Book: A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

His struggle! How about mine? I was misled by the great reviews and all the plaudits that this book (most of them reprinted in the prelims) has garnered into borrowing it from the library. I've got to say, I just don't get it. The author/protagonist (as it's a memoir) is solipsist in the extreme. He has no empathy for nor understanding of others but seems to believe he has or that he at least recognises when he hasn't. It's hard to identify with such a misanthropist. The book, reasonably interesting to begin with, eventually degenerates into a version of `How Clean Is Your House' and that's not a programme I like: page after page on which bleach or detergent he's using on which part of the house and so on. Why would anyone find this interesting?

Then, very occasionally, something is described adequately, ok except that it's usually completely arbitrary and sometimes rather dull so in a way kind of pointless. He goes into details about some weird fantasy he had as a child without ever really explaining what's behind it. It's like if two people came into your house and you spent three pages describing one but said nothing about the other.

I think we're supposed to have sympathy for him because his father drank but if he were my son, I think I'd drink too and this book could drive anyone to the bottle.

Not sure how to explain all the praise it's received. Can only conclude that it's a peculiarly virulent case of the emperor's new clothes.

Film: Dark Storm

A movie starring a lesser Baldwin (Stephen, they’re all ‘lesser’ to Alec since he’s been around the longest) who spends the whole film looking vaguely pissed off, or as if he’s trying to do mental arithmetic (like Joey, Matt LeBlanc, in Friends is advised to do when required to show emotion), an expression that probably originates from his manful struggle to spout scientific gobbledegook like ‘I’ve never seen so much dark matter in one place’ as if it actually meant something.

He plays that disaster movie cliché, the one sensible person in the possibly (inevitably) catastrophic scenario battling whatever constitutes the powers that be (the mayor/the government/the corporation/the other scientists), questioning their refusal to act in the face of this certain calamity, usually for reasons of the bottom line, insisting that the town/beach/world be evacuated while there’s still time (time is always of the essence) because there’s going to be a tidal wave/earthquake/tornado/shark attack/solar flare/alien invasion (delete as appropriate).

He will probably be the one to deliver possibly the most used line in any horror/thriller/scifi movie: ‘Let’s get the hell outta here!’ as if anyone would contemplate staying put while the sky falls in.

To top it all, he’s absorbed some ‘dark matter’ himself, as you do, been electrocuted then struck by lightning. No wonder he looks a little peeved.

The plot is nonsensical but the film’s a trip. See the image on the front of the box – that’s the expression Stephen Baldwin wears throughout. Perplexed. Or maybe that’s just his ‘intelligent scientist’ face.

Book: Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

I've got to admit that this book was a bit of a disappointment after The Poisonwood Bible, which I loved. In fact, the title itself is a little off-putting. It certainly doesn't grab you - Flight Behaviour. Something seems to be missing and this is the case with the book too. I ended up feeling short-changed. First of all, I thought the beginning was excellent and was excited at the prospect of Dellarobia's affair so I felt a little misled when that didn't materialise. I have a feeling that this young man would have been the most interesting character.

Then I gradually lost respect for and belief in the protagonist and don't feel she was very well realised. I would have liked to identify with her but too often, things are signposted in advance and she behaves in a weak or childish way, for instance when she first encounters Ovid Byron and talks to her friend Dovey about him. They sound like tittering teenagers. Then when he comes to the house and she and Cub talk up her expertise on the butterflies. You know that Byron is going to be the real specialist. It's too obvious. And it seems out of character to drag the reporter into Byron's lab without any warning.

The other thing I'd take issue with is the way she seems to first recognise how many toys her kids have in comparison to Josefina but then bleats on about having to shop in the dollar store or the new second-hand emporium. It seems she has no perspective. She resents people shopping there who she thinks could afford to shop elsewhere and pay full price and the implication is that, if she had the money, she would rather not economise. What's wrong with buying nearly new stuff at rock-bottom prices? I would love to find this store. She's not exactly hypocritical but inconsistent and full of self-pity, not particularly attractive traits.

I applaud her stand on the butterflies and have nothing against the message of the book. I only think that more time should have been spent on characterisation and dialogue. Her exchanges with Dovey don't ring true at all and Ovid is not well drawn enough to be convincing so ends up as merely a cipher, the scientist from somewhere exotic to Dellarobia. 

Book: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

I did not get this book and was misled by the blurb and cover quotes to think that it would be `grand and powerful', `accomplished and gripping', `lyrical'. It was none of these things. The writer has managed to create three very detached and unlikeable characters. His style is to have them wonder a lot about pointless, uninteresting questions that he seems to think are deep and he seems to believe that this will increase our identification with them, e.g. `Do you think it's worse to be wounded or killed?'

First Arrow: `But then she begins to wonder about this. Do the men on the hills hate her? Or do they hate the idea of her ...?' and on and on. You're tempted to ask `Who cares?'


Then Kenan. He's the brainbox who kindly takes his neighbour's bottles to fill them with water when he does his own. It's a long and dangerous route, complicated by the fact that her bottles don't have handles. He has two spare bottles that do have handles and carry more than hers. Instead of taking hers from her, leaving them at his apartment and using his more manageable ones (and filling hers from these when he returns), he navigates snipers and hills and unsafe bridges with these hard-to-hold bottles while constantly whingeing about it. Didn't have very much respect for him after this. In a terrible situation like this, when it's a life or death deal, you would use your head to negotiate your own safety and not be led by the whims of a neighbour for whom you're doing a favour.

When the author uses incidental details to fill out his characters' lives and homes, this is too obvious and doesn't sound authentic.

I suppose what I'm saying is it purports to realism but doesn't deliver. This means that the reader can't identify with or care about the characters, which turns out to be a major flaw. 

TV Series: Close to the Enemy (2016)

Unlike another reviewer, I didn't make it to the half hour mark. I only lasted twenty-five minutes. In my defence, each minute felt like an hour.

Jim Sturgess has the lead and is particularly awful, putting on an accent and a tone that are horrible to listen to, phony and irritating at once, as if he were copying a Cockney doing a bad imitation of a toff. His voice in this is completely unbearable – and as he was heavily featured in most of the first twenty-five minutes, you'll see why I had to give up.

There are so many actors out there who could achieve a posh accent or already have one (George Blagden, Alex Vlahos,  Clive Standen to name a few) that it seems stupid to cast one who can't deliver (although maybe anyone who could, read the script and said 'No thanks'). And is it me or is Alfred Molina always exactly the same?

It's not all his fault though as I often persevere longer with dramas where there's one annoying character, if the script, plot, other characters hold my interest. This is not the case here.

I've enjoyed Poliakoff in the distant past (certainly not recently) but perhaps he's had his day. It annoys me that the BBC has spent our money on something else so turgid and tiresome.

Film: Inside Llewyn Davis by Joel and Ethan Coen

At least the cat's made it onto the poster

Decided to post a review on this after seeing a page of plaudits in an old magazine: THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR, A PERFECTLY PITCHED MASTERPIECE, AN INSTANT MUST-SEE TRIUMPH, BEAUTIFUL, HEARTFELT AND UTTERLY ENTHRALLING. Huh? Did I watch a completely different movie?

Other reviewers on Amazon and so forth have suggested that people don't like this film because there's not enough action and pointed out that it's not an action movie. But mate, if I wanted to watch an action movie, I wouldn't pick one about a singer-songwriter wandering about 1960s New York. One guy does his girlfriend a disservice by implying she's simply too low-brow to appreciate it, that there's not enough action for her. It's not that she only likes action movies, it's that she doesn't like bad movies or movies without a plot. People have written that it's darkly comedic. It isn't. The protagonist played by Oscar Isaac (who has also starred as another arrogant, pretentious character in another movie that was dull beyond belief, Mojave), admittedly he's not supposed to be likeable, is aimless in a completely charmless way and really rude to his two benefactors, simply as an excuse to flex his artistic temperament.

John Goodman

As usual, the Coens have stuck in John Goodman as a completely over-the-top caricature. They like to stretch credulity. He must surely tire of these roles (like in Death Sentence) but it's all money in the bank I guess. Carey Mulligan does her usual hard-to-like girlfriend act. Justin Timberlake is worth watching as a wholesome folk singer and Garrett Hedlund is wasted as the enigmatic Johnny Five. I'm not sure that Hedlund makes good career choices as he was also in another Carey Mulligan movie that turned out to be pretty unwatchable, Mudbound although I love the theme song from the latter: Back from the Fire by Gold Brother. And in Mojave. See above.

The Coen brothers still think swearing is hilarious when it hasn't been funny since the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film that boasted Hugh Grant at his charismatic, endearing best. They also wrote a movie directed by George Clooney, that was absolutely dire and had a totally ridiculous storyline: Suburbicon. How Julianne Moore and Matt Damon were convinced to participate in this is a mystery. I'm not saying that movies have to be realistic but we have to be believe in the movie's world in order to be persuaded to suspend disbelief. Oh my God, poor Oscar Isaac was also in this. I didn't realise till I looked it up. I have nothing against the guy but he's now been involved in three truly dire projects. This will not deter him though because he can't lose with the Coens who, for some reason, can do no wrong as far as the critics are concerned.

The cat is by far the best thing in it and doesn't even get credited in the cast. Sensibly, he spends all his time trying to disassociate himself from this ideas vacuum of a movie and disappear from the frame. The cat should get an award, the rest was awful. Fargo was ok, although even that had a bit of a hackneyed theme but the rest of their oeuvre has left me cold and I particularly hate The Big Lebowski. For another aside on the Coens, see my blog Eagles and Glenn Frey: Beyond Cool, in which I speculate on what others seem to believe.

‘The Coen brothers are cool, therefore their films are cool, their characters are cool, therefore the Dude must be cool (and Jeff Bridges of course), and the Dude doesn’t like the Eagles therefore the Eagles can't be cool, therefore, in order to be cool, I have to dislike the Eagles’.

I'm not sure why the Coen Brothers are deemed the ultimate arbiters of cool.

So I'd like to ask: When does the Dude cease to be 'cool'? And surely, if everybody thinks he's cool, he's now too mainstream to actually be so.

For more film reviews, see 12 Hours to Live and Three Peaks.

Glenn Frey, effortlessly cool, RIP

TV Series: Taken on 5USA

Neeson as Bryan Mills

This is a spin-off from the Liam Neeson film franchise. I gather the films are pretty formulaic, with Neeson’s protagonist, the ordinary-sounding Bryan Mills, a name that is also used in the TV series, but which sounds more like a mail-order catalogue from the 1970s than a moniker for an action hero, tooling up with weapons prior to encountering some cartoon-like baddies and somehow despatching them one by one. You know the sort of thing I mean, the films your Dad and brother love and love partly because they know what to expect. It’s only ever gonna go one way.

Rollo, never without a weapon

The only possible justification for this series is the sex appeal and presence of Clive Standen (who I loved as Rollo in Vikings, let’s face it, he’s not hard to look at) but it’s a poor vehicle for his talents. He does his best, much like Patrick Swayze (Rest in Peace) in The Beast* (I’ve got to say that Travis Fimmel was far better in Vikings than in the latter), with a poorly scripted, poorly plotted show.  I can't fault Standen. Because of his physique, he’s a much more credible ‘special ops’ guy than Neeson, for instance, or even Bruce Willis. He delivers his lines, no matter how nonsensical, with absolute conviction. 

Bryan Mills, ditto

It’s just so hackneyed, the storyline from IMDb says Mills is coping with a personal tragedy as are all the heroes in these shows, from Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in NCIS to Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) in The Mentalist, to Walt (Robert Taylor) in Longmire. Feel free to comment and add your own.

Jennifer Beals, who is the source of all the missions this elite team take on and for some reason ends up looking like a man in drag, asks to see Clive alone to say: ‘I just wanted to check in with you’. He’s bemused: ‘Ok. Why?’ We say: ‘Because you’re sexy?’  I can completely understand why Standen took the role – a lead in a TV series seems too good to resist, especially when you’ve been playing second fiddle to Ragnar for a while but he’s capable of much more than this.

Carrie Mathison

It’s sort of Homeland without, oh, everything that Homeland has – real suspense, fully developed and engaging leads, believable storylines, quickfire and natural-seeming dialogue and a character you root for even when she's really annoying you in Claire Danes's Carrie Mathison (like Buffy, 'she saved the world, a lot'). For more on Homeland, see Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) and Peter Quinn in Homeland.

What we get is a whole load of on-the-nose dialogue (i.e. dialogue that explains a character’s back-story or tells us what they’re like), something like ‘So you’ve been sent here after your actions in the whatever when this and this happened’. See my review of Ferocious Planet for some good examples. The characters are stereotypes. There’s always a nerdy computer whiz (a boffin, I love that word), often Jewish for some reason, who has trouble making small talk or relating to others.

Patrick Swayze, Travis Fimmel, The Beast

*My favourite line was Swayze’s character, Charles Barker’s comment on a mysterious band of baddies:  ‘It doesn’t  have a name. Sometimes they call it the Outfit.’ Ok, so that would be a name, Patrick.

For more on Travis Fimmel,Clive Standen, etc., see Ragnar and Athelstan. For more on Ragnar, see Travis Fimmel is Ragnar Lothbrok.