Saturday, September 14, 2013

Roundup, of sorts

Thsi week will see a Saturday Random Ten, rather than a true FR10.  The important thing is, it will be just as fresh and delicious as ever.

Watched Wait Until Dark earlier tonight.  It's a clever and creepy little movie, matching Audrey Hepburn who is perfect in that she initially seems too wimpy to even watch this movie, much less star in it; with Alan Arkin, who's not a loveable rebel this time so much as a demon escaped from Hell.  Something tells me that if this story were filmed today it would be done a lot more ham-handedly.  In fact it's basically already happened.  Panic Room, from about ten years ago, is basically the same movie screamed through a megaphone.

Also read Mrs Pargeter's Plot, by Simon Brett, this week.  Mrs Pargeter is the widow of a smooth criminal, and thereby an unusual detective story heroine.  Rather pleasantlyskewed, in this novel.

2 comments:

susan said...

Saturday Random Tens are always as welcome as the usual.

Wait Until dark really is a great movie and one that stays in the memory long after the last viewing. I tend to think most remakes show a lack of imagination anyway, but a few have been well done - 1962s Cape Fear with Robert Mitchum is well matched by the one with Robert DiNiro made in 1991 (Mitchum has a small role).

Oh, now you've made me want to read some Mrs. Pargeter novels. That does sound like fun.

Ben said...

I only kind of scratched the surface of the Mrs Pargeter book. It's a pretty canny story. Published in the mid-late 90s. Simon Brett has like four different mystery series and he's still writing, and I'm sure there's some variation in quality, but this was a primisng introduction.

The Cape Fear remake was pretty good. It amped things up in a way that made it more conventional as a horror movie, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun watching it.