A movie, a book, and thou

I loved Cold War spy novels.  All the intrigue and double crosses,  the not very gentlemanly “gentlemen’s agreements,”  the quirky characters.  Le Carre, Follette, you name the pulp writer, I’ve read the majority of their stuff.  Well that’s all messed up now.  There is no structure and few cultural commonalities with our current antagonists, they are hard to understand and, scarily, instead of nifty spying stuff, they just use brute force.  That’s one reason Salt is such a hoot.  It reaches back to the Cold War and world domination conspiracies, Russian sleeper agents, with lots of shooting and explosions.  Angelina Jolie is killer (snicker) in the lead of this movie—the woman who is a suspected Russian sleeper who works for the CIA.  She’s athletic, smart and there is darn near no sexuality in the movie, which I thought a fine choice.  This is about a smart resourceful agent, not a hot chick with guns.  In fact I think the role was originally written for a male actor.  It could have gone either way and did, I guess.  If you liked the Bourne Identity, you’ll like this one.  It’s a little more techie, but not much.  There’s lots of killing, but not that much gore, one torture scene at the beginning, some tacky talk, a great (and improbable) chase scene, some spiffy plot twists, a good cast, and, of course, an ending that leaves the movie open for sequels.  Big fun, highly recommended.

I read this book thing that was leant to me by Marcia’s daughter Meg.  The title is “Gods Behaving Badly.”  It seems that all the old Olympian gods are still around, but because of their great age (not that they’ve aged in looks) is much reduced.  One works as a dog walker to make spare change, the goddess of love works for a phone sex business..  The book is fun and well-written, but the real cleverness is that the gods themselves are portrayed as they were in Greek mythology—full of human failings, bitchiness, a fairly generous amount of contempt for mere mortals and the same competition and vengefulness that’s supposedly been going on for millennia.  I won’t tell you this is great literature, but it is fun and the author, Marie Phillips, did her research.  While this isn’t a chick book in anyway, there aren’t any explosions of Nazis, guys.  Fair warning.  But I liked it—it’s a quick read, an airplane book, if you will.

Spanky, Movie Dude

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