Walk km 6338-6341: to Denman @ Davie
Book #358 (#50 this year): The Yellow Dog (1931, Georges Simenon)
Another task completed: 50 books in one year.
I've read one of these Inspector Maigret's before and found it quite dry and tasteless. "The Yellow Dog" is supposed to be one of the best in this series, so I tried again. I don't know what it is but I had the same reaction. There is no verisimilitude here - I never really believed a world that was said. I don't know what there is in Simenon's style that leaves me cold but I do appear to be in the minority on this one.
Movie #1523 (#305 this year): Slap Shot (1977, George Roy Hill)
Enough of that foreign film artsy-fartsy stuff. Time for a real movie.
Great! Except I didn't even understand it. I got the first 99% of it. The movie concentrates on goonish activity exactly like hockey does. Hockey doesn't put seats in the stands with great passing and skating: it's violence that puts seats in the stands. Same with this movie. Nobody is going to go see a movie about hockey even if Paul Newman is in it. Enter the Hanson brothers! That'll sell tickets.
However, back at the last scene of the movie. The one fella who refuses to "goon it up" is sitting alone on the bench when he looks up into the stands and sees his estranged wife. Except that she doesn't look so good any more. Paul Newman has taken this great looking woman to his ex-wife's beauty parlour to get a complete makeover into that artificial 70s look (they tell her she could look like Cher!). So when he sees her he skates out onto the ice and does a strip tease. For the life of me, I don't know what the motivation was there. I wonder if there'll be any enlightenment on IMDB?
Oh ya, the movie: I gotta admit that it does move along at a pretty good clip. Nothing great but a good two hours entertainment.
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