Jesus and Harrison Ford

The last 2 books I've finished:

1) Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice. I picked this up as airport and/or hotel room reading for my recent Chicago trip, and I'm not sure why. I loved Rice's first book, Interview with a Vampire, but have been unable to finish any of her other vampire stories, though I did like The Mummy, and I have a copy of The Witching Hour somewhere in the house. The premise of the book sounds like something that has never been done: a year in the life of Jesus (his seventh), told first-person in His voice. For the first 40 or 50 pages, it held my attention, but it quickly becomes boring. The style is very plain, almost all subject-verb-object sentences with few stylistic frills, and that actually works, but nothing of much import happens: Jesus's extended family leaves Egypt, heads to Jerusalem and Nazareth and gets caught up in a revolt against the excesses of Herod and his successors. Jesus knows he's different from his friends (the best scene is probably the opening one in which he accidentally kills a boy in a fight, then brings him back to life), but doesn't learn until the last half of the book that he is the Son of God.

It's sad that Rice has tackled something with such potential, but almost completely failed to bring her story to life. I don't think it's the style, but more the lack of meaningful personal conflict. The violence all around Jesus and his family rarely seems to mean anything to them, except for one very good moment when Jesus sees a man killed by a spear up close. Mary and Joseph come off as relative blanks, and a young relative named Salome who seems at times like she'll be important in the narrative is never fleshed out. There is a sequel, and more planned, but I'm not inclined to continue reading.

2) 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I don't like this trend of books telling us what to see/read/visit/do before we die. But the selection of this volume was interesting. I didn't read it word for word, but I did look at every film mentioned. Some of the mini-essays were maddeningly vague, rambling on for 3 or 4 paragraphs while giving me virtually no idea about the plot of the film. Of course, several of the picks are non-narrative, avant-garde movies, but at least a couple of plot summary sentences about narrative-driven films would seem to be necessary here. I was pleased at the width of selections: pop favorites like Casablanca, underground films like Scorpio Rising, avant-garde darlings like Dog Star Man by Stan Brakhage, and a strong selection of non-English langauge films. I was most pleased to see Pink Flamingos and Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, two low-budget films which, though often dismissed as trash by critics, have been quite influential (and are great fun to watch). I've seen over 600 of the movies in the book, and there are many in there I know I'll never watch (mostly John Ford westerns and many of the more obscure foreign films), but I did make a short list of 8 movies from the book that I'd like take a shot at, including Indiscretion of an American Wife and a Russian horror film called Viy. It was worth taking a spin through.