Movie of the Week: Hunger Games, Mockingjay Part Two

I was only half looking forward to this. I enjoyed the first two films (and the first two books), but Mockingjay Part One suffered from being the movie of the first half of the final book in the trilogy, depicting the period where Katniss, suffering from PTSD, has no agency. Frankly her agency is limited for part of this movie, too, until she takes it back in the final moments in an act which is flagged up so heavily that it comes as no surprise,

There's no doubt that the acting is excellent (particularly Jennifer Lawrence, but also the supporting cast) and the cinematography/world-building well realised, but oh how I wish they'd not succumbed to splitting the last book. One movie would have been quite sufficient.

Book Log 33/2015 - Humphrey Jennings: Pandaemonium 1660 - 1866

The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers
A collection of contemporary texts on the progress of the industrial revolution from 1660 to 1866, well chosen and arranged in chronologigal order. It includes poetry, diary extracts and contemporary writings and gives an excellent flavour of the changes taking place. It provides a continuous narrative of the industrial revolution, but told from many different viewpoints, a narrative of ideas and emotions, not merely of hard facts and mechanical innovations. The pieces illuminate the industrial revolution as straightforward text books cannot.

Humphrey Jennings was a documentary film maker who died in 1950 with this work incomplete, but with a huge selection of writings and notes from which it has been assembled by Charles Madge. True to Jennings original intention this collection of writings is a visual piece. From a personal research point of view, it provides an insight into the period I'm writing about, from descriptions of London, scientific treatises, newspaper articles, letters, extracts, pamphlets, diaries and poems. It includes writings of Lord Byron, William Cobbett, William Blake, Jeremy Bentham, James Watt, Vincent Lunardi, Tom Paine, Elizabeth Fry, Dorothy Wordswirth, Tom Poole, Michael Faraday and many, many more. Highly recommended.

Movie of the Week: Victor Frankenstein

You might think that the Frankenstein story has been mined out over the years, but this time the film industry has come up with Victor meets Igor, It's not quite a porequel because it does see the story through to the end, but much emphasis is put on Frankenstein rescuing the downtrodden hunchback, Igor, (Daniel Radcliffe) from a desperately bad life as a circus freak, hence Igor's devotion to Frankenstein despite his better judgement.

Radcliffe is a surprisingly effective Igor, particularly in the circus scenes. James McAvoy is the driven (and quite bonkers) Victor. The story does have a different take on the story and was well worth watching on a wet Wednesday afternoon on the Meerkat Movies two-for-one offer.

Book Log 34/2015 - Diana Gabaldon: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade Lord John #2

Another of the Outlander spinoffs set in the mid 1750s featuring John Grey, youngest son of the disgraced, deceased Duke of Pardloe, and an unrepentant homosexual in an era when it was a hanging offence. Lord John is a principled young man, a career soldier (Major) in his older brother, Hal's regiment. This is a mystery, but largely concerning the story surrounding the Duke of Pardloe's demise, supposedly a suicide, but John Grey, only twelve at the time it happened, knows differently.

A fair bit of the plot hinges on people on the same side not sharing information and it takes a while for John to pull the story together from what he knows and what he discovers. If his mother and older brother had come clean then it would have been a much shorter book.

Ms Gabaldon knows how to write a page turner and with the main murder-mystery, the military detail, and the sub-plot of Grey's complex relationship with Percy, his new step-brother by marriage, there's a lot to like in this book. It's also good to see Jamie Fraser, main character in Outlander, appearing here in a minor but vital role.