I have never been that much of a Gary Cooper fan. He is well suited to serious fare, perhaps this opinion is influenced by his roles in westerns like High Noon or Man of the West or war films like A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. But when I see him in playing 'less intense' characters as he did in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town or Sergeant York, it just doesn't work for me.
So, watching Beau Geste was a strange one-of-a-kind experience. He does play a 'less intense', occasionally playful character in the film. But the movie itself (based on an early 20th century novel) is very much on the grim, intense side...in fact difficult to typecast; I would describe it as an action/adventure, almost-a-thriller. The opening scene itself is creepy, almost macabre - not terms that one would normally use for an action-adventure film from 1939. Then the rest of the film goes into 3 different flashbacks, which serve to play the story out to the present. 
The story essentially revolves around the characters played by Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston, all 3 put forward engaging performances as the fun-loving, daredevil, close-knit Geste brothers, orphans who were taken in as children by an upper class family. Due to a series of events, the grown up brothers run off to join the French Foreign Legion. Brian Donlevy plays their cruel Sgt. Markoff, who eventually takes over the command of their detachment. His character is certainly one of the most striking and eerily charismatic 'villains' in classic American cinema.
The film is well paced and the supporting cast keeps the audience thoroughly engaged. Finally, at the end, the reason for their flight from the British estate becomes clear and Gary Cooper's character  - Michael Geste - gains redemption and he is referred to as 'Beau' Geste, meaning "gracious gesture", to describe his actions.
Perhaps, this film finally, has helped to elevate Gary Cooper up a notch in my 'favourite actor' rankings, to leapfrog above Errol Flynn, John Wayne and Spencer Tracy, and get a bit closer to the likes of Clark Gable, William Powell, Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart.

After a long long time, I am reading a new scifi author whose style I like and enjoy. Actually, the last Hard Scifi new author I enjoyed was Scott Westerfeld (I read his outstanding Risen Empire back in 2006). And a few weeks earlier, I 'discovered' Dan Simmons. So, obviously that was a good year.
Anyway, getting back to the present, I am reading a book by Neal Asher called HillDigger. It is part of a series of books written by home, loosely wound around a group of 'post-humans' known as the Polity, who get up to various political and military shenanigans with other human spin-offs spread across the galaxy. At least, that is what I have gathered after reading about 95 pages.
I have discovered that with the hard scifi sub-genre, I enjoy space opera the most and cyberpunk the least. That means that whle I admire the likes of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, I will always prefer to read Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton and now Neal Asher.
It's early days in the book for me to write about it with any degree of clarity, but I am loving all the technology and the no nonsense writing. Even when Asher goes non-linear in his chronology, he has the good grace to let the reader know with a sub-heading. 
My other favourite sub-genre is alternative history (a category Harry Turtledove has made all his own), within which I am getting more and more attracted to steampunk. It's good to see quite a few steampunk novels coming out these days, so I will have to get my hands on a few soon. And of course, how can one talk about steampunk without referring to Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
This feels like an unfinished train of thought...hope to post more soon.

**WARNING - SOME SPOILERS AHEAD**

I finally watched the famous (infamous) Japanese cult classic Battle Royale, nearly 11 years after it shook up the Japanese movie industry and even prompted their parliament to criticize the film and question its release.
This is the 2nd ultra-violent movie I am watching in the past week, the other one being Reservoir Dogs, which I watched 19 years after it put Quentin Tarentino on the world map.

Tarentino has listed Battle Royale as one of his Top 20 films, but there is a big difference between the violence of his own Reservoir Dogs and that of Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. The on-screen violence in Dogs is far less than that of Battle, but the implied violence and its impact feels greater in Dogs, because we care about the characters. Tarentino takes the time to build them up and get us to invest emotionally in most of them.

Clearly, in the case of Battle Royale, the problem is that there is no one to root for...neither the students nor the government/ military forces. Neither of them are drawn as sympathetic characaters. Ironically, it is the teacher, played by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, who emerges towards the end as having some depth and for whom I felt some "sympathy". Even the one student for whom he sets up a back story, is still primarily a cardboard character. So, while 2 students actually come out of the carnage alive, I didn't really care. Contrast this with Reservoir Dogs, where no one survives, but right till the end, I was waiting to see if any of them would make it through. 

I read somewhere that Hollywood was looking to do a remake of the movie, but after all the various shootings which keep happening in their schools and colleges, there seems to be very little appetite to get such a movie made in America. A sequel was released in Japan, but I don't think I will be in a hurry to watch that. Would much rather pick up a Tarentino film.

Next few months should be fun. Looking forward to all the superhero movies (Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, X-Men: First Class), the action-adventure sequels (Pirates 4, Transformers 3, Harry Potter 7.2), the animation sequels (Cars 2, Kung Fu Panda 2) and the dark horses from the big directors (Super 8, Cowboys & Aliens, War Horse). 
Today I watched Rio...a spirited, colorful movie, with a great voice cast headlined by Anne Hathaway and Jesse Eisenberg, well supported by a host of character actors. Carlos Saldanha (Ice Age series and Robots) cements his place in the flock of imaginative contemporary animation directors, along with Darnell/ McGrath (Madagascar series) and DeBlois/ Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon). But, a word of advise to Fox Animation/ Blue Sky...don't try to make musicals, guys, leave that to Disney who know how to do it and do it well. Seriously, with a setting like Rio, they could have done so much with the songs, instead the music was cliched and the songs were just plain boring. Irrespective of that, the movie was very engaging on the strength of its voice cast and the pacing and I suspect a sequel will be greenlit soon.
Hoping I can watch Thor tomorrow to kick start the summer action.