Movie of the Week: Saving Mr Banks

H and I went to see this on a whim. It's Wenesday. Twofers day. We usually see every SF movie we can, but this week we'd not much to choose from as we've already seen Catching Fire etc. So it was a toss-up between The Family and Saving Mr Banks. I'm so pleased we picked Mr Banks.

On the surface it's the story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) persuaded PL Travers (Emma Thompson) to sell him the film rights to Mary Poppins, but beneath that lies the story of Travers' own childhood in Australia and her relationship with her charismatic but troubled father, played brilliantly by Colin Farrell.

The story flips back and forth between 1906 and 1963. I've seen some reviews that suggested this was a mistake, but for me it was the whole point of the movie and yes I admit that I had to quietly wipe away more than one tear. As both PL Travers and Disney point out, Mary Poppins purpose in the book is not to save the Banks children, but to redeem their father. (That's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer!)

It's an intelligent script. Emma Thompson is brilliant as the tetchy, author determined that Hollywood will not have her star character despite her agent's cajoling as her money runs out. Tom Hanks gives a nuanced performance as Disney. I shouldn't be surprised by this as he's done some brilliant work in the last few years, not least in Cloud Atlas. There are plentry of excuses for snatches of the sings from Mary Poppins, some genuine feelgood moments and appropriate catharsis at the end.

Highly recommended, even if it doesn't look like the sort of movie you'd usually go and see.

Fifteen Significant Books Meme

This was originally a Facebook challenge, but here are the rules for anyone else who might want to try their hand at it.

Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. John Wyndham: The Day of the Triffids


2. C. S. Lewis: The Horse and His Boy


3. Peter O'Donnell: Modesty Blaise


4. Lois McMaster Bujold: The Curse of Chalion


5. Joe Abercrombie: The First Law Trilogy


6. Monica Edwards: Storm Ahead (and all her Romney Marsh books)


7. Andre Norton: Year of the Unicorn (amongst other Witch World books)


8. Wilbur Smith: Eagle in the Sky


9. Eric Linklater: Wind on the Moon


10. Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea (original trilogy, not the later ones)


11. Lois McMaster Bujold: Warrior's Apprentice (and all the Vorkosiverse novels)


12. Rosemary Sutcliffe: Eagle of the Ninth


13. George R. R. Martin: A Game of Thrones


14. Terry Pratchett: Night Watch


15. Diana Wynne Jones: Deep Secrets

Some selected because they are books that won't get out of my head and others because I read them at a particular time of my life when they held relevance.

Book Log 34/2013 - David Hewson: Writing a Novel with Scrivener

An excellent clear guide to using Scrivener to write a novel. Scrivener is one of those programmes with so many possibilities that you could spend weeks learning it from top to toe, or you could just take a day or so to grasp its main features and wade in, learning as you go. Most fiction writers will never need the full range of Scrivener's facilities, so the learn-as-you-go method makes sense and this book is a tremendous help.

I've been working in Scrivener for a few months,now, ever since my friend Karen Traviss recommended it as a useful tool for writers. It doesn't help the creativity, but it does help you to organise what you write and to revise it and tease out separate threads for revision purposes.

I've grasped enough to use it, but Mr Hewson pointed out some of the features I'd missed and I've already put some of his ideas into use.

If at times this book seems a little Mac-centric, it's because there are features for the Mac version of Scrivener which have not made it as far as the PC platform yet.: