In a Boyle Sort of Mood

I find myself these days gathering together a large number of Danny Boyle films around me in the wake of my watching 28 Days Later and Sunshine. For that matter, the two most recent books I've read have been The Beach and The Coma by Alex Garland, screenwriter of both of those films. I'm not sure, exactly, what about those movies and books is speaking to my particular frame of mind, but they seem to be giving me some comfort.

Boyle is a filmmaker I've always followed (his 'trilogy' of films with Ewan McGregor, John Hodge and Andrew MacDonald being my faves) so rounding out the collection is feeling pretty good right now. I've never had a copy of Trainspotting and The Beach and Millions are nice additions to the collection. I also picked up 28 Days Later a couple of weeks ago, I think. At this point, with the exception of some of the smaller works they've done, I think Shallow Grave is the only one I've yet to grab (unfortunate seeing as it's one of my all-time faves from Boyle and co.). I'm pretty sure the DVDs I've seen of it are all fullscreen with no features, so I'm in no hurry to grab one of those. If anybody knows of a nice widescreen copy, feel free to let me know where I can grab one.

On the Garland front, I enjoyed The Beach immensely and feel confident that it won't help my opinion of the film, which I didn't enjoy too much the first time, anyway. The Coma I read the same night I finished The Beach and am still sort of trying to unclench my mind. I loved it as a story but its Kafkaesque elements leave your brain a bit twisted at the end. I'm kind of cruising for something new, now. I'm thinking of trying out The Tesseract but I'm not all that interested in South East Asia, so I'm not sure how much I'll like it.

I hear he wrote teleplay for the BBC in the late '90s based on that book. I should look into whether or not it was ever produced.

Later!

mike