What a terrible loss! I really enjoyed Barney's Version and was looking forward to Richler's next novel.

Saw A.I. over the weekend. Spielberg fans will no doubt be pleased with the movie, but Kubrick fans will be disappointed. I love a good sci-fi movie that gets you thinking about basic flaws of humanity, especially when the movie is beautifully and imaginitively filmed (Bladerunner and Gattaca are two that come to mind). A.I. starts out doing this, then lets you down at the end with classic Spielberg sentimentality. Had the movie ended 20 minutes earlier, it would have been a sad but plausible futuristic fairy-tale. As is, there's a final, cheesey part that's Pinocchio meets Munsch's Love You Forever with its creepy Oedipal overtones. As a mom, let me tell you I do not want my son to obsess about me in that way. Quite frankly, it gave me the willies.

That said, A.I. is still a visual feast with some amazing acting by Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. And it does get you thinking about certain fundamental things like our responsibility to other thinking, feeling beings, whether meca (robot) or orga (human, animal or alien). On that level, the movie does what it set out to do: entertain and provoke some thought, two rare qualities in a summer movie.