I finally read an Aussie book. Richard Flanagan's second novel, Gould's Book of Fish, takes on the sad tale of early Australia, its convict history and settlement. He describes, under a thin quilt of civilization, a racist and contemptuous brutality. The book is essentially a long monologue of William Gould, a supposed counterfeiter shipped to the antipodes, who appropriately forges himself as an artist in the new world, upon which he is ordered to paint fish for science. His compassion grows for the fish he paints, foiling the lack of compassion found in those around him - guards, convicts, settlers, rangers, hunters - who are building a new world in which they reproduce the horrors of the one they left behind. His poignant love for his fish in a world of murder and hatred aptly mirrors an inner clarity of thought (of sad and funny insights) paired with an outward insanity, which goes unnoticed among the insane brutality in which he finds himself.

Gould's Book of Fish ambitiously ties themes of modern to colonial Australia. A deeply sad and moving story that may have you laughing and crying tears at a change-a-minute beat. Five Okkos.

Nick Hornby's most recent book A Long Way Down takes on suicide as it's main subject matter - considerably graver than relationships (a la High Fidelity), or parenting (a la About a Boy). While this isn't the first time Hornby writes about it, it reads like a regression from his older works. Four people intending to kill themselves on New Year's Eve by jumping off a tall building find they cannot do it in each other's presence. From their encounter they progress on a path of 'healing'. Unfortunately few of their motives or their recoveries are convincing making the book a confused muddle of what is otherwise Hornby's well-known trademark mixture of tears and laughter. The narrative style suffers a similar fate. The book is broken into short chapters told in first person alternating between the four main characters. While this achieves a nice and sometimes amusing effect of perspective of some event it often backfires and alienates from the characters.

The book has its moments, an occasionally well-captured moment of gravity, some hilarious dialogue between its unlikely protagonists. For Hornby fans. Three Okkos

Not much I can say here that hasn't been said. It's more politicized than the previous two (and much more so than the original ones.) It's more sinister than either of the previous two. If folk consensus is that Star Wars works best when it's dark, this one is right up there with Empire.

However that wasn't my, or most people's demands when going into this one. For someone who has, at least at times, had feverish dreams about being a Jedi, played various Star Wars computer game installments over the years and who has managed to stay optimistic after many moments of terrible feats of scripting and acting in Episodes I and II, wanting a graceful finish was more important. At last, Episode III delivers. Don't be fooled: the Force may be subtle but Lucas isn't and hasn't become more so since the start of the Clone Wars. Neither have some of the main actors learned to mouth his scripting atrocities, but... OK no spoilers here - five Okkos for not letting a fan down. Thanks for the good times.

No I didn't like this one at all. I saw (in fact I own) Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and Ghost Dog, which both grip you despite their deliberate pace and unconventional story telling (or lack of story, just telling). But Coffee and Cigarettes doesn't do that at all. It's a bunch of short segments of people having coffee and being awkward with each other - maybe deliberately so, but I doubt it. It's often not clear what parts are improvised and what are scripted, but if I err in favour of the former I'm stuck thinking that the likes of Roberto Benini, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi and Alfred Molina have absolutely no talent for it. The latter, scripted, option is even worse, since the dialogue is for the most part so poorly constructed it qualifies neither as contrived/artistic nor as particularly real-life. The result is something in the middle: boring high-school level conversation acting that are neither real nor fake enough to be good or meaningful. Decent segments only by Kate Blanchett, Tom Waits and Iggy Pop and - as always - Steve Buscemi.

Oh and nobody clinks their coffee mugs. Nowhere I've been anyway - Two Okkos for that.

Book critics are probably all masochists. Book are invariably described as 'a tour-de-force' or 'riveting'. This book works well for the passive, submissive reader.

For one, it has a pace that is not for the fast and furious. More often than not, the narrative reminded me of a cork floating on a calm pond.

For another, Turo embodies that kind of passivity. The book takes him on a series of supernatural and bizarre events and encouters, which he accepts 'quel-tel' and without question. The book forces the reader to do the same, and there is little resistance.

This passivity allows Turo to undergo a special kind of transformation. The nature of his change is never literally revealed. Rather it is inferred from his encouters and experiences that gradually connect Turo to a larger set of people and circumstances, each unravelling a piece of his life. During this process the distinction between the real and the illusionary is never quite clear. I've read the word 'dreamlike' used in association with this book, but the simili is just off-mark as much of the narrative is, in fact, dream.

When eventually Turo passively changes his life and that of others around him, the change is at once metaphorical and real. As far as the book is concerned, there's no difference

Turo's transformation deals with issues of diverse character from the general (love, hate, power) to very specific (war-guilt, the guilt of murder) that go together fantastically and in holistic harmony. The last hundred pages, Murakami shifts the narrative style and may loose some readers. Five Okkos for a haunting and gripping read that kept me involved for days afterwards.

It's been hyped so much I barely need to recount the plot and persons involved. The Oscars are over.

Rather I'd like to write a short defense of the Hollywood biopic. People often complain about the liberty with reality, the scewed focus, and the contrived drama that movies about real people and events adopt. Often in those debates, people forget that there's a crucial distinction between life (or biography) and art (or biopic). A biography is a painstaking account of events and circumstances that is meant to inform. A movie is a medium that, first and foremost, has developed forms and convetions in order to entertain.

This is why real stories usually make such crap movies. Few exceptions aside, real-life-based movies do not conform to our expectations of form and shape that we think movies should take. This is a frustrating experience.

The Aviator's main strength and pitfall lies exactly here. It presents a man's life in a format that is at once gripping, moving and entertaining. The obvious liberties it took with Howard Hughes latter days, are forgivable for that reason. Unfortunately they are also inexcusable (now for the movie's weakness) when you consider that Martin Scorcese essentially depicts him as a tragic hero, an icon of modern life (which may be no understatement), while omitting almost half a century of embezzlement and political intrigue.

Three Okko's for this movie, for not getting its head around that essential paradox.

This book sort of came out of left-field. While Jeffrey Eugenides of Virgin Suicide fame ostensibly tells the story of a hermaphrodite (pseudo-hermaphrodite to be exact), Cal, who is raised as a girl to become a boy at age fourteen, the narrative takes such extensive detours, it's hard to begin to explain what this book is about.

But perhaps detour is the wrong term. The book isn't going anywhere rather than arriving at a known point. The whole thing starts as a family retrospective during the Turkish invasion of Greek Smyrna in 1923 (now Izmir in modern Turkey), then follows the flight of two siblings, who engage in a incestuous relationship on their way to America (of which the protagonist's predicament is borne), then becomes a portrait of 20th century Detroit, Greek America, the civil rights movement and a first hand account of economic decline of Motown. In terms of scope the book is ambitious, to say the least, and one of the most enjoyable things about reading it is how well the narrative flows through such a range of subject matters without loosing continuity.

Why a book about the inner life of a hermaphrodite boy raised as a girl has to tackle such a breadth of subjects isn't quite clear, but the question isn't important as the story manages to make 'this thing is neither-nor' analogies along the way, which run through the story like a thread of yarn. The final hundred-pages-or-so fell a bit flat of the gripping rest of the narrative, but perhaps that aptly mirrors Cal's coming of age and coming to grips with history (both personal and otherwise). Five Okkos.

Ok, moving stress, cold winter days, partying with friends, ice-skating. There really is only one thing that these things have in common. Eating at La Banquese (Rue Rachel, corner of Christophe Colomb, Montreal). I've eaten there on so many occasions, I thought it'd be befitting to write about it.

Apparently this place has been a staple of Montreal fast food for over 30 years. It's a stow-away little casse-croute (Montreal term for greasy spoon) that's open almost always, and usually busiest around 4am (as we recently had to discover.) I make no pretense about how unhealthy it is to eat here, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about people complaining about the adverse health effects of poutine, variations of which make up about a third of an otherwise off-the-mill menu of various diner dishes.

That isn't to say that there aren't other local bouffe rapide (Quebec term for fast food) specialties. The 'Toasté' ($3) for example, which is a steamed hot-dog, specially toasted. Or the 'Hot Dog Michigan', a hot dog smothered in tomato sauce. Nothing against these fine dishes, whose only crime may be being off-by-one variations of otherwise standard fare. But poutine is really where La Banquise excells.

For the uninitiated, a basic poutine is fries, fromage squeek-squeek (French Canadian term for unripe cheese curds) and gravy. If this sounds like you want to read no further, you may not appreciate the subtle art of arranging cheese and fries on a plate so that the hot gravy poured all over it equally melts the cheese without drenching the fries. Or the fine touch required to balance such opposing flavours such as peas and smoked meat in a single dish.

Beyond the basic poutine, there are variations galore. These tend to have names of various degrees of befittingness. For example, the aptly labelled 'T-Rex' is a bacon, smoked meat, Italian saussage poutine. However the 'Dan Dan' for some reason contains onion, mushrooms, Italian saussage. You have to think of it as pizza, in that you choose your non-cheese toppings, except you put them on fries with gravy instead of dough.

The three times I've eaten there this week I ate a poutine 'Matty' with a side of cheeseburger. After much experimentations I found that the bitterness of the green peppers (which I normally hate) goes very well with the sweetness of the gravy and rounds off the saltiness of... well everything else (in the Matty that would be mushrooms, onions and bacon). And the side of cheeseburger, while a bit heavy on the relish, is always a nice touch.

Five Okkos (two of them with a small tear in my eye, and three decidedly unfit to walk up a small hill) for being such an integral part of my Montreal experience. I'll miss you Banquise, but don't be offended if I come back slimmer.

NOTE: Some spoilers within... apparently.

I gotta give it to Clint Eastwood for making this movie. Happy news doesn't sell well, especially not this time of year. And if it does, it has to involve death, violence and sex.

Eastwood plays aging boxing coach Frankie who has some skeletons in his closet. Washed-up boxer Eddie (Morgan Freeman), who also narrates the movie, pushes him to take on Maggie (Hilary Swank), a spirited but bitterly poor woman in her early 30s, who gets her only kicks in life out of boxing. Initially Frankie refuses ("I don't coach girls") and only when his protigee Will switches to another manager to promote his career does he agree to coach Maggie. Because of her talent and determination, her career soars and Frankie begins to drop his macho shell, finding in Maggie a replacement for his long lost daughter.

The movie is a sports movie only because it employs boxing as a dramatic vehicle for characterizing success and failure. But unlike recent installments of the sports-genre, MDB has no false drama, no painfully contrived game-turning moments (safe maybe one) and certainly no last minute victories. Unlike movies in which athletic struggle represents a vehicle for hope, and in which victory tends to come about at the last moment, MDB lifts you up early (with a good amount of wit and comedy) and gradually lets you back down. This works well with the central theme that the struggles of the movie's characters are not the sport itself or any opponents in battle, but inner battles from which the sport can only distract. There's some resolution to the characters' conflicts, however none of it is achieved by athletic success, setting it apart further from other sports movies.

There's no poetic justice, no punished villains, no rewarded heros (or any heros) and no happy ending. There's only people learning to face their inner demons and their past. And while there's enough violent moments to make seasoned Fight Club fans cringe, there's no sex and only a little bit of death. Five Okkos to Clint for that daring artistic decision and pulling off the feat of making a good movie from it.

Gary Shteyngard's Russian Debutante's Handbook is an entertaining, short read. It's the story of Vladimir, the son of Russian 'alpha-immigrants' (in his words), who struggles to cope with the high expecations of a better life in the US. The story takes him from a rather befitting position as an underachiving immigrant-assimilation-officer via a series of absurd twists to that of a Central-Eastern-European crime mastermind.

Vladimir gradually discovers that achievement comes to him easily as his identity is more and more dismantled and his moral character becomes increasingly dubious. His failure to help other immigrants assimilate fuels his dissociation from his adopted culture and drives him to various criminal ploys, which pinacle in an episode in Praha, Shteyngard's fictional Prague of the early 90s. Here Vladimir's becomes a pyramid-scheming poetry god among a hodge-podge of American expat misfits who, like him, are all in search of an identity that's as far from home and the truth as possible.

Eventually, as Vladimir's escapades reach their most absurd it all comes crashing down. The book resolves Vladimir's struggle for acceptance in a dramatic escape from his vengeful Russian mafia cohorts, only to re-insert him into American society as a 'beta-immigrant', leading a life of normalcy, in other words the antithesis of his 'alpha-immigrant' ideal.

TRDH is a fast and fun read, whose absurd culmination, although not without irony, feels rushed and somewhat unnecessary. Shteyngard also has a penchant for stereotypes and caricature that may not be to everyone's liking, but are pure hilarity to those who do. I do, so four Okkos.

NOTE: Some spoilers within.

Wow what a feast. All those stunning, beautiful and - omigod! - famous people. Where to start?!

First off, this is a very smart sequel, or at the very least a clever one. As a movie franchise, the first doesn't really depend on a unique style (it's a run-off-the-mill heist movie), rather than it's over-the-top cast. So the second one enjoys a certain amount of liberty with respect to look and feel, as long as the cast is there, which obviously it is.

Soderbergh takes that liberty and the excess of cast to it's logical conclusion. The movie sheds all pretense, denies us any suspension of disbelief that was ever possible under such celebrital bombardment and engages in a kind of meta-hodgepodge of heist movies. The film constantly nods to the genre's classics, with an occasional elbow-in-ribs at European cinema, a slew of more or less ridiculous movie references and at times obnoxious but forgivable self-reference. Examples:

Brad Pitt is garbed in trenchcoat a la Robert Redford. Matt Damon sits on on a Paris sidewalk bench in precisely the spot where Franka Potente dropped him off in her Austin Mini in The Bourne Identity. Vincent Cassel delivers a laser-dodging dance performance a la Catherine Zeta-Jones (also in this one) in Entrapment. Guy Ritchie trademark freeze-frames, flashbacks filmed in a 70s French love story style, an acoustic Italian title song. The crew gets annoyed at being labelled 'Oceans Eleven'. And lastly, Julia Roberts plays Tess Ocean, who plays Julia Roberts

Only Andy Garcia was sold a bit short I found.

Four Okkos for delivering a sequel that doesn't comply to sequel-making rules, but gives us plenty of chic and sleek to look at and raises potential rental value for spot-that-reference drinking games.