Good Reads meta-data is 182 pages, rated 3.73 by 15 litizens.
Genre: Krimi; Species: Sherlock.
DNA: Brit.
Verdict: Elementary.
Tagline: The stuff that nightmares are made of.
The Woman reappears, having twice outwitted the incomparable Sherlock Holmes, she turns to him for help in an hour of need: the one, the only Irene Adler.
It seems an overweight, gregarious, duplicitous, and garrulous Man thinks she has what is his – dat boird – only she doesn’t. It beggars belief but Irene is engaged to a young wastrel who schemed to get that bird, make a fortune, and whisk her away to parts known. But both wastrel and bird have taken flight.
Enter Holmes.
J R Trtek
There is a coda that traces the characters in this tale, including Sam Spade, to 1940. That alone is worth the price of admission.
But it lacks that early line in The Maltese Falcon that said it all: ‘We didn’t believe you; we believed your $50.’
The End of Baseball (2008) by Peter Schilling, Jr.
Good Reads meta-data is 340 pages, rated 3.85 by 209 litizens.
Genre: Alt History.
DNA: Baseball.
Verdict: What a ride!
Tagline: If only.
In Hollywood where fiction is fact the publicity for this book would say ‘inspired by a true story,’ almost. Bill Veeck, baseball fans need no explanation, lived and breathed baseball, and kept himself alive through 36 operations after losing a leg on Guadalcanal (1942) in the USMC dreaming of hit-and-run, sacrifice bunts, faked cut-offs, catcher pick-offs, and line-drive doubles. An invalid, he returned to the States in 1944 to light up the world of baseball for the next forty years, wooden leg and all.
The premise of this novel is that Veeck acted on his oft stated ambition to break the colour bar in Major League Baseball, hatching a complicated plan to do so in a coup de theatre that would surprise and defeat the many opponents of this change. The nub of the plan was that he, with his $500 payout from the Marines, would buy two baseball teams, one all-white and one all-black, and Hey Presto! Switch the one for the other on Opening Day! Genius! So he thought, but well, what did the elder von Moltke say, no plan survives first contact with reality, and neither did this one.
The man himself
FYI the two teams were the catastrophically broke Philadelphia Athletics in the American League and the unloved Philadelphia Stars of the Negro League. This latter team was hardly better off financially than the A’s, but had many talented athletes. Veeck assembled investors who had profited from some of his legerdemain before the war to funds the deals without knowing his master plan, and off he goes in this roller coaster ride of one imaginary season.
The cast of characters ranges from Satchel Paige (whose autograph I once had), Buck Leonard, Roy Campanella, J Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Judge Landis, and a great many more. What a kaleidoscope of the times and places of 1944.
Peter Schlling, Jr
Post Script. By the way Veeck did break the colour bar in the American League when he ran the Cleveland Indians by signing and playing Larry Dobey.
Good Reads meta-data is 464 pages rated 4.21 by 1107 litizens.
Genre: Historical fiction.
DNA: Edwardian England.
Verdict: Not for me.
Tagline: …. (Meh.)
The book is very well written, well researched in keeping with Harris’s other historical fictions, but…. Yes, there is a ‘but’ because, well, the story is depressing and boring. British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (1852-1928) went sleepwalking into the Great War, daydreaming about his mistress in cabinet meetings, only occasionally noticing what went on, and even more remarkable, throwing secret state papers into the street for the German sympathisers and agents who followed him around to collect, so preoccupied was he with his lady love; this sixty year old man in a teenage hormone haze barely knew what he was doing. When confronted with this fact of the state papers, first he denied it, then, then excused it, and then…continued it.
PM Asquith
All in all, he must be a candidate for the Donald Trump Prize for the most vacuous head of government. Yet he was PM for nearly a decade and Liberal Party leader longer. Asquith’s entitlement mentality and monumental incompetence is so tedious that I started flicking pages, and pages.
The woman was far more responsible than he was on this telling. She secreted his nine letters a day, tried to stop his littering with state papers, and finally broke with him to go to France to drive an ambulance. His reaction to the latter was to feel sorry for himself rather than snap out of his stupor.
Bring on Lloyd George!
Grey (sometimes ‘Gray’ in the Kindle text), Kitchener, and Churchill were the only ones in these pages who realised from the off that there would be a long and terrible war. Grey tried to prevent it, while Churchill savoured the thought but was realistic about what had to be done, and Kitchener feared it. None of them got any help from Asquith who drifted.
By the way, Harris claims both in a forward and an afterward that all of this is true. I believe him.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1h and 54m, rated 7.9 by 23,001 cinematizens.
Genre: Parody.
DNA: Japan.
Verdict: More!
Tagline: A Noodle Eastern.
A square-jawed stranger rides into town and when he enters the saloon the crowd of idlers goes quiet. So opens the Spaghetti Western.
Well, sorta. The stranger is driving a tanker truck, and the saloon is a ramen bar on the outskirts of Tokyo. In what follows are fist fights, espionage, Rocky training, and more as the stranger searches for the perfect ramen through an encyclopaedia of oater movie tropes. A team is assembled and the quest proceeds.
***
The momentum is hampered by interludes about love and food, some of which are odd and others incomprehensible, including a very tedious start. None add to the main theme. Cutting them would reduce the film by 30+ minutes. But the red line (as they used to say in Moscow) is clear and it rattles along.
I saw this long ago at Sydney Film Festival on its first release.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 34m, rated 7.4 (!) by 52 cinematizens.
DNA: Brazil.
Genre: Boring.
Verdict: Nothing comes from nothing.
Tagline: Is this all there is?
A movie about the purpose of life and the meaning of human existence, modestly declaimed the writer and the director.
With that pretension stated, what follows is an indulgent account of the angst of an adolescent posturing this way and that. In case it was all too deep for the viewer some scenes are repeated two or three times, and there is a narrative to guide the dull wits like me.
He is a poor little rich boy who seems to have no responsibilities or ambitions. He meets or perhaps dreams of a man even more useless than he is, painting the Atacama Desert blue.
It takes place in the Jetsons’ Brasilia, and is gorgeously photographed, preferable to turn the sound down and the subtitles off and watch the moving pictures.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 5.8 by 3,400 cinematizens.
Genre: Fantasy; Species: Alice.
DNA: Geordie.
Verdict: It’s all about time.
Tagline: Go girl!
Late at night the amnesiac Alice hitches a ride in Whitey’s (who is late, late) black London cab and nothing is quite the same again. In a series of skits she and he meet contemporary updates of the Mad Hatter, Tweedlee and (very) -dum(b), Caterpillarman, Dormouse, The Cheshire Cat, The Walrus, and, of course, the Red Queen. A few genders are bent along the way.
Alice moves things along by ingesting every illegal substance these creatures purvey in the struggle to regain her memory. She is the missing daughter of zillionaire Lewis Dodgson who offers a colossal reward for her return, and that lucre sets off even more scoundrels in pursuit to relieve Whitey of this fare.
Fun follows. Lots of it.
***
It makes no sense but it is a mile-a-minute with some engaging players like the Gardening Girl in the looking glass. Alice ends where she began and there is a charming resolution.
It seems there is species of Alice films. All manner of them from Disney to anti-Disney from the silent era to today in many languages. One review lists 33 without any claim to being comprehensive. By the way, this title has also had many iterations.
IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 43m, rated 6.5 by 6,000 cinemtizens.
DNA: Finland.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: A parody with laughs.
Tagline: ‘Deploy Windows 95!’
Travelling by accident from the far future back to the 21st Century Earth, no one believes Captain when says he is from the distant future. He’ll show them! He sets about conquering Earth so he can save it from destruction. Yes, he is a megalomaniac.
When the going gets tough, the tough use the ultimate weapon: Windows 95! It will destroy anything!
***
This is a fan mash up of Star Trek, and it worked well enough to keep me watching. There are others segments of different lengths. Click on.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1hr and 54m, rated 5.6 by 1,800 cinematizens.
DNA: Strine.
Genre: Neither Rom nor Com.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: Is that all there was?
The tale of a poor little rich boy who has everything (money, cars, women, booze – who could ask for more?) and, yet, wants more.
The best scene comes with the end-credits when our now reformed hero is leaving the country. If you can endure the preceding drivel, stay tuned long enough to the see that.
***
Overall it views like a Melbourne Tourist Board production of bright and beautiful young people basking in the hedonistic sun and fun (alcohol and sex) day in and night out in bleak city.
It is accompanied by a deafening soundtrack that combines demolition work with peak hour traffic.
Good Reads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.86 by 982 litizens.
Genre: Sherlock.
DNA: Victorian Britain.
Verdict: Tony needs counselling.
Tagline: Period detail galore.
Tony Moriarty has come back from the dead, making a pact with Sherlock who looms on the horizon but never appears in these pages. Reclaiming the reins of his criminal organisation he dispenses justice, grants favours, invests in heists, and plans his own master stroke. He is one hard working Don. No wonder he needs counselling.
John Gardner
***
The telling is replete with the slang of London lowlife of the time and place. The text is accompanied by footnotes that relate incidents to the Holmes canon, which sometimes offer supplementary fictional text to enrich the soup. One in series starring the professor.
Good Reads meta-data is 281 pages rated 4.17 by 634 litizens.
Genre: Krimi.
DNA: Navajo
Verdict: Overcooked.
Tagline: The evil Barbies did it.
Mostly Bernie and her bottomless portfolio of worries – career, sister, mother, neighbours, weather, parking, etc. If it’s there she will worry about it.
Over-plotted, too much exposition, too much ‘How I am feeling.’
The snow and quick changing weather certainly dominate as are the distances with attendant loss of cell phone coverage but all rather mechanically.
Leaphorn’s name is on the cover but has but a few lines on the telephone at the end of the book.
The two villains were obvious from the get-go. Both quickly crossed the border of my suspension of disbelief. Each seemed too incompetent to pull off anything.
