Cell
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
It was a smart idea to take the apparatus glued to the ear of the world and turn it into a terrorist weapon that turns people into primitive animalistic zombie-like creatures ready to shred fellow crazies as well as the ’still-humans’ to pieces. Most readers of Cell will never look at their phones in the same way again. Steven King’s exploration of the darker side of human nature is as disturbing in Cell as it is in all of his other novels. The Zombie theme always lends itself to the dog-eat-dog metaphor, which highlights the callous physical, emotional and intellectual destruction and defamation that members of the human race inflict upon one another. King, who does not own a cell phone, has written a horror story scary enough to launch a cultish wave of cell phone phobia. The title is a clever pun on the entrapment initiated by society’s obsession with the cell, which places it in a metaphoric cell similar to the one the lead characters find themselves in towards the end of the novel. (more…)
Nothing makes me feel homeland nostalgia like the verbal warfare bust out by the characters of Stephen Francis & Rico, who remind me of South Africa’s glorious idiosyncrasies. Mother Anderson is still chasing the mielie lady with her catty, stingy Madame and lazy Eve are still negotiating a wage increase whilst Eve involves herself in some dodgy back-end business schemes and wise-cracking Thandi remains the voice of the astute observer. In Madame & Eve: Unplugged, the satire seems more biting than in any other edition. 
a World War II drama set in Molching, Germany. It is narrated by Death, who tells the story of Liesel Meminger – a pre-teen occupied with the complicated task of growing up whilst trying to survive the violence and poverty of a war, which, in the first chapter of the novel, lays claim to her brother and mother. Liesel is faced with the death of her younger brother and the disappearance of her communist mother, who saves her daughter’s life by leaving her in the hands of foster parents, Rosa and Hans Hubermann, as she flees in the hope of survival. Liesel adapts well (under the circumstances) to her new home and community in Molching and develops a special love for her foster father, with whom she has a natural affinity. She also meets Jesse Owens-loving Rudy Steiner, who quickly becomes her best friend. The brave and loyal pair get up to many a mischievous activity. 
Bluntly stated, Stardust the film was a billion times cooler than Stardust the novel – and I say this with great disappointment. I have a bias towards literature and I am almost always on the side of the novelist in the tacit battle between pen and picture. I very rarely watch a film adaptation of any novel that I am interested in reading, before having read the novel. I hate having character, plot and context dictated to me on screen. I love to read and let my imagination run wild, and then see what brilliant acting and directing can contribute to an author’s mastery. At least if a novel is destroyed by a poorly crafted film, I still have the written word to cling to. That said, I broke my own system by watching the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust before I read the novel, and it was a really bad idea. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that I still would have preferred the film, even if I had watched it after reading the novel. 
The man is just a walking ball of talent. It seems so wrong that so much artistic flair should be allocated to one individual. And yet when one is watching the beauty and imagination of stop-motion Sally falling to pieces as she jumps from the turret of her fortress prison; or the dramatic intensity of Sweeney Todd singing to his razor as he contemplates bloody murder; or the comic tragedy of Edward Scissorhands trying assimilate into suburbia by succumbing to its behavioural demands, it seems so right.