Dispatches from the Sporting Life (1960-2000/ Collected 2002) by Mordecai Richler: Enjoyable, uneven collection of sports essays nearly spanning the late, great, irate Canadian's entire writing career. The bulk of the essays date from the early 1960's to the mid-1980's. There's a sloppiness to the volume that's a bit annoying -- the book omits the original publication information for many of the pieces in favour of their first book publication info, leaving the reader to figure out when they were first published from internal evidence.
The best pieces (surprise!) concern hockey, and include a lengthy piece on the early 1980's Montreal Canadiens, a profile of Gordie Howe (Amway salesman!), and a profile of Wayne Gretzky c. 1985 (to Richler, Gretzky is stunningly boring as a person). Some pieces, even long ones, seem to have been dashed off without much editing. For the record, Richler loves hockey, baseball, and snooker. He doesn't have much time for football, American or otherwise.
Reminiscences of Jewish life in 1940's and 1950's Montreal abound. And Richler's contentious piece that floats his theory that a fear of anti-Semitic backlash caused Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg to stop at 58 home runs is as odd and unsourced today as it was when published in the 1960's; letters rebuking Richler's thesis appear as well with the essay. Recommended.
Barney's Version: adapted by Michael Konyves from the novel by Mordecai Richler; directed by Richard J. Lewis; starring Paul Giamatti (Barney Panofsky), Mark Addy (Detective O'Hearne), Scott Speedman (Boogie), Dustin Hoffman (Izzy Panofsky), Minnie Driver (The Second Mrs. Panofsky), and Rosamund Pike (Miriam Grant) (2011): Paul Giamatti is pretty much pitch perfect in this adaptation of Mordecai Richler's last novel. Even his awesome 'fro in the 1970's sequences seems perfect, hideous though it is.
Barney is a pretty typical Richlerian superschlub -- funny, screwed up, occasionally self-destructive, possessed of a core of mushy romanticism that only occasionally manifests itself, often in spectacularly inappropriate ways. Oh, and he loves hockey. Boy, does he love hockey. And cigars. And hard liquor.
Over the course of the movie, Barney goes through three wives and three careers. He is accused of, but never prosecuted for, the (assumed) murder of his disappeared best friend Boogie, whose ultimate fate seemed a lot more prominently displayed in the novel. The main frame of the film, set in 2007, when Barney is 64, looks back on Barney's life in a mostly linear manner. In 2007, Barney is the successful producer of a long-running soap on Radio-Canada about a Mountie (played knowingly by Paul Gross) and a French-Canadian nurse. But he's divorced and somewhat miserable. And then back we go.
Then performances are all pretty much top-notch -- Bruce Greenwood is great as an earnest neighbour whom Barney instantly dislikes, Rosamund Pike is lovely and understated as the Third Mrs. Panofsky, and Dustin Hoffman seems to have a hoot playing Barney's retired Montreal policeman father. I'm surprised that this movie doesn't clock in at about 4 hours. It really plows through a lot, maybe a bit too much. Recommended.
