Friday, January 27, 2006 - Posts

The Constant Gardener

My favourite film of last year was The Constant Gardener; an excellent antidote to some of the unrealistically cheery Hollywood blockbusters that we are mostly bombarded with. 

This is the story of a British diplomat, Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle and his political-activist wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz).  Tessa campaigns against the policies of a large drug company in Kenya and ends up dead.  The, basically, apolitical Justin sets out in search of answers and finds a wholly different Africa from  the one that he experiences in his day to day work as a diplomat.  His trail of discovery is wonderfully described right up until the disturbing ending.

Based on the John Le Carre novel of the same name, this film combines fantastic cinematography of the Kenyan wildlife and human situation with a complex, realistic conspiracy thriller.  Thoughtful political insights nestling happily alongside all of the elements of a taught thriller make this a cinematic triumph for Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles.

I recommend it without reservation.  Watch it now.


Codex by Lev Grossman

In my life, I have probably read several thousand books and once started, I, almost invariably, will continue on to the end.  I try to read books that I think I will enjoy and it is not all that common that I don’t.  Sometimes a book will come along that is out of the ordinary, sometimes exceptionally good; sometimes exceptionally bad.  Codex is exceptionally bad; so bad I did not finish it.  In fact, I only made it about a third of the way through before deciding that I would be better reading almost anything than this.

The back cover reads well.  If you want to enjoy the book, don’t open it.  The major problem with it is the lack of anything to actually capture your attention.  The main character, Edward Wozny, is just boring; boringly written, boringly plotted.  He has a boring life and knows boring people.  He gets involved in a “plot” that reaches new heights of inanity and irrelevance to anything that would interest anyone in knowing anything about this character. 

The plot consists of the Wozny sorting a collection of books and playing a fairly poor sounding video game.  No really, that’s it.  That’s all that happens.  To give it the benefit of the doubt, it is only the first third of the book that I read; perhaps something else happens.  But, I don’t care and neither will you.


Recent Links #5

BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 35 languages and 50 versions.
The ideal place to research passages to make the religious look hypocritical or stupid

Scotsman.com Sport - Wallace Mercer dies
Our office landlord and former Hearts chairman dies of cancer.

Headaches (Cont.)

I had a really bad headache yesterday.  I woke up OK but later than normal as we were going to a funeral. I didn't eat and had developed the headache by 10 and was starving as well.  I had a couple of paracetamol and I made breakfast for Penny, Jordan and myself but then had to rush out to get Gregory who had gone to work.  By the time I got back my headache was really bad; a band behind my eyes was the worst but it was all over by this time.  I had a couple of ibruprofen at 11:45 and rushed out with a couple of sausage pieces.  The headache eased but stayed most of the day at a low level.