{"id":7327,"date":"2018-06-28T08:19:24","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T12:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7327"},"modified":"2018-07-24T07:11:11","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T11:11:11","slug":"disappointment-on-screen-and-on-the-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7327","title":{"rendered":"Disappointment on Screen and on the Page"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bang,

photo: Kenneth Lu, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019ve read a few of my book and movie reviews, you\u2019ll have noticed I generally praise these creative efforts. Maybe you\u2019ve thought I\u2019m not very critical (my family members will gladly disabuse you of this notion). No, I end up reviewing mostly good stuff, because I don\u2019t read a book or go to a movie that promises not to be pretty darn good. Life is short. In the past week, though, I\u2019ve had two disappointments\u2014one book and one movie that defied expectations.<\/p>\n

The Scarpetta Factor<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Patricia Cornwell\u2019s forensic investigator Kay Scarpetta has many devoted fans. Somehow, I\u2019d never read one of these books and scooped up this one at a book exchange. I won\u2019t read another, even though I suspect this was a sub-par entry in the long-running series.<\/p>\n

First of all, it was almost 500 pages long. To demand that much commitment of precious reading time, a book has to meet a high bar. Second, it could have been 300 pages, or anyway, 350. Sooo<\/em> much tedious backstory clumsily dropped in that I kept thinking, can\u2019t we get back to this<\/em> story? Annoying repetition, repeatedly, over and over, as if the author tried three different ways of saying something, planning to go back in the editing process and eliminate the two weakest. Then didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Naming three characters Berger, Bonnell, and Benton was an invitation to reader confusion, which I accepted, most ungraciously. I never could get them straight. Did I mention plot holes? Hundreds of pages in, the story is building to a climax that was more like a gun that shoots a message saying \u201cbang.\u201d So much else had gone on, I had no interest at all in her villain (show, don\u2019t tell his perfidies).<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re tempted to read one of Cornwell\u2019s thrillers, check online reviews carefully\u2014\u201cnot one of her best\u201d is a giveaway\u2014and maybe try one of the early ones. This was number 17 in the Scarpetta series, and perhaps she\u2019d run out of steam.<\/p>\n

P.S. I could have saved myself a lot of time if I\u2019d remembered that she\u2019s the author who keeps trying to prove the cockamamie theory that Jack the Ripper<\/a> was the English painter Walter Sickert.<\/p>\n

First Reformed<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"EthanWriter-director Paul Schrader\u2019s new film about an upstate New York Dutch Reformed minister\u2019s apostasy can\u2019t be faulted for the acting (trailer<\/a>). Ethan Hawke as the desperately unhappy Reverend Ernst Toller (Earnest, get it?) is spectacular, as always. He\u2019s a drinker and, believe it or not, that doesn\u2019t help. Perhaps that\u2019s why his character can\u2019t see trouble coming every time he encounters his pregnant congregant with the heavily symbolic name, Mary, played by Amanda Seyfried. I especially liked Cedric Kyles, as the head of the local megachurch, Abundant Life.<\/p>\n

The polar opposite of Abundant Life, Toller\u2019s tiny First Reformed congregation is merely an archaic satellite of the larger church, kept alive more for historical value\u2014its 250th anniversary approaches\u2014than for its contribution to the spirit and economics of the parent enterprise.<\/p>\n

The problem for me was the plot. Where is this story going? Is it an exercise in consciousness-raising about the environment? Is it about one man\u2019s spiritual journey? The point must have flown by on wings of song (the singing is good), and I missed it. Perhaps it all boils down to the theme first expressed by Mary\u2019s husband, a depressed environmental activist\u2014\u201cWill God forgive us?<\/a>\u201d And maybe that question applies equally to Rev. Toller\u2019s personal quest as well as to our worldwide environmental depredations. Plus, the ending is strange, with two different interpretations in our household. (See the movie and tell me your, please.)<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 95%; audiences: 72%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve read a few of my book and movie reviews, you\u2019ll have noticed I generally praise these creative efforts. Maybe you\u2019ve thought I\u2019m not very critical (my family members will gladly disabuse you of this notion). No, I end … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Disappointment on Screen and on the Page - a police procedural and a well-acted movie that came up short for me, anyway","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,366,57,311,104],"tags":[324,1348,1349],"class_list":["post-7327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-drama","category-movies","category-novel","category-the-morgue","tag-ethan-hawke","tag-patricia-cornwell","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Ub","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7330,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7327\/revisions\/7330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}