Short takes on five films

When I'm not reading and writing (as I haven’t been much lately), listening to music or playing chess, I'm usually watching movies, and I saw quite a few in recent weeks. Some I liked and some I didn’t. Here are Short Takes on five of them for Tuesday’s Overlooked Films, Audio and Video over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

Aliens, 1986 - James Cameron

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is back on dead planet LV-426 looking for aliens, who haunted her in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), or survivors. Ripley joins heavily-armed space commandos in the hunt for the frightening extraterrestrials. In the end she is left alone to face them, right in the centre of a slimy alien egg nest. Somewhat unbelievable, but I liked the way Ripley kicks alien ass with a weaponised blowtorch and lives to see another day. While the music and special effects are good, the film didn’t hold up as well as it did the first time. Maybe, I knew what was coming. Still, I like Weaver and Michael Biehn.

Hannibal, 2001 - Ridley Scott

Julianne Moore replaces the brilliant Jodie Foster as FBI agent Clarice Starling in this sequel to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, but you wouldn’t believe it), a horribly disfigured victim of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), wants revenge against the serial killer and uses Starling to get to him. While Hannibal doesn’t spare anyone, he has a very soft corner for Starling—he almost treats her like a daughter. Hopkins wasn't as convincing or chillingly intimidating as he was in TSOTL. It seemed as if he was going through the motions. Moore, otherwise a fine actress, is expressionless. Can someone tell me what Ray Liotta is doing in the film?

Marmaduke, 2010 - Tom Dey

There is trouble wherever the loveable Great Dane, voiced by Owen Wilson (who else?), goes, and that includes accompanying his adopted family to a new neighbourhood where he makes new talking friends. While Marmaduke more or less looks like Brad Anderson’s cartoon, I’d stick to the comic strip for the humour. This isn't funny at all.

Unthinkable, 2010 - Gregor Jordan

This suspense film justifies America’s paranoia after 9/11. CIA consultant Henry Harold ‘H’ Humphries (Samuel L. Jackson) uses every means to break hard-nosed Islamic convert Steven Arthur Younger (Michael Sheen) into revealing where he has hidden three nuclear bombs. FBI agent Helen Brody (Carrie-Anne Moss) must find the bombs before it’s too late. But she has another problem on her hands: reining in the rampaging torturer ‘H’. The film didn’t live up to its trailer which, on hindsight, would have sufficed. I'm going to give crazy Jackson a break.

The Love Punch, 2013 - Joel Hopkins

Now this one’s for the entire family. Divorced but friends, Richard (Pierce Brosnan) and Kate (Emma Thompson) prove they can do comedy as they set out to recover pension funds from the owner of a company who has duped them and several others. Richard and Kate, joined by their neighbours Jerry (Timothy Spall) and his wife, Pen (Celia Imrie), use the man’s girlfriend and a precious diamond he gave her to get back at him. The film is wacky in parts as Richard and Kate knowingly put themselves in risky situations, but it all sits well with the plot of this entertaining romcom.

So, there you are. I’d have reviewed some more films if I remembered their names. Have you seen this mixed bag of movies?

30 Stories to Remember, 1962

The lineup of authors in 30 Stories to Remember, the third anthology of stories, novelettes, and novels edited by Thomas B. Costain and John Beecroft, is quite remarkable. We have important contributions from Agatha Christie, John Buchan, George Bernard Shaw, Daphne du Maurier, William Faulkner, James Thurber, Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, Paul Gallico, and Arthur C. Clarke among several others. I have read many of the authors, including all of the above, though not the titles covered in this collection.

You can borrow the nearly 1,000-page ebook from Archive where it is currently on loan. Here is a complete list of the 30 stories.

01. The Split Second by Daphne du Maurier

02. The Theft of the Mona Lisa by Karl Decker

03. The Soldiers' Peaches by Stuart Cloete

04. A Night to Remember (from the book) by Walter Lord

05. Aerial Football: The New Game by George Bernard Shaw

06. Courtship of My Cousin Doone by Walter D. Edmonds

07. Hotel Room (from the namesake book) by Cornell Woolrich

08. Two Soldiers by William Faulkner

09. How We Kept Mother's Day by Stephen Leacock

10. The Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie 

11. The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

12. The Catbird Seat by James Thurber

13. Act One (from the namesake book) by Moss Hart

14. The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét

15. Gigi by Colette

16. The Little Minister (from the namesake book) by James M. Barrie

17. The Alien Corn by W. Somerset Maugham

18. Profiles in Courage (from the namesake book) by John F. Kennedy

19. The Company of the Marjolaine by John Buchan

20. First Day Finish (from The friendly persuasion) by Jessamyn West

21. The Adventure of the Priory School by Arthur Conan Doyle

22. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

23. Death and Professor Raikes by Alice Duer Miller

24. Leiningen versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson

25. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico

26. They by Rudyard Kipling

27. Son of a Tinker by Maurice Walsh

28. History Lesson by Arthur C. Clarke

29. The Truth about the Flood (from The Bible as History) by Werner Keller

30. A Candle for St. Jude by Rumer Godden

The anthology follows Stories to Remember and More Stories to Remember, also edited by Costain and Beecroft.

Million Dollar Arm, 2014

Million Dollar Arm, directed by Craig Gillespie (Fright Night, Mr. Woodcock), is the true and inspiring story of sports agent J.B. Bernstein who travels to India to recruit two young and talented cricketers who can throw a ball really fast—and takes them to America to train for Major Baseball League. 

However, JB, nicely essayed by Jon Hamm (Mad Men), is in for a surprise when he realises, much later, that the boys he has selected from a small rustic village are actually football fans. But that little detail doesn't get in the way of things.

Do the young teenagers fulfil JB’s dream, and their own, in a foreign land—or do they let him, and themselves, down?

I liked this film for its Indianness—the long search for the right candidates in the colourful and vibrant countryside; the customary village send-off for the two lucky boys, with garlands and teary-eyed farewells; their struggle to adapt to a new language and culture; the offering of prayers the Hindu way; yoga with JB's charming neighbour Brenda (Lake Bell); and the growing friendship between JB and the boys. An Indian interpreter lends a nice touch of humour on the journey to baseball glory.

By the end of the film, JB is humbled by his experience and therein lies the beauty of Million Dollar Arm, which should appeal to fans of both cricket and baseball.

Western films set in and around India—Bend It Like Beckham, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Life of Pi, The Hundred Foot Journey, and many others—are a delight to watch on English movie channels. 

For more reviews of Overlooked Films, Audio and Video, hop over to Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

Beyond the Rest of Us by Andrew Man

Beyond the Rest of Us by Geneva-based writer Andrew Man is the third standalone novel in his Tego Arcana Dei Series, which tells the magical, mystical, and mysterious adventures of the “deeply flawed but unforgettable James Pollack through 200 years.”  

In Beyond the Rest of Us, due for release next month, “A retired Swiss banker is kidnapped at a Geneva hotel for crimes he doesn’t understand. An Italian cruise ship crashes into rocks in the Tyrrhenian Sea. A respected American scientist disappears into thin air. And a British secret agent follows a trail of corrupt power.”

Here is a more detailed synopsis of the book.

Winter 2013, James, a Swiss-banker from the recent past, another baby boomer, is enjoying retirement in the small town of Geneva, Switzerland. He has a dark past from his active days in banking, an even more difficult history with Italian women and the unpredictable—and less common—ability to astral travel. When Pollack is targeted by an undercover corrupt European operation and dragged back in time to 1814, he has to use all his skills to work out who is behind his abduction and what they really want from him and his cell mate, The Professor.

Against a backdrop of a disintegrating and unscrupulous world—from rising unemployment, borderless controls and a time-bomb of illegal immigration, unchecked climate change and impotent governments—Beyond the Rest of Us not only provides a roller-coaster ride of an action thriller but shines a spotlight on the current world climate.

The book—published by authoright.com—is described as a poignant and fast-paced thriller that would appeal to fans of Dan Brown on one hand and John Le Carré on the other.

Below is a brief synopsis of Books 1 & 2 in the Tego Arcana Dei series.

Keeping God's Secret

Britain is suffering under recession, and James Pollack leaves to work for a bank in Switzerland, only to return to the Caribbean island of Antigua for a meeting. Her name is Gina; her client is the Commander of one of the world's most powerful agencies. The couple plunges down the rabbit hole into a dizzying, mystical adventure, and American powers collide with secrets at the Vatican summer palace. Keeping God's Secret takes James back to the shadowy corridors of Italian banking, his excitement heightened by memories of his escape in Rome with a young female lawyer, who leads him on to the South of Lebanon to a woman he is willing to risk his life to save.

Forces of Retribution

Forces of Retribution, the second book in the series, follows James Pollack from a war in Lebanon in 2006 to the mysteries of the Pyramids in Egypt. The storyline is set in backdrop of the banking crisis of 2008, as world leaders try to prevent a global meltdown of the financial system. The novel tells a human interest story—an expecting mother battling to save her baby on a train ride across Europe.

A spokesperson for authoright.com wrote to me asking if I’d be interested in reading (and probably reviewing) Beyond the Rest of Us, which sounds more promising of the three novels. At this point I'm not sufficiently convinced I want to.

Bereavement

I won't be blogging until next week as I heard only this evening that a very dear aunt of mine, the pillar of our family, passed away. I'll be away for the weekend.

The novels of Jack Higgins

A brief post on the work of my favourite author for Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

A couple of days ago, I visited my favourite book haunt in the suburb where I live and found, not to my surprise, a whole new pile of secondhand paperbacks. I bought two novels by my favourite author Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) for Rs.25 each, less than 50 cents. I have read more than half of Higgins’ books and as some of my blog friends will concur, his earliest novels, up to The Eagle Has Landed (1975), are his best. Thereafter, the quality of his work has somewhat declined, though I still enjoy reading his mild thrillers.

I like the way Jack Higgins tells his stories — the style is clean and uncomplicated, and conversational; there is minimum description of people and places; the heroes are usually mercenaries with a heart of gold, and quite endearing; and the plots are simplistic but not unbelievable. He often makes covert operations look ridiculously easy; where the guardians of justice often get in and out of unlikely places and extreme situations without so much as a scratch. In The White House Connection, for instance, Sean Dillon, one of his most popular characters, walks into the White House as if he were entering his own home. Some of the heroes are reformed IRA hitmen and work for British Intelligence as nameless operatives.

What I like about his battle-scarred heroes is the way he romanticises them — I’d describe them as poets with a gun in their hand.

These were the two titles I added to my collection of Jack Higgins.

Sheba, 1994

The Lost Temple of Sheba is not just a biblical legend. A German archaeologist has found it. The Nazis have claimed it. And one American explorer has stumbled upon their secret — a plot that could change the course of World War II. 

The year is 1939. An American archaeologist named Gavin Kane is asked to help a woman search for her missing husband.When Kane follows the man's trail into the ruthless desert of Southern Arabia he makes two shocking discoveries. One is the legendary Temple of Sheba, an ancient world as fantastic as King Solomon's Mines. The other is a band of Nazi soldiers who plan to turn the sacred landmark into Hitler's secret stronghold…
— HarperCollins

The President’s Daughter, 1997

“Twenty years after his affair with a beautiful Frenchwoman in Vietnam, Jake Cazalet finds out he has a daughter. He must keep it a secret—but years later, when he is President of the United States, someone discovers the truth. And when his only child is kidnapped by a terrorist group, he must count on British operative Sean Dillon and FBI agent Blake Johnson to find her.”
— Amazon

The mystery of the forgotten women authors

Over the years I have come across dozens of women authors of crime, detective-mystery, and suspense on the internet and I confess to having read very few of them. Below are the covers of seven paperbacks written by female writers who, I assume, were (and are) noted for their craft. I didn't know about them, let alone read their books. I just happened to find them online. Looking up 20th century authors is a pastime. Have you read their books?