DVD Review: Stan & Ollie

Stan & Ollie
(DVD Stan)

Growing up as a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s, I watched a lot of classic older comedy films that would air on Saturday and Sunday afternoons on the small handful of television stations that were available at that time. Among the classic film comedy teams, I tended to gravitate towards Abbot & Costello or Martin & Lewis — I never did care for the Marx Brothers, and to my youthful eyes, Laurel & Hardy just seemed a little…”old fashioned”.

Fast-forward a few decades, and having now seen quite a few of the classic Laurel & Hardy films, I’ve grown to have a much deeper appreciation for their contributions to American cinema — and to the influence they had on so many film comedians who followed them.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I went into viewing Stan & Ollie, a biographical drama that looks at the relationship between Stan Laurel and Oliver “Babe” Hardy in their final few years. My first concern was whether they’d have actors who could do those real-life performers justice. My second concern was that the film would be a depressing look at a relationship that had fractured or disintegrated. On both of these counts, I was very pleasantly surprised. Steve Coogan as Stan and John C. Reilly as Ollie are absolutely mesmerizing in this film. And, considering that the film covers a period of time in which their careers were waning and Ollie was facing major health issues, Stan & Ollie still manages to be an uplifting and emotionally satisfying film.

I can’t recommend this one highly enough — the writing, acting, directing, set design, make-up, costuming, music — it’s all spot on. For anyone who appreciates the artistry of Laurel & Hardy, and enjoys historical biopics — this one is superb!

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try tracking down any of the classic old Laurel & Hardy films or shorts, some of which are available via the libraries, either on DVD or in our Hoopla digital service.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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Book Review: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

The Memory Police
by Yoko Ogawa

This dystopian book uses magical realism to turn metaphorical examples into actual physical changes the characters must endure. The Memory Police periodically announce something that is to disappear and be forgotten: birds, flowers, photographs, ribbons, stamps, green beans, etc. After an item has been “disappeared” the general population immediately forgets about its use and its characteristics. The few people who are able to remember things are considered dangerous, forced into hiding before the Memory Police can capture and murder them. The disappearance of things and people then losing awareness about what they were forgetting was a powerful symbol of how we need to stay aware of things happening in our world that need to be addressed, rather than passively accepting injustices and dangerous changes.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, or The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.]

[ publisher’s official The Memory Police web page ] | [ Wikipedia page for Yoko Ogawa ]

Recommended by Jodi R.
Anderson and Bethany Branch Libraries

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: The Risk Agent by Ridley Pearson

The Risk Agent
by Ridley Pearson

The four volumes in the Risk Agent series by Ridley Pearson were the assigned reading for the March 2020 meeting of the Just Desserts mystery book discussion group here at the Lincoln City Libraries. As usual with any new series, I prefer to start at the beginning, so I read the first volume in the series, the eponymous The Risk Agent (2012).

The Risk Agent is set in Shanghai, and deals with corporate espionage, conspiracies, corruption, delicate international relations, and violence among Chinese mobsters. When a Chinese national, working for an American-owned construction company is abducted, along with an American intelligence asset who tried to help prevent the abduction, Rutherford Risk, an international security company, hires ex-military man and antiquities dealer John Knox to come in-country and attempt to either locate the two kidnapped men or facilitate a ransom payment to free them. He is teamed up with Grace Chu, a forensic accountant (with her own military training), who is also tasked with looking into the money trail of corruption and bribery payments that ultimately led to the kidnappings. Each of our central characters has a personal reason for wanting to recover the kidnapped men, adding extra urgency to their efforts.

Most of the book features non-stop action, as John and Grace learn to work together (awkwardly) or separately (not completely trusting each other). Everything they discover makes the situation more and more complex. They quickly figure out that multiple parties, with multiple motivations, are all after concealed information the kidnapped Chinese man had gathered, and most of them don’t care whether the kidnapping victims actually survive or not. Both John and Grace quickly find themselves on the run and not sure who they can trust. This is a very fast-paced political crime thriller, with a complex, multi-layered plot. Unfortunately, I found most of the characters to be rather one-dimensional and somewhat stereotyped — which kept me from fully investing myself in the plotline. The setting — with multiple locations in China — as one of the book’s strong points.

I enjoyed this one and find myself mildly recommending it for anyone interested in fast-paced international thrillers, though I doubt that I’ll read the remaining three volumes in the series, myself!

[ official The Risk Agent page on the official Ridley Pearson web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!