Movie Magic Michael

'Who is Michael Ovitz?' by... erm... Michael Ovitz

Who doesn't love a good Hollywood movie?  If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes to make the magic happen, then 'Who is Michael Ovitz?' might be just the book for you.

Super-agent Michael Ovitz was once one of the biggest Hollywood names you hadn't heard of.  As joint owner of innovative creative agency CAA, he worked 24/7 to recruit and package perfect combinations of talented writers, directors and actors to work on films and TV shows in the '70s, '80s and '90s.  Thanks to his eye for great talent and an alchemist-like instinct for mixing the right creative ingredients, Ovitz was often at the birth of box office gold.  His deals led to hits like 'Rain Man', 'Ghostbusters', 'Jurassic Park', 'Tootsie', 'Schindler's List' and the epic TV mini-series 'Shogun'.  Not bad for a kid from the San Fernando Valley whose career began as a Universal Studios tour guide before he talked his way into a post in the William Morris Agency mailroom.  But though this story takes place in the City of Angels, Ovitz was no saint, and his hard-nosed work ethic, drive and often blinkered focus on making the deal made friends into enemies and enemies into friends.  By the end, his reputation had taken some hard knocks and gossip was rife.  In this book, he aims to set out his side of the story.

Gilead Revisited

'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood

With the release of companion piece 'The Testaments' just ten days away, I've done something I don't normally do - I've re-read a book!  So, unsure of whether it was as good as I remembered and with some trepidation, I returned to Gilead and 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood.

Following a carefully planned coup that wipes out Congress and strips civil liberties, the United States of America has been taken over by a fundamentalist Christian group and renamed 'Gilead'.  Those not purged find themselves boxed into new, sanctioned roles that mean work and above all relationships are state controlled.  With birth rates low and people needed to fight ongoing wars, the rulers of Gilead assign senior personnel 'Handmaids', fertile women to be ritually raped in the hope that they will provide the Commanders and their Wives with children.  'Offred' is one of the first wave of Handmaids, haunted by memories of the life she had before, fearful for the future of her lost daughter, and stunned into compliance by the isolating existence she now endures as an object of desire and moral revulsion.  As the shock begins to fade, however, she starts to see that things are not quite as godly as the regime would like believed, and even those at the highest levels are showing signs of very human weakness...

A Walk in the Dark

'Help the Witch' by Tom Cox (Unbound, 2018)

As some of you may remember, I really enjoyed Tom Cox's '21st Century Yokel' about this time last year.  His next adventure was in short fiction, so, as a short story fan, I couldn't wait to try his folk horror collection 'Help the Witch'.

'Help the Witch' is a collection of ten tense tales which put the nature back into the supernatural.  A village's dark past haunts a new resident in the story 'Help the Witch', while a covertly sinister waterway permeates 'The Pool'.  Spirits walk in unlikely places in 'Speed Awareness' and 'Just Good Friends' and morality tales are modernised and subverted for comic effect in 'Folk Tales for the Twenty-Third Century'.  This is a collection that draws readers' attentions to the murky shadows that are inevitably cast even on bright, sunny days in the countryside.  You can't have one without the other, after all.  You may not notice them as you picnic and play, but they're always there.  And they may be out to get you...