Cultured

I've been reading Terry Pratchett recently. I suppose you could say this is like reading through John Grisham's œuvre, but he writes funny, entertaining books that are hard to put down. And he doesn't divide them into chapters. So I have a hard time stopping.

I also discovered that much of Akira Kurosawa's work in film is in the public domain and available from the Internet Archive. I just finished Ikiru (To Live) and he really got me in the end. Thought he was going for easy, but he didn't.
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Posted on Nov. 25th, 2007 at 01:49 am | | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

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[info]http://www.haller.ws/logs/

Ikiru

I saw 'Lost in Translation' first, and it seems to have been hacked out of Ikiru; from the dissolution to the salvation via cute, young, rule-breaking female. Although Ikiru wins with the funeral discussion; could you imagine an American film in 1952 doing anything like that?
Posted on Nov. 25th, 2007 09:51 am (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]hexmode

Re: Ikiru

The wake is definitely not anything like what I grew up experiencing. I got a glimpse of something similar at the two Vietnamese wakes I've gone to (but with less drunkenness), so it isn't too hard to suspend disbelief.

But, yeah, it would be interesting to see if the last part of the movie would work even in the contemporary West.
Posted on Nov. 25th, 2007 09:58 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]danlyke

Yay for Pratchett

I'm not sure Pratchett is litrachoor, but I think that Guards, Guards has some profound things to say about government and the notions of kings, Night Watch about police powers, and Making Money delves into issues of currency and the gold standard in ways that far surpass the depth of Grisham.

So I feel no guilt at all in re-reading Pratchett. Or working through his entire opus.
Posted on Nov. 26th, 2007 05:30 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]hexmode

Re: Yay for Pratchett

I've just started Thud! and I swear part of it is just Pratchett retelling the story of the Lackawanna Six.
Posted on Nov. 29th, 2007 08:05 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]danlyke

Re: Yay for Pratchett

Yeah, IMHO he does an amazingly good job of doing satire, but making it just different enough from what he's parodying that it doesn't become preachy and whiny.

There are a number of places where I've had the "wait, that's just... Oh, no, he managed to twist it just enough" feeling.

Some day I'm going to go back and read the original "Monstrous Regiment" tract that he was riffing on in his novel of the same name, though, just to see...
Posted on Nov. 30th, 2007 12:38 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply