abounding hackery
Finally finished The Alchemist and quite frankly, I'm not sure if I get what all the fuss is about. When I reached the end, all I could think of was a recent review in Entertainment Weekly for I ::heart:: Huckabees. As in, obviously there's a high concept Charlie Kaufman-esque comedy going on here, so critics must think it's grand because if they don't, then they obviously were too stupid to understand what was really going on. "Group speak" as the phenomenon is known in news media.
I feel like I have been a victim of group speak. Many sources which I know and trust have listed this little fable as one of the "best" books, "must-reads" and all that. So, I got the book and began it with no little amount of excitment. (I am a proud owner of the illustrated version with the gorgeous illustrations by Moebius. They remain the only redeeming value of the book.) And it was awful. It wasn't that exciting, it was terribly over-simplified, and heavy-handed with its religion and coincidences. I understand that it's point is not to reinvent the predictability of fables-- by the very nature of its subject matter, one knew from page one that the end would be contrived in some way. But what separates a bad fable from a great fable is the delivery. Our young Spanish hero is traveling in some pretty exotic locales and meeting up with some interesting characters. At least they could have been interesting if we as readers ever got to spend more time with them. Where were the vivid descriptions of bustling marketplaces, the sights and smells of exotic lands, the thrilling prose of adventure? Not in the damn book.
Half way through I toyed with the idea of what the fable would have morphed into had Ms. Dunnett wrote it instead of Mr. Coelho. The boy would be slightly tormented over losing his sheep, would have gotten into a knife fight with the thief in Algiers, made friends with the barman and persuaded him to come along for the ride, spent some time in a Beduoin camp and possibly made some more friends, and have paragraph after paragraph describing the smell of the desert. And what a great book that would have been. (Which reminds me I need to start on Scales of Gold but knowing that I'm going to receive Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by the end of next week, I don't know if I can finish it in time...)
Similarly depressing: Before good shows starting reappearing on Sunday nights, I spent the summer watching... *gulp* Lifetime's show Wild Card. It never broke the bank creatively speaking, but Joely Fisher is charming as are her two co-stars. And despite being on the despised "womens'" network, it manages not to be that entirely sick-making. So, during Boston Legal commercial breaks, I managed to catch the latest episode, which featured a crime reporter seeking proof that her dead relative was murdered. Like I said, not overly original but okay, whatever, I'll bite. What bugged me was what started as a nice little murder, with three prime suspects and a suspicious bottle of champagne, degenerated into the worst hackery I've EVER witnessed on television: in the last fifteen minutes, the plot DIRECTLY LIFTED the EXACT "murder" from one of the greatest episodes of Glenn Gordon Caron's Remington Steele, In the Steele of the Night.
How could I possibly know the name of the episode of such an old show? I am a fan, natch, and have seen that episode a couple times, back in the day when reruns were still being shown at obscure times of day on even more obscure channels. But that one was special, in that it won the prestigious Edgar award of 1983 for best presentation of a mystery, because the puzzle plot was crafted so carefully, dropping specific clues all the way through to solve the perfect murder. The perfect murder (which appeared as the plot of the crime reporter's unpublished novel in the awful Wild Card and as Alan's best murder story in Steele) is this: Man gets in an elevator on the first floor. Man pushes button to go to the third floor. The elevator rises to the third floor. When the elevator doors open, the man is dead. The elevator makes no stops, the man is unaccompanied, he wasn't poisoned. How did he die?
In both, the final solution is the same. However, what was so stylishly revealed by Pierce Brosnan, thoughtfully sitting in Alan's study and responding to Laura's query about why someone puts an elevator in their home ("Charles Laughton. Witness to the Prosecution, MGM, 1957. Had a stroke, couldn't walk up stairs.") was ham-fistedly squeezed into Wild Card at the last possible moment, and solved with just as much speed with such utter ridiculousness that I was amazed that they didn't name drop the 80s detective show. (Maybe Zoey had watched that episode too, explaining the quick turn-around on solving the case.) I was sick to my stomach for a good half-hour afterwards. This is why I don't make a habit of watching "women's entertainment." Because it sucks. I have a better time watching James Bond flicks on Spike.
On a more upbeat note, though William Shatner seems to have a halo of hackery around him from his Star Trek days, on Boston Legal he is decidedly impressive. I can see why they gave him the Emmy. He's good, not James Spader-rific (who is?), but real good nonetheless.
I feel like I have been a victim of group speak. Many sources which I know and trust have listed this little fable as one of the "best" books, "must-reads" and all that. So, I got the book and began it with no little amount of excitment. (I am a proud owner of the illustrated version with the gorgeous illustrations by Moebius. They remain the only redeeming value of the book.) And it was awful. It wasn't that exciting, it was terribly over-simplified, and heavy-handed with its religion and coincidences. I understand that it's point is not to reinvent the predictability of fables-- by the very nature of its subject matter, one knew from page one that the end would be contrived in some way. But what separates a bad fable from a great fable is the delivery. Our young Spanish hero is traveling in some pretty exotic locales and meeting up with some interesting characters. At least they could have been interesting if we as readers ever got to spend more time with them. Where were the vivid descriptions of bustling marketplaces, the sights and smells of exotic lands, the thrilling prose of adventure? Not in the damn book.
Half way through I toyed with the idea of what the fable would have morphed into had Ms. Dunnett wrote it instead of Mr. Coelho. The boy would be slightly tormented over losing his sheep, would have gotten into a knife fight with the thief in Algiers, made friends with the barman and persuaded him to come along for the ride, spent some time in a Beduoin camp and possibly made some more friends, and have paragraph after paragraph describing the smell of the desert. And what a great book that would have been. (Which reminds me I need to start on Scales of Gold but knowing that I'm going to receive Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by the end of next week, I don't know if I can finish it in time...)
Similarly depressing: Before good shows starting reappearing on Sunday nights, I spent the summer watching... *gulp* Lifetime's show Wild Card. It never broke the bank creatively speaking, but Joely Fisher is charming as are her two co-stars. And despite being on the despised "womens'" network, it manages not to be that entirely sick-making. So, during Boston Legal commercial breaks, I managed to catch the latest episode, which featured a crime reporter seeking proof that her dead relative was murdered. Like I said, not overly original but okay, whatever, I'll bite. What bugged me was what started as a nice little murder, with three prime suspects and a suspicious bottle of champagne, degenerated into the worst hackery I've EVER witnessed on television: in the last fifteen minutes, the plot DIRECTLY LIFTED the EXACT "murder" from one of the greatest episodes of Glenn Gordon Caron's Remington Steele, In the Steele of the Night.
How could I possibly know the name of the episode of such an old show? I am a fan, natch, and have seen that episode a couple times, back in the day when reruns were still being shown at obscure times of day on even more obscure channels. But that one was special, in that it won the prestigious Edgar award of 1983 for best presentation of a mystery, because the puzzle plot was crafted so carefully, dropping specific clues all the way through to solve the perfect murder. The perfect murder (which appeared as the plot of the crime reporter's unpublished novel in the awful Wild Card and as Alan's best murder story in Steele) is this: Man gets in an elevator on the first floor. Man pushes button to go to the third floor. The elevator rises to the third floor. When the elevator doors open, the man is dead. The elevator makes no stops, the man is unaccompanied, he wasn't poisoned. How did he die?
In both, the final solution is the same. However, what was so stylishly revealed by Pierce Brosnan, thoughtfully sitting in Alan's study and responding to Laura's query about why someone puts an elevator in their home ("Charles Laughton. Witness to the Prosecution, MGM, 1957. Had a stroke, couldn't walk up stairs.") was ham-fistedly squeezed into Wild Card at the last possible moment, and solved with just as much speed with such utter ridiculousness that I was amazed that they didn't name drop the 80s detective show. (Maybe Zoey had watched that episode too, explaining the quick turn-around on solving the case.) I was sick to my stomach for a good half-hour afterwards. This is why I don't make a habit of watching "women's entertainment." Because it sucks. I have a better time watching James Bond flicks on Spike.
On a more upbeat note, though William Shatner seems to have a halo of hackery around him from his Star Trek days, on Boston Legal he is decidedly impressive. I can see why they gave him the Emmy. He's good, not James Spader-rific (who is?), but real good nonetheless.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home