September 1, 2002

I finished the last Ludlum in my collection – “The Hades Factor” – sometime last week. I was losing momentum while reading that book anyway since it was a collaboration between Ludlum and another author and I didn’t like the pacing as much as I do the rest of Ludlum’s work – maybe I was subconsciously thinking that it wasn’t really a Robert Ludlum novel because it was a collaboration :p Anyway, I did finish the book and since I’m all out of thrillers, I decided to go back to fantasy and read another one of my regulars – Terry Pratchett. Strangely enough, this was the last book in my collection from Pratchett that I hadn’t read and it was a collaboration too :p This time the collaboration was with Neil Gaiman, whom I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about but whose work I had never read apart from a couple of issues of the Sandman comics – and I’d never really gotten into those, if I recall correctly after about five years that is <g>

I’ve tried to read “Good Omens” (that’s the book BTW) for a while now but couldn’t get up enough enthusiasm – again I suspect that the fact it’s a collaboration has something to do with it but it could just be that I’m getting tired of reading … There have been periods when I get tired of reading continuously and need a break. So I decided to take a break yesterday and watched movies. I watched “Lucky Numbers”, “Meet the Parents” and “Fight Club”. “Lucky Numbers” gave me a few laughs but I hated Lisa Kudrow’s character and Travolta seemed to be hamming it a bit – especially at the very beginning when he meets people at the restaurant. I had some laughs towards the end of “Meet the Parents” and had a sappy tear in my eyes at the romantic conclusion <g> but basically thought that it was rather an annoying movie – maybe it was Greg’s (Ben Stiller’s character) stupidity throughout most of the film in stumbling into one disaster after another or maybe I just was feeling a bit impatient at all of the improbability but it just didn’t work for me except towards the end.

Now “Fight Club”, what do I say about it? This was the first time I watched it since the very idea about guys getting together to beat each other to pulp was kind of repulsive to me but people kept on telling me how brilliant the movie was. So I finally decided to go ahead and watch it. It is certainly a good movie (I won’t spoil the plot for anybody who hasn’t watched it) and there is one particular revelation which left me astounded since I didn’t expect it (or rather, I saw it only as the revelation began … I didn’t anticipate it) and the central characters are extremely interesting *but* I don’t know whether we really need such dark and dystopian movies when the world all around is grim enough as it is. I don’t know what it is about David Fincher – first “Seven” and now “Fight Club” – but he seems to revel in the movies that portray the deepest, darkest, basest parts of humanity. Maybe it’s art but I just don’t think I want any of it right at the moment, thank you :p

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Posted by Fahim at 7:16 am  |  1 Comment