Roland Limmerich

Roland Emmerich is filming "Foundation."

That's my favourite sci-fi creation!

I can't help but speculate

How he plans to integrate

His trademark White House desecration...

The Cult Of Sedaris Part II [Review: Me Talk Pretty One Day]

Now read on...

Hurt by the callous and ungentlemanly behaviour of those bookstorians, I went on to perform a highly scientific survey of fellow coffee drinkers, armed with my new copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. My census confirmed, thankfully, that there are plenty of other people out there who have also never heard of David Sedaris. The test subjects also showed an immediate interest in the book - Mr. Sedaris, if this leads to any sales then I want my cut.

Finally I ran out of displacement activities and had no choice but to actually read the damn thing.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is a collection of short, strongly themed autobiographical stories. David Sedaris as a writer has a love of language and word-play. He also manages both to embrace his identity (sexuality, nationality, tastes and so on) and to simultaneously use Woody Allen-style self-deprecating humour. Eccentric family members and habits are easy targets, and the shadow of Sedaris' father looms large in many of the stories. Although I've no doubt there is at least exaggeration, the stories do ring true and are often moving as well as funny. Themes are varied - this is definitely a short story collection, not a novel - and include Sedaris' childhood encounter with a speech therapist, the rise and fall of Sedaris as a performance artist, and the title story, one of many about living in France and learning French.

While the humour is often gentle, don't be fooled: firstly, it's funny enough to cause a major incident on the Tube, and secondly Sedaris can,suddenly and without warning, dip into much blacker stuff. The following passage, from "The Youth In Asia" follows on from a series of hilarious but mostly harmless anecdotes about Sedaris' parents' pets:

"When my mother died and was cremated herself, we worried that, acting on instinct, our father might run out and immediately replace her. Returning from the funeral, my brother, sisters, and I half expected to find some vaguely familiar Sharon Two standing at the kitchen counter and working the puzzle in the TV Guide. 'Sharon One would have gotten five across' our father would have scolded. 'Come on, baby, get with it.' "

How does Sedaris fare with the Terry Pratchett comparison? It's hard to judge as they write such different material: giggling on Underground trains is probably the only common ground. Personally I would describe Sedaris as two parts Woody Allen, one part Garrison Keillor and one part Natalie Tran. And if that isn't either a recommendation or the best episode of "Come Dine With Me" ever, then I don't know what is.

With thanks to Lovy Boheme for the original recommendation.

[Edit 5.9.10: Oops! removed highly embarrassing mistake. I think I got away with it :o ]

Daydream Believer [Review: Inception]

Inception is good, hard speculative fiction in the sense of gedanken-experiment. It revolves around a single, simple concept - shared dreaming - and the plot of the film introduces and explores the practical, philosophical and moral questions thrown up by this concept.

While the idea is straightforward, the plot is not: as the climax approaches, the heist-movie team of nöonauts* are travelling through different dreams simultaneously while trying to pull off their audacious and precisely timed plan. Director Christopher Nolan and editor Lee Smith, who also worked together on The Prestige, have once again delivered a complex plot that remains easy to follow - a number of cinematic devices, including the different colour themes and styles for each layer of reality, help with this. However where The Prestige is perfectly edited, Inception is close to perfect but slightly too long, and as a result a few scenes gain a comic edge that may not have been intended.

Casting is great whether you are a fan of Mr. DiCaprio or not - like many heist movies this is very much an ensemble piece. I was particularly pleased to see Ellen Page, the star of Juno, in a major role - an arrogant and talented architecture student and far from your typical action heroine.

Previous films such as The Cell, The Matrix, eXistenZ have explored similar ideas to Inception - travelling either into the minds of other people or into cyberspace. A common idea is that when you die, or are killed in such a state, you also die in real life. There's no obvious reason for this so I was pleased to see that Inception takes a different and more intelligent tack. Here, if you die in your sleep, you just wake up - however it turns out there are other, more plausible ways for dreaming to be dangerous.

*The term nöonaut for a dream traveller is not used in Inception but in Black Brillion and Matt Hughes' other novels and short stories of The Times Before The End Times, in which characters explore the collective unconscious and do battle with archetypal foes.

Location, Location, Location

My latest foray into amateur filmmaking wrapped on Wednesday evening. I'm keeping the details of this one under my hat for now, except to say that it's a collaboration with another blogger, and will use a hybrid of vlog and mini-documentary styles. It should be edited in a couple of weeks and will eventually go up on YouTube. More details plus production stills coming soon.

Today's Lesson Learnt The Hard Way is: always clear your locations in advance - and by "in advance" I mean 1997. Our plan to shoot in a local building with striking architectural features was set up during the past week, but almost fell through on the day when (it seemed) nobody could be found anywhere in the region who held either the key or the passcodes for the building. Cue an afternoon of anxious phone calls.

Happily everything was resolved by evening with minutes to spare, and once again I'm amazed at just how helpful people can be sometimes. After a shoot you end up feeling grateful to everyone - the library and council staff who never gave up trying to find a way in, my brother who helped me to operate three cameras simultaneously, or the narrator's travelling companion who proved to be a kick-ass clapperboard operator. Even though it meant waking him from his nap 14 times....

The Cult of Sedaris Part I

A friend and recent visitor to this blog introduced me to the name David Sedaris. The commenter juxtaposed Sedaris' humorous writing with that of Terry Pratchett and the comment was phrased in such a way as to create a challenge: for review blogging, as for Street Countdown, once the gauntlet is thrown there is no option but to accept the joust.

Over recent years my own appreciation of David Sedaris, America's Finest Humorous Writing Source, has been only slightly muted by the fact that I'd never heard of the guy. Was this The Emperor's New Clothes all over again? (that first day at the office was so embarrassing.) Worse, the First David Sedaris Conspiracy quickly became apparent - Other People (TM) have been reading books by this author all over the internets. Shamed by my ignorance but not deterred, I resolved to find out more.

I searched a number of large high street coffee-and-bookstores. In every one, I hit a blank when looking under author in the A-Z shelves, or on the Short Story shelf, so had to engage the shop assistants. This is how I came across the Second David Sedaris Conspiracy: all bookshop assistants have been reading David Sedaris books for some time, they would all recommend the same one - Me Talk Pretty One Day - and they have all conspired to hide these books under a different definition in each store: Biography, Humour, Travel Writing and so on.

To be continued...

Alien vs Vikings [Review: Outlander]

A spaceship crash-lands in a Viking fjord, survived by a humanoid soldier from an interstellar army… and something else. Outlander, a mid-budget movie, features a great principle cast: Jim Caviezel as the alien warrior and John Hurt as the ageing Viking leader, while Sophia Myles is brilliantly cast against type as a flame-haired, sword wielding Viking princess. The monster that has been unleashed on the Viking homestead, complicating the local and inter-tribal tensions, is also excellent even though it is yet another Giger-inspired alien, and the war against it is action-packed: Caviezel’s warrior has superior knowledge of how to fight it, but none of his advanced technology to back him up, and not everything goes to plan.

The real stars of this film though are the legion of extras – Viking re-enactment enthusiasts – who make up the tribe and bring the massed battle and scenes of drunken celebration to life. A few sequences are over-long but they are the exception in this wonderful film.

Film noir et blanc [Review: Renaissance]

Renaissance (2006) is a stylish French animated thriller. The English voice acting from Daniel Craig and Romola Garai is good, however the real star is the futuristic Paris, imagined as if Gustave Eiffel had carried on building towers, walkways and ironworks across the city, and the resultant contrast between Gothic and modernist architecture is toon-rendered in perfect black and white CGI. The storyline is complex and engaging if not particularly original, revolving around kidnapping, corporate conspiracy, and criminal underworld goings-on in the cosmetics industry.