DVD Review: Best Sellers

Best Sellers
(DVD Best)

Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza turn in bravura performances in what may very well be Michael Caine’s last feature film — he was quoted in interviews as saying it was likely his final film.

 

Aubrey Plaza plays Lucy Stanbridge, a young woman who has inherited her late father’s publishing house, only to discover that it is on its last legs, and she is being aggressively pursued by buyers for a larger publisher wishing to absorb and liquidate her family business. Looking for something, anything, that could save and reinvigorate her floundering business, when Lucy’s assistant discovers that legendary eccentric/reclusive author owes her father a new work, Lucy decides that Harris Shaw (Michael Caine) is her last hope. Unfortunately, Harris Shaw hasn’t had a new published work in decades, and has no desire to go on a road trip to promote any new work he might come up with.

 

Lucy manages to guilt Harris into finishing and submitting a new work, but the bulk of this film is the awkward, painful road trip Lucy and Harris go on to dive bars across the country, where Harris uses every opportunity he has to sabotage Lucy’s promotions. But the longer they’re together, the more this odd couple starts to understand each other and bond.

 

The DVD box promotes Best Sellers as “heartwarming”, and the ending does have a good upturn. But these two characters are both bitter, desperate, emotionally-damaged people and watching them crash and burn over weeks on the road was a bit painful. None-the-less, the two actors turn in stunning performances, and if Caine has to retire after this one, he gave one of the best performances in his life to close out his acting career — as a cranky, curmudgeonly, profane and lonely old man.

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched 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!

Book Review: Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski

Together We Will Go

by J. Michael Straczynski (Straczynski)

 

I’ve been a fan of the writing of J. Michael Straczynski for many years. He is perhaps best known as a writer for both television and the comic book industry. Personally, I loved the series Babylon 5, which he created and executive produced, and for which he wrote the majority of the episodes over a 5-season run of 110+ episodes and TV-movies.

 

Together We Will Go is Straczynski’s first original novel in over twenty years (his first 3 were either horror or mystery novels, published between 1988 and 2000). This is general fiction, and while I did enjoy it very much, it is not going to be for everyone.

 

To be blunt, Together We Will Go is about suicide. A failed writer hatches a plan to create an interactive narrative work, using the life stories of a group of suicidal strangers. He buys a bus in Miami, has it rigged up with technology to be a mobile WiFi hotspot, equipped with equipment to record and store tons of data, then sends out a message to online forums and bulletin boards — this bus is going to travel across the country, picking up anyone who is serious about killing themselves, and at the end of the journey, the bus and all its passengers will drive off a cliff in San Francisco, killing them all. In order to join the group of travelers, you have to sign a release, and then you have to live-journal your experiences, to leave a record of your life behind.

 

This novel is epistolary in nature — it is told entirely in journal fragments, from the dozen or more people who join the trip — blog entries, voice messages, emails, all non-traditional storytelling elements.

 

There is a lot of pain in this novel — we get to see up-close-and-personal the kinds of struggles that make a variety of people suicidal. Anyone with serious depression issues will probably be triggered by elements of this story. But all the characters are fascinating and well-developed.

 

The cross-country journey reveals a lot of hidden truths, and deceptions. For those of us living her in Nebraska, you may enjoy the fact that there are scenes set at Omaha’s Lauritzen Gardens, and in Lexington, that all prove pivotal to the plot of novel.

 

Like I said, it’s not going to be for everyone, but personally, I found it to be riveting reading.

 

( publisher’s official Together We Will Go web page) | ( official J. Michael Straczynski Twitter feed )

 

See Scott C.’s review of J. Michael Straczynski’s TV series Babylon 5, in the June 2005 Staff Recommendations on the libraries' BookGuide resource pages!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to 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!