Friday, October 28, 2005

October Random Reviews

DVDs:

This will likely be the last Random Reviews post, at least in this format, since I've resigned from DVD Verdict and will be posting any movie reviews I do in this blog. Sadly, a critique of a painfully boring movie was my swansong with the site, but it doesn't tarnish the great experience I had with them.
  • Shall We Dance - The seventh Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film is made memorable by the music of George and Ira Gershwin. The plot is flimsy, the jokes are lame, but it's Fred and Ginger, George and Ira, and you can't take that away from me. Click here for the full review.
  • The Moon and Sixpence – With a tagline saying “Women are strange little beasts,” this humorless movie is a strange little beast. Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, which was based loosely on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is stripped of all Maugham's wit and wisdom, leaving melodrama and the psychological exploration of characters I don't care about. Click here for the full review.
Books in Brief:
  • Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie – this book is not so brief, and it's been a busy month, but I'm still amazed to realize it was the only thing on my nightstand this month, and I'm not even half finished it. Rushdie's prose is beautifully intricate and the story is absorbing. Told from multiple viewpoints, the book flips from Los Angeles to Kashmir to ... be continued next month, when I finish. Click here for my post on Rushdie's recent appearance in Vancouver.

"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson