kittiwake: (travel)
kittiwake ([personal profile] kittiwake) wrote2004-06-30 07:19 pm

Books & Films / June 2004

This month's must read book is "Barney's Version".
This month's must see movie is "The Saddest Music in the World".

Books Read

Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler
Unless - Carol Shields
A Dog Called Demolition - Robert Rankin
Flatland - Edwin Abbott
Red Dog - Louis de Bernieres
Are YOU Dave Gorman? - Dave Gorman & Danny Wallace
The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
The Unlimited Dream Company - J.G. Ballard
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Walking on Glass - Iain Banks
Jingo - Terry Pratchett

Here is my June reviews post to [livejournal.com profile] 50bookchallenge.


Cinema Trips

The Saddest Music in the World
Confidences Trop Intimes

Film reviews

"The Saddest Music in the World"
What a wondrously strange movie! Nearly all shot in a very grainy black-and-white, set in the 1930s and with production design like a German expressionist movie. A baroness who owns a beer factory in Winnipeg decides to run a competition to discover which country has the saddest music, and musicians from all over the world gather to compete for the prize. Best things: Maria de Medeiros perfectly in-period look, Isabella Rosselini's legs (!), the commentators' arch discussion of the competitors, the canoeing scene, the production design and how funny it was once I got over being gobsmacked by the weirdness.

"Confidences Trop Intimes"
A French film starring Sandrine Bonnaire as a young woman who makes an appointment to see a psychoanalyst to discuss her marital problems, but knocks on the wrong door and ends up talking to a tax accountant instead. I am going to gloss over how unlikely it is that people running businesses from a block of flats would not have a notice on the door showing their business name, and say that this was enjoyable in an understated kind of way.