If you don’t like Graham Greene then you’ll get no biscuits round our house. He was tops in my book. He also made a very clear distinction between books as entertainment and books as literary novels. Important that, and refreshingly frank; and honest when you take a second to think about it. You would hardly recommend Don Quixote to a friend as a light holiday read. I took it on holiday, but then again I’m fundamentally wrong on many levels and not really built for holidays. All that staring at things and sitting around on stuff while far distant nuclear reactions cause DNA damage to your Melanin. Urgh!

Thus so with movies and films. Unless your potential alternative fifty percent is a little... different, then on a date take them to a movie not a film. Avoid the "Seventh Seal" or "Exterminating Angel" and opt for something with a dying dog or perhaps the ever popular Hugh Grant. Movies are for popcorn, chocolates and having a bit of a wheeze. Also avoid anything with a prolonged rape scene mid-film as I discovered to my chagrin recently. And people wonder why I’m single.

Films are films and movies are movies. There is occasional cross over but in the main you should know what you are getting when the Sunday Times describes it as "Engrossing" or the Sunday Star calls it "Laugh out loud funny". First: "film"; Second: "movie".

Which bring me to Telos Movie Classics: Hulk. This is a 100 pages love story with the film Hulk. Once again the film Hulk.

When we all heard Ang Lee was directing Hulk the majority of us must have had that unfortunate feeling of "Oh crap!" We wanted the movie. We wanted the "Hulk SMASH!" We wanted ripping shirts and purple trousers that miraculously survive transforming into a nine foot plus behemoth. We got Ang Lee’s Hulk.

Now, I was not a fan. Not that it is a bad film per se but it was not a movie. We got that later and while it was not brilliant it fulfilled its origins. It gave the masses what they expected.

I expected this book to be drivel. It’s is not. It is intelligently written, heartfelt and a fine read. It is also heavy on media studies type flights of fancy, numerous allusions to a vast range of other films and movies and severely lacking footnotes and references to a bibliography (not that this is a crippling criticism but constantly referring other works and actors within the main text is distracting). Mr Tony Lee makes a case, I don’t buy it but it is a case well made and well written.

8

Dean Smales