Only two movie reviews (more like rants and stories actually) with books on here too, but first off I've got to tell a few Maine stories (one gross and one celebrity). Robert Schrader and I went to Maine last week for five days as the "Get the Hell Out of NY!" summer camping tour. It was so great to get out of the noisy, hot, crowded city for a while and I wish I was still out there driving, heading into Canada, laying in the tent reading and listening to the wind in the trees. Day #2 had us in Belfast, Maine, camped out near the water on nice, soft ground. For supper we ate at a place down the road and had steamed clams, fried whole clams and I topped it off with a pretty big cone of soft serve ice cream. Little did I know this was going to be a dangerous mix that would come back to attack me in a few hours. I woke up at around 1 that night, with the awful rumbling in my stomach and this odd twitching nervousness that always tells me I'm about to be sick. I unzipped the tent, waking Rob up, "What's going on?" he asked. "I think I'm about to throw up." I reply flatly and bound off barefoot down a dirt path, trying to make it to the bathroom before getting sick. I don't make it. I threw up all over the ground near the walkway outside the campground office, five feet from the bathroom door! I rushed in there and spent the next two hours, without shoes and alone, being sick, shivering and cursing my entire existence. There is something about getting food poisoning and throwing up that upsets my entire chemical make-up and I become unbelievably depressed and dark. I just want to die it's such a terrible thing. This is the first time I'd gotten sick like this since December of 1996 when I ate one of those potato things, baked and with sour cream, bacon bits and the works over the top. This was worse though. To be alone, somewhere in Maine, in the middle of the night, wearing no shoes in a semi-dirty toilet and puking up these undigested clams! It's not a moment I want to relive anytime soon. I returned to the tent at almost 3am to find myself shivering with a slight fever and unable to stop my teeth from chattering loudly against each other. The next morning I was weak and ate bland foods but two days later I was back at my usual diet. It has put me off the clams though. Never again will I eat steamed clams.

Maine story #2 is for the film geeks out there and involves a celebrity sighting. We had made up to Bar Harbor, Maine and were staying near the Acadia National Park. We were returning on a shuttle bus from the park and a great couple of hours hiking along the rocky shoreline that had the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing into the giant rocks while a soft drizzle fell from the sky. It was around dusk and the shuttle bus was stopping at various campgrounds letting people off and get on. At one of these stops a couple of kids get on and this normal looking guy. I noticed him and thought, "That looks like..." but then thought, "Naw, what's he doing up here on a shuttle bus in Maine?" but realized it was him and turned to Rob and said, "Hey, that's an actor named Luis Guzman!" "I was just about to tell you that I knew that was some famous actor," Rob replied. I was psyched. Guzman (Traffic, The Limey, Boogie Nights) is one of my favorite character actors and I always mention him in my reviews. Rob and I made a series of jokes about what we could go up and say to him that would be funny to us and that would catch him off guard being up here in the boonies of Maine and we decided to get off when he got off to at least say hello, thinking he surely doesn't get spotted a lot, especially here. We kind of walked behind him, that saw us having to pass a couple of his daughters to pull up even. I was walking a little ahead of Rob and Luis made eye contact and I said, "Luis Guzman?" "Yeah." "I'm a big fan of your work." "Hey, thanks a lot. All right." "What're you, up here to see the park?" "Yeah, up here for that, watching the whales." It started to rain and I don't recall much that was said after that but we all started running for our various tents or RVs or whatnot. It was cool. Luis Guzman. He seemed nice and kind of into being complimented and had it not started raining I may have gotten a longer conversation but it was funny as we weren't really expecting to see someone like that on this bus shuttle to the campgrounds. Now, to the movies/rants and more Maine stuff during the Rat Race review.

The Score (2001, usa)

The heist film is back in style and I'm glad for it. The Score, starring a bunch of heavy hitters such as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Angela Bassett, is one of the recent heist film releases (upcoming movies such as Heist (that's original!) and Ocean's 11 (with the above mentioned Luis Guzman I'm sure as he's a Steven Soderbergh regular) also have big starpower around capor action and double crosses). Maybe it's because I'm such a flat out sucker for these movies but I found The Score a pretty solid and enjoyable little heist film. I wasn't really surprised by anything but it follows such a steadfast and winning formula that any any film that adheres to the basic heist bluebook and has good performances, I'm going to recommend. All the actors are very competent (although Bassett is barely used) as De Niro plays a master thief making one last job before (I told you it follows the formula!) and joins up with a cocky, unknown guy (Norton) who is the inside man. Norton is an actor who is often said to be the finest of this generation (I'd probably go with Sean Penn myself) but come on, let's be honest, he couldn't carry De Niro's bags when De Niro was in his prime in the mid to late '70s and early '80s. The Deer Hunter. Taxi Driver. Raging Bull. Just three of De Niro's career defining roles during this period. Maybe he could rise to such lofty heights but those kinds of intense, epic, decade defining roles and movies aren't made these days (horrible state of American cinema is to blame. Again, I'm bashing American Hollywood movies but try and convince me this isn't true. How many great American movies have been released this year anyway? A tiny few at best. Wait a sec, let me see how many American releases I've scored a four or better so far in 2001 Kinetoscope. Here's the list: Traffic, State and Main, Momento, Moulin Rouge, Ghost World, that's it, 5 movies, 2 of which I saw in the first 2 weeks of the year. That's pathetic in any book you look at. Let me count up the foreign films released in America in 2000-01 that I've seen this year. Chunhyang, In the Mood for Love, Afterlife, The Taste of Others, The Gleaners and I, The Foul King, Amores Perros, Eureka, With a Friend Like Harry, Sexy Beast, Seance and Thomas In Love. 12 movies. I don't need to write more on the subject. 6 of the 12 are out of Asia. I'll say it again: the best movies in the world are coming from Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong/China right now. It just sickens me that with so much money at their disposal that American films aren't more up to snuff. Nothing but blockbusters and lowest common denominator cinema I'm afraid and I just expect too much I guess because I'm not satisfied by the litany of crap movies they produce. Well, an unexpected rant has emerged to comprise the bulk of this review! American cinema is in such a weakened state I truly feel compelled to go after it at every opportunity.). Okay, now I'm in a downer, don't feel like picking up where I left off. I wouldn't call The Score original but it's a very solidly made heist film with a great "big job" at the end that should be enjoyed as an entertainingly done genre picture. It kind of has an old time feel to it as it is mostly business around the capor. The scenes away from the robbery kind of drag it down but thankfully those scenes are few. Film geeks take note: Gary Farmer is among the cast. Solid, no-frills, pulls no punches heist movie here.   Joshua: 3.5

Rat Race (2001, usa)   Weir's Drive-In Theatre at Weir's Beach, New Hampshire   w/ Rob

Rob and I are on our "Get the Hell Out of NY!" summer tour, New Hampshire portion and happen to be camping out in a little town with a drive in theatre, one of the last bastions of authentic Americana. After we ate supper at a great place called Hart's Turkey Farm (their motto: Where Everyday is Thanksgiving Day! and had the world's largest turkey plate collection that was started by Grandma Mae in the '50s. See this is the real America that you only see by travelling around to small little, off the turnpike towns.) where I had turkey livers, more turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potato, butternut squash and a slice of key lime pie (my clam/ice cream poisoning was in the past as you can see), we drove down to Weir's Beach and the drive-in. Yes, we got in a honk before the film started when we felt that it was dark enough to start the movie (the honking is a part of the experience and tradition of the drive-in). Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the old style metallic window mounted speakers to the fm radio signal that is used now. Sure it sounds better on fm but there's something unique about having to attach this oblong, beautifully silver, heavy object to your window and then adjusting the static filled volume up and down and then making sure you don't drive off with it still on your window. The movie we came to see, Rat Race, is not really worth going into as its an updating of the Cannonball Run genre of picture. A big group of stars go on a chaotic, loopy road race while trying to win a chunk of money by crossing the finish line first. Rat Race is a silly movie that is certainly enhanced by the drive-in setting of cars, night sky with stars, trees next to the screen, people hollering out around us as they sit in folding chairs or in the back of trucks and the flickering image burning its way through the darkness and showing up on the screen that needs painting. My score would have been lower had it nod been seen in the great drive-in atmosphere but that fact added a great deal to watching a not so funny zany road picture.            Joshua: 3                     Robert: 2.5

(book review time: ***********Tokyo Underworld (1999)***********    by Robert Whiting

The subtitle of this non-fiction book by Robert Whiting is The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. That American is Nick Zapetti and Tokyo Underworld follows Zapetti from his early days as GI and black marketeer in post WWII occupied Japan. Zapetti managed to make ties with prominent Japanese organized crime branches, the Yakuza, which was unheard of for a gaijin. Zapetti lived an up and down life with riches beyond riches and then trouble with his Japanese wives and money problems that cost him the bulk of his empire. Zapetti also had a highly popular group of pizzarias called Nicola's that were a haven for celebrities and yakuza. My favorite moments of Tokyo Underworld were the Zapetti stories and the yakuza ones connected to him. The exerpts on pro-wrestling as nationalistic ego builder and the America vs. Japan mindset are two of the more enjoyable areas of the book. Unfortunately, the book goes into the details of the past 25 years of the yakuza and the white collar crime as they became more mainstream and moved away from the back piece tattooed, chopped off pinkie finger, sword carrying criminals there were known as in the '50s and '60s. I'm into the old style yakuza more than the new breed who are just basically businessmen with no scruples or ethics (but that might be common for the world of business?). Anyway, I'd have liked more crime and less business at times during Tokyo Underworld. This is the second book by Whiting I've read on Japan. He also wrote the classic You Gotta Have Wa, an examination of the differences of America and Japan throught the viewpoint of American baseball players in Japan and the difficulties they face on foreign soil. I wouldn't put Tokyo Underworld in the class of Wa but if you are into crime/mafia/yakuza/ Japan, then it's certainly worth checking out.

Movies reviewed: Thomas in Love (2000), Brother (2000) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972). Plus, there are two more book reviews at the end, Footsucker and Andy Kaufman Revealed! as I attempt to catch up from the backlog of books I've read this year.  

Thomas in Love (2000, Belgium)                 NY--Cinema Village

Thomas In Love is one of the more unique films I've seen in a while. Directed by Pierre-Paul Renders, it offers us life as Thomas sees it, through his visiophone (new teknology that is the phone and video through his komputer: the visiophone). Thomas is agoraphobic and can only communicate with people through his komputer. This is sort of a sci-fi film because of its futuristic setting and new teknology but the film isn't your normal sci-fi film as it is just a collection of people talking into this digital camera and Thomas' voice as he responds (we never actually see Thomas). I thought seeing everything from the perspective of a single camera would get old but that wasn't the case. The film was visually striking with all these hyper colors and strange face tattoos and makeup that's popular in Render's future world. Thomas' psychiatrist signs him up for a dating club and his agoraphobia scares all the women off except for one named Melody (Magali Pinglaut, who is doe eyed, cute as all get out fiesty actress who has an incredible way of biting her lips as she pauses between sentences that was very beguiling). Melody and Thomas hit it off, she makes video pomes and even considers some taboo cybersex with Thomas instead of having sex in person. Thomas also meets a woman named Eve who works as a prostitute through some kind of komputerized on-line agency. Eve behins to take up more of Thomas' attention as they talk more and more after he sees her crying through his visiophone. Renders has made a film that is really unique in look and he takes this cool idea and runs with it full steam ahead and it's a wonderfully inventive and different movie. It uses some animation (some naughty cybersex bits) and all kinds of digitalized tricks to liven up the images through the visiophone. The screen blips in and out, grows fuzzy and out of focus, uses odd, disjointed framing, photos pulse multiple images behind those who are talking to Thomas and all those vibrant colors and face tattoos. I bet some people would hate this kind of tekked up movie but not me, I found it oddly kind of warm hearted despite the coldness of future teknology and the lack of genuine human interaction. Thomas In Love is a strikingly different kind of sci-fi that should be checked out if you get the chance and this plays in other cities.  Joshua: 4

Brother (2000, Japan/usa)                    NY--Village East

Takeshi "Beat" Kitano's lates sees him making a claim at breaking into the American market more as it is half in English and mostly set in Los Angelos. I'm a Kitano fan and think his Fireworks is one of the best films I've seen in the past few years but Brother is a bad movie and the last half of it is practically an unwatchable mess. I don't know what in the world went wrong here but boy was it a complete and utter disaster. Kitano plays Aniki, his usual quiet yakuza, with facial twitches and extremely violent personality. His crime family is taken over in Japan and he leaves for America to save face for his old partners who are attempting to assimilate into the new gang. He arrives in L.A. to find a half brother (Claude Maki) who is involved in petty drug dealing. In no time Aniki has killed off the competition and has started up his own new crew of American styled yakuza. Brother just devolves into a mindless and silly series of brutal killings that mean absolutely nothing as their is no emotional attachment to any of these guys. Kitano's wordless, Clint Eastwood silent tough guy lacks the personality he's captured in the past. Brother also is missing the interesting visual artsy flair and the bizarre, non-linear editing that have been a Kitano trademark in his past few films. Truly, Brother looked and felt like some kind of straight to video release you see late Friday night on Cinemax with its tedious violence and empty sentimentalism. I really despise seeing a movie from a writer/director I admire and then a sinking feeling slowly creeps in as to how what I'm watching is not working and turning into a failure. It's painful. This is exactly one of those times. Takeshi Kitano has thrown out a massive dud with Brother that's for certain.              Joshua: 2

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask (1972, usa)

Early Woody Allen comedy that sees him turn sex into farce by showing seven sketches based around questions such as what is sodomy?, why do some women have trouble reaching an orgasm? (which is in Italian), and are transvestites homosexuals? the sodomy story features one of my favorites with Gene Wilder as a doctor who falls in love with a sheep named Daisy and begins to have a hot and torrid affair with her (hence the sodomy). Allen's early comedies, such as Bananas and Sleeper, are just so silly and goofy and in many ways my favorite of his films in his long career. This is in that vein. It's not always funny as some of the jokes fall flat and Allen plays to the camera with a wink too much, but it's so giddy in its bits of goofy business that its fun for Woody fans like myself.              Joshua: 3.5

INKLAB book reviews............INKLAB book reviews.........INKLAB book reviews.......

Footsucker (1995)         by Geoff Nicholson

As the title may tell you, this novel by Nicholson is about the world of a foot fetishist who meets a woman with perfect feet and has his world turned upside down because of it. Footsucker is about the most out and out sexual book since I read The Fermata by Nicholson Baker (a great, dirty book about stopping time and sex!) a couple of years ago. The fact that there were large doses of strange sex got me through this as it is not very well written. In fact, it's one of the poorest written books I've read in a while. Nicholson always uses the end of a chapter as an opportunity to toss in a one line teaser of what comes next--a very annoying and cheap ploy by a writer. Footsucker is thinly construcked, poorly plotted and just isn't well done. But, I suppose, if you are into feet a lot (which I'm not) you might want to check this out because you'll like Footsucker due to the amount of sex in it. The book details every kind of facet of foot fetishism and I mean everything and it can get a tad repetitive if you aren't into feet. I mean, there's only so many ways to eroticize licking toes for non foot freaks before it gets old. But, I did keep reading so maybe I'm into feet more than I thought I was? (okay, I read and wrote this in early May, since I've read it I've noticed I spend a lot of time on the subway casually looking at women's feet! either this book infuenced me in that way or I had more of a foot thing than i thought--i still don't think that's the case. It just helps to pass the time on the subway and there are so many women who wear shoes in the summer with feet visible and up front. Another thing that surprises me is just how few feet I find attractive. Very few of them I would consider getting into in the ways that Nicholson does in Footsucker. Thought a little confession might make this a more positive review than what I wrote in May.)

Andy Kaufman Revealed! (1999)              by Bob Zmuda/Matthew Scott Hansen

I don't want to repeat myself from earlier Andy Kaufman related rantings in Kinetoscope but I was and am a big fan of this madcap genius ever since I was in my teens and saw him on Saturday Night Live repeats. To me, he was an American original, who was fascinated by the audience and pushed their buttons at every chance he got. He liked it when they hated him (see pro wrestling or wrestling women or Tony Clifton identity) as when they loved him (Foreign Man as Elvis, taking them to eat milk and cookies, I love Grandma persona). I know quite a bit about Kaufman's stunts and antics and act so there were not a lot of surprise in this memoir by Kaufman co-hort Zmuda. There were details in some of the Clifton gags (Clifton was Kaufman's alter ego, a loud, drunken lounge singer prone to verbal abuse and mayhem) I didn't know--the hilarious appearance on the Dinah Shore show for example that I didn't know that much about. Plus some of the Kaufman and Zmuda real life gags were funny too. Lots of details and trademarks from Andy's life that are interesting if your a Kaufman geek like me. But, the only thing that bothered me about reading this was this is Bob Zmuda's version of some of this and you must take that with a grain of salt. A lot of the time Zmuda is trying to pump himself up too much or tries to take credit for a lot of the gags and while I don't doubt he had a hand in some of them, I'm just not sure it's as much as he says it is. If you are interested in Kaufman, watch one of the docs on his life, see Man on the Moon, watch the ABC special and then check this out to get some of the background info. A small part of me will never give up hope that Kaufman has pulled his greatest hoax: the faking of his own death. I know its very doubtful, but I can still hope and believe can't I? That's what being a fan of Kaufman is about anyway: the suspension of belief.       

Hello. Movies reviewed: Seance (2000), The River (1998) and Planet of the Apes (2001). Maybe a book at the end if I find I have time, I'm so far behind on these books...reviewed two of them: Hoolifan and The Missing World.

Seance (2000, Japan)                  NY--Screening Room

I showed up at the Screening Room expecting to see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest film Pulse, a horror story with ghosts in the internet. Well, the print did not show up from Japan, so I watched a different movie with ghosts from Kurosawa. Last time out in Kinetoscope, I reviewed his 1997 film Cure (3.5 outta 5) which was just released here in the u.s. but I think I enjoyed this more straight forward film that was made for Japanese tv and then given a transfer to film. I'm glad to have discovered Kurosawa as his two films I've seen bend the genre they are in and are atmospheric as all get out. Seance stars Kiyoshi regular and one of my recent favorites Koji Yakusho as a sound recordist who is married to a woman who has psychic proclivities. It may be an act when she's speaking for a person's dearly departed in seances (classic old time spiritualist shucksterism that dupes gullibles who crave to have any sort of contact that they eagerly repell disbelief) but she does also see these faceless spectres every now and then. This makes it kind of hard for her to work a public job with these unannounced hauntings popping up just for her. She also tries to help the police in a missing girl case and it causes trouble to come to their doorstep in unexpected and chilling ways. Seance has some truly creepy moments where ghosts appear quiet and wordless and Kurosawa knows that the waiting or hinting at the ghosts is 75% of the fun, so he doesn't knock us over the head with them. Seance's creepiness does not lesson by the end, it just sort of steamrolls with dashes of twisted, dark comedy pitched in there as well. Your imagination creates the fear which makes it more effective. I can't wait to see Pulse when it comes out in NY in the fall after seeing this atmospheric, dark little movie.            Joshua: 4

The RIver (1998, Taiwan)                    NY--Cinema Village

The River is the 4th Tsai Ming-Liang film I've seen in the past month and is by far the bleakest, most hopeless of the four. That's saying something because the other three are meditations on urban isolation among a variety of people who live in Taipei. The River sees a return to the same dysfunctional family seen in Tsai's Rebels of the Neon God and now they are even more messed up and lost. Before it was just the teenage son (played by Tsai regular Lee Kang-Sheng) who was troubled but now both the mother and father are having their own battles with internal desires that separates them not only from their family but the world around them. The father spends his time cruising gay bath houses and the mother is embroiled in a dead end affair with a guy who distros porn. No one talks to one another in this apartment. Everyone is in their own little world and the doors to the others are firmly shut and this adds to the sense of impending doom and the sheer hopelessness of the film. There is practically no dialogue in The River and very little actual story. An older couple sitting in front of me turned to one another and said, "This is boring. Nothing's happening!" 15 minutes later they got up and left the theatre. The River is just so incredibly relentless that it is one of the more depressingly styled films I've seen this year. That's okay most of the time because I'm kind of a depressed guy, but I wasn't in the mood for this much hopelessness. I mean, it offers no hope whatsoever as we know that if we check in with them in 5 years that very little will have changed. Tsai is obsessed with leaks in the ceiling and water in an apartment and The River had both. He needs help with these leak/water compulsions of his! Every Tsai film I've seen has a leak and water in the apartment and I've seen 5 of his movies now. Tsai must have had some kind of traumatic experience as a kid to still be fixating on it in every movie he does. The River is a real downer but that's okay, it's on the meandering and storyless side but that is classic Tsai, but I would have liked just a little more hope on this day as by the end the movie is practically drowning in the intense despair of its characters.             Joshua: 3

Planet of the Apes (2001)

To be honest, I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this summer blockbuster from director Tim Burton that is a re-doing of the classic 1968 sci-fi film of the same name. The '68 film is one of my all time favorite sci-fi films and it haunted my childhood off and on for years. This 2001 version I doubt will have the same kind of impact on kids because it's just eye candy and not ideas as the first one was. That being said and out of the way, I liked this more than I was expecting to. Probably because of the just plain greatness of the idea of the movie itself: a variety of apes who rule the humans and the world. Great idea no matter how average the execution of the idea. Mark "Funky Bunch" Wahlberg plays astronaut Leo Davidson and crashes his space pod onto a strange planet and quickly discovers it is a messed up world indeed with apes in charge. The original Apes took its sweet time to get to the apes and the human round up scene, not this one though as they couldn't get to that scene fast enough. The humans talk in this one and frankly the dialogue was so weak that they would have been better served to just keep their mouths muted as it makes for a better story too with sharp contrasts between Leo and the other, supposedly more primitive humans. This one doesn't really even try to tackle some of the issues the original did (race, religion, oppression, class) as we see a couple of good apes and a couple of bad ones who either help or work against Leo getting off the planet. Leo himself, played with no personality at all by Wahlberg, is just a standard, cardboard action hero cut out with bad one liners (like "Never send a monkey to do a man's job." Awful.) and ripped muscles beneath his tight clothes. There's no real connection between Leo and the nice ape played by Helena Bonham Carter and the sad part is an attempt to create one is missing entirely. The only two areas this is better than the original is the apes and Rick Baker's makeup (which is incredible) and the jump up in production over all. Maybe I shouldn't be doing all this comparing of the two films, but when the first is such a classic and they are basically re-doing it, comparing the two is a given. The screenplay is very clunky, with silly, unfunny one liners/in jokes, thin characters, a lackluster plot that has an very abrubt ending that I found kind of forced. Tim Roth (Thade) gives a fervant performance and Paul Giamotti as a slave trading ape was quite funny but no one else in the cast stood out. Chuck Heston does have a small role as an ape but it's brief. There was also the absurd casting of some talentless model (Estella Warren I believe) who is there to provide heaving bosom beneath her cave woman hide top at appropriate moments. A couple of times she's clearly wearing lip gloss for god's sake! The gloss helps give the primal pouty look that so many women who live in a cave are going for. She was in the movie just so Wahlberg could make out with and stare longingly at over the campfire. Absurd. This is starting to sound more and more negative which wasn't my original intention as this is not the worst of films as summer fare goes. Liked Burton regular and former Oingo Boingo front man Danny Elfman's score. All in all, this was flawed and very average, but thanks to a great idea about apes controlling the planet, it is somewhat entertaining despite its problems.      Joshua: 3

Okay, here's two book reviews for you...

Hoolifan: 30 Years of Hurt (1999)                by  Martin King

This book has a great, appropriate title. I'm interested in a wide variety of strange subcultures and one of which is soccer hooligans in England. A few years ago I read and loved a book called Among the Thugs that is highly recommended about the subject if anyone is interested. I came across Hoolifan in this tiny East Village place called the Onion Bag Shop that is owned by this English guy and has nothing but soccer stuff in it. Focus is on England and Europe, with a large selection of imported books on soccer. There were about 10 on hooliganism to choose from and I settled on Hoolifan. This book is written by a real life hooligan--although King abhors that term--and is about his life as a member of one of England's toughest firms (gangs), the Chelsea Headhunters. King describes how he became involved as a teen following Chelsea and talks openly and without apology about violence connected with his Chelsea mob. Some of it is humorous, often violent, but it can get a little repetitive talking about fighting agains West Ham or Millwall or other tough firms. It was really interesting to read about the connection of soccer firms and fashion tastes and how each team's supporters had their own unique look and hair cut to go along with their chants and songs. When I lived in London in 1989 I got caught on the periphery of a serious fight/riot near Tottenham Court Road and I have no clue what firm was involved, I just remember lots of broken glass on the sidewalk, bobbies everywhere and bloodied faces from the soccer fans. That's as close as I'll come to soccer violence which is maybe the reason I like reading about these people? I just can't imagine meeting up with a group of Steeler fans, seek out some Brown fans and then commence to have a brawl in the street. I am fascinated by the sociology and the mindset of people who combine violence with sport and the violence is often much more important than what actually happens on the pitch itself.

The Missing World (2000)               by Margot Livesey

The Missing World is an interesting novel combining ideas such as obsessive love, memory and coincidence and/or fate into its story. The book takes the literary thriller and gives the genre smarts and none of the cheap ploys that the bulk of those kinds of books drown themselves in. The Scottish Livesey uses three characters to tell her story. There is Jonathan, a stuff shirt insurance claims investigator and beekeeper who is still in love with Hazel despite her leaving him. Hazel is hit by a car and as a result loses three years of her memory. Jonathan has the chance to "redo" their relationship, salvage what went wrong and make Hazel love him again. The two other characters who tell the story are Charlotte, a struggling actress and Freddie, an American expatriate making a living as a roofer who has his own issues to work through. All the characters will move toward one another and cross into each other's lives. The Missing World's effectiveness is that it takes place among the ordinary and normal and that gives the book its power. This ordinary quality can be sort of deceiving as there are things going on below the surface of most of those involved that give the book an imbedded layer of darkness.