Last night we watched The Oxford Murders, starring Elijah Wood as Martin, an American math student looking to study under a famous mathematician (John Hurt) in Oxford. The mathematician (his name is Seldom, which made me think about Hari Seldon from the Foundation series) is a bit of a bastard, but he and Martin are thrown together when a serial killer starts taunting them with math problems. The first victim is Martin’s landlady, who also has a history with Seldom and was involved with the Enigma system during WWII. The landlady’s slightly wacky daughter falls for Martin, as does a fetching young nurse who also has a history with Seldom. The murders are interesting in that the victims are people who were on the verge of dying anyway. The movie has shades of the Da Vinci code. John Hurt is good, but Elijah Wood isn’t really all that convincing as a mathematics whiz on par with the great legend. It has some interesting twists and turns and reversals, but the fact that it was filmed in 2008 and is only now being released via OnDemand says something about the overall quality. Also appearing in the movie were Dominique Pinon from Amelie and Burn Gorman (Owen from Torchwood), who plays Martin’s office mate, a crazy Russian. It sounded like his dialog was overdubbed.
Today we watched the Pixar animated film Up, which was a lot better than I expected. I’d seen about 5 minutes of it in a waiting room once, and it seemed cute, but it was a lot more emotionally touching than the little snippet hinted. The first ten minutes encapsulate an entire life far better than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
I finished Stories: All-New Tales last night.
“Parallel Lines” by Tim Powers is about two sisters, one alive the other dead. The dead one isn’t content to stay that way, so she tries to co-opt the body of the young girl who comes in to help out, unaware that she’s broadcasting her messages on two lines, the other of which is being picked up by her sister.
“The Cult of the Nose” by Al Sarrantonio is an interesting conspiracy theory story about a guy who uncovers a strange organization through historical photographs.
“Human Intelligence” is another story that has a subtle Christmas element to it, as if someone suggested the writers should try to find a way to work in Santa Claus! The main character is a spy who has lost contact with his handlers, so he’s continuing to carry out his mission while hoping that they’ll make contact again. It turns into a science fiction story once its revealed that his central base is a space ship that was once located below the ice near the North Pole.
“Stories” by Michael Moorcock tells the complete lives of a small circle of influential writers over the courses of their lives. Their fights and breakups and reunions, loves and losses. It’s a very dense story, packing a ton of story into relatively few pages. It’s completely mainstream, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of evil to it.
Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight Of McCauley’s Bellerophon” made me think of Ray Bradbury. Though it takes a while longer than necessary to get to the meat of the story, it ultimately proves to be about a woman who is dying of cancer and a friend who wants to give her one last gift, a recreation of an apocryphal 20-second film depicting an unconfirmed flight that happened before the Wright Brothers. An oddball group, including two teenagers, head off to a strangely abandoned barrier island where the original film was shot. A touching story with elements of the surreal lurking below the surface.
I started The Liar’s Lullaby by Meg Gardiner today. It gets off to a great start, with an unstable rock star about to mount a daring stunt on a zipline from a sky box in an auditorium to the stage below while fireworks go off around her and helicopters pretend to strafe the stage. At the last minute, the woman locks herself on the balcony and produces a gun. Someone fires on the helicopter and the woman–who just happens to be the President of the United States’ ex-wife–is dead when she hits the stage. Self-inflicted wound, accident or murder? A terrific opening.
