What are you reading?

[CineMaven]

It absolutely did. It's like how the Superbowl pre-game show is now a big big extravaganza.

[JackFavell]

Even the music intros sounded football-ey.

[charliechaplinfan]

Is it on all channels? Can someone who wants to watch anything else find a channel that they don't have to pay for and watch something else?

[JackFavell]

I'm sorry Alison, I could have sworn I replied to your question, but I see that my answer is not here, now that I come back to this thread.

The major channels all carry election coverage, but you can find many cable stations that cater to those who don't want to watch political stuff.

I finished The Third Man. I found it breathtaking at moments, incredibly similar to the movie, and yet shallower. The movie has a richness that the book doesn't have. However the filmmakers leaped into the milieu already created and went it one better - in other words, they out-Greened Greene. The book has the same spiral downward to the depths emotionally and gets better as you get into it. Several sentences from the middle onward made me suck in my breath, they are so thrilling to read. I don't know if I was so very much more impressed by the writing, or by the fact that it was exactly like the movie.

I very much liked that Calloway was the narrator, he's very funny and world weary. There isn't much different outwardly from book to screenplay, all the interchanges between characters are there, except for the second part of Lime's ferris wheel speech and one piece of dialogue between Anna and Holly, who is called Rollo. But inwardly, there is something just slightly lacking in the settings, the underpinnings of the novel are not as unsettling as the movie.

The descriptions of the characters and events are literally the same, as if the film were made first and Greene looked at it and described what he saw - but it wasn't. You can see that the novella was a practice run for Greene before he wrote the screenplay. One thing is for sure, Harry Lime IS Orson Welles. It's obvious. No other could have played him. Described right down to the look on his face, that little nose and his bulky frame.

There is a breadth to Greene's work, he seems to make analogies to things we can all identify with, even when his characters are in specific situations that we could never possibly be in or relate to. There is something comforting in his sureness that we know how Holly/Rollo is feeling at any given time, a humanity to Holly's foolish pipe dreams and visions of the past. How is it that I know how Holly feels when he looks back at all those 'good times' at school with Harry, and is disillusioned? Seeing instead only that he was used over and over again and left holding the bag?

[charliechaplinfan]

That's my abiding memory of the book, Harry Lime was Orson Welles, no one else would have done. After reading your synopsis Wendy it makes me want to get the novel out and read it again, failing that watch the movie all over again.

[JackFavell]

It's a good book, well worth reading, very short, but not a GREAT book. I'm quite curious about some of Greene's other books. I read one when I was young, I believe it was Our Man in Havana, and I understood none of it, but did acknowledge it as being perfectly written. His stories are far too adult for an eighteen year old to understand, I think. At least this eighteen year old. I just didn't have the life experience to get it.

[RedRiver]

Greene's more ponderous work is too stiff for me. But I like his novels of intrigue. BRIGHTON ROCK is fantastic. A GUN FOR SALE would become THIS GUN FOR HIRE on screen. THE QUIET AMERICAN is fine. I give credit to the makers of the recent film of that one. In an era of flying zombies and blue aliens, to tackle Graham Greene took courage. It paid off.

[JackFavell]

That's the one with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser?

[RedRiver]

Yes. Good movie. There's an older version with Audie Murphy. I saw half of it and it looked pretty good. I imagine the Caine/Frazer project is better.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think I was 18 when I read The Third Man, maybe it's time to try Graham Greene's writings again. I certainly enjoy the movies made from his books.

[JackFavell]

I was the same age Alison, and I think I just didn't understand. I'm quite curious to see how something like End of the Affair reads, I like the movie so much.

[charliechaplinfan]

The End of The Affair is a more mature film/book, at 18 is there anything that compares with true love? It takes more maturity to appreciate the driving force for the woman.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've had my head turned recent ly by some true life murder case books, there seems to be a sub genre that's first purpose is to get to grips with the crime committed and the person committing it but also the times and the science behind some of the forensics of the time, I've read Mr Brigg's Hat which is about the first railway murder, The Magnificient Spilsbury about the Bride in the Baths murder and the forensic scientist who helped convict him and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher a murder at Road Hill House committed in 1860. I also read Murder in Peking about a brutal murderof a white woman in 1937 in Peking just as China was falling to the Japanese.

Now I've gone in another direction and started reading Call The Midwife, I haven't seen the programme but the book just has enough medical detail in to keep me fascinated but not make me squeamish but what I really love about it is the insight into the East End of the 1950s, the poverty, the overcrowding, the size of the families and the camaraderie of one and all. It's great, I might even get round to watching it at this rate.

[JackFavell]

Oh my gosh, Alison, those books sound so interesting. When I read the annotated version of the first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, there was an entire section on the Bride in the Bath murders, it was absolutely fascinating how that mild mannered man was able to marry and dispatch three women (Ithink it was?) without anyone catching on.

[charliechaplinfan]

It was three women that got discovered but he'd also married lots of women and robbed them of their modest savings. He would court them quickly and because there was a shortage of men lots of women were just happy not to be on the shelf anymore, life was not pleasant for a spinster being married was more socially acceptable. He'd marry them, take them to were their modest saving were, usually the post office, the woman would withdraw her money, which he would pocket being the husband, he'd then take his wife on a day out and leave them whilst he went to the toilet then he'd abscond back to the lodgings taking all their worldly belongings and all their money leaving them with only the clothes they wore. All the women were lower middle class that he treated badly, he had also been married for years to a working class woman who thought he went around the country buying and selling antiques. Police think he didn't try to kill he because of the very reason of her being working class unlike the others.