That dependable beacon of contemporary literature, MOTEV, has weighed in on more titles. In fact, as much as I love Ian McEwan (I consider him to be one of our greatest living writers and there is, in fact, something of a McEwan shrine on one of my bookshelves), I have to agree with her slightly about Enduring Love. I genuinely believe it to be the weakest of McEwan’s novels because, as MOTEV suggests, the artifice calls attention to itself.

But I suspect the faults have more to do with McEwan’s inability to follow through on Enduring Love‘s fantastic opening set piece, which is among one of the greatest things he’s ever written. One of McEwan’s literary specialties is in showing how one act affects other lives. In Atonement, we see how a childhood act of cruelty leads to guilt and deceit, even in chronicling the details of the act. The Cement Garden shows with devastating clarity how the loss of parents alters the lives of children. But Enduring Love‘s great fallacy is in intellectualizing the trauma rather than filtering emotion through McEwan’s cut-to-the-bone clinical prose.

The other night, I found myself defending Something Wild‘s spotty third act with someone. I still consider Something Wild to be my favorite of Jonathan Demme’s films, largely because the first hour is such a breathless array of madness, with the tone alternating between demented screwball comedy, melodrama, sexual charge, and the poignant revisitation of family. Is it a flawed film? Absolutely. But as far as I’m concerned, I don’t believe Demme will ever top that first hour in his career.

So what of it, readers? Are there any books like Enduring Love or films like Something Wild that you find yourself falling over, yet looking the other way when the last act gets derailed by clunky narrative or, worse yet, a deus ex machina?

THE GOOD:

• It’s better than the awful Paul McGann 1996 TV movie. It’s better than “Time and the Rani.”
• Christopher Eccleston is a very good choice as the Doctor. We’ve never quite seen a version of the Doctor this spastic, let alone one with such an unusual gait. I’ll be interested to see where this incarnation, who is far more interesting than McGann, develops.
• Thank goodness they acknowledged the awkward romance angle that was introduced in the TV movie. There’s a funny scene where Rose’s mom is trying to seduce the Doctor and he isn’t interested at all. This is the kind of juxtaposition I see working in the series’ favor.
• It completely makes sense that there would be people on the Web keeping track of this strange guy, the Doctor, popping up at various moments in human history. Also, Doctor Who premiered the day after Kennedy was assassinated. The Doctor’s tie-in with JFK is a nice inside joke.
• Rose, the new companion, isn’t bad. She’s not a screamer. She fits in as the constant questioner. She’ll certainly appeal to kids. I’m not crazy about her character, but it’s still early.
• Finally, people who suffer total disorientation on the whole “bigger on the inside than it is on the outside” question.
• The Doctor’s concern for humanity’s potential is as strong as ever.
• The old sound effects are preserved!

THE BAD:

• The Doctor wearing a leather jacket, jersey pullover, and black pants? That’s the kind of thing I’d expect out of a CSI investigator, not Doctor Who. Where’s the eccentric attire? The question mark collars?
• The intellectual aspects of the Doctor have almost completely vanished. Part of the charm of the previous incarnations was that the Doctor would toss a reference to meeting Sir Francis Bacon or Picasso out of the blue. Writer-producer Russell T. Davies has gone for a more goofy direction, but his goofiness isn’t offset by a passion for knowledge and personal development.
• In fact, the Doctor’s solutions are more physical than creative. We first see him running away from an Auton. Would the Doctor really put an Auton into a headlock? Come on.
• It’s good to see the sonic screwdriver back, but what happened to “reversing the polarity of the neutron flow?”
• The new Doctor Who logo sucks.
• There seems an almost complete lack of mystery to this first episode. Where’s the sense of wonder? The weird details that come together to reveal an alien conspiracy?
• The new TARDIS console room is going to take some getting used to. The blue rotor looks nice, but the pillars surrounding it look like cheap foam core. The design is busier than it needs to be.
• The TARDIS is no longer temperamental with its navigation? That’s no fun.
• I miss the cliffhangers.

Even so, this isn’t that bad of a start.

Publisher’s Lunch reports that Margaret Cho has sold world rights to her YA novel I Hate Boys to Harper Children’s. Despite the seemingly endless spate of celebrities donning their pens to children’s books (there are now, in fact, more actors-turned-authors than actors-turned-directors), this one might be worthwhile.

• Disney has paid Clive Woodall $1 million to film One for Sorrow. Unfortunately, Disney has revealed a company policy whereby that are only allowed to pay seven figures to a supermarket manager once every thirty years. (This is for tax purposes.) So aspiring writers working at supermarkets will have to consider other studios.
• You have to admire the ethical devotion of the Limestone County School Board. After all, those Alabamans, who are clearly morally superior to the rest of us, have gone out of their way to keep a novel depicting “realistic life” off of school library shelves. The book is Chris Crutcher‘s Whale Talk. An excerpt reads: “The facts. I’m black. And Japanese. And white. Politically correct would be African-American, Japanese-American and what? Northern European-American? God, by the time I wrote all that down on a job application the position would be filled. Besides, I’ve never been to Africa, never been to Japan and don’t even know which countries make up Northern Europe. Plus, I know next to nothing about the individuals who contributed all that exotic DNA, so it’s hard to carve out a cultural identity in my mind. So: Mixed. Blended. Pureed. Potpourri.” Could it be that the Key Lime Pie Imperial Wizards have a problem with “realistic” diversity?
• I might be alone in my excitement here, but He-Man has come to DVD.
• “The most unnatural thing for a novelist is to talk about their [sic] work, really. And certainly about themselves.” What planet is Emma Richler living on?
• A cookbook catering to book clubs is out. The cookbook will include the proper dishes to serve when book club members are on the verge of strangling each other and an appetizer that will help settle the stomach when only one arty dude shows up among a coterie of thirtysomething women.
• Sam Weller has written a new Ray Bradbury biography entitled The Bradbury Chornicles. No word yet on whether Bradbury will go as apeshit over Weller’s title as he did over Fahrenheit 9/11. Odds: 10 to 1 that Weller will be physically assaulted by an 82 year old writer before the summer.
• And believe it or not, Rushdie was able to speak for one hour without threatening a journalist. Too bad that his idea of deep thought is “In order to defeat the enemy that needs to be defeated, we must not stop being what we are.”

OGIC has undertaken a massive summary of the movie quote game. The most cited film was Casablanca. Tied for second were Dr. Strangelove and The Big Lebowski (further proof that Lebowski is now indelibly quilted into the cultural fabric).

However, I’m really curious about the films that were only quoted once: the fun little gems and cult movies that remained in everyone’s subconscious.

(For what it’s worth, Quote #6 would have probably been “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kickass, and I’m all out of bubblegum” from They Live, “Let’s order sushi and not pay” from Repo Man, “Oh Mr. Travis! Try not to die like a dog!” from O Lucky Man!, “You say to yourself ‘How hot can it get?’ And then in Acupulco, you find out.” from Out of the Past, or “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” from Night of the Living Dead.)