A couple of weeks back, my (roughly) semiannual Amazon.com order arrived, some 30 books this time. I figure I’ll try to review at least some of them here, so here are my impressions of the ones I’ve read so far.

His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman (Dell Laurel-Leaf Books box set)

This is very interesting, a trilogy of dark fantasy for “young adults” which is outspokenly anti-religious (or at least anti-organized religion), and is quite heavy on metaphysics based on or extrapolated from modern particle physics. Philip Pullman has been on record criticizing C.S. Lewis for the moralizing and christian propaganda in the Narnia books, and although I remember the Narnia books fondly, I have to say that Pullman is a much better writer than Lewis, and has much more interesting things to say.

It’s fantasy, of sorts, and steampunk, and some SF, and alternate universe fiction, and several other things, and it works quite well. The criticism of organized religion is right on, although it gets a bit heavy-handed and obvious in the third book. The third book in general has a few problems, especially the second half of it, where the ending seems anticlimactic, and the loss forced upon the protagonists by fate seems unnecessarily cruel. But all in all, it’s quite good, and far better than most things written for young adults, including the Harry Potter series (which I like, but it’s not as interesting or well-written). There are some awesome ideas here, from knives that can cut between universes to armored sentient polar bears, but also very well-written sentimental passages, and meditations on destiny, free will, loss, and death.

Black Hole, Charles Burns (Pantheon)

I bought this mostly because Sean T. Collins has been constantly raving about it, and it’s an interesting book. It’s a graphic novel, but bound in a normal novel-sized hardcover, which makes the art smaller than it would be in the hardcover or trade paperback bindings usually used for longer graphic novels, but it’s fine, the art is crisp and clear black and white, and looks gorgeous on the heavy paper.

The story itself is a sort of body horror concept, teenage alienation in seventies Seattle manifest as “the bug”, a sexually transmitted disease that brings about bodily transformation that varies wildly from person to person. That sort of psychological state manifested in the body story sounds like something Cronenberg would have written, and it appeals to me because of that. The story isn’t really about that, though, the bug is the backdrop against which the characters work out their lives and relationships. There’s also a serial killer picking off infected kids, but that subplot didn’t seem particularly necessary or interesting to me. All in all, it’s interesting and quite good, but I’m not going to be raving about it like Sean has been.

Teach Yourself Film Studies, Warren Buckland (Teach Yourself)

My formal knowledge of film studies is lacking, so I decided to get a few books to try to remedy that. This is the first and most basic, and while it’s a good introduction and high-level overview, it was really too basic for me. It introduces core concepts, the main directions of film studies (mostly the difference between genre theory and auteur theory), has a chapter on documentary film, and one on film reviewing, and that’s about it. If you’re more or less in the dark about the whole thing, and want to see if it’s interesting, this is probably a good book, but it is very basic indeed. For me, it mostly confirmed and refreshed my memory of things I already knew, like the fact that I mostly disagree with auteur theorists, and think their priorities are misguided.

Coming up next, Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind, which I just started reading. I got it on the urging of my girlfriend, and so far, I have to say it’s very promising. I see it’s been compared to Focault’s Pendulum, Auster’s New York trilogy, The Club Dumas, Borges and Márquez, so this should be right up my alley.

It’s not that often that I get to review a Norwegian movie, and especially not a Norwegian psycho-thriller with horror elements, reminiscent of Polanski and Lynch. Naboer is that film, which finally found its way to Mexican theaters, and surprisingly, it was a quite pleasant experience. By pleasant, I of course mean unpleasant, but in a good way.

The plot is rather simple: John lives alone after his girlfriend left him, and bumps into his next-door neighbours, two young women. They are acting… strangely, and seem to know things more about him than they should. Things go rapidly downhill from there. It’s not the sort of movie you can explain too much without giving it all away (although the truth wasn’t too hard to figure out about halfway through anyway).

It’s not particularly original, I have to say, and it’s very fair to compare it to and consider it inspired by movies like The Tenant, The Machinist, Spider, and Lost Highway, but it’s quite well done, and it works. Visually it’s also quite nice, all muted tones and old, worn-down Eastern Oslo apartment building interiors, second-hand sixties furniture, and a thin layer of grime on everything. I was also amazed by the incredibly fractured space in the movie, you literally don’t know how things in these big, old, cluttered apartments connect and relate to each other, and that’s kind of the point. It’s done subtly, though, not the jarring cuts that breaking basic rules of cinematography would imply, and it gives you a sense of being lost and paranoid, just like the lead character.

The acting’s a bit uneven, Kristoffer Joner, perhaps the finest actor in Norwegian cinema today, does a great job, while some of the others put in a somewhat less convincing performance. But none of it’s too bad, and if you don’t know Norwegian, and you watch the movie subtitled, it probably won’t bother you at all.

Oh, and there’s an amazing sex scene. I know people have reacted strongly to it, but I thought it was amazing, an incredibly visceral mix of sex, violence, blood, and base instinct, with a raw urgency and credibility to it. And so very sexy, the sort of thing you get excited by despite yourself, similar to some of the stuff in Crash. Actually, thinking about inspirations and influences for this movie, I think Sletaune is definitely in the same idea space as recent Cronenberg, the general concept reminded me of Spider, while the sex scene made me think of both Crash and A History of Violence.

If you like psycho-thrillers, violent sex and nice visuals, well tied together although perhaps not incredibly original, you should definitely take a look.

We were mugged today, in the car, when we stopped at a red light. A guy came up and stuck his head in the window, holding what at least was supposed to be a gun. I’m still unconvinced it was real. He told us to give him all our money. I was the one by the window he was coming in through, and I told him no. Aline, who was driving, was accosted by another man on her side, who was opening the car door. She gave him money, and they both left.

I’m struck by how undramatic it was, really. The guy was trying to be threatening, but really failed quite pathetically, and I’m convinced that if everyone in the car had just refused to give them any money, they’d have given up and left. The guy with the “gun” was waving it around and holding it very loosely, which made me sure he wasn’t actually planning on shooting anyone, if it indeed was real. I considered taking it from him, he was holding it just 20 centimeters from my face, but pointing it in another direction, but since it was so undramatic, and they left quickly, I never got around to trying it.

First time that’s happened to me in 8 years here. I’m underwhelmed. I was expecting an adrenaline rush or something, but no, nothing. Desperate people will do desperate things, there’s no surprise there.