17 posts tagged “reviews”

I also finally watched Casino Royale, the 2006 version that introduced new Bond, Daniel Craig. It was a darker, more serious Bond film than I am used to, although I have to admit to having never seen any of the Pierce Brosnan ones, so I'm not sure if the trend had started earlier.

In this film, based on Ian Fleming's first Bond book, we see the origins of the "double oh" that James Bond would become. In fact, it begins with a black and white montage, showing us how Bond qualified for the 00 status. After this, we see him in Africa, trying to track down the source of terrorist money and he follows the money trail until he attempts to break the financier in a high stakes poker game. Much mayhem ensues and Bond gets his man.

I enjoyed this new Bond flick and thought Craig made an excellent Bond. I'm not, however, keen on torture scenes, even if we know revenge is in the offing, so it was a little unsettling. And I thought the movie in general was uneven; that the pacing was off. There were plenty of good action scenes, but the idea of hinging the whole plot on a poker game seemed just to trite these days. But I'm looking forward to his next installment.

I watched on BluRay extra, about the search for Craig. It's funny, the producers were talking about needing a new Bond, because this movie would go back to the beginning of his career, so they wanted someone younger. But they admitted that while it didn't make much chronological sense, they did stick with Judi Dench as "M". I have to also admit that I for some reason thought this was her first, but she actually goes all the way back to GoldenEye, Brosnan's first Bond flick.

The BluRay picture was very nice. I could really see the quality when I paused the movie - rock solid pause with a crisp, clear picture. I still like the HD DVD menus and extras better, but what can you say?

Netflix and the USPS really have been combining for a joyful experience. I dropped the movie in the mailbox Tuesday just before pickup (1pm). Wednesday at 7am I got notice that the movie had arrived in the processing house. And I had its replacement by Thursday. Very Nice!

I almost made it all the way through Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour. I really tried but I have to admit to just losing interest in the adventures of Guy Crouchback after about 600 pages (out of 800). Originally published as three book, this long novel follows the life of Crouchback, beginning just before the start of World War 2. It finds Crouchback in his mid-30s, hanging out at the ancestral Italian summer villa. He decides to "make something of himself" and goes back to England to enlist.

He originally finds it hard to fit in somewhere, but eventually joins an infantry group. The book follows his (mis)adventures through training, getting shipped to Europe just before Dunkirk, getting shipped to North Africa, and then off to Crete. In each case, he just sort of misses the interesting bits. He gets to Dunkirk in time to retreat, to North Africa in time to get sent back for a misunderstanding and Crete in time for the evacuation.

In the beginning, it was a lot of fun. Waugh's wry commentary on the class-conscious society of the 1940s, even with the war clouds building, is quite amusing. Crouchback reminded me a little of Forrest Gump or, maybe even closer, Chance from Being There, as he just sort floats through life, observing, and getting peripherally involved in weird plots. But the detachment got to me after about 600 pages, and so I just gave up.

Strange that this would be one of Richard Dawkins' top five novels of all time, as Crouchback is a devout and practicing Catholic, with religion playing a fairly prominent role in the book. Perhaps it would have been easier to take, reading it one book at a time, but as an entire course, Sword of Honour was too much for me.

My weekend viewing was pretty light. Friday night, I watched Rushmore, a Netflix movie I had been putting off watching. One of those movies I'm not sure how it got on my list, or even how
it ever percolated to the top. Movies about high school angst do nothing for me.

But while waiting for the girls to finish their swim class, I was flipping through a magazine. It was some supplement magazine put out by Wired, and it was all about movies. And in it was a very interesting list (who doesn't love lists?) of the 50 best movie soundtracks of all time. My Google-fu fails me on finding this list, but suffice to say that Rushmore was on it, and pretty high up too. So I was spurred on to give it a viewing.

And I liked it. It was wacky enough to overcome my natural dislike of movies that celebrate high school angst. Telling the story of a natural born slacker who looks for corners to cut and things to do besides schoolwork, who falls in love with a teacher, competes with Bill Murray for her attention, finds out the truth of the maxim "Revenge is a dish best served cold", and comes to settle into his own life, Rushmore does a good job of keeping you off balance. And the fact it had the beautiful Olivia Williams (sadly underutilized in films since), didn't hurt either.

But it did involve too much high schooler pathos at times. I'm sorry, but to be honest, my high school years just weren't that bad, and I have no urge to relive someone else's horrible times there. I was involved in enough sports and academic stuff to blend well enough with both the geeks and the athletes. Sure, I had my heart broken a few times, but not so that it scarred me for life. And while the times weren't too bad, they were neither the high point nor the low point of my life, and so I'm just not interested in revisiting them. Sure, the old "if I knew then what I know now" would kick in, and yes I did have a big crush on one of my high school teachers like Max Fischer did, but they are mostly times well served by warm over memories.

Rushmore was rescued by the completely believable performances by Jason Schwartzman as the geeky, gawky Max Fischer, and the aforementioned Bill Murray and Olivia Williams, as well as by the superb soundtrack. Some great songs were in there, from all over the map, but the new wave / grunge metal was the best. I really liked the last song, "Ooh La La" by the Faces and Rod Stewart (speaking of "wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger"!). So, all in all, it was well worth watching, even if you don't like "coming of age" movies.

We watched a couple of movies the other night. First up was The Bourne Identity. I had seen it before, although not in hi-def. When Best Buy was offering up a "buy one get one free" and it included the HD-DVD versions of the first two Bourne movies, I snatched them up. I really enjoyed The Bourne Supremacy, even despite the shaky camera work, so I was hoping that the HD-DVD version of the first one would be equally sparkling.

And it was an excellent audio/visual treat. Not quite as frantic as Supremacy, but still really good action movie. The car chases were solid, especially the one through Paris in the mini. It held up very well, and now I really want to go back and re-read the novel.

The second movie was a Netflix rental, something that had been sitting around for a while - the standard DVD movie Once, an indie sensation when it came out in 2006. And what a wonderful movie it really was - a nicely romantic, yet real life feeling movie. There are often no easy answers when it comes to matters of the heart and this movie didn't take the easy way out, leaving things messy.

The story is pretty straight forward - "Guy" is a busker on the streets of Dublin, living at home as a "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy", whose girlfriend left him for London. Girl comes up to him and tells him encouraging things about his songs. But despite her own complications, she gets him to a weekend long recording session, where things work out well. And life goes on.

The main actors, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are both pretty much first time actors and really nailed the parts. Director / writer John Carney caught lightning in a bottle with these two and the movie has a great feel about it. Glen and Markéta are obviously comfortable with themselves and, in one of the commentaries, Carney talked about having old band mate Hansard write some songs of a movie he only had partially sketched out in his head. But the more he thought about it the more it became obvious that Hansard was his actor too, and, serendipitously enough, Hansard had a good friend in Markéta who was both a Czech immigrant and a piano player, exactly what Carney was looking for. And she really nailed the part, being both vulnerable and strong at the same time.

My biggest complaint is that, for some reason, the movie has an R rating (in the US, R is for 18 and over only). I can't even begin to imagine why it would have generated an R. The "f-bomb" is dropped a few times, but that is the only thing that could possibly have done it. There's no sex, no violence, just a great, touching, honest story being told, often in song. I was thinking it would be a good movie for my girls to see, as it also does a great job of showcasing the creative process, as both the Guy and the Girl work on the songs. I think it would help get them more fired up on their piano play. I'm truly baffled as to its rating, other than to agree with the feeling in the ratings documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which said that indie films were graded on a much tougher scale than big budget titles.

But you should see Once. No, it isn't a "chick flick". Just a realistic portrayal of two people and how they can affect the lives of each other.

Next up in the (HD)DVD player was Serenity, Joss Whedon's followup movie to his Firefly series. I am not familiar with the series at all, but the movie proved to be an excellent, if slightly derivative, sci-fi action flick.

The movie takes place six months after the last episode of Firefly, where Mal and his crew are getting desperate. After a nearly botched robbery where telepath River Tam nearly gets killed by the Reavers (mad, cannibalistic humans), River and her brother try to strike out on her own. But River leads them all on a wild chase across known space, to try and uncover a desperate Alliance secret.

A solid entry in the space adventure science fiction genre, Serenity suffers some from too much of the "same old, same old". There were a few spots where I'd say, "Okay, next comes..." and sure enough it would happen. Not often enough to detract measurably from the final enjoyment, but enough to keep it nothing more than a fun couple of hours. There were some great quotes, that's for sure! I enjoyed the wry, self-deprecating humor and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Define "interesting".
Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: [deadpan] Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?

The movie was also dragged down by the video quality, which was nothing more than average for a normal DVD,  never mind an HD-DVD. I guess it was Universal's first HD-DVD, and it shows, unfortunately. The sound was good and there were plenty of extras (which I explored only a little bit). So I would recommend this movie if you enjoy a good sci-fi yarn.

Through a strange serendipity (is there any other kind?), I started reading Trials of the Monkey at about the same time as I was watching the Nova show Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. In Judgment Day, the author of Trials, is interviewed. An avowed atheist and great-great-grandson of Darwin himself, Matthew Chapman is now a successful screenwriter, living in New York City.

He was feeling closed in by the rat race that is Hollywood and began casting about for something else to do. As the annual recreation of the famous Scopes Trial was coming up, he decided to write a book about current views in that area of Tennessee. So he embarked on a bus journey there, and began writing his book.

Which quickly evolved (nyuk nyuk) into an autobiographical sketch, leading to the subtitle of the book -  An Accidental Memoir. This surprised him as much as his editor, but it leads to a very interesting description of his growing up in England as the son of a very colorful parents, including his mother, an alcoholic great granddaughter of Darwin. Through some very colorful vignettes, Chapman describes his childhood, complete with his unnatural fixation on girls from an early age, which leads to his expulsion from several schools. His is a brutally honest book, often painting himself with almost painful glee as a very warped child!

Interspersed with these autobiographical chapters are the descriptions of his first trip to Dayton, Tennessee, a few months before the trial recreation. As someone who has lived most of his life in the nearly secular (at least, relatively speaking) Northeast US, I found the description of Dayton, with its 45 churches for a population of about 6,000 and its never ending series of religious billboards, to be particularly scary. There are some pretty funny (yet eerie) chapters of him poking about into tent revivals, interviewing the head creation "scientist" at the local Bryan College and other outrageous examples of religion gone wild that I just never have to deal with here.

Chapman also gives an excellent overview of the Scopes Trial itself, complete with thumbnail biographies of the three main contestants - Scopes, Bryan and Darrow. He also gleefully quotes HL Mencken all over the place:

Today, with the curtain barely rung up and the worst buffooneries to come, it is obvious to even the town boomers that getting upon the map, like patriotism, is not enough... Two months ago the town was obscure and happy. Today it is a universal joke.

There is one chapter ("Spelunking with the Christians") that has to be one of the funniest chapters I have read in a very long time. I haven't laughed so hard reading a book since my first reading of A Confederacy of Dunces. I had tears running down my cheeks, as his description of the ride over to the cave in a van full of devout Christian teenagers, lead by his "favorite Creationist" was so full of acid descriptions. And the actual cave trip...

I expected a big yawning mouth with a souvenir shop to one side. I thought we'd plod dutifully within, along well-defined paths until it was almost dark - and then turn around an exit, going "Boy, was that something or what?" [ed. note- that's been my cave experiences] But clearly this is to be an experience of an altogether different order and magnitude.

It's a slit!

The entrance to the cave is a ragged horizontal slit, like a mouth clumsily hacked into a pumpkin at Halloween. Even more alarming, it's at ground level. Doughty Christians insert themselves into it with difficulty, slither down in steep descent - and disappear. This is not for tourists. This nasty, malevolent gash which at its highest is no more than three feet, can only be an invitation to something worse. There's no souvenir shop and not a single reassuring sign saying 'Mind Your Head' or 'Don't Touch The Stalactites'. It's a real cave, one of those narrow, lethal warrens into which children fall and emerge alive only when the TV movie lies about it a year later. It's a perfect cave for adrenaline deficient professional spelunkers with miners' helmets, ropes and pitons. It's not a cave for a gang of infantile Christians and a middle-aged atheist with a panic attack.

And it just gets funnier. There's a bit of a twist at the end, but it wraps up nicely and he seems to have been better off having written the book. Combined with Judgement Day (and some of the grotesque polls that have come about, like how many people still prefer creationism to evolution), it was a real eyeopener and made me quite sad for the state of education here. One thing that really struck home was the remarkable similarities between the Scopes Trial and the Dover Trial. Here it is, over 80 years later, and the evolution side still has to bring on scientists to point out just how solid and beautiful a theory evolution truly is. Nearly the exact same testimony, showing the power of evolution and how, over the intervening years, it has become even more of a bedrock theory, was brought out for the Dover Trial. And still, perhaps due in part to the guilty finding at the Scope Trial, education is so lacking in some areas they just have never been exposed to the grace of evolution. Sad and disheartening.

But read this book. Trials of the Monkey is incredibly funny and enlightening. Chapman's story is a little less so, as he seems like a odd duck (a fact of which he seems to find truly ironic, given his heredity!). But solid writing and wonderful insights have me penciled in for his next book, which is on the Dover trials.

A few comments on some library books that will be returned soon:

 
• This Mighty Scourge : perspectives on the Civil War by James M. McPherson. Very interesting book containing a set of essays by the eminent (and Pulitzer Prize winning) Civil War historian, on various ideas, both right and wrong, about the Civil War. One is on the attempt by (mostly) Southern historians to ascribe the basic cause of the Civil War as something other than slavery, like the "states rights" canard. Very nice destruction of this falsehood. Also an interesting article on Harriet Tubman, as he tries to cut through the mists of time and get to the "real" Tubman, and also explores reasons why she is so well known, when there are other, perhaps more worthy, examples of Underground Railroad heroes. Very good book.

 
• The Politics of Truth : inside the lies that led to war and betrayed my wife's CIA identity : a diplomat's memoir by Joseph Wilson. Very good book that I just couldn't finish, as is typical of most books that spell out the incompetence and outright evilness of the current administration. What a life that must be, as a diplomat living in various countres for a couple years at a time. I thought I moved around a lot as a kid (born overseas, and lived in more houses than I was years old until I turned 10), but my moves were all in the US and mostly in the Northeast. If you have a stronger stomach than I to read through the lies and deception of the rulers today, you will enjoy the entire book, I'm sure.

 
• Because I'm the mother, that's why : mostly true confessions of modern motherhood by Stephanie Pie. My wife is really enjoying this humorous look at being a Mom.

Time to get back to Trifle, I think. Been kind of spinning my wheels on various other projects and, while I'm sure no one else cares, I do write this blog for a reason - to keep track of what I've been reading and watching. I've been very lackadaisical adding to it, and it is time to get fired up about it again, as I have been reading and watching, just not documenting.

First up are the movies.

I first heard about The Dead Girl after reading about it here on Vox, although I'll be damned if I can find that original posting. I find Brittany Murphy to be the cutest actress going today (oh, those eyes!). She was huggably adorable in Little Black Book and, despite being the murder victim in this movie, I was looking forward to seeing it.

And it was a pretty good show, all in all. The movie follows three intersecting story arcs in a very interesting fashion. The stories sort of overlap and intertwine, and are told in a chronologically twisted fashion. There were some great performances by veterans like Toni Collette, Giovanni Ribisi, Mary Steenburgen and even Piper Laurie. In the end, though, I'm not convinced everything hung together as tightly as it should have and in the commentary, the director (Karen Moncrieff, also the writer) mentioned how a lot of it ended up on the cutting floor. I'm also not sure of the motivations of the wife, and what she was doing.

But I love films that play games with chronology. Movies offer a unique opportunity when it comes to jumping around time and I find the ones that do it well to be some of my favorite movies.  Memento is one of the best known, as it also plays games with memory, but other great ones include Run Lola Run, with its three versions of the same time span, and Betrayal, Harold Pinter's fascinating exploration of a failed relationship, told backwards in time. Even my all time favorite movie, Casablanca, plays games with time, albeit in the more straight forward fashion of using a flashback sequence. But by doing that, it lets the characters be more mysterious in the beginning, as they allude to times in the past that will be explained to us a little later in the movie. This makes repeated watchings a must, as that is the only way you can follow the interwoven dialog.

Next up was the HD disc of Goodfellas and, while it was miles better than The Departed, it was still only okay. It did have the most annoying voice over of all time, though. I just wanted the narrator to shut the hell up already and let me watch the movie. I'm really beginning to detest voice overs. They just pull you out of the "now" of the movie too much and don't seem to let anything visual take precedence. And while The Sopranos isn't perfect, maybe it has jaded me to other mob flicks. We're just about to finish up the fourth season, and it has been a pretty languid pace for the entire season, but they still seem like real, albeit not very pleasant, people. The gangsters in Scorcese's movies seem to all be cardboard pinups, and all too "movie-like". Just not all that much fun.

My most recent Netflix DVD was Steve Soderbergh's 2002 Solaris remake starring George Clooney. Now I really enjoyed the original Solaris, the classic 1972 Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky (whose Andrey Rublyov was also an epic masterpiece). A long, languid movie on memories, emotions, and human nature, it isn't a movie for everyone, but I surely got into its flow and really enjoyed it. The Criterion DVD had an excellent critical commentary that opened up much of the symbolism from this 2 1/2 hour epic.

The American remake by the Soderbergh/James Cameron team strips the original of much of its languorous feel and goes straight for the mystery that is Solaris - ho and why it conjures up real memories of the space station inhabitants. Told in a pretty straight forward narrative (while the original does much more chronological hopping), it was okay but paled in comparison with Tarkovsky's masterpiece. You might be better off viewing them in opposite order. Start with Soderbergh's film, as it is sort of the Cliff Notes version and then settle in for the true masterpiece that is Tarkovsky's.

A few months ago, I read the book Fiasco, which describes just how badly the United States was prepared when we (they - I didn't vote for the bum) invaded Iraq. One of the nearly infinite sources of information that was ignored or misinterpreted was a "handbook" on battling guerrilla insurgency written by the French commander in Algiers.  Reading about this encouraged me to move The Battle of Algiers up in my Netflix queue and I finally got around to watching it last night.

The Battle of Algiers documents the guerilla warfare in the city of Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence, by the National Liberation Front (FLN). In a neo-realistic, mock-umentary fashion, The Battle Of Algiers follows the story of the brains of the operation, especially Ali, the more brutal of the four. Showing both the terrorism and counter-terrorism, it is a pretty even handed film, depicting brutality on both sides.

Wow, what an intense film! Really surprised me just how intense it was. I had seen bits and pieces of it on TV a few times, which made me want to watch it even more. There were also many conflicting emotions. On the one hand, you wanted the Algerians to throw off the yoke of colonialism and give the French masters a "what for". But on the other hand, they were religious radicals, intent on wiping out any who disagreed with them. And you also had the feeling that the final outcome, while it could be called independence from France, wouldn't really match any idealistic hopes and dreams of the regular people. And further research on Wikipedia proved that out. After they finally shucked off the French, they not surprisingly sunk into a virtual dictatorship for 30 years or more.

But the movie was powerful. Filmed in a quasi-documentary style, complete with bad focus and shaky cameras, you really felt like you were involved. Explosions felt real and the characters believable. When they dropped off bombs in the European Quarters, the bombers were shown glancing about, seeing the people they were about to blow up. Very tense stuff, and hitting all to close to home, as you can imagine the US Army, in Iraq, behaving in equally reprehensible fashion much like the desparate French army did.  Well worth your time and effort.

Philip Kerr, the wildly flexible British author of everything from noir detective stories, to far-out sci-fi, to comic crime capers, began his career with what is now known as the Berlin Noir trilogy of books in 1989/1990/1991.  Beginning with March Violets and followed by The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem, these mystery novels follow the adventures of Bernie Gunther, ex-cop and now a private detective. Set in pre-WWII (the first two) and postwar Germany, they explore the interesting mindset of the German people in those crazy times.

In March Violets, Bernie is hired by Herman Six, German multimillionaire industrialist, to find a priceless diamond necklace stolen during the murder and arson at his daughter and son-in-law's house. He also gets involved with Herman Goerring, who hires him to find another person involved in the murder and theft.  All this happens during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, amid an atmosphere of fear, loathing and corruption. In typical noir fashion, Bernie wins a few and loses a few.

It is a real fun book, with some great noir writing (even if it feels sometimes like he is trying too hard):

We waited in the library. It wasn't big by the standards of a Bismarck or a Hindenburg, and you couldn't have packed more than six cars between the Reichstag-sized desk and the door... There were plenty of books, of the sort you buy by the metre: lots of German poets and philosophers and jurists with whom I can claim a degree of familiarity, but only as the names of streets and cafes and bars

She looked at me, puzzled, while I only gawped back at her.  She was worth it. She had the kind of body I'd only ever dreamed about, in the sort of dream I'd often dreamed of having again. There was't much I couldn't imagine it doing, except the ordinary things like work and getting in a man's way.

I enjoyed the book and hope to get to the next two in the series, before tackling his newest Bernie Gunther book, just recently released.