We Are In A Spooky Country

Granted it's late and the late night screening here is showing the horribly mis-cast, mis-directed, yet somehow still endearing, Scorpion King, although truth be told, people are mingling and shuffling around, preparing to head out somewhere else on the town. It certainly pales when compared to Deepa Mehta's Water, and intimate and highly moving portrayal of the state of widows in Gandhian India.

The real inspiration here however was William Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country. Picking up from threads left dangling at the end of Pattern Recognition, Gibson charts the courses of several characters searching for unifying pieces of information to a mysterious cargo container. More thrilling perhaps than his quick-moving prose, is the fact that Gibson sets a portion of Spook Country in his home city of Vancouver, and in many ways, he too captures the same sense of movement and promise (though in a far better manner, and with the benefit of being able to give a backstory to particular locations) that we had picked up in, on an early post back in June (see Vancouver, City on the Edge of Tomorrow).

For the record, here's to hoping for further posts, now that fall is underway. Perhaps the Calgary International Film Festival will inspire us.