Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

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A round-up of the top films, music releases and books heading your way this month

Slumdog Millionaire

Director Danny Boyle Starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla

Danny Boyle, the arch chameleon of British film has turned… Indian. And not just Indian, but gloriously, sentimentally and romantically Indian at that. Slumdog Millionaire is the sort of crowd pleaser that makes the slushiest Bollywood rom-com look stoney-hearted in comparison.

And yet this is no rip-off job. Boyle hasn’t ‘done’ Bollywood, nor has he reinvented himself. He’s simply applied his peerless skills in a dazzling environment and the results are breathtaking.

The story follows the Dickensian life and times of Jamal Malik, a Muslim gutter rat who, when we meet him, is being hanged from his wrists and beaten by the Mumbai police. Jamal, you see, is one question away from winning the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and the show’s host smells a rat. How could this slumdog have the answers?

The answer to that question is the catalyst for a rip-roaring journey through Jamal’s life, where each misstep in his adventures gives him the key to another question. It’s a romantic love story, a gangster movie and a Biblical tale of two brothers, but it’s also a staggeringly ambitious social fable of modern India. It may just be Boyle’s masterpiece, too.

Frost/Nixon

Director Ron Howard Starring Toby Jones, Frank Langella, Michael Sheen

These days, David Frost is a cornerstone of the British establishment: best friends with Prince Charles, Knight of the Realm and general Old Man of the Media. But in 1977 he was an all but over-the-hill TV presenter who desperately needed to get his career back on track. Enter Richard Nixon, disgraced former president and wily politician looking to worm his way back into the public’s affections and – who knows? – maybe the White House.

Thus the scene was set for a legendary show-down over a series of interviews in which the two men pitted their wits against each other, each one knowing that his future rested on the outcome.

Peter Morgan turned this true tale into a stage play in 2006 and, although that was a big hit, this film adaptation remained a risky proposition for director Ron Howard.

While it’s surprisingly dramatic and full of intrigue, this is fundamentally a talky character piece. But Howard is helped immeasurably by his cast – Michael Sheen as Frost and Frank Langella as Nixon – who ensure that the film is as riveting as any political thriller.

Book club

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s whole life sounds like a thriller novel. Originally an activist for the Communist Workers League, he went on to edit a Trotskyite journal before becoming president of Sweden’s largest science-fiction fan club. He also worked for a news agency and set up an anti-racist organisation in the face of death threats. He died in 2004, at the age of 50, from a heart attack (although foul play was suspected), leaving three unpublished novels which are now being released. The first, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, won a series of awards for its epic tale of serial murder, fraud and corporate crime. The sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, sees odd-couple detectives Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist continue to delve into this treacherous world.

Larsson’s trilogy offers a thought-provoking, and at times shocking, critique of modern Sweden while ticking all the boxes of a great genre work.

Antony & The Johnsons

The Crying Light

Antony Hegarty emerged from nowhere in 2005 to win one of the biggest awards in British music when the album I Am A Bird scooped the Mercury Prize. Alternatively, if you listen to his legions of admirers, he was delivered straight from heaven on a golden chariot with a ready-made choir of angels.

In truth, Antony is a glorious oddity – a dark, brooding (and cross-dressing) figure, at once icily indifferent to his public, but also strangely wrapped up in his own mythology.

Whatever you think of his ‘narrative’, one thing is undeniable: he has a uniquely powerful voice. Not powerful in a belt-it-out-tothe-back-row sense, but liquid, stirring and soulful. The kind of voice that reveals eerie truths.

His new album, The Crying Light, has been previewed in a handful of shows and suggests that there’ll be no let-up in Antony’s run of success. It glides easily between radiant self-absorption and a more extrovert, almost grandstanding vein of self-expression. Indeed, just reading the track listing is its own kind of pleasure, with titles like Daylight and the Sun, Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground, Aeon and Kiss My Name. He’s a rare treasure.

Bruce Springsteen

Working On A Dream

Bruce Springsteen is bigger than criticism. When you’ve been selling out stadiums for as long as he has, when your fan base is as devoted as his is and when your musical legacy is totally secure, you’ve earned the right to do whatever you like. How else to account for the continued career of the Rolling Stones?

So it’s hugely to The Boss’s credit that not only is he still producing new albums, but those albums actually sound fresh, exciting and totally switched on.

Working On A Dream is a case in point. The title track was unveiled at a rally for BarackObama and the whole record fizzes with optimism and vitality. “I’m working on a dream/Though trouble can feel like it’s here to stay,” sings Bruce. “I’m working on a dream/Our love will chase the trouble away.”  

The production by Brendan O’Brien is noticeably better than on their last collaboration on Magic, with the energy and verve of the E Street Band left to do the talking.

The Boss is definitely back.

Book club

Your Heart Belongs To Me by Dean Koontz

With the sad passing of Michael Crichton, the field is wide open for anyone who wants to step in with a quality medical thriller. Veteran author Dean Koontz has done just that – but with a twist.

Internet entrepreneur Ryan Perry has it all: a good life, a bulging wallet and a hot girlfriend. But when he starts experiencing strange symptoms, it soon becomes clear that his bank balance is the only thing in Ryan’s life that’s healthy. He’s suffering from cardiomyopathy and has 12 months to live unless he receives a heart transplant. When a donor is found, however, it turns out that Ryan’s problems have only just begun. Before long he’s receiving anonymous ‘gifts’ accompanied by a chilling message: “Your heart belongs to me”.

Part medical thriller, part macabre chiller and part romance, Your Heart Belongs To Me is a successful, if not always compelling, mish-mash of genres. Impeccably researched, well paced and stylishly crafted, it still doesn’t pack the punch of Crichton at his best.

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