Sci fi — The Blank Page

Taste is a strange beast. I know a lot of the things I like now all started with my parents. They showed me some great films, some great TV. They got me into some brilliant books. They played me the first songs I ever heard. Then, at a certain point, you start to pull away from their tastes. Or I did, anyway. I wanted to fit in with other people. I wanted to like what they liked. That expands your taste even more. In some cases, I eventually ended up introducing my parents to things they might have missed by themselves. Or, in other words, that’s how my dad ended up becoming a bigger Radiohead fan than me. My mum, not so much.

One film my dad couldn’t wait to show me was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was his favourite film. Over the years, a few other ones came close. The Big Lebowski. The Shawshank Redemption. City of Lost Children. Not that one of them ever managed to push 2001 off that glorious top spot.

Book review, Books, ReviewChristopher Long28 April 20232001, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke, Sci fi, Michael Benson, MoviemakingComment

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks

I need to start off with a disclaimer. Or maybe it’s more of a confession. I’ve been caught in a love/hate relationship with Iain Banks/Iain M Banks pretty much since I first heard of him, back when I came across a TV interview he did for the release of The Bridge. I was fascinated by the idea of the novel, so I picked up a copy and read it. And loved it.

After that first encounter with his fearless storytelling, I would occasionally try another Banks, TBR pile allowing. Which is where the problem started. You see, some of his books took root really easily. The Wasp Factory left me breathless. The Crow Road instilled a sort of melancholy nostalgia in me that I don’t think I’ve ever lost. Complicity was pacier than I expected. Dark and playful. Coming along just as I’d gotten into reading old Gonzo articles and grisly murder mysteries, it felt made for me. There were trickier reads ahead, though.

Player 2 Has Left the Game

There are some people in the world of cinema whose name becomes synonymous with what they do. You can spot them quite easily. They normally get the word ‘esque’ stuck on the end of their name to tell you another director has tried to respectably rip them off. It’s a sign that their talent has sewn them into the fabric of the cultural landscape. Steven Spielberg is very much one of those people. Although, unlike so many other directors who share that honour with him, he’s transcend the need to be seen as connected to only one genre or style of film. When it comes to Tarantino, Hitchcock, Fellini, Lean or Kubrick, you know roughly where the movie is going to take you. Whereas Spielberg feels more of an iconoclast than the rest of them. Or, at the very least, he appears to have a few extra clubs in his bag.