Much fun but falls off.
Screenwriter Wolper’s latest raking over of Hollywood.
Once more she goes on too long, although this is the shortest of her three works. Mr. Famous is an aging action film star on the downslide whose doomed, dark-toned current offering, Last Standing, sounds very much like the doomed, dark-toned Depression-era el floppo flick Last Man Standing that starred Bruce Willis (and was a dullish remake of Kurosawa’s seriocomic action masterpiece Yojimbo). Mr. Famous, or simply Mr. F, is the nickname given to Victor Mason by his chef/nutritionist, failed TV writer Lucinda, who sounds much like failed screenwriter Elizabeth West of Wolper’s Cigarette Girl (1999) and who shows up for a chapter herein, as she did in Secret Celebrity. Mr. Famous has had a literary novel under option for over ten years. He knows he can’t make it until he has two action megahits back to back. Then he’ll be allowed to film Skate, which is almost certain to tank—although Bruce Willis’s extremely low-keyed The Sixth Sense (coasting on Armageddon) had money falling out the bank-windows. Mr. F, going through a midcareer crisis, tends to lock himself into his bedroom for three days running—meals left by the door. So Lucinda sends him off to see her shrink, Dr. Davenport, who tells Mr. F that he’s no longer alive but has turned into, well, Victor Mason, action film star. This really upsets Mr. F, who rants against this clear truth to Lucinda, then takes her on a quickie plane flight to Boston, then by limo to his hometown, Falmouth, on Cape Cod, in search of lost time. Unlike California, Falmouth suffers gray rainy days. But Dr. D’s truth at last works its way through, and Victor gears up for serious acting, teaches a film class, and sets out to save Last Man from the suits. There’s a mini-subplot about Lucinda’s ex-boyfriend stalking her, but that suspense tidbit goes nowhere.
Much fun but falls off.Pub Date: June 7, 2004
ISBN: 1-57322-272-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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