Magnificent Obsessions

In an unscheduled intermission from the regularly programmed meditations on films, writing, and writing on films, you’ll just have to tide yourselves over with this.

There’s a red triangle flashing neon in my mind, screaming “KEEP IN LOW GEAR”, but the beast is too hard to get a handle on, and is skidding out of control. I’ve got an inbox groaning under the weight of unanswered e-mails, film reviews pending, friends and family being neglected, the elusive next job still to be found, and a day job that I despise with a virulent intensity, especially as it keeps sapping my ability to do anything else meaningful. Thank fuck we have a 3-day weekend around the corner.

The only thing keeping me going in my snatched moments shuttling between obligations are books. There are a handful of books jostling for space amongst back issues of Empire and Time magazine in my ever-trusty bag, and they all aid in letting me hold onto the slender hair that is my lifeline between this existence and a full-on, Michael Douglas in Falling Down spaz-attack.

On the go at the moment, in no particular order:

Ed McBain’s Sadie When She Died. Slowly filling the gaps in my collection of 87th Precinct novels, and this one’s a corker. Words that crackle and pop across the page, sending you hurtling towards the end, when you just know that the trusty bulls of the 87 will prevail. Class.

Volume 7 of Tokyopop’s manga adaptation of one of my enduring fixations, Battle Royale. Eviscerations, big doe-eyes, high-tech weaponry, and the obligatory panty shots.

Ryan Gilbey’s It Don’t Worry Me. Admittedly, we don’t really need yet another book singing the praises of the 1970s American movie-brats (Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese et al), but this is a passionate and intensely personal look at a decade of great movies, and a nice counter-point to the scurrilous rumour-mongering of Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

Lee Server’s biography of the heavy-lidded hipster, Robert Mitchum, Baby, I Don’t Care. Wading through this one very slowly, but it’s worth it, covering his womanising, dope-smoking, ill-advised foray into music, and, of course, his movies.

Right, someone’s on the verge of cracking a whip again. I’m gone.