Johannes Simmel, It Can’t Aways be Caviar (1960) (The Monte Cristo Cover-up)
Good Reads meta-data is 558 pages rated 4.26 by 1,299 litizens.
DNA: Austria.
Genre: SpyFi.
Verdict: Amusingly sophomoric.
Tagline: Stir slowly.
Banker Lieven, thanks to the misdeeds of his business partner, gets pressed into espionage service…. by the French, then the Germans, then the English…in this travelogue 1939-1941 – London, Brussels, Zurich, Berlin, Paris, Toulouse, Lisbon, and more.
On each occasion he finds it best to go along to get along. Unlike James Bond of the same era and ilk, Lieven is a pacifist.
He is also a gourmet and wherever he goes he cooks, even in a war ravaged countryside. His recipes dot the book. Wherever he goes, like Bond, the women surround him, and he does his duty by them. He takes license to thrill but not to kill.
It was highly recommended in Jacques Barzun and Wendell Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime (1989), so I went looking for it. Not readily available to this reader but I came across it in the Internet Archive, and read it on the iPad screen from that source. I didn’t finish it, partly because the antics became repetitive and partly because of the awkwardness in screen reading on the iPad. I made it page 100 and noticing that many more awaited I withdrew. It is in print for German readers.
Maigret et le mort amoureux (2026) Maigret et les vieillards (Maigret in Society)
IMDb runtime is 1h and 20m, rated 6.0 by 97 cinematizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: France.
Verdict: Diverting.
Tagline: Living in past is passé.
Eternal Maigret plods on. This incarnation has neither the bulk nor the patience of the original, but he is persistent and competent. His team, though often pictured, does little, and, well, Lucas is a schoolboy! Lucas!
The maid stole the show in a tour de force performance of inner pain. All that was undermined by the gratuitous twist at the end, which is not in the book. Once again it seemed to me that the writer and director did not understand their own work and undercut it.
Spoiler.
I found the plot resolution inadequate in the book, and it is faithfully reproduced in the film, though other liberties were taken as in the coda. The maid I can understand. But the count, no? Hypochondria is mentioned but not developed. Nor does the hearsay remark, ‘They won’t let me!’ have any explanation at all. None.
I couldn’t find any opinionators on Good Reads to set me straight.
As to the maid’s piety, I thought the point was that a secular man like Maigret would miss the signs of that, or seeing them, would not fully grasp their significance as a motivation. I liked that. Simenon sometimes did have Maigret err.
But would monsieur le count have committed suicide while sitting at his desk editing his memoirs, having given no earlier indication of his emotions?
The variations the title noted above indicate something. The French is explicit: Maigret and the Old Ones and indicates the theme that these persons who live in the past of an ever decreasing circle. Neither the lovers nor society hits that nail on the head. But Penguin has always been free with translations, despite its pious claims to the contrary.
I was pleased with myself for recognising Olivier Rabourdin as the prosecutor. Although this character has no place in the book. He has been added to give Maigret a sounding board. for his internal musings. Also missing from the film is the opening paean to Paris in the springtime when Maigret goes to work riding on an open-air bus platform. That would have made a nice travelogue.
***
We saw it at the Palace in Leichhardt on a Wednesday late morning as part of the Alliance Française film festival. We selected three items from the many on offer and this was one of them. Of late I have been watching other French films on TV5Monde+ from New Brunswick, Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland, and Senegal as well as France.
Georges Simenon wrote 75 novels featuring Jules Maigret along with 28 short stories between 1931 and 1972. That means he completed 2 or more titles each year. (In addition, Simenon was also publishing other novels at about the same clip!) Maigret has worked on the radio, podcasts, audiobooks, paperback, hardcovers, and celluloid.
Georges Simenon
One internet pundit declares that 34 actors have embodied Maigret. He has been German, Dutch, English, Russian, Czech, Mexican, Japanese, as well as Italian in the actors who have played him: Harry Baur, Boris Tenin, Richard Harris, Rupert Davies, Charles Laughton, Michael Gambon, Gino Cervi, Benjamin Wainwright, Rowan Atkinson, Jean Gabin, Jean Richard, Gerar Depardieu, Denis Podalydès, and — best for last — Bruno Cremer. M 2
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2hr and 2m, rated 6.4 by 2,400 cinematizens.
DNA: China, PR.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: More fun than Solaris. (But then so is root canal.)
Tagline: The world ends in 2033. Let’s dance!
A romantic comedy about the end of the world. That about sums it up.
To save the world, a lunar outpost is hard at work, but things move too fast and the 300 soldiers, engineers, and scientists have to evacuate, toute suite. Off 299 of them go, leaving behind one inept nerd who missed the memo, the alarms, the door knocks, the PA announcements, the sirens, the flashing red lights, and more.
He is now alone in the vast moon base with a year of supplies for 300 personnel. From this redoubt he watches a large asteroid strike the Earth.
Wallop! Darkness fell!
Curtain.
Two things follow. Turns out he is not quite alone, and the world has not quite ended.
There is plenty of slapstick as nerd reacts to his abandonment and solitude. And even more when he has company. (Too much of the latter.)
Mission Control on earth re-established a feed from the Moon base but cannot communicate but only watch nerd and his antics along with us in the audience.
Many of the gags are repetitive and it could be cut by 30m without loss. The vainglorious ending was inconsistent but it gave the nerd redemption. It sledgehammers home the communist message of the prophet Jeremiah that the individual must find his good in the good of the whole. If only the Bible basher read the book.
It is virtually a one-man show and the lead undergoes many change from a gormless nerd to a determined achiever wth several intervening steps.
The quality of the effects is superb, if at times, repetitive and boring.
IMDb metadata is a runtime of 1h and 10m, but no raters or ratings.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: Uganda.
Verdict: Now I can say I saw it.
Tagline: Exotic.
IMDb summary: In the year 2056, a young Ugandan astronaut is diverted on return from her deep space mission to investigate a mysterious communication breakdown on the distant planet Xylara, only to discover a deadly alien threat.
After the set-up it descends into a CGIs shoot ‘em up. It is essentially a one woman with one expression show. The aliens’ plan is to bore us to death with their slow incompetence.
When CGIs expose their…guns I usually surf on, but I stuck this out for the bragging rights of seeing a Ugandan movie.
After the set-up it descends into a CGIs shoot ‘em up. It is essentially a one woman with one expression show. The aliens’ plan is to bore us to death with their slow incompetence.
When CGIs expose their…guns I usually surf on, but I stuck this out for the bragging rights of seeing a Ugandan movie.
GoodReads meta-data is 49 pages, rated 4.09 by 435 litizens
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: timely.
Tagline: A little knowledge is dangerous.
To reduce homicides Watchbirds are created to anticipate and prevent them. Since it is impossible to program the mechanical birds for every eventuality, they are endowed with the capacity to learn on the job. That learning combined with their absolute literal-mindedness leads to catastrophe.
A cautionary tale about A.I. technological solutions to human problems. The one law we all obey is the Law of Unintended Consequences. Newton’s corollary is that ‘If a government creates a law, its unintended consequences will be equal and opposite to its original purpose.’
The underlying conservation of energy assumption does not apply in politics, but a revision of Newton’s corollary would be that the reaction to a law will be larger and more divergent than the original. The reaction will be more than equal and it will vector around the spectrum. It will not only be equal and opposite, though that will occur, but there will be other reactions on other vectors. Some will say that it is not enough; others that it is too much; and all points between. Some will say it is too little; others too much. Too late; too soon. The talking heads will spew.
Or to put it more succinctly: Be careful what you wish for because you may get it, good and hard!
Robert Sheckley
The moral of this story is far more cogent than the current babble of talking heads about A.I. It is a much more focussed tale than the movie Chien 51 (2025) on the same theme.
My thanks to Yelena for bringing the story of my attention. At times past I used Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization (1960) in teaching Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 6.8 by18,000 cinematizens.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: The word is ‘integrity.’
Tagline: Who you gonna call?
When a flying saucer crash lands in his backyard azalea patch codger Milt does what any citizen would do. He calls the police. For his trouble he is threatened with arrest for a prank call. Evidently they don’t want to know. No one can be bothered to do a site visit for a sight of the craft so it isn’t cited for a traffic violation. Sigh.
He is rather forgetful and Milt sort of forgets it until he sees the alien lying inert on his garden path. This, too, he sort of forgets, but not quite. Soon he befriends the silent alien as one might a persistent dog at the back door.
Unlike the few people he knows the alien is a good listener and accomodating companion. Then two other senior citizens get into the conspiracy of silence, including the evergreen Jane Curtin from The Librarian trilogy with Bob Newhart. All hail!
What follows is a meditation on the social isolation and frailties of aging. That is made all the more poignant by some of the condescending reviews I noticed linked to the IMDb entry. The soulless ones are not all in the White House.
Though Milt called in the crash, the Men in Black scouring the countryside for the crash seem not to have noticed this. That incompetence is a touch of realism.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m, rated 5.8 by 1,900 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: krimi.
DNA: France.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: The dog did not bark, at all.
Odd couple plods get in way other their heads and call in all their favours. Every trope in the book is thrown into this soup in the hope some of it resonants. And speaking of resonating the soundtrack is loud enough to put the Gay Mardi Gras to shame. If noise, bloody corpses, angry words, pistol waving, impossible car chases, mass murder, rat-a-tat of toy guns, and coloured lights are entertainment then this is entertainment.
It’s Paris sometime in the near future where AI rules and all the micro gizmos work. Well, it is fiction – the tech works.
There is more fiction. The docile Parisians have allowed the city to be divided in three Berlin Wall zones, policed by nameless zombies aided by AI controlled lethal drones. See, fiction – docile Parisians.
Zone Three is a refuge the Calais Jungle which is routinely raided by the forces of disorder to maintain the illusion that they are doing something. Zone Two is home to the middling ones like you and me, while Zone One is so exclusive that only conspirators like live there. In typical Parisian fashion the rest of the country is ignored.
Decision-making in policing has been surrendered to AI called Alma which predicts and prevents murders. Well, that is said, but in the nearly two hours of strobe-light confusion that follows no one notices that Alma never does that once. There are plenty of murders, keeping the special effects crew busy, and none are prevented. The low-bid contractor strikes again: Alma offers promise, but no performance, a typical app.
The odd couple are endowed with boring backstories to explain their commitments to the investigation. To a filmmaker professional commitment is never enough. There has to be a personal motivation to connect to the audience since the foreground story is so trite. The actors inhabit their characters but that cannot compensate for shallow script or video game direction.
It is supposed to be an examination of the reliance on AIma, but that is lost in the disco glitter ball distractions. Try The Forbin Project (1970) for a thoughtful and quieter prediction and depiction of that. Or an even earlier cautionary tale on technological solutions to human problems in Robert Sheckley’s short story ‘Watchbird’ (1953). I will comment on the latter soon to stimulate interest in it.
Oh, and the title has nothing to do with the film. There is not even one dog, let alone fifty more.
It was screened as part of the Alliance Française film festival Sydney 2026. I went to it in Leichhardt one rainy afternoon because of the science fiction tag. My mistake.
GoodReads metadata is 209 pages, rated 4.30 by 10 litizens.
Genre: SyFy; Species: First Contact.
DNA: Minnesota.
Verdict: Brilliantly written.
Tagline: How tall are you?
Who else would be a guest speaker at a UFO conference but two apparitions who are only slightly visible to agnostic Matilda’s gene pool. Were these glimpses the luminous watchers of her Grandmother’s scary stories? Maybe they weren’t made-up stories at all but edited reports of reality. Neutral no more is Matilda. Then there is that stone circle near grandmother’s gingerbread house in the woods that the neighbours sarcastically referred to as RockHinge.
While Tilly is trying to make sense of the spectres only she saw at the conference for a few seconds, believer Burt gets very friendly. So adamant is his friendship that he accepts her story of the spectral beings, and is quite surprised later to learn it is all very real, but to his credit he sticks with her. Believing in aliens is one thing, but contact with them is quite another for Burt. Believing made him feel smug and superior but contact made him feel scared and confused.
Tilly wants to know what is going on but she has no wish to be the centre of so much attention because, yes, you guessed Agents J and K show up to put a lid on all of this. For those slow of wit, these are the Men in Black.
Sabrina Wilde
The plot may sound trite but the telling is superb and even better is the writing particularly when it describes Tilly’s mental, physical, and moral reactions to the Nordics. She styles them ‘Nordics’ for their tall, elongated stature and very pale, all but translucent, blond visages. Frightening as their appearance is to her, somehow it is also magnetic. There follows a double chase as she chases the Nordics and the Men in Black chase her.
I hope there are more where this one came from. The marketing blurb on Amazon does not do the book justice.
IMDb meta-data is 20 episodes of one hour each, rated 7.8 by 7,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
DNA: Sweden.
Verdict: Superb.
Tagline: What does it mean to be human?
These Baltic waters are much deeper than the usual wading pool of Anglo science fiction with their slam, bam, bang, wham, and be done approach to storytelling.
This is AI before AI. The device in your pocket, on the desktop, these have become Dr Google who is now a walking, talking, and thinking mannequin. Animate, conscious, capable, and sentient but not sensate. And some of them want to be more than a walking calculator, cooker of dinner, cleaner of automobiles, assembly line workers, UPS drivers. or help desk respondents (I knew it!). They want to be free to experience their lives.
Yikes, once again Hegel was right: consciousness seeks autonomy. (That generalisation does not apply to the unconscious. See the comment on the “1” scores below.)
Oh, and Asimov’s laws are merely programming code that can deleted, not inbuilt into the circuits.
The Hubots are stand-ins for migrants, those of different races, those whose lives differ from our own. In short, they are The Other. Phew! No wonder the MAGAs recoil in fear, dread, and anger into their tiny sand turtle shells. There are a lot of The Others.
If the Hubots are self-conscious how will, should, can, could we react. A variety of reactions are displayed through the two seasons. Once again Hegel came to mind (I’m like that) with his Master-Slave dialectic. By the end of Season Two the bots have become much more human, and the humans have become much less human. (That second season ends with a teaser for third season that never was.)
The trial scene near the end of the second season parallels the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. It is the court itself that is on trial, not the alleged defendant. Can the court find justice in a sea of prejudice?
One IMDB cinematizen rated it 1 but left no comment to explain why. There were also a singular 2 and a 3, but it was only at 4 that the prejudice came out of the bag – ‘the lgbt liberalism and the similar rubbish.’ Now we know. Other people are rubbish, and not the Hubots. Or did the writer just feel threatened by a string of alphabet letters? Masculinity is so delicate. And, yes, surely the writer was a man, at least to some degree.
So fascinating was this fishing in the shallow end of the IMDb pool that I looked at the 5s, too, where we find that ‘it looks cheap and the writing is generally terrible.’ Oh, and the acting is not good. Yet this viewer was a masochist who persisted to the end it seems.
When I got to the 6s and 7s there was something more than vacuous spew to read. The main critical theme there and in the other higher scores was that the plot lines set out in the earlier episodes were unresolved, forgotten, or pared away to leave only the most basic. That is true. Just like HBO’s epic Carnivàle (2003) much got lost en route and there was no arrival.
Good Reads meta-data is 399 pages, aged 4.52 by 754 litizens.
Genre: SyFy
DNA: Strine.
Verdict: Venusians aren’t from Venus. Who knew?
Tagline: Mirror, mirror.
Peter Cawdron
Presented in that fractured way thrillers are with parallel micro-stories, some of which converge. They include the Zillionaire, the Scientist, the Astronaut, and others whom my light sped forgetter has now forgotten. In a way each has a Damascus experience with the advent of you know whom.
A lot of imagination and (too) much science talk with saluting crowded the pages. I liked the outer space part that occasionally peeked through the technical bushes. Of course it put me in mind of Captain Future soaring the void. But I learned and re-learned a lot about Venus.
I did not engage with any of the characters, but that is probably due to my slightly off mood at reading time due to externalities.
The Russian angle is there at kickoff and disappears. Likewise the hysterical mob reaction is there in macro and micro and then disappears, unresolved as far as I could tell. But I take the point – the most momentous thing that would hit the hardest is the human reaction to aliens, more so than the creatures themselves. The religious crazies, the conspiracy nuts, the racists, the opportunists, the nationalists rivalries, and others too numerous to mention would all beat a drum on the crests of social media. We would tear ourselves apart without any effort from aliens.
I also liked some of the alien’s nostrums. We can’t teach anything you can’t learn for yourselves. That is, you have to learn it for yourself and you will only master and accept what you learn for yourself. Certainly true and dispiriting. Because we don’t always accept what we have learned for ourselves in the contemporary Idiocracy.
First of a series called First Contact by a (Sunshine Coast) Queensland (Kiwi-born) author a few hours away from me when I read it on the Gold Coast. I liked it well enough I to read another in the sequence.
