5) Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes
Catching up now on the books I have read in the last week (a mere half dozen, with several others started if not finished). Another character study from Clowes; I love his drawing style, and his individual moments, but he doesn’t always put them together to great effect, and this is an example: two teenage girls, leaving school, bitch about their neighbours and each other to no real conclusion. He almost writes himself in as a character but doesn’t follow through. The one element of tension – Will Rebecca go away for university, or not? – seems to fizzle out. Apparently this was made into a film; the mind boggles.
How to Train your Dragon is also interesting because it’s the best use of 3D in a film I have ever seen, knocking Avatar into a cocked hat. The 3D was supervised by Phil McNally, who is by some margin the best 3D cinematographer in the world.
And Scott Pilgrim gets a bonus point for taking cinema in a direction that it’s never gone before. Which here in 2010 seems pretty interesting to me.
I haven’t seen Inception. Probably I should. But this week The King’s Speech is calling me.