Quote:
Originally Posted by SomeSteve
I'm reading Marlowe by John Banville (a.k.a. The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black), a Philip Marlowe novel. I had planned on reading all of Chandler ... before tackling it ... But now that the movie version of Marlowe with Liam Neeson is available for streaming, I thought that ... I'd hurry and read the book and then watch the movie.
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The movie was -- what's the
mot juste here -- terrible, awful, dreadful, or perhaps more appropriate to the genre, lousy. And whatever you do, don't forget boring. Take your pick, mix and match. They're all pretty
juste, so you can't go wrong. The filmmakers departed in several ways from the book, and not for the better. I don't know who my idea of Philip Marlowe is, but though I'm happy enough to see him slugging and plugging thugs in his other movies, it's not Liam Neeson.
In my previous post I said that I didn't know whether Banville tried to mimic Chandler. In a conversation with
The Guardian he said, "I wanted to write the spirit of Chandler, not to parrot." How well he succeeded, I'm in no position to say, but the book was enjoyable, though it turns out I really should have read the genuine Marlowes first.