>I read the book and I didn't like the movie either. I
didn't buy the
>characterization -- for instance, Marcia Gay Harden's
shift from backing
>her husband to selling him out just made no sense
without a whole lot
>more background -- and I still can't believe that all
of that EMOTING
>got praised as great acting (Bill Murray got robbed).
I thought it was
>a classic example of a film that sacrificed depth of
any kind by trying
>to retain too much plot.
Plus, didn't everyone else know exactly where the film was
going almost right from the beginning?
I mean, I thought the acting was fine, but all that scenery
chewing
(and all the "Look, look, I'm artistic!" camera work) was in
service to a pretty obvious plot twist.
I haven't read the book, but I find this to be a common
problem I have with much of Lehane's work -- for all the
lovingly crafted (or is it just overworked?) verbiage, his
plots simply seem so damn obvious to me. I'm not sure,
though, if this is because he's an obvious writer, or we're
just on the same narrative wavelength.
Thing is, there are several writers whose plots I can often
suss out
(Block and Pronzini, in particular) well in advance, but
generally, I keep reading, because I find they write so well,
and create interesting, compelling characters. With Lehane,
it becomes a chore. I don't particularly like his characters,
and worse, I don't believe them.
Maybe it's just me, but he's one of those writers whose
current popularity just baffles me.
Anyone else have this problem, where some writers' plots just
offer no surprises?
--
Kevin -- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Jul 2004 EDT