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The Omnivore (www.theomnivore.co.uk) rounds up newspaper reviews, bringing you a cross section of intelligent opinion.
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We’re not sure if Tony Blair’s autobiography needs any more publicity but we really had to share this quotation from an article in today’s Times:
He details racier moments of life with Cherie, particularly the night he became Labour leader in 1994. “I needed that love Cherie gave me. I was an animal following my instinct.”
Hatchet Job of the Day
Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out described the forked path that many a comedian approaching middle age doth face. Indeed, the road to hell is paved with good (box office) intentions:
Every middle-aged ‘Saturday Night Live’ alumnus grazing the wider pastures of Hollywood comes to a big decision: do you follow the model of Steve Martin and traipse into middlebrow mania? Or, like Bill Murray (and, to a lesser degree, the Mike Myers of ‘The Love Guru’), do you pursue your muse even further into go-it-alone weirdness? Adam Sandler may have made his choice.
Read the collection of hatchets Sandler’s latest film is inspiring here.
The sickest film ever made?
Perhaps this is indeed the sickest film to have yet hit the screen. The moment when the leading constituent of the beast with three backs defecates into the mouth of the young woman sewn to his anus would surely take some beating. Yet, what self-respecting film-maker could be content with such a laurel? “Sickest” makes you a bit of a card. “Most horrific” turns you into a cinematic legend.
David Cox disects what makes a horror film truely horrific in his Guardian film blog. Does Tom Six’s surgical slaughter fest, The Human Centipede, compare with classics like Psycho, Halloween, Rosemary’s Baby or even last year’s offerings Antichrist and Paranormal Activity?
The Omnivore recommends…
Colm Tóibín will be discussing his latest novel Brookyln at the Guardian Review Book Club on Thursday, 26nd August. Read all the excellent reviews for Brooklyn here.
The Omnivore recommends…
Angelina Jolie’s physical attributes were a popular point of discussion in the press this week. Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times found an apt metaphwoar in an uncharacteristically entertaining review:
Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer accused of being a Russian “sleeper” planning a top-level hit. Her eyes speak to us of her shocked innocence. Her lips, large enough to be a pair of disguised Trident submarines, pout in a warlike way.
Read all the reviews here.
The latest issue of The Omnivore’s Weekly Digest considers Blair’s autobiography, plus a roundup of new crime and our picks of the best new books, films and plays.
When book recommendations go wrong
If someone’s ever told you to read a book “you’ll love” and you’ve actually loathed it, then you’ll understand the pain and suffering Guardian Book Blogger Darragh McManus has gone through:
Does this mean, when a fellow book lover gives you a book you hate, the person didn’t really know you, or had an erroneous idea of you in their mind? Does it mean you don’t really know yourself? Does it mean the self is fundamentally unknowable, at least through the contents of a bookshelf? Most importantly, does it mean you’ll have to avoid the giver from now until the day one of you dies, just to be spared that excruciatingly awkward moment where they excitedly ask how you liked the book, and you lie unconvincingly to spare their feelings?
Read the full article here
Hatchet Job of the Day
Two glaring omissions in an otherwise sterling line-up were quite rightly pointed out by the New Yorker’s venerable film critic Anthony Lane in his review of Sly’s latest The Expendables:
Where is Jean-Claude Van Damme? If I go to see a movie called “The Expendables,” which already features Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, I expect a place to be found, amid this noble array of thinkers, for the cuboid Belgian. Or how about that vast, immovable block of dough, with two tiny currants for eyes embedded near the top, that goes by the name of Steven Seagal?
Maybe they read the script. “The Expendables” is savage yet inert, and breathtakingly sleazy in its lack of imagination. Stallone, who co-wrote the movie with Dave Callaham, is also listed as the director, but since he appears to be having trouble, in the autumn of his years, getting his eyelids and lower lip to act in consort with the rest of him, I’m hardly surprised that he had no energy left over to command the film.
NB. The Expendables are Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Ying Yang (Jet Li), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren). But perhaps the names aren’t as tongue in cheek as they appear: Sly named his two sons Sage Moonblood and Seargeoh.
Read all reviews here.
Man Booker Prize 2010 Longlist: Update
New reviews in for:
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The shortlist will be announced on 7 September.
To see The Omnivore’s review roundups for all the longlisted books, click here
“Cheap” and “Shitey”: European Fiction?
Christos Tsiolkas, Australian author of “controversial” Booker-nominated novel The Slap explains why he’s better than European writers:
A friend of mine gave me a book of the best European short stories of 2009. I was instantly struck by how dry and academic they were, and not in the best way, in a cheap, shitey way… They didn’t talk about the real. I want something more rigorous, more challenging than I am finding at the moment.
To hear more of his fighting talk from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, read Charlotte Higgins’ article on the Guardian website.
