story", but of course there was a story and a delicious one at that. Two people meet, they have a good time and they ... well, no spoilers. I must have been living in Paris and spoiled by good movies for too long. Karaoke plays its clever part and fax machines contribute to the gentle comedy. With excellent, rich photography and an admirably appropriate musical score put together mainly (I believe) by Kevin Shields, this is an easy 8/10. Indeed, it was so much a better film than the other woman director's movie of the week, 'In the Cut,' that I'd be tempted to slash a half-point off my vote for the latter. But to each the mood of the day, and it's unfair to compare the incomparable. (Stolen photo credit to Yashio Sato, Focus Features) 9:07:27 PM  link   your views? [] Meeting your readers: another name to drop... Tony can usually be relied on for the short cut that didn't spring immediately to my own mind. A very old-school British fellow, looking only a little the worse for the years since he first stormed the literary world, was being interviewed for TV when I dropped into the mainly American Brentano's (who need to get an anglophone to proof-read their website). After five minutes I tut-tutted slightly because the writer was answering idiotic questions in front of my favourite shelves and access to much of the bookshop was barred by people trying to talk to him in the reverent way that immediately puts my back up. I dived downstairs into the children's section instead and had a chat with the woman in charge down there, whom the Kid has promised to send book reviews. By the time I emerged, the crowd round the author had thinned. "I didn't know you'd taken to writing science fiction!" I remarked. "Science fiction?" asked Frederick Forsyth with amused astonishment. "You're sitting in front of rows of the stuff," I told him. "Aah," he said. "No." I've only read 'The Negotiator', but, on that basis, was able truthfully to say "I do admire your work" as I passed on to my selection. Since he'd mentioned 'The Day of the Jackal' just last weekend, before leaving the shop, I asked Tony on my mobile, "Would you like a signed copy of Frederick Forsyth's latest, 'Avenger'?" "Why, because it'll sell for a lot?" "Tony! Because I happen to be in Brentano's and so is he." "Oh dear," said Tony. "No thank you. Once you've reached that awful signing stage I think you're in a bit of trouble!" "Would you like me to pass that on?" Mean, mean. Personally, I think that when you're world-famous and made wealthy by those who like your work, the odd bit of suffering at the hands of your admiring public can't do any harm. (No, I didn't introduce myself and no, I didn't buy a copy of the book.) 8:49:11 PM  link   your views? [] 'Revelation Space': admirable intro to a tough 'opera' (This review went up at B'critics (b'rolled) yesterday, with links to Amazon US. Here, I've concluded by adding a link to the author's site.) "There was a razorstorm coming in. Sylveste stood on the edge of the excavation and wondered if any of his labours would survive the night." With three tempting novels on the review shelf, it was 'Revelation Space' by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, 2000; paperback 2001) which just beat the others past a "first lines and in at the deep end" test. We're on the unfriendly surface of the planet Resurgam, Delta Pavonis system, the year 2551. Battling the misgivings of his team with an obstinate logic and bloody-mindedness, Dan Sylveste persuades most to stay with the dig. If the alternative is to evacuate and risk losing all trace of the site for years to come, the archaeologist would rather batten down against the tempest and unearth more of a civilisation wiped out 900,000 years earlier. What killed the Amarantin and why? Does it matter? Few other scientists share Sylveste's obsession with a long-dead and not particularly sophisticated alien race on an inhospitable planet. Even if the secret is there to be unriddled, it's scarcely likely to mean much to humanity, which has better things to do now that its vast lighthugger ships are travelling to more profitable parts of the known universe. Reynold's big first book, ambitious and confident, won him immediate praise and almost instant comparisons with superstars in the space opera genre like Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton and Stephen Baxter. It's black, bleak, extremely well written, with an undercurrent of menace and increasing danger, and it's a thriller to keep you turning the pages until you lose sleep. Barely one of the main characters -- alive, dead or in between -- is likeable, but their lives and their emotions grab hold of you and sustain the interest through some extensive and inventive hard and believable future science. One good question Reynolds tackles concerns humanity's solitude in a universe which seems increasingly likely to host many possibilities for intelligent life. A professional astronomy research scientist in his day job, the Welsh-born writer forgets any religious or mythical assumptions to ask not "Are we alone?", but "Why are we so very alone?" The Amarantin are one of more than half a dozen long dead alien civilisations humans have found by the 26th century. A smaller handful of very different races survives, including the Pattern Jugglers and the Shrouders. They can do strange and very dangerous things to people's minds, but they are far from genocidal. Dan Sylveste is the only person to have gone to a shroud and come back sane. Amid power struggles on Resurgam, Sylveste's fascination with the Amarantin finds him a buried and largely intact city, with linguistic clues he can just about grasp and a colossus of a statue which could hint at the secret of extermination. But forgetting politics for the sake of his obsession costs Dan his position and his freedom. Part of the answer to the mystery of obliterated civilisations haunts a starship called the Nostalgia for Infinity. This old, battered lighthugger carries a strange cargo of powerful ands inhuman weaponry, only partially mastered and understood by the sole crew member to stay mainly awake, Ilya Volyova. And what Ilya wants is a gunner. Her last one went mad. The perilous Chasm City, Yellowstone, in the Epsilon Eridani system, is home to a likely candidate. Ana Khouri, a hardened soldier embittered by loss, now pursues the career of contract killer. That Ilya's going to pick her up is inevitable. The lives of Dan, Ilya, Ana and others come together in a quest to make sense of one of the most original and terrifying artefacts in recent science fiction, a deadly threat from an immensely distant past to any sentient and space-faring species. 'Revelation Space' is a tense, taut and rewarding book, and also the first SF novel I've reviewed in a while that is decidedly of a genre, part of no mainstream and none the worse for that. It's also the first of a series pursued in 'Redemption Ark' and 'Absolution Gap', which was published last November; and Reynolds has written a novel about 'Chasm City'. Teased by accounts of the more recent work, I preferred to begin at the beginning. I'm very glad I did. This remarkably busy man also keeps a website of his own going, which makes for a good read: meet Alastair Reynolds. I see the fellow appeared to have liked a description of 'Revelation Space' as "gonzo cybergoth"! Yeah. That's one way of putting it! 1:17:37 PM  link   your views? [] Brain food: lucky strike and jelly update No doubt on my next working day in the Factory, I'll suddenly stop waking up first thing in the morning. But I did. Again. And feeling so odd with left-over dream fragments that it was clear my unconscious had been churning away merrily after last night's meeting with the Mind Juggler. Yikes, it's hard and exhausting going! Worth it, though. My mates on the desk, especially chief Jo, have been very decent: I have a large number of vacation days stashed up and until staffing thins out again on Thursday, they've let me use a handful of these while I'm doing this batch of intensive sessions with Dr. F. I appreciate that because it calls for a lot of "homework". By the way, that name I've given the psychotherapeutic expert in brain-body phenomena, the Mind Juggler, is in part a tribute to the writer whose first book gets reviewed in my next entry. I caught the tail-end of 'I Should be So Lucky', which was fascinating 15-minute episode of a BBC series exploring luck: why some people seem to get all of it and others are just plain unlucky. This week, talking to psychologists and taking a test, Martin Plimmer learned that luck is in good measure a matter of attitude (direct link to RealAudio clip). In the last programme at 0930 GMT next Tuesday, Martin will be asking how we can change our luck. Given the invaluable resource now available, here's the Radio 4 Listen Again page where all the online recordings of such programmes are listed in one place. You need a fairly fast Net connection to make best use of this fabulous store of broadcast material anywhere in the world, while the Beeb opts mainly for RealPlayer rather than QuickTime, but the quality is excellent. So here's the link to the BBC Radio digital "portal". Most of the hundreds of programmes available get stored for the week after broadcasting, but some are permanently archived. As for the player, I use RealOne for OS X. Real Networks is known for "burying" info on the free versions of their products in small print, but they do have a Real free download page for all the major computer operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and mobile devices). Finally, the latest Jelly Report: Some two months into it now, I find that most of the claims made for the real thing, small and expensive jars of Royal Jelly (Draper's aviaries) are true. This stuff is no placebo. While scientists remain divided about it (and some say it's of no interest at all) the jelly is not, in my experience, the anti-depressant some of a multitude of websites, mostly sales outlets, make it out to be. However, my ability to sustain mental energy, swift thought, processing and linking ideas, clarity of mind and concentration have all certainly and, probably measurably, increased. Including on days when at this foul time of year I'd be as close to waking hibernation as possible. After 40 days or so, I also found that my short-term memory had improved. Some things I still shut out, but I can recall whole conversations for longer and have become a bit better with numbers. The jar pictured here comes with a tiny spoon and I was told to start out on two of those each morning while still fasting. I find that my optimal dose is three. If you overdose, it's bad news. I tried it once and the outcome was a mind running away with itself -- what my buddy Jean-Paul would call "excessive multi-processing" -- and feeling super-hyped! The dreams that followed were wide-screen, vivid nightmares. Like Vitamin C, it's also a bad idea to take it late in the day. Jean-Paul also recommends, from his own considerable experience, laying off after four months, five at most. You can read more at the Draper's page, which I chose because it's one of the few sites that sells anything other than freeze-dried capsules, which you can easily find in parapharmacies. Capsules are a rip-off, if you want all the active ingredients. I know because I tried them for a month and noted no effects. I then went to the French Beekeepers' Society, which sent me directly to one of the very few specialised retailers in Paris. The real thing costs 32 euros (41 dollars) for a jar which lasts about a month. It took a week to start having any effect. 12:56:49 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.