hermes

So I finished 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z Danielewski. I'm not really sure what to make of it. It certainly makes for an interesting experiment but I'm not sure if it works 100%. It's not an easy book to explain if you haven't seen it, but it essentially it reads like a non-fiction description of a film that was never made by people that never existed, with annotations and footnotes by yet more fictional characters. It kinda explores loss and space and identity but in a very tangential and subtle way. The text is arranged in a deliberately haphazard way, with sections that represent transcripts, newspaper articles and even lines of prose that mimic the story being described (these last bits are for me the bits that didn't really work). There are appendices of additional bogus content, some of which barely seem to be relevant. In some ways the book is an enigma, but I can't tell whether it's just the author trying to be clever, or whether there are layers I have yet to penetrate. It's the kinda book that needs to be read multiple times to sink in. Hmm.
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On Friday I stopped by Forbidden Planet London to get a copy of 'A Feast For Crows' signed by the author George R R Martin. He wasn't quite what I expected. A small greying man hunched, sweating over his autographs, he seemed to be somewhere between Richard Attenborough and Warwick Davis. Unfortunately there wasn't really much time to chat but apparently the sister volume to AFFC should be out by this time next year. Tsk. (Apparently he split the original book he was working on in half because it grew too big). What is it with fantasy authors not being able to curb their prose from marching on ad infinatum? Haven't they heard of narrative cycles or the Hero's Journey? TBH Mr Martin is the shiznaz and I'm glad he's writing his way out of the fuzzy ending to his third book (which also got split in two because it was too big) but even so... *taps foot*
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I seem to have discovered another immutable law of nature: when cutting polystyrene, the amount of time it takes to clear up is equal to the amount of time spent cutting in the first place. Grrr.
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Last week I took some time out to see Serenity (again) and Night Watch. Serenity was as good as I remembered, although strangely the effects actually looked a little too polished (in comparison to the more gritty shots we got for the test screening in February). I'm glad to hear it's been doing well in cinemas here in the UK. I am entirely perplexed by people who claim it's the worst movie they've ever seen. Indifference I could understand, but vitriol or distaste? How can that be possible? *scratches head* Night Watch proved to be rather ambitious, but certainly not as confusing as the critics tried to make out. It's more of a dark fantasy than a horror, and I'm certainly intrigued to see where the story goes through the next two films - assuming Hollywood doesn't step in a f*** them up.
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I also re-watched Kingdom of Heaven and Gladiator back-to-back, trying to decide which is the better of the two. TBH although at first I liked Gladiator and didn't think much of KoH, it's now the other way around. Gladiator's pace is far too sedate, especially on repeated viewing, and the treatment of history is equally liberal (if not ludicrous). KoH on the other hand is more ambitious, and it mostly succeeds in cramming in a huge amount of material in a short space of time. Although poor mr Bloom looks rather baffled through most of it - assumedly at the thought of carrying such a film with so little experience - he kinda gets away with it as his character would've quite rightly been equally baffled. And the soundtrack is far cooler too.