Gone Girl - strange and disturbing, but a refreshing change from Hollywood

Gone Girl starring Ben Affleck reminds me of American Psycho. It has a very dark humour and tries to tell us something about the world today that we try to ignore. Based on a novel, and I believe the ending to the movie has been changed from the book, we see characters who are more than just cardboard cut outs. What happens when a relationship breaks down? What happens when we crack from the pressure of our lives?

So we are left guessing what will happen next and the story takes some strange turns. For the most part the pace is right and the tension gets cranked up. The dialogue and script were pretty decent. The acting was solid. But what is this movie missing? It lacks subtlety.  I find troubling the criticism of the media, combined with the lack of responsibility we take as individuals for our own happiness and for the society that we create. The idea that we are trapped in our lives is perhaps a notion we can get sucked into and it is perpetuated by movies like this one.

I left the cinema and I didn't feel that this movie gave me anything fresh and new. It was a refreshing change from the predictable Hollywood drivel that continually fails to challenge us or present us with anything but formula. It has taken some small steps away from what we come to expect, but it really hasn't gone far enough. In this age of technology where we are amazed and spoilt for choice, I hope that Hollywood can see that they need to actually stop resting on their laurels and make the cinematic experience worth while.

Soseki's Kokoro - the Japanese literary master who captures humanity

Soseki is one of the most widely read authors in Japan capturing the country's culture and history. He is a master of simplicity and story. Each chapter is short, no more than two or three pages. However, this novel is one that will make you look deep inside the human heart, the gentle whisperings that were in your young mind once upon a time and question ideas about love, family and friendship.

Though set in the Meiji era, the story is timeless and beautiful. Soseki is truly one of the great gifts to our world. He is not just for readers in Japan, but for readers around the world. The restraint of his writing is powerful and the tension he creates through structure, story and foreshadowing is brilliant. I think of Murukami, one of Japan's contemporary popular writers and Ishiguro, a much loved English writer of Japanese origins. Both these writers are branches from the Soseki tree.

If you have ever loved and lost, you will fall in love again. The love you will discover will be for a man long dead, but Soseki's writing lives on.

Crash by JG Ballard - Can porn make good literature?

JG Ballard's Crash takes readers into the dark and crazy world of sex in cars. It is page upon page of pornographic content. The strange thing is that Ballard is described as a genius. Zadie Smith has written about him, and he is studied in universities.

Pornography and literature often aren't associated with one another, but the moral divide seems to be blurring. Authors can no longer shy away from sex scenes. In a modern society where sex is everywhere, explicit in the music that we play, the films we watch, the advertisements that we drive by, why should it not be in the books that we read?

However pornography is still taboo. Can a book such as Ballard's Crash, which goes from one page to another streaming obscene language and frequent references to genitalia, be celebrated and held up as a piece of good fiction which aspiring authors can learn from, be inspired by, spurn new novels that pay homage to?

Fifty Shades of Grey burst into the world of fiction. It became the Da Vinci Code of today. Fifty Shades of Grey is pornography disguised as romance. How else can you describe a book that explores and delves in depth into sadomasochism? Whilst no one would claim it is in the league of Austen or Dickens or Woolf, does it have a place in the history of popular literature?

Books reflect the culture and world that we live in, and with the increased growth in the internet and pornography, the content of literature cannot remain in the realm of tea and cake. So we are exposed to material that may offend us and make us shake our heads in disbelief. But is that simply not what history has shown us, that there are stories and views that are not widely supported but somehow survive because they stand out? DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was shocking in its day. Baudelaire caused controversy. They have withstood the harshest of critics - that lovely lady we call Time.

Ballard's Crash is not a book I can say that I enjoyed, but it is one that does stay with you, and one that you can't help but puzzle over and discuss, and whether it will be studied a hundred years from now and be considered an example of great literature for this period, well I guess that will be judged by time and future generations.