Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 5/11

We have a losing streak going - two days without sales. I did have some company, though. Ted, who purchased Adjustments last Fall, stopped by the floating bookshop. I was sorry to hear he has lost his sales job. He was selling ad space in magazines for News Corp, which owns the New York Post and other media outlets. Hang in there, buddy. Esther, 61, also visited - for the first time. I learned quite a bit about her in 15 minutes. She's about to celebrate her 37th wedding anniversary. She has a 32 year old son who is unmarried and drives a Mercedes which she helped finance. She attended Clara Barton HS with the idea of following in her mom's footsteps as an RN, but changed to a commercial course instead, and worked for a few years at a Wall Street bank. She has a twin - Regina. And she is sure the woman who is about to go on trial in Florida is guilty of killing her toddler. And she doesn't read books.
Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) is one of my favorite films. Last night I watched the Hong Kong actioner that inspired it, City on Fire (1987), directed by Ringo Lam and starring a very young Chow Yun Fat, who later burst onto the world stage in John Woo's over the top blood fests The Killer (1989) and Hardboiled (1992), and who would later have only modest success in American films. I feared that Lam's film would diminish my respect for Tarantino's, as some have called RD a ripoff. Although the influence is clear, the films are very different from each other. In RD, the heist is never seen, only its aftermath. There is no love angle. And the characters have so much more depth. And the dialogue is rich. The subtitles in COF often lend the banter an unintentional comical air, as is the case in most translations from the action genres of the Chinese and Japanese, although there is a wonderful line by one of thugs about how he does not hate the police, as they are only doing a job. COF is a fun film. RD is a meaningful one, a glimpse into the minds of a diverse group of criminals, and one of the few I've rated five stars.
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