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Reviews (119)
07 January 2023
Good value omnibus collection of Runyon short stories of 1900s soldiers and 1930s NY lowlife, complementing the On Broadway omnibus collection.
This book is the counterpart of the other omnibus Runyon short story collection, On Broadway. The first 6 or so stories are from the early 1900s, and are based on Runyon's army service and brief time as a hobo. However, most of the stories are after the On Broadway collection, and date from 1938-46. These include the dozen stories of the A La Carte collection, and about another 6-7 short pieces written in illness, and as Ruyon's own death approached.
Personally, I don't rate the early stories, though they may encourage rookie writers to see that even the greats can serve a long apprenticeship before they find their true voice.
The A La Carte stories are the best of Runyon, equalling the Furthermore collection in the On Broadway omnibus (not here). However, they are more varied than Furthermore, with many based abroad, Miami, or at racetracks, rather than Broadway. Also, Runyon is a little more careful not to over-glamourise the gangster life-style. Many of his heroes now are gamblers, rather than gunmen. Nonetheless, the A La Carte section does contain the key Broadway tale, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, which helps pull together a number of other stories in the 1955 musical Guys & Dolls. It must be said, however, that there is a valedictory note in The Idyll, since the hero eventually goes straight and leaves the life of a high-rolling gambler.
Overall, this collection is less of a coherent whole and has fewer self-references than the On Broadway stories. Nonetheless, it's a good value omnibus collection of the short stories of Damon Runyon, the most important author of early C20th New York lowlife.
08 May 2023
Four of Peckinpah's best films: The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Ride the High Country, & Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Super picture quality
Four Peckinpah westerns in high-definition colour, at a good price.
Ride the High Country (1962) is strongly influenced by Anthony Mann's Naked Spur & Winchester 73. The plot is decent here, though not as good as Mann's work. The acting by old-stagers Joel McCrea & Randolph Scott is excellent, while Mariette Hartley (Star Trek) does well in her first starring role. The strongest point in favour of this film is Lucien Ballard's sumptuous photography of the mountain and high lakes, reproduced here in gorgeous hi-def.
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) is a musical western, of the same vintage as the more famous Paint Your Wagon, but with even more of an anachronistic hippie influence. Jason Robards gives a very strong performance (as always) as the down-and-out prospector who builds a thriving business selling water to coach travellers in the desert. He briefly makes an honest woman out of Stella Stevens, and is given dubious spiritual counselling by trendy Brit, David Warner.
The Wild Bunch (1969) is Peckinpah's most notable film, famously featuring realistic slow-motion arterial blood in gun-shot scenes which make Dirty Harry look like daytime viewing. Realism was an obsession with many directors 1960-80, and these gory scenes were similar to contemporary Vietnam war footage, which was very lightly censored. William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ben Johnson, Ernest Borgnine, & Edmund O'Brien lead the starry cast of military bank-robbers.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) starts with tremendous promise: a starry cast, wonderful hi-def colour photography, and a sophisticated prologue and first act, which give the impression Peckinpah is making a western version of a Greek tragedy, exploiting the audience's familiarity with the story. Sadly, this all dissipates in a soggy second act. However, besides the photography and strong performances by Coburn & Kristofferson, this film is also interesting as an alternative version of events to The Outlaw (1943), The Left-handed Gun (1958), and John Wayne's hagiography, Chisum (1970). Billy the Kid is shown to have a strong connection to the Mexican community, whose story was often overlooked in earlier versions of this famous tale.
15 November 2022
Paints a realistic picture of the future solar system. Two interesting main characters. Fresh SciFi ideas. Plenty of action. Average prose style. 8/10
A very good SciFi book with fresh ideas and interesting, well-developed characters. Several hundred years in the future, Earth-dwellers are largely idle and on benefits. A few super-rich control the big system-wide corporations. Martians are more go-ahead, with a national terraforming project & an efficient military.
Out in `The Belt' almost 10 generations have grown up on the larger asteroids & the moons of Jupiter. The `Belters' have partly evolved away from standard humans. They have longer arms & bodies adapted to low gravity, and a more positive attitude to risk-taking and group cooperation. Continually at the mercy of large corporations for air & water, they have also grown to hate all authority and those from the `Inner Planets'; i.e. Earth & Mars. Although small in number, highly dependent, and lacking resources, there is always the threat that a few Belters will `Throw Rocks'; i.e. divert an asteroid towards Earth or Mars.
Suddenly, this unstable scenerio is threatened by the discovery of a mysterious, contagious, and lethal organic substance called the `Protomolecule' in the outer solar system.
The two main characters in the book are Miller, a sloppy 50ish cop from Ceres, who's asked to look into the disappearance of a rich girl from Earth, and Holden, an early 30s former Earth naval officer, who charges around the solar system in a fast 5-man ship, trying to stop the spread of the deadly Protomolecule. Miller has lost his zest for life, but finds new interest in the girl he's sent to find.
The book is told in alternate chapters, one for Holden, followed by one for Miller. Holden and his diverse Scooby gang have a ridiculous amount of luck, escaping from one disaster and lurching into another. He becomes a system-wide cult fugure after broadcasting some half-founded allegations which put everyone on a war footing.
The main positives of the book are a realistic future picture of the solar system, two interesting main characters, some fresh SciFi ideas, plenty of action, an intriguing opening, and a dramatic finale. The main downside is the rather average prose style. 8/10