G.W. Clift entertainments log from Manhattan, Kansas, written January 30, 2009

We were glad to be back home after our recent mid-winter vacation. But the cold. Goodness. Then, too, we also had to adjust to eating our own cooking and to watching college basketball in place of live plays. Books, though--we had books everywhere we went.

The late R.D. Wingfield wrote apparently wrote six books about police detective Jack Frost. The last one, A Killing Frost (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/14/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview8 ), is just like the four others I'd already read. Except more so. So much more so, I wondered if the author had died before editing. The paperbound Corgi edition runs to 571 pages. This time over-worked, personally-confused Detective Inspector Frost is about to get kicked out of his job by a high-flying and creepy new D.C.I. Why does this guy want to get rid of Frost, who is doing all the work, napping in cells, and taking none of the credit for success? The current crime-wave in fictious Denton includes several missing teenagers, the blackmailing of an unpleasant supermarket owner, a kiddie porn ring, thefts from school lockers, a break-in, a thirty-year-old rape case, and so on. Too much crime. Too much for Frost to do. Too much complication. But I did finish reading it all, and the last hundred pages contain a couple of little rushes of completion.

While I was in London I went upstairs in Long Acre Street to visit Bertarm Rota Antiquarian Books (http://www.bertramrota.co.uk/), the outfit which provided the Milton volume to be Farrell Library's one millionth volume. They were Fred Higginson's agents when he was putting together the Robert Graves bibliography, and a fellow at the store told me that when Prof. Higginson flew in, the partners arranged for him to have a desk and a typewriter for the length of his stay. After browsing for half an hour on shelves that looked just like the Higginson ones I currently have in my dining room, I purchased a copy of Evelyn Waugh's While the Going Was Good to have as a sort of souvenir.

The book, which I've read before, is a gas. It is selections the author took from his own travel writings of the twenties and thirties, and it describes third world societies that no longer exist in the same form. The famous anecdote is the one about the hippo who walks the golf course at Kampala, causing the club to make a ground rule about ball drops. Waugh's description of Haile Selassie's coronation is tops, of course. "Ras" is apparently a title for the nobility in Ethiopia. "Taferi" seems to have been the emperor's name. Thus: "Ras-teferi [an]." The section about the events of the crowning week is worth the price of the book. I noticed that Waugh's style improved as he aged.

I'd never before seen Nunsense (http://nunsense.com/home.cfm ) when I saw it in McCain Auditorium recently. The cast included Sally Struthers. The music was not impressive. The jokes were all pretty much dependent on the idea that there is something funny about seeing a habit-wearing nun sing and dance. I suppose that is sort of funny. But only sort of.

A group of singers from Manhattan mounted a Gospel Music show on the stage of the Columbian Theater in Wamego, and I saw one of the performances. The singing wasn't bad, and the performers were in good spirits. They sang recognizable gospel stuff, like "Turn Your Radio On" and "I'll Fly Away," and also some hymns. But there were only a dozen songs altogether. I don't begrudge them the $15 ticket money, but I spent half as long driving to and from Windmill town to see the show as I spent in my seat.

The best of the recent movies (of which there have been many) is Eastwood's Gran Torino. It is the same sort of farewell to Eastwood's politically incorrect tough guy characters as were Stallone's recent films farewells to Rocky and Rambo. But I think I prefer this story, about a retired auto worker who finds a way to save neighbor kids from a local gang. The idea that the kids are the children of Asiatic emigrants who have moved onto his decaying Detroit block has some critics doing backflips over the film. The script is salted with some terrific movie lines, my favorite one being "Everyone blames the Lutherans." The young crowd laughed at almost every line of dialog.

Bride Wars, with Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, is a big fat failure. To enjoy it, we have to forgive two adult women who have live-in beaus and serious professions, for being petty and silly about white formal weddings at an expensive hotel. Only Kristen Johnston is ever funny here.

And The Unborn is never scary. It is a sort of Jewish Exorcist with a bony heroine I didn't warm to. Apparently her umbilical cord strangled her male twin before her birth. He was possessed by some sort of demon. And so on. The explanation is as silly as it is incomplete.

The producers of Last Chance Harvey seem to think it is enough to put Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000668/) out in spring or fall London. That ought to be movie enough. It nearly is. What story we're given concerns how our title character overcomes a dismissal by his bride daughter, snubs from his ex-wife, and firing from a long-held job as a jingle composer. Not that the reversals are due to a systematic plan of any sort. Nevertheless, this was sort of fun to watch.

I didn't care much for Nickelodeon's movie version of Hotel for Dogs. Its makers couldn't settle on one tone, and I didn't think enough was made of the inventions which allowed the strays living in the deserted hotel to walk, eat, eliminate, fetch, and be otherwise amused. With Julia Roberts's niece Emma, who was Nancy Drew last year.

Defiance is too long and its sub-plots end too regularly. But the story itself, about White Russian Jews who take to the forest rather than being rounded up by the Nazi invaders, is interesting. The action scenes work pretty well. There is no reason this shouldn't have been more fun than it was.

There is only one good joke in Paul Blart Mall Cop, or that's the way I remember it. Drunk, the title character gets a tattoo that looks like two inverted Vs and a small case F without a cross bar. These lines represent the Loch Ness Monster. Otherwise the film is one of those "warmedies" that are intended to make audiences want to weep more than to laugh. What it made me want was to get the heck out of the theater.

And I liked Underworld: Rise of the Lycans even a little less. It has Bill Nighy with blue contact lenses. Otherwise it is just another one of those "adult" fantasies who spend most of their time describing a world (the vampires don't turn into bats and the werewolves don't need the full moon to turn into wolves) than it does exploiting its circumstances. There are guys who like this sort of fantasy. Good for them. But I just can't enjoy what seems to me to be descriptions of marginally new fantasy worlds.

The one described in Ian Softely's film version of Inkheart (http://www.inkheartmovie.com/), for example, is based on laws which make no sense at all. The characters, cursed by their ability to bring beings from books into real life by reading aloud, discover they can write and read corrections. So what's the problem? The music doesn't help the suspense much, either. But the special effects are special and well-integrated, the movie is full of terrific images, and the cast is excellent. Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirren, and Jim Broadbent. Hadn't seen Paul Bettany since Wimbleton, I think. It was nice to have him to watch as well. A pleasant family film.

One needs the occasional cozy matinee if one is to survive the on-slaught of movies, books, and performances--and basketball games--Manhattanites have before them this time of year. And I need to do some prep for the Superbowl party, too. Chex Mix. Go Cards.

Back here in two weeks with another report written three blocks west of Aggieville.