Fans of Johnny Depp will undoubtedly remember the 1999 horror flick The Ninth Gate as a film that failed to live up to its promising premise. Roman Polanski, the film’s director, would have been wise to stick with the much more satisfying denoument of the novel the movie was based on, Arturo Perez-Reverte’s 1993 work The Club Dumas. Part of the problem with adapting a book such as Dumasis that Perez-Reverte’s books often have two simultaneous plots taking place within the same novel. Polanski’s decision to remove the second plot for his film streamlined the narrative but handicapped the suspense. Like the film it was based on, Dumas centers on Corso, a fast talking book scout (a self professed “book mercenary”) with questionable morals. In the first of the novel’s two plots, Corso is tasked with verifying the authenticity of a rare grimoire (book of magic) known as the The Book of…
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Viv Drewa - The Owl Lady 