If Music Be

Archive for November, 2009

UK Title – Audition
1999

Synopsis from IMDB: A lonely Japanese widower whose son is planning to move out of the house soon expresses his sadness to a friend and fellow film producer, who becomes inspired to hold an audition for a non-existent film so that the widower can select a new potential bride from the resulting audition pool. The widower ultimately becomes enamoured with and fascinated by one particular young woman…but first impressions can often be horribly wrong

Review: Japanese horror films are renowned for their creepiness and this was no exception. Apart from one or two weird moments the first 50 minutes are a normal if slightly bizarre story of a Japanese film producer trying to find a wife. When they go away for the weekend; that’s when the real horror starts. More than a couple of moments that make you look away and a stunning performance from the female lead makes this a great scare and a brilliant film to watch.

by Katie Fforde

Synopsis from Amazon: Hetty Longden’s mother thinks that looking after Great Uncle Samuel’s crumbling stately home will be just the thing for Hetty’s broken heart. Hetty doesn’t mind; at least she can be miserable in private. But ‘private’ is a relative term in a village which revolves around the big house. Particularly when you are expected to thwart Great Uncle Samuel’s awful heir, and his nefarious plans for his inheritance. Pitchforked into the community’s fight to save the manor, Hetty has no time to wallow. And once she has shared her troubles with one neighbour (Caroline: a very understanding shoulder, despite her glamorous appearance and impossibly long legs), and cast an appreciative eye over another (Peter: equally long-legged, but offering rather more practical help), she wonders if her heart is irretrievably broken after all…

Review: Of course you know from the second Connor walks in what’s going to happen at the end, but this is a lovely tale of overcoming differences and adversity in order to find common ground and some romance underneath. Most of the characters are likeable although as the romance grows they seem to be marginalised somewhat in order to concentrate on getting the right level of animosity and sexual tension between the main characters right. I do get irritated by the never having dated lets’ get married scenarios but this was a good fun and pithy read nonetheless

Synopsis from IMDB: Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) walks into an FBI office late one evening and announces that he has information about a serial killer known as the God’s Hands Killer that he will only give to the lead investigator. When Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe) arrives, Meiks says the killer is his brother, Adam, who has just died. Fenton is cool and distant, and Doyle is obviously skeptical. Fenton admits to stealing his brother’s body and an ambulance, to fulfil a promise to bury him in the “rose garden”, and Doyle confirms this story by calling a small town sheriff’s office. Fenton does not answer Doyle’s direct questions about why Fenton knows Adam is the killer. Instead, he begins a long, involved tale about his family history.

Review: Matthew McConaughey can act in roles other than romantic comedies, who knew? This is a slow paced creepy thriller with a great cast and plot. The two kids in it are superb playing the opposite sides of what might happen when religion goes mad in small town America. The adult characters are well rounded and equally scary, even the FBI agent looks shifty in this one. Definitely worth watching

by Katie Fforde

Synopsis from Amazon: In the 10 years since the collapse of her tempestuous marriage, Perdita Dylan has become beautiful, confident and determinedly celibate. Now the owner of a thriving salad nursery, she has patched her life back together and has almost completely forgotten how much she loved, and then hated, her ex-husband. So when she finds out that he has taken over the kitchen belonging to one of her most important clients, she is understandably wary. Add to this the fact that she is going to have to play at being polite to him during the filming of a new TV celebrity chef programme at her run-down cottage and it seems inevitable that her world is about to fall apart.

Review: This was a good story to read, especially as someone who has a working knowledge of hotel kitchens and the characters who inhabit them. Yes it was utterly predictable but you didn’t lose interest because you knew which way it was going to go from the outset. The scenes with Perdita and Kitty were heart warming and heart breaking in equal measure

by Katie Fforde

Synopsis from Amazon: A combination of overwork and jet-leg propels Julia Fairfax into becoming engaged to a golf-playing wine buff called Oscar. But when she realises that she has fonder feelings for his adorable Labrador than for Oscar himself, she is forced to confront the fact that there is something drastically wrong. Ditching her fiance and jacking in her job, she decides to revolutionise her life. Her new career as a cook on a pair of hotel boats is certainly a departure, and teaches her more about life than how to get a couple of narrow boats through a lock. But even afloat, Julia’s past catches up with her. Not only must she contend with the persistent Oscar (not to mention his frightful mother and her own mother’s determined matchmaking), but also the arrival of her childhood enemy, the enigmatic Fergus Grindley.

Review: This is the second or third time i have read this book and it’s still as fun and enjoyable as it was the first time. the second half of it especially is a delight, because you expect it to be the traditional chick-lit story and it turns into a whole other thing. Easy to read and a must for fans of Katie’s work