Multi-Media Review

The local cable channel MhZ airs, on Tuesday and Thursday, an International Mystery movie featuring detective/cop shows from around...well, I'd say the globe, but I've only seen European ones, so I'll limit it to that. This is where my friend CrazyQuilt videotaped one based on the Andrea Camiliari Inspector Montalbano books, and also where I caught another Italian cop show sort of movie called, I think, Homicide Squad. Would that I had a multi-region DVD player, because they're available but obviously coded for European players.

Last night, Bemo and I watched one from Sweden. It was called The Man Who Smiled, and featured a detective more self-destructive than Sam Spade ever hoped to be. His name is Kurt Wallander, and he's a big, beefy type with a jowly, sad-circus-bear type of face, and a penchant for destroying the relationships that make him the happiest. The story was interesting, the supporting cast excellent, and the baddie of the story genuinely creepy and evil. (Points for me and Bemo both for going, "Eww, there's an icky incest vibe happening here!" when our suspicions were validated ten minutes later as the smug millionare discussed artifically inseminating his adopted daughter so he could continue the family name.)

I've just added a bunch of the books that the show was based on (the author is Henning Mankell) to my Amazon wish list - a trifle warily, as I'm better dealing with very depressing topics via a tv show than I am in books. If these turn out to be as bleak as the Michael Dibdin books set in Italy, I'm not going to enjoy them. Anybody who has read them, please feel free to let me know what you thought about them.

I'm also reading - or attempting to read - a book by Nicholas Bornoff, called Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage, and Sex in Contemporary Japan. The book is an unfortunate mishmash of an attempt at serious scholarly work, day-in-the-life-of set pieces, personal experience, and anecdote. It's very disjointed, and apparently relies on data that was rather outdated at the time the book was published, and is even more profoundly so now. It also paints a portrait of Japan and the Japanese that I hope is, for their sakes, rather exaggerated. It's strange to say this about a book that goes into detail about neon-encrusted love hotels, Japanese schoolgirl Lolitas, and the No Panty Coffee Shop, but much of the book is, quite frankly, boring. I'd love to read a better study along these lines, but I'm afraid that I can't recommend this one beyond the most basic, "read it if you've got nothing else."

Oh, and also - GIP *g* Everybody else grew up with Hello Kitty, but I was always a Little Twin Stars girl myself.