Joe's View

On vacation last week I picked up two quintessential summer beach books — Lauren Weisberger’s third novel “Chasing Harry Winston” (Simon & Schuster) and Jackie Collins’s 26th novel “Married Lovers” (St. Martin’s Press).
Both books were published within the last month. The Weisberger tome seems to have surpassed “Married Lovers” in the best-seller sweepstakes, riding comfortably in the number six slot of The New York Times best-seller list for the past several weeks while the Collins book has dropped out of the top ten.
Weisberger’s fashion magazine world debut novel, “The Devil Wears Prada,” was one of the key chick-lit titles of the past decade and her follow-up book, “Everyone Worth Knowing,” was an entertaining look at the public relations industry in Manhattan.
“Chasing Harry Winston” is a lame time-waster that reads like a contractual obligation book written under duress.
Weisberger catches up with three college pals after a decade of living in the New York fast lane — Emmy, Leigh and Adriana — but the novel stalls out after only a few chapters when it becomes clear the author doesn’t care about these women and hasn’t thought of a plausible narrative for them. The women are pushing 30 and make an inane bet to change their aimless dating habits within the next year.
Where her earlier books were grounded in Weisberger’s actual experiences working in New York media, “Chasing Harry Winston” is a desperate recycling of material from “Sex and the City” and the other chick lit/chick flick milestones of the past decade. The writer never tries to make the ridiculous Brazilian Adriana credible as the best friend of Emmy and Leigh — the hot-blooded swinger is a stale amalgam of Samantha from “SATC” and a Eurotrash party girl in an early episode of “SATC” who was revealed to be a high-class hooker.
I kept reading “Chasing Harry Winston” assuming that some sort of plot would kick in eventually, but I was wrong.
Jackie Collins has been writing beach books for as long as Lauren Weisberger has been on the planet.
While Jackie might not have quite the “heat” of her “Hollywood Wives” era of the 1980s, she still knows how to tell a good story and how to keep a reader hooked for hundreds of incredibly fast-paced pages (Jackie keeps her chapters short and punchy and makes sure her cast of characters are such distinct individuals that we never get that feeling, so prevalent in “Chasing Harry Winston,” of not being able to tell one person from another.)
Jackie has kept her finger on the pulse of the international jet set for four decades and the new book serves up the same irresistible mix of gossip, pop sociology and sheer fun that has been the hallmark of every book since “The World is Full of Married Men” in 1968.
In “Married Lovers,” Collins serves up more juicy characters and situations than you would find in the average half-dozen beach books. Over-heated dust jacket copy is, for once, an accurate reflection of what’s inside: “Three high-powered Hollywood couples, two hot affairs, one underage Russian ex-hooker, a passionate murder – and the players’ lives are changed forever.”
Reading Lauren Weisberger’s latest you get the feeling she had to slog her way through the manuscript to fulfill an unpleasant obligation to Simon & Schuster. Racing through “Married Lovers” you can tell that Jackie Collins loved writing every dirty, sexy and funny page.

The new Will Smith movie “Hancock” is the only major studio release to open during the July 4 weekend, so the box-office figures on Sunday should be strong.
Word of mouth has got to be deadly, however; this is one of the worst summer movie star vehicles since Arnold Schwazenegger’s “Last Action Hero” in 1993. That turkey had a decent opening weekend, too, but the star’s reputation took a big hit — Schwarzenegger was no longer the sure thing he represented during the previous decade.
The pressure on big box-office stars to deliver is intense. The bigger they get, the bigger the budgets become, and record-breaking grosses are expected for every movie.
Years ago, Meryl Streep gave a speech where she complained about the huge discrepancy between the star salaries paid to men and women. She had already won two Oscars by that point, but was earning a pittance compared to male counterparts such as Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford.
Streep had a point, but perhaps her lower salaries and her continuing willingness to take chances on low-budget movies (such as “A Prairie Home Companion”) are responsible for the actress still being a prestigious in-demand performer, while many of her 1980s and 1990s male peers have faded out. The terrific performer has the starring role in “Mamma Mia!” opening July 18 and will be seen in the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Doubt” late this year or early in 2009.
Will Smith has been a money-in-the-bank star for more than a decade now — can you believe “Independence Day” opened 12 years ago this weekend? — but he appears to be losing his edge and his knack for finding good material.
“Hancock” is a messy, nasty piece of work that is poorly made to boot — it’s distressing to see a major talent misuse his gifts this way. And I don’t think audiences will keep Will Smith at the top of the movie star heap if he keeps making duds like this one.

Fans of the Evelyn Waugh novel, “Brideshead Revisited,” and the 11-hour British miniseries from the early 1980s, will probably find a lot to criticize in the new theatrical film version that’s opening on July 25.
The miniseries — which launched the career of Jeremy Irons — was exhaustively faithful to the book.
The Miramax film is a Cliff’s Notes version of what Waugh was trying to say about class and sexuality in England in the years between the two world wars. Ironically, at the screening I attended in New York last week, I heard someone complain that the two-hour-and-10-minute film was “slow” — what would they have made of the miniseries?
No matter what happens to “Brideshead Revisited” in its midsummer art house release, the picture should bring more accolades to the 27-year-old actor Ben Whishaw — his performance as the alcoholic gay aristocrat Sebastian Flyte is the best thing in the movie.
After a series of small roles in British TV and films, Whishaw got his big break when he landed the starring role in the 2006 “Perfume” — where he played a sympathetic madman with a genius for creating expensive scents. The following year, Whishaw turned up as one of the multiple Bob Dylans in “I’m Not There” and held his own in a company that included Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett.
Whishaw is a classically trained stage actor with the charisma of a movie star — he has that special ability to draw us close to angry, disturbed and confused characters who might not be sympathetic if played by a less compelling performer. Whishaw reminds me of the young Tom Courtenay, who was able to redeem anti-social anti-heroes in “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1962) and “King Rat” (1965).
Sebastian Flyte in “Brideshead Revisited” is a more conventional character than the ones Whishaw played in his last two movies — a sad young man who drinks to block out his inability to come to terms with being gay — but the beautifully mounted production will take the actor into the center of the mainstream. It’s the sort of flashy and tricky work that earns Oscar nominations.

It doesn’t seem likely that 2008 will bring us a movie book that is smarter or more entertaining than “Pictures at a Revolution” (The Penguin Press) by Mark Harris.
I wrote about the book at length in this space last winter, but wanted to let you know that Harris will be speaking at the Stratford Library tomorrow night at 6:30 p.m. This is another coup for library programmer Tom Holehan who hosted the brilliant Katharine Hepburn biographer William J. Mann last month.
In “Pictures at a Revolution,” the Entertainment Weekly writer and editor takes us back to 1967 and shows us how the five films nominated for the best picture Oscar that year were a perfect representation of the artistic and financial forces that were about to produce a changing of the guard in Hollywood.
Old-school Tinsel Town was represented by the conservative “Doctor Dolittle” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the brash young revolutionaries were on hand in the form of “Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Graduate” (above) and the fifth film (and eventual winner) was a mix of old and new styles, “In the Heat of the Night.”
Harris takes us behind the scenes of the making of all five Oscar-nominated films. In each case, years were spent simply trying to get the movies into production. The material on “Bonnie & Clyde” is particularly interesting, detailing the half-decade spent by Esquire magazine writers Robert Benton and David Newman trying to interest directors in their off-beat gangster film. Harris shows us how their screenplay grew out of the writers’ love of the French New Wave pictures that opened here in the early 1960s and that “Bonnie & Clyde” was almost directed by Francois Truffaut (he opted instead for “Fahrenheit 451” as his English language debut).
“Pictures at a Revolution” is based on fresh reporting and fresh insights into a pivotal moment in the history of movies.
The free event at the Stratford Library will kick off a five-week Wednesday night film series during which all of the 1967 Oscar nominees will be screened, starting with “In the Heat of the Night” tomorrow at 8:15 p.m.
For more information call the library programming office at 385-4162 or go online to www.stratfordlibrary.org.