Once (2006) (nat)

I watched this one last night while Joel was being an invalid on the couch. He'd said before that he didn't want to see it especially but when I went to watch it he commented that he'd read good reviews and then (he came in the bedroom while I was watching) commented after I was finished watching it that he'd liked the music and wanted to watch it so if I could keep it instead of sending it back . . . . .

All that to say, it's a good movie with a good soundtrack--which is very important since the film is about music. I also like that imdb lists the main characters as "Guy" and "Girl." So, plot rundown is that the "Guy" is a singer/songwriter/guitarist and plays in Dublin's streets (what looks like Grafton Street--a shopping district with pedestrian streets--to me) after working in his father's hoover repair shop during part of the day. By day he plays covers but by night he plays his original songs which is what attracts "Girl" to stop and talk to him. She's a bit nosy--asking about why the guy wrote the song and about the ex-girlfriend that inspired it--and makes a plan to bring by her vacuum cleaner for him to fix the next day. They become friends with undertones of romance.

Anyway, I like the music--especially that first song they sing together in the music shop and I think the plot is cute and romantic while being realistic.

Seraphim Falls (2006) (nat)

This one may actually be worse than Amazing Grace (nothing can top Passion, yet). The basic plot is obscured by the stupidity of the movie. More or less you have Pierce Brosnan (Gideon, apparently, although I never would have remembered that from watching the movie) in the woods in the 1860s. We don't know why he's in the woods but he's near a pretty river in some mountains and it's snowing, a lot. Well he gets shot in the arm by Liam Neeson (Carver, apparently) and his gang of men who are apparently hunting Brosnan--we don't know why (see a theme developing here? apparently the theme of this movie is "I don't know what's going on or why it's happening). The chase continues for the whole movie with Brosnan killing at least two of the gang (one he guts but we're never told why even though Neeson seems to know because he knows that Brosnan didn't eat him as is suggested by another man in the gang--anyway, Brosnan kills all sorts of people with his spectacularly aimed large knife). We move from the snowy mountains to the snowy-ish plains where one of the gang may rape a woman. You literally can't tell. He has her bent over the table for long enough for something to happen but there's no real indication either way which really just makes it icky. Then we move to the not snowy plains then to the desert. Anyway, we finally find out that these two were on opposite sides of the Civil War and Neeson's wife and two young kids died in a fire that Brosnan ordered set. Problem is that Brosnan ordered his men to make sure the house was clear and then to only set the barns on fire. So not so much really his fault especially considering that it was a war and I'm sure his moron lackeys killed someone else that didn't need to be killed during the war. And I'm sure that Neeson killed someone or had someone killed so I'm positive he's got blood on his hands, too. And it seems ridiculous to track a man over a huge span of desolate country. Regardless, the movie is retarded so I'm going to spoil the ending. Throughout their little journey across landscapes, they meet various people--the Irish making the Chinese work on a railroad, Evangelicals who steal Neeson's bullets, a random Native American in a suit, and, finally, Angelica Huston in the middle of the desert. She barters with Brosnan to get his horse in exchange for a bullet--so he has one bullet in his gun--then she barters with Neeson for his water in exchange for a gun with one bullet--so he has one bullet (he just lets his horse wander off). So, two men, one bullet each, in a supposed Western. I wonder what might happen. Yeah. That doesn't happen. Brosnan shoots Neeson in the gut (you'd think he'd have better aim considering the way he handled the knife) and then gives Neeson the gun to shoot Brosnan. Neeson doesn't but lays back and looks like he dies. He doesn't. Brosnan gets him up so he can walk and then Brosnan drops his knife in the desert and the two walk off--in separate directions. So we have Angelica Huston as a thinly veiled devil then we have two wounded dehydrated men wandering the desert without horses, water, or weapons. Right. That's going to work out for them.

Music and Lyrics (2007) (nat)

This is a very cute movie. Cheesy? Yes. Silly? Yes. Predictable? Of course, it's a romantic comedy so it's not like they're all going to die at the end after a car chase and massive explosions. But it's worth a watch if for nothing but the send-ups of MTV and Vh1 programming.

Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is an 80s pop star dying on the state fair and theme park scene when he meets and falls in love with Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) who seems to have a knack for songwriting and also seems like she can help him write a song for the Britney-esque pop starlet Cora by the only-a-few-days-away deadline. Typical romantic comedy plot-lines ensue and all is resolved accordingly. Anyway, cute and worth watching.

Amazing Grace (2006) (nat)

B. O. R. I. N. G.

And not at all about the creation/writing of "Amazing Grace" (as the tag line--"Behind the song you love is a story you will never forget"--title and previews indicated). It's about the main character's crusade against the British slave trade. The only connection to the song is that his childhood pastor was once a slave trader but quit, repented, and went into the clergy then wrote the song about what a horrible man he was/is. But the song writing was years before the action of the movie (no flashbacks or real attention paid to his story) and has nothing to do with anything really. The pastor and his whole story could be taken out of the film with no real consequence.

Meanwhile, the whole abolitionist plot is boring. Put me to sleep boring.

And, oddly, two of the supporting actors here (Romola Garai playing Barbara Spooner and Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt) are also in Atonement (Briony at 18 and Paul Marshall, respectively).

Juno (2007) (nat)

Joel and I finally went to see this last night. Joel was angry about it because the writer, Diablo Cody, claims that she wrote it in her free time as a hobby while she was stripping as a profession. We both doubt that she had no formal training after seeing the film.

Regardless, I've wanted to see it since seeing the first preview and I was rewarded. It's really very funny and cute and sweet. Some of the slang gets a little thick and trite but I love the snarky. The basic plot is that Juno (Ellen Page) gets pregnant by sleeping with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and hijinks ensue. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the Lorings (Vanessa and Mark)--the couple who wants to adopt Juno's baby--sort of fall into stereotype but not so much that the movie is derailed or even sidetracked, you just see what happens coming from a mile away (although Joel said some of the reviewers think/think people would think something different about what happens with those two--which I think is silly and a pretty shallow reading of the movie but whatever, I can't say anything about it here or it will spoil the end). Juno's dad (J.K. Simmons) and stepmother (Allison Janney) steal the show. Those two have of the best lines of the whole film and are both spot-on deadpan serious with their line delivery which makes everything all the more hilarious. The story progresses over several seasons and is punctuated by the high school track team (of which Paulie Bleeker is a member) running across the screen--it's funny, very funny, to see these boys in silly little outfits run across the screen and, surprisingly, it doesn't get any less funny as the movie goes on. Very much a must-see movie. Maybe a must-own.

Damn. It. (nat)

One of Johnny Depp's "in production" credits? Mira Nair's next film. Shantaram. Damn her.

Sweeney Todd (2007) (nat)

Johnny Depp. Perfect Movie.

Ok. So, there are a few more factors to consider, I suppose. But not really, right? Joel and I went to see this late Friday night. The Grove had it in a tiny theater--I was caught off guard when I went in to find seats while he got drinks. There are billboards for the movie every two feet in LA and they put it in the smallest theater in the place. Anyway, that has no real bearing on the movie.

It's a good movie. The opening is neat with some sort of computer animation telling the whole story in a vague way before we meet any of the characters. The atmosphere of the movie is what you expect of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (and Helena Bonham Carter, for that matter) and it works perfectly. It's all muted with a few well-placed exceptions. The storyline is tight and the songs don't get in the way like they can in more ill-conceived musical to movie adaptations. The singing voices aren't perfect with the possible exception of the actress who plays Johanna (Jayne Wisener--her first on-screen role and her voice is very very pretty but under-used) but the less-than-wholly-musically-accurate voices add to the effect of the movie (and there weren't any terrible jarring moments in the singing which is something considering none of the actors was musically trained prior to this movie). You wouldn't expect the "demon barber of Fleet street" to sing like a canary so he doesn't. His first duet with Helena Bonham Carter is really very good. And, my goodness, even covered in white paint with purple around his eyes and blood spattered on his face, Johnny is . . . . well, the man is just sexy. The movie is gorey--lots and lots of blood. Lots. But nothing that I needed to cover my face for or anything. One teensey problem though . . . . plot spoiler below! (although hopefully in a different colored font--highlight it to read)

So, my one issue with the movie is that the story between Johanna and Anthony is left hanging a bit. I guess we are to assume that he returns with the coach and they escape--although probably to a less-than-ideal life as they have little to no means but I wanted one more shot of the two of them together and was frankly shocked that we didn't return to them, even if just for a tiny second to see them reconnect. It's just baffling that the subplot was left hanging. But I looked it up and it seems like the Broadway show ends the same way . . . . odd to me though. It doesn't ruin the movie for me but it gives me pause, especially when the rest of the movie was pretty tight and everything else was tied up pretty neatly (and it's odd for a Broadway show to leave a partially loose end)

Anyway, great movie. Worth watching every single day for a week ;-)

Mr. Brooks (2007) and Interview (2007) (nat)

I really liked Mr. Brooks. The basic plot is that Mr. Brooks (Kevin Costner) is addicted to killing and agged on by Marshall (William Hurt) who is sort of his alter-ego. Brooks is blackmailed by "Mr. Smith" (Dane Smith) to take him on as an apprentice as sorts. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing at home with his wife Emma (Marg Helgenberger) and daughter Jane (Danielle Panabaker). And detective Atwood (Demi Moore) is hot on his trail, sort-of. Costner is actually really accurately creepy and mechanical here and his interaction with Hurt is fantastic. They are strangely in-sync which just makes it work all the more. And it all just fits together really well. I did figure out one of the twists long before it happened but not the details of what would happen and there are some startling moments in the thriller. Definitely worth a watch, maybe a purchase.

Interview, on the other hand, is only good in comparison to Passion. Almost all of the movie is just an "interview" between Pierre Peders (Steve Buscemi), a demoted political journalist, and Katya (Sienna Miller), the hot new untalented party girl actress on a Sex in the City type show and slasher flicks. He's dismissive, she's rude, then he's in a minor car accident and she takes him to her loft. And there ends the probability of this film. What hot young actress takes the middle-aged rude journalist who didn't read any of the info on her given to him and is dismissive of her career to her loft? Anyway, the dialogue is terrible, the ideas are trite, the logic resembles something of a freshman paper. For example, we see Katya snorting coke or heroin and Pierre almost leaves the loft (for the bazillionth time)--ten seconds later, we learn that his daughter died of a heroin overdose. Another example, Pierre asks Katya what makes a man attractive, she says scars (good answer but she gives a stupid reason--"because most women have them, too")--guess who has a scar?? Pierre flashes his stomach later and he has a massive scar on his abdomen. Katya says she's good at crying and then later Pierre is shocked at her lies and faux-crying. It's only 84 minutes long but it felt longer than the over 2 hour Mr. Brooks. It's not paced well and it doesn't make much sense as a story. I didn't care about the characters. Only watch this if this and Passion are your only choices.

The Namesake, again (nat)

One more thing. A movie should really avoid glaring impossibilities, especially in what are supposed to be poignant moments. Here, Gogol has gone to his father's temporary apartment (the father accepted a semester-long teaching appointment at another college) to collect his things after identifying his father's body at the morgue (the father died of a heart attack without warning). Gogol has a vision of his father leaning his hand against the wall above his shoes, sliding on his brown oxfords, and walking out the door. This vision mimics what we see happen earlier, before his father goes to the hospital. After the vision, Gogol walks over to the wall and slips on the same shoes and walks around the apartment. What should be a poignant, nice, symbolic "walking in his shoes" moment is severely undercut by the fact that the father walked out the door in those shoes and, therefore, Gogol should have brought them back in a bag of his dead father's belongings--they could not have been at the wall.

There was something else like this that was wrong but I can't think of it at the moment . . . .

The Namesake (2006) (nat)

Like most things I really want but am denied for ages, this movie did not live up to my expectations. My little internal pictureshow while reading the book did not match up with Mira Nair's. And I think I've decided that I am not a fan of her movies (Joel and I watched Monsoon Wedding the other week).

So, my main issue with Nair's version of The Namesake is that she seems to miss the point of the novel. The story is a simple one about an American-born child, Gogol, of Indian immigrant parents (who immigrated when adults) and that child's struggle balancing his Indian culture (which he tries so hard to deny because it makes him odd in a McDonald's world) and the American culture he knows and loves. It's a typical coming of age story with the rebellion from parents, denial of inheritance, etc but with the addition of the cultural aspect. Nair makes the movie way too much about the parents and India. She's in love with giving the viewer random, unrelated (to each other and what's going on in the film) shots of India. She's in love with India, which is fine and lovely and beneficial to that country. What is not fine, lovely, or beneficial is when she takes a story of the struggle of an Indian-American to be American and makes it about India. There is very little of Gogol out in the world, which is what the majority of the novel is and what we need to see in order to see the child come of age.

While the novel covers all of the information presented in the movie, a good book adaptation (unlike my last viewing of the adaptation of the Good Book) should strike a balance between including too much of the source material and cutting out too much of what makes the story. Nair actually managed to include too much and cut out too much. By giving too much time to the parents' story, she gives us quite a bit of the necessary back story but does so to the detriment of the current story. We understand the parents' love story much more than we understand what's going on with Gogol. While the whole movie is devoted to the older love story, we breeze through two of Gogol's long term affairs, both of which are reduced to stereotypes.

Further, any story that is trying to dissect the clash of cultures, whether on a grand scale or a personal internal scale, has to be super careful to avoid such stereotypes. Instead, Nair's movie exalts the traditional Indian and the more traditional Indian-American woman but shuns (1) the white, blonde, bohemian, selfish, call your elders by their first names, bring truffles as a gift, fail to understand culture differences and wear black to an Indian funeral girl and (2) the Indian-British-American girl who tries too hard to be Anglo in that she sleeps with a whole slew of men, has one fiance leave her almost at the altar, and cheats on her husband. So, while this movie isn't as racist/anti-peoples as Passion, it ends up being racist.

All in all, Nair manages, in all three of her movies that I've seen (Monsoon, Namesake, and Vanity Fair), to make an oddly scattered, disjointed story that lacks any real heart--it ends up being like a freshman paper or what you end up with if you ask MS Word to summarize a document (it just picks out the first sentence of each paragraph)--most of the information is there but you're lacking argument and explication and you end up not caring at all. Sadly not really worth a watch to me (but I'm also in an odd position in that I'm stacking it up against the book and a long wait).

Control (2007) (nat)

This one is a biopic of Joy Division's frontman Ian Curtis. Shot entirely in black and white (well, shot in color and converted to black and white), it's a really good movie. Unlike Passion, you don't have to know a thing about the guy, the band, the scene, anything, to be able to appreciate and follow the story. And it's compelling--despite Curtis being doomed and a bit of a cad at points you want him to succeed and escape his demons. It's a very simple story of his rise and fall and it manages to avoid be starstruck by Curtis or the British post-punk scene. It is also very artsy without falling victim to the inclination. Sam Riley's performance is impressive (even more so considering it's his first role of any sort of import) and the others fall in line without overwhelming Curtis as the point of the plot. Definitely worth a watch.

Passion of the Christ (2004) (nat)

I didn't want to see this movie. I'd avoided it when it first came out and patently refused to watch it otherwise. Then the book included it. Damned book. But I put it pretty far down on the Netflix queue and kept moving other things up thinking I would never get through 1001 anyway so this may as well be one that I missed. Well, with the packing and moving and the post office forwarding my mail much earlier than I asked them to, I failed to pay attention to the queue and the damned thing showed up in Los Angeles to await my arrival. Yick. Joel wanted to watch it because he's working on a new movie about an exorcism and thought it might help. So we watched it.

It's terrible. Worse than terrible really. It may be the worst movie I've ever seen.

First, there is the Aramaic. Just absurd. And it's mixed in with Hebrew, Latin, and something closely resembling Italian. Just odd. And it fails to translate all of the lines. At several points, people say things and they're not subtitled. Why did the actor learn that line and say it if I don't need to know what the guy is saying?

Second, there is this strange devil type androgynous character--who IMDB tells me is a woman--who just appears all over the place, only talks the first time, had a creeeeeeeeeppy baby another time, pitches a fit in hell when Jesus dies . . . . The character is just odd and never explained or given any sort of recognition.

Third, Mary Magdalene and John are never identified by name--I managed to figure out the former while watching but just now figured out the latter with IMDB. And I have no clue who some of the other characters are. That's largely a lack in my religious knowledge, but I shouldn't have to have read any book in order to know a character's name in a movie.

Fourth, Jim Caviezel is not that good. And he creeped me out in the last supper scenes.

Fifth, it's unnecessarily violent and gruesome. I did not need to see Jesus' skin ripped from his body at all much less a few dozen times, I did not need to see the nails being hammered in, I did not need to see a crow rip an eye from another crucified man. And I covered my face for most of these scenes so I didn't even see the most violent parts--Joel exclaimed audibly several times.

Sixth, it's reductive as well as historically and scripturally inaccurate in parts. Mary Magdalene is still portrayed as a whore. And the film claims that Jesus was the one to invent the table with chairs. Right.

Seventh, I didn't care about Jesus in the film. It's horrible that a person was tortured and etc but nothing was done to make me care about the man in the film.

Eighth, it relied waaaaaay too much on its audience having an intimate (if inaccurate) knowledge of scripture--ex. not identifying characters, too little background info, etc.

Ninth, despite what anyone may say, the movie is terribly anti-Semitic. It's really terrible anti-anyone who isn't Christian (in the way that Mel Gibson and his cronies are Christian, of course).

Tenth, it played only to it's own crazy Christian wacko audience--"Hey let's celebrate how wonderful we think this guy is and how terrible everyone who doubted what we would have never doubted are and let's just have this little inside story that chastises any and everyone else"--instead of sharing a message in a, oh, let's call it "Christian" way.

Eleventh, it's even incredibly condemning of it's audience. When Jesus dies, Mary looks straight at the camera while holding her son as if to say, "see what you did."

Twelfth, it's terrible in it's "portrayal" of God/pathetic fallacy. Throughout the movie, Jesus and other characters look to the sky in a Halle Berry/Oprah ruining Their Eyes Were Watching God way. At the Crucifixion, one of the other two nailed up pledges himself to Jesus and Jesus blesses him. The other says "no way you're the son of God, you're still nailed on a cross and you're going to die"--he then promptly gets his eye pecked out by a crow (despite the fact that Jesus is the bloodier and closer to death of the three by a long shot). Then what really stuck in my craw is when Jesus is dying, the heavens start to cloud over. And, at the moment of his death, the camera suddenly shows us the scene from above, from God's supposed p.o.v, an angle from which none of the rest of the movie has been shot, and a single massive raindrop falls. Yick. Just YICK. That's right before Mary looks at you accusingly.

The movie is about 4 hours too long and it's only 2 hours 7 minutes.

Monsoon Wedding (2001) (nat)

Lots of a plot and lots of little plots swirl all around in this one. It's not bad and it's pretty and fun to watch because of the different culture and all. And the main storyline is interesting with the Dubey/Alice subplot sticking out for me because it's so sweet and cute. Basically, it's the story of an arranged marriage, focusing on the bride and her family. She's consented to the arrangement because she's tired of playing second fiddle to her boyfriend's wife. Her father is super anxious and worried because he's giving away his daughter to another family and to America and because of money concerns as well. Meanwhile, there are subplots about a cousin's abuse, the younger brother's sexuality, a budding romance between a set of cousins, a romance between the event planner and the maid, the tense relations between the bride's mother and father, the joys and stresses of a large family, etc. It all gets a bit jumbled and some of it seems a bit watered down. Not terrible, just not that inspiring.

The Golden Compass (2007) (nat)

I liked the movie just fine. Joel calls it preposterous.

It's not perfect, isn't neat, has some plot holes. But I expect such things from movies with talking, fighting, armored bears and whatnot that are essentially meant for children. It's clearly setting itself up for sequels and this is the foundation movie that leaves a lot to be filled in with the subsequent movies, if they're ever made. If you can forgive the movie that, it's entertaining. I went in only wanting to see Daniel Craig and the polar bears. I got those things.

Anyway, it's apparently a way watered down version of the watered down American versions of the British series of children's books. It's getting slammed for being anti-religion which is basically nonsense. The movie can have religious overtones if read as such (as could just about any Tom Cruise movie or any other movie for that matter) but the Magisterium reads as more of a government thing to me (in the film, at least--apparently the books are more explicitly death of God, etc).

The polar bears are cool, the witches are cool, the daemons are cool, the architecture is cool, Daniel Craig is good as is Nicole Kidman and I like the little girl playing the lead role. I did not like the ugly child they found to play her best friend not did I like Kidman's character's daemon monkey. Creepy. There is also an odd two second use of Christopher Lee that is misleading as he doesn't show up anywhere else in the movie. And there is quite the graphic scene for a children's movie but I won't say anymore because it would give something away. Anyway, I liked it just fine. I was entertained.

Atonement (2007) (nat)

Well. This was not as good as expected. I think because it's getting soooooooo much hype that I just expected brilliance. Instead it's mediocre with flashes of good and one of the worst endings I've ever experienced. Literally, with one camera shot the movie was ruined for me. I haven't read the book yet--I'll probably trot my butt across the street tomorrow to get myself a copy--but if it ends like the movie does, I hope it's handled much much better. There are very pretty scenes, very pretty shots, funny moments, the love story is touching and poignant and heartbreaking and I was on board all the way until about five minutes before the movie ended when it just shattered for me. I was taken all the way out of the movie and felt cheated. Really cheated out of the whole experience.

Joel has a whole rant, it went something like this:
J (as we're leaving the theater): So what did you think about the movie?
N: I liked it until the end. I think the end ruined it.
J [in a stern but not overly loud voice]: UNDERACHIEVING. SELF-DELUDED. AND. MANIPULATIVE. UNDERACHIEVING. SELF-DELUDED. AND. MANIPULATIVE. UNDERACHIEVING. SELF-DELUDED. AND. MANIPULATIVE.
Throw in trite, silly, ridiculous, the sort of movie I'd want to write until they fucked it up with the end, etc. and you have the rant that lasted from the movie theater to the grocery store across the street and over the length of a strip mall. It had a brief reprisal as we left the grocery store and then again when I just yelled downstairs to ask him his exact words.

I'd be interested what you think, Tracy, since you read the book first and loved it.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) (nat)

Joel and I once again procrastinated about the unpacking and ran to a movie almost as soon as we were up and moving today. This one is loooooooooooooong. Two hours and forty minutes. And it feels that long (but, thankfully, not in a Kingdom of Heaven way). The movie is beautiful. Really very stunning. Casey Affleck does a good job as does Sam Rockwell and Pitt is pretty good. Mary Louise Parker is under-used as James's wife. The story is ok, not as interesting as it could be especially if you happened to have caught 15 minutes of a History Channel show that detailed the assassination (it's not as interesting when you know exactly when James is going to be shot). And it should have ended about 4 times before it did. But the film is gorgeous. Some it is fuzzy about the edges and some of it looks as if it were shot through an old piece of glass with waves in it. The color is fantastic as is the play of light and dark. But there are some strange still shots at the end that are a bit off. Like No Country (but for very very different reasons), this one is worth a watch but be prepared for a long watch that doesn't pay off as much as it should or could.

No Country for Old Men (2007) (nat)

Not my first choice of a movie to see but I saw it because it seems like it may come into play come awards season and Joel was willing to watch it again with me (and what better way is there to avoid unpacking than going to a movie?) Anyway, I can't say there is anything wrong with the movie. It's beautifully filmed with very interesting shots, the acting is superb, the storyline is tight. Well, the exceptions are a vomit scene, a scene involving multiple needle injections, a dog being shot, and a good bit of gore but none of that is particularly gratuitous or played for shock. But it's just not a movie I especially like. It didn't speak to me at all really even though I was never bored while watching it. Worth seeing but I'm not promising it will be a favorite although Joel liked it a good deal.

The Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), and Torn Curtain (1966)

Nope. I'd never seen The Birds or Psycho. I should have never seen The Birds. That was not a good idea given my already firmly planted fear of birds. It certainly did not endear birds to me. I just sat there wide-eyed all by myself, freaking out every time I heard a little creak outside. Psycho I liked just fine. I'm not in love with it but I liked it (I was impressed with the no-gratuitous-nudity and no-flesh-wounds shower/ murder scene).

The same goes for Torn Curtain (even with Paul Newman starring--another point for the Paul Newman shows his bare chest in every movie poll). It's a Cold War era film with Cold War era politics as physicist Newman (right--this I didn't really believe even considering my love for the man) "defects" to East Germany in order to uncover the secret he needs to finish his nuclear bomb diffusing/deflecting/eliminating/or some nonsense thingamajig. Julie Andrews is engaged to him (that's something I didn't really want to see--Julie Andrews in bed with Paul Newman, or anyone really) and follows him to find out why he's going behind the Iron Curtain. Intrigue (sort-of) and suspense (sort-of) and narrow escapes (sort-of) ensue. I'd watch it again on TV but I wouldn't seek it out.

Lola (1981) (nat)

The last of the BRD Trilogy. I only watched about half of it and sent it back to Netflix. It's fine but it's too much like the other two in the trilogy to be very interesting. Blah.

AND!!

I thought the movie needed Mos Def. We had Common. Mos Def needed to be there, too.

American Gangster (2007) (nat)

The more I think about this, the more I think the movie should have been at least two films. At least two.

We could have gotten more of Lucas's background than that one story of his childhood and we could have seen some of Roberts's background--we don't get any of that and not many people become cops without some sort of family thing guiding them, especially (it seems) in New York. So that's one movie. The second could be most of what's in this film--Lucas and Roberts rising to power in their respective fields. Ok, so there have to be three. The third would be the trial and what happens afterwards. Whether that could actually be pulled off is questionable but whatever. I also think Lucas's daughter needs to be added in, especially if we're keeping Roberts's son--although that needs to be expanded to be relevant. And Roberts's law career needs to be explained more--there's a bit of a cognitive leap at the end what with the courtroom appearance and all. And that one white gangster guy needs to be explained a little bit--the one who goes into business with Lucas. And the whole Italian/Black mob dichotomy and the Jewish/whatever cop dichotomy needs more light shed in them. . . . everything needs more info. It's good as a whole but I want more info. I guess that's a good problem for the movie to have, though.

I do want to get rid of that odd voice over toward the beginning of the movie and wish that the scenes in the preview were in the film.

That's what I think about it right now.

Norman Mailer 1923-2007 (NYT article)

Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With a Matching Ego, Dies at 84

By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: November 11, 2007

Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation, died early yesterday in Manhattan. He was 84.

The cause was acute renal failure, his family said.

Mr. Mailer burst on the scene in 1948 with “The Naked and the Dead,” a partly autobiographical novel about World War II, and for six decades he was rarely far from center stage. He published more than 30 books, including novels, biographies and works of nonfiction, and twice won the Pulitzer Prize: for “The Armies of the Night” (1968), which also won the National Book Award, and “The Executioner’s Song” (1979).

He also wrote, directed and acted in several low-budget movies, helped found The Village Voice and for many years was a regular guest on television talk shows, where he could reliably be counted on to make oracular pronouncements and deliver provocative opinions, sometimes coherently and sometimes not.

Mr. Mailer belonged to the old literary school that regarded novel writing as a heroic enterprise undertaken by heroic characters with egos to match. He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

He was also the least shy and risk-averse of writers. He eagerly sought public attention, and publicity inevitably followed him on the few occasions when he tried to avoid it. His big ears, barrel chest, striking blue eyes and helmet of seemingly electrified hair — jet black at first and ultimately snow white — made him instantly recognizable, a celebrity long before most authors were lured out into the limelight.

At different points in his life Mr. Mailer was a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women’s liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing. Boxing obsessed him and inspired some of his best writing. Any time he met a critic or a reviewer, even a friendly one, he would put up his fists and drop into a crouch.

Gore Vidal, with whom he frequently wrangled, once wrote: “Mailer is forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more chance, get through to us so that we will know. Each time he speaks he must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more foolish bells. Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements.”

Mr. Mailer was a tireless worker who at his death was writing a sequel to his 2007 novel, “The Castle in the Forest.” If some of his books, written quickly and under financial pressure, were not as good as he had hoped, none of them were forgettable or without his distinctive stamp. And if he never quite succeeded in bringing off what he called “the big one” — the Great American Novel — it was not for want of trying.

Along the way, he transformed American journalism by introducing to nonfiction writing some of the techniques of the novelist and by placing at the center of his reporting a brilliant, flawed and larger-than-life character who was none other than Norman Mailer himself.

A Pampered Son
Norman Kingsley — or, in Hebrew, Nachem Malek — Mailer was born in Long Branch, N.J., on Jan. 31, 1923. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, known as Barney, was a South African émigré, a snappy dresser — he sometimes wore spats and carried a walking stick — and a largely ineffectual businessman.

The dominant figure in the family was Mr. Mailer’s mother, the former Fanny Schneider, who came from a vibrant clan in Long Branch, where her father ran a grocery and was the town’s unofficial rabbi. Though another child, Barbara, was born in 1927, Norman remained his mother’s favorite.

When Norman was 9, the family moved to Crown Heights, in Brooklyn. Pampered and doted on, he excelled at both Public School 161 and Boys High School, from which he graduated in 1939.
That fall he enrolled as a 16-year-old freshman at Harvard, where he showed up wearing a newly purchased outfit of gold-brown jacket, green-and-blue striped pants and white saddle shoes. Classmates remembered him as brash and jug-eared and full of big talk about his sexual experience. (In fact he had had very little, a lack he quickly set about rectifying.)

Mr. Mailer intended to major in aeronautical engineering, but by the time he was a sophomore, he had fallen in love with literature. He spent the summer reading and rereading James T. Farrell’s “Studs Lonigan,” John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” and John Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.,” and he began, or so he claimed, to set himself a daily quota of 3,000 words of his own, on the theory that this was the way to get bad writing out of his system. By 1941 he was sufficiently purged to win the Story magazine prize for best short story written by an undergraduate.

Mr. Mailer graduated from Harvard in 1943, determined on a literary career. He started on a thousand-page novel about a mental hospital (never published) while waiting to be drafted. He was called up by the Army in the spring of 1944, after marrying Bea Silverman in January, and was sent to the Philippines.

Mr. Mailer saw little combat in the war and finished his military career as a cook in occupied Japan. But his wartime experience, and in particular a single patrol he made on the island of Leyte, became the raw material for “The Naked and the Dead,” the book that put him on the map.

Mr. Mailer wrote the novel, which is about a 13-man platoon fighting the Japanese on a Pacific atoll, in 15 months or so, and when it was published it was almost universally praised — the last time this would happen to him. Some critics ranked it among the best war novels ever written.
“The Naked and the Dead” sold 200,000 copies in just three months — a huge number in those days — and remains Mr. Mailer’s greatest literary and commercial success, even though it is in part an apprentice work, owing a large and transparent debt to Dos Passos, Tolstoy and Farrell.
Mr. Mailer later said of it: “Part of me thought it was possibly the greatest book written since ‘War and Peace.’ On the other hand I also thought, ‘I don’t know anything about writing. I’m virtually an impostor.’ ”

‘Daring the Unknown’
His second book, “Barbary Shore” (1951), a political novel about, among other things, the struggle between capitalism and socialism, earned what Mr. Mailer called “possibly the worst reviews of any serious novel in recent years.” A third, “The Deer Park” (1955), in part a fictionalized account of Elia Kazan’s troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee, fared only a little better, and for the rest of the decade he wrote no fiction at all.

For much of the ’50s he drifted, frequently drunk or stoned or both, and affected odd accents: British, Irish, gangster, Texan. In 1955, together with two friends, Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher, he founded The Village Voice, and while writing a column for that paper he began to evolve what became his trademark style — bold, poetic, metaphysical, even shamanistic at times — and his personal philosophy of hipsterism.

It was a homespun, Greenwich Village version of existentialism, which argued that the truly with-it, blacks and jazz musicians especially, led more authentic lives and enjoyed better orgasms.

The most famous, or infamous, version of this philosophy was Mr. Mailer’s controversial 1957 essay “The White Negro,” which seemed to endorse violence as an existential act and declared the murder of a white candy-store owner by two 18-year-old blacks an example of “daring the unknown.”

In November 1960, Mr. Mailer stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife, seriously wounding her. It happened at the end of an all-night party announcing Mr. Mailer’s intention to run in the 1961 mayoral campaign, and he, like many of his guests, had been drinking heavily. Mr. Mailer was arrested, but his wife declined to press charges, and he was eventually released after being sent to Bellevue Hospital for observation. The marriage broke up two years later.

All told, Mr. Mailer was married six times, counting a quickie with Carol Stevens, whom he wed and divorced within a couple of days in 1980 to grant legitimacy to their daughter, Maggie. His other wives, in addition to Ms. Silverman and Ms. Morales, were Lady Jeanne Campbell, granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook; Beverly Rentz Bentley; and Norris Church, with whom he was living at his death. Lady Jeanne died in June.

In the 1970s Mr. Mailer entered into a long feud with feminists and proponents of women’s liberation, and in a famous 1971 debate with Germaine Greer at Town Hall in Manhattan he declared himself an “enemy of birth control.”

He meant it. By his various wives, Mr. Mailer had eight children, all of whom survive him: Susan, by Ms. Silverman; Danielle and Elizabeth Anne, by Ms. Morales; Kate, by Lady Jeanne; Michael Burks and Stephen McLeod, by Ms. Bentley; Maggie Alexandra, by Ms. Stevens; and John Buffalo, by Ms. Church. Also surviving are an adopted son, Matthew, by an earlier marriage of Ms. Church’s, and 10 grandchildren.

For all his hipsterism, Mr. Mailer was an old-fashioned, attentive father. Starting in the 1960s, the financial burden of feeding and clothing his offspring, as well as keeping up with his numerous alimony payments, caused him to churn out a couple of novels, including “An American Dream” (1965), for the sake of a quick payday and also to take on freelance magazine assignments.

A series of articles for Esquire on the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions became the basis for his book “Miami and the Siege of Chicago,” and articles for Harper’s and Commentary about the 1967 antiwar march on the Pentagon were the basis for the prizewinning book “The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History.”

‘Servant to a Wild Man’
The beginning of “Armies” is both a good summary of Mr. Mailer’s life to that point and an example of how he had begun to turn himself into a character in which literary style and selfhood were virtually indistinguishable:

“As Mailer had come to recognize over the years, the modest everyday fellow of his daily round was servant to a wild man in himself: The gent did not appear so very often, sometimes so rarely as once a month, sometimes not even twice a year, and he sometimes came when Mailer was frightened and furious at the fear, sometimes he came just to get a breath of fresh air. He was indispensable, however, and Mailer was even fond of him, for the wild man was witty in his own wild way and absolutely fearless. He would have been admirable, except that he was an absolute egomaniac, a Beast — no recognition existed of the existence of anything beyond the range of his reach.”

The critic Richard Gilman said of the book: “In ‘Armies of the Night,’ the rough force of Mailer’s imagination, his brilliant wayward gifts of observation, his ravishing if often calculated honesty and his chutzpah all flourish on the steady ground of a newly coherent subject and theme.”
Alfred Kazin praised the book for its “admirable sensibilities, candid intelligence” and “most moving concern for America itself.”

Somehow in this busy decade Mr. Mailer also managed to write “Of a Fire on the Moon,” about the 1969 lunar landing, which began as a series for Life magazine; to make his most famous movie, “Maidstone,” during the filming of which he bit off part of an ear of the actor Rip Torn after Mr. Torn attacked him with a hammer; and to run finally for mayor of New York, this time as a secessionist candidate, campaigning to make New York City the 51st state. He also proposed to ban private automobiles from the city.

The writer Jimmy Breslin, who was also on the ticket, thought the race was a lark until, at a disastrous rally at the Village Gate nightclub, he discovered that Mr. Mailer was serious. Mr. Breslin later recalled, “I found out I was running with Ezra Pound.” (The Mailer team eventually lost in the Democratic primary to Mario Procaccino, who was beaten in the election by John V. Lindsay.)

In an interview in September 2006, Mr. Mailer said his favorite novel, if not his best, was “Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” a mystery thriller he wrote, under extreme financial pressure, in just two months in 1984. He was in tax trouble, he explained, and needed to crank something out quickly. “I was prepared to write a bad book if necessary,” he said, “but instead the style came out, and that saved it for me.”

His best book, he decided after thinking for a moment, was “Ancient Evenings” (1983), a long novel about ancient Egypt that received what had by then become familiar critical treatment: extravagantly praised in some quarters, disdained in others. About the book that many critics consider his masterpiece, “The Executioner’s Song,” he said he had mixed feelings because it wasn’t entirely his project.

“The Executioner’s Song,” which is about Gary Gilmore, a convicted murderer who, after a stay on death row, asked to be executed by the State of Utah in 1976, was the idea of Lawrence Schiller, a writer and filmmaker who did much of the reporting for the book, taping Mr. Gilmore and his family.

But in “The Executioner’s Song,” Mr. Mailer recast this material in what was for him a new impersonal voice that rendered the thoughts of his characters in a style partly drawn from their own way of talking. He called it a “true-life novel.”

Joan Didion, reviewing the book for The New York Times Book Review, said: “It is ambitious to the point of vertigo. It is a largely unremarked fact about Mailer that he is a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story. His sentences do not get long or short by accident, or because he is in a hurry. I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book. The authentic Western voice, the voice heard in ‘The Executioner’s Song,’ is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature.”

Mr. Schiller also assisted Mr. Mailer with “Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery,” his 1995 book about Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s assassin. In a review for The Sunday Times of London, Martin Amis called the book a “remarkable feat of imaginative sympathy.” But Mr. Amis also noted that it recalled Mr. Mailer’s championing of the convict Jack Henry Abbott, which displayed, he said, the author’s “old weakness for any killer who has puzzled his way through a few pages of Marx.”

Mr. Abbott was serving a long sentence in a Utah prison for forgery and for killing a fellow inmate when, in 1977, he began writing to Mr. Mailer. Mr. Mailer saw literary talent in Mr. Abbott’s letters and helped him publish them in an acclaimed volume called “In the Belly of the Beast.” He also lobbied to get Mr. Abbott paroled. A few weeks after being released, in June 1981, Mr. Abbott, now a darling in leftist literary circles, stabbed to death a waiter in a Lower East Side restaurant, and his champion became a target of national outrage.

Black-Tie Benefits
The episode was the last great controversy of Mr. Mailer’s career. Chastened perhaps, and stabilized by his marriage to Ms. Church, a former model whom he wed in November 1980, Mr. Mailer mellowed and even turned sedate. The former hostess-baiter and scourge of parties became a regular guest at black-tie benefits and dinners given by the likes of William S. Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt and Oscar de la Renta. His editor, Jason Epstein, said of this period, “There are two sides to Norman Mailer, and the good side has won.”

In 1984 Mr. Mailer was elected president of PEN American Center, the writers’ organization, and was the main force in bringing together writers from all over the world for a much publicized literary conference called “The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State.” For a change, Mr. Mailer even found himself attacked from the left as many of the attendees protested about his inviting George P. Shultz, then secretary of state, to address the opening session. Mr. Mailer dismissed them as “puritanical leftists.”

In the ’90s Mr. Mailer’s health began to fail. He had arthritis and angina and was fitted with two hearing aids. But his productivity was undiminished, especially after he embarked on what he called a “monastic regime” in 1995, swearing off drinking when he was working.

“Bellow and myself and a couple of others were very much smaller than Faulkner and Hemingway,” he conceded early in the decade, but he never backed off from the claim that among his contemporaries he was the heavyweight champion.

In 1991 he published “Harlot’s Ghost,” a 1,310-page novel about the Central Intelligence Agency, in which he conceived of it as a kind of cold-war church, the keeper of the nation’s secrets and the bearer of its values. A poorly received biography of Picasso came out in 1995, followed in 1997 by “The Gospel According to the Son,” a first-person novel about Jesus. It gave some critics the opportunity they had been waiting for. Norman Mailer thinks he’s God, they said.

Mr. Mailer’s next novel, “The Castle in the Forest,” was about Hitler, but the narrator was a devil, a persona the author admitted he found particularly congenial. “It’s as close as a writer gets to unrequited joy,” he said. “We are devils when all is said and done.”

Interviewed at his house in Provincetown, Mass., shortly before that book’s publication, Mr. Mailer, frail but cheerful, said he hoped his failing eyesight would hold out long enough for him to complete a sequel. His knees were shot, he added, holding up the two canes he walked with, and he had begun doing daily crossword puzzles to refresh his word hoard.

On the other hand, he said, writing was now easier for him in at least one respect.

“The waste is less,” he said. “The elements of mania and depression are diminished. Writing is a serious and sober activity for me now compared to when I was younger. The question of how good are you is one that really good novelists obsess about more than poor ones. Good novelists are always terribly affected by the fear that they’re not as good as they thought and why are they doing it, what are they up to?

“It’s such an odd notion, particularly in this technological society, of whether your life is justified by being a novelist,” he continued. “And the nice thing about getting older is that I no longer worry about that. I’ve come to the simple recognition that would have saved me much woe 30 or 40 or 50 years ago — that one’s eventual reputation has very little to do with one’s talent. History determines it, not the order of your words.”

Shaking his head, he added: “In two years I will have been a published novelist for 60 years. That’s not true for very many of us.” And he recalled something he had said at the National Book Award ceremony in 2005, when he was given a lifetime achievement award: that he felt like an old coachmaker who looks with horror at the turn of the 20th century, watching automobiles roar by with their fumes.

“I think the novel is on the way out,” he said. “I also believe, because it’s natural to take one’s own occupation more seriously than others, that the world may be the less for that.”

Veronika Voss (1982) (nat)

The title is also translated (from German) as "The Longing of Veronika Voss," which is probably the better title. It's the last of the trilogy released although (according to wikipedia) the second of the trilogy--apparently Lola was marked "BRD 3" when it was released the year earlier--which was how Fassbinder "announced" that the movies were a trilogy. So I'm sort of watching them in order, while still out of order. . . . .

This one was different in that it was in black and white and did some very interesting things in terms of light. But the film carries the same thematic element of a very disturbed, desperate woman post-WWII. Veronika Voss is an aging movie star, formerly close friends with Goebbels (although this is only briefly mentioned), who has become addicted to morphine and, therefore, dependent upon her "doctor." Voss gets a (sort-of dimwitted) sports writer entangled in her life which she pathetically tries to make glamorous again--complete with a movie role playing the mother to the newest actress on the scene.

There is also an odd appearance of the actor Gunther Kaufmann--he is an American GI/morphine dealer in this movie but was a random, belligerent American GI on the train in The Marriage of Maria Braun and apparently is a GI in Lola . . . . . Why do all three have a random, black, American soldier? Oh, wait. I just looked him up. He was in most of Fassbinder's films because the latter was "madly in love" with Kauffman and they carried on a long long affair. Here's more: http://www.hollywood.com/celebrity/Gunther_Kaufmann/187231

The movie reeks of Sunset Blvd. but is better than the earlier movie, in my opinion. If nothing else, see it for the play of light and dark.

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (nat)

This one is part of a trilogy (only determined a trilogy after the release of the third film and only thematically connected): The BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, West Germany) Trilogy which consists of this film, Veronika Voss, and Lola. Maria Braun is a woman in West Germany whose husband is lost in the war (end of WWII) just a half a day and a night after they are married. Maria has to then do what she can to help her family (mother, grandfather, and a close friend) survive the post-war poverty. She ends up transforming from a loving, hopeful wife into something of a manipulative cold bitch.

The clothes (and their transformation as she changes) are interesting and the hair is amusing because it obviously shows not only a certain post-WWII historical accuracy but a pre-1980s accuracy. I think she may have made use of a banana clip more than once. And I totally pegged the director cameo without having seen a photo of him. :-)

Anyway, it's a bit of a heartbreaking love story about a woman thwarted at every turn and unable to be with the man she loves. But the means by which she manages to survive, thrive, and flourish as an independent woman complicate the matter, and she ends us thwarting herself as much as, if not more than, the outside circumstances have done the same. Her downfall is interesting in terms of her getting a dose of her own medicine. She's heartbroken by someone else using her own methods of survival and love. But, throughout, I thought she remained something of a sympathetic character.

It's a tad bit slow but worth a watch--the other two aren't on the list but I think I might watch those anyway (yes, I'm obviously OCD).

Fat Girl (2001) (nat)

One would think I've learned by now not to watch these movies before going to bed, especially the foreign ones. This one is just terrible. Supposedly it's about Anais, a twelve year old girl who is overweight. What it's really about it Anais's fifteen year old sister, Elena (who is thin and pretty), and her sexual awakening and it's really extreme consequences. It includes a vomit scene and another thing to add to my list of things I just don't need to see on film--the application of a condom. Really. I can use my imagination. Thanks.

The whole film is problematic. The basic premise is that an Italian college student is trying his damnedest to take Elena's virginity with all sorts of "it doesn't count if we do this," "I love you, won't you show that you love me," various promises, and even a proposal. Elena is excited and scared to lose her virginity but wants to do so with someone she loves whereas Anais is an incredibly grim and pessimistic twelve year old who asserts she'd rather the guy not love her and vice versa because, once it's over, any man most certainly won't love her. Add a couple of supposedly over-protective but really mostly absent and vacant parents, and you've got the story.

But what is most outrageously problematic is the ending. It's terrible and awful and just disgusting really. Not a fan of this one at all, not one bit. No no no.

Hairspray (2007) (nat)

V-A-N-I-L-L-A. (though I watched it on the plane so maybe it was edited? Didn't seem edited, though)

And slightly racially problematic for a movie about racial integration . . . .

I wouldn't bother watching it until it comes on TV and you have nothing better to do.

Un chien andalou [An Andalusian Dog] (1929) (nat)

Joel and I saw this 16 minute silent film at the LACMA Dali and Film exhibit. It's a collaboration between Dali and Luis Bunuel (~ on that n) and it makes absolutely not a damned bit of sense. At the very beginning a man slices open a woman's eyeball with straight razor, at another point ants stream out of a hole in a man's hand, someone gets hit by a car . . . . . There isn't a plot of any recognizable sort and none of the usual somewhat helpful subtitles (only time indicators that don't run in any chronological order).

Before watching this in the gallery, we attended part of the worst lecture ever given. The woman had notes but it really seemed like she'd been told two minutes before the lecture that she'd be giving a lecture on a subject she knew nothing about. She said she'd "read some things" and they said . . . . but never cited the sources. And she actually said at one point "if the relationship [between Dali and Bunuel] wasn't homosexual, it was right there between them." What?

Identity (2003) nat

A smart and scary psychological thriller starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina, and Ray Liotta. All I can really write is that it’s about 10 people caught in a rainstorm at a scary out of the way hotel. They all start dying one by one and have to figure out how they are all connected in order to escape. I didn’t see the major plot twist coming—I was also not paying a super lot of attention because I was carving a pumpkin while watching the movie—but I thought it was fairly smart and interesting. Worth a watch.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002) (nat)

I'd seen this one before but Joel and I bought it while waiting to eat at Cheesecake last night--he hadn't seen it and I like it a lot. It's about Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Senay (Audrey Tautou) who are illegal immigrants in England, him from Lagos, she from Turkey. They both work in a hotel when some strange things start to come to the surface. Okwe finds a human heart lodged in a toilet and then things start to unravel. Senay is pursued by the immigration authorities and falls in love with the emotionally closed Okwe. The movie was in the "thriller and horror" section of the DVDs but I wouldn't really classify it as either. It's a tad suspenseful and definitely dark but not a thriller or a horror movie in my book--just a drama with a macabre tinge to it. Anyway, it's very good and Ejiofor won all sorts of awards for his acting in it. Definitely worth a watch.

Horror Hotel (1960) (nat)

Also titled, The City of the Dead, this one has Christopher Lee as Alan Driscoll, a professor of witchcraft who sends a student, Nan Barlow (young, pretty, and blonde, of course), to research her term paper in Whitewood (a tiny, New England town untouched by time) and stay at the Raven's Inn, which is own by Mrs. Newless (a friend of Driscoll's--he was born in the town). The town's claim to fame is that it burned the witch Elizabeth Selwyn in 1692--this is the opening scene of the movie. Nan goes to the town, much to the dismay of her science professor brother and science-minded boyfriend. There she stays at the creepy Raven's Inn in a room with a trap door in the floor and a mute servant girl who keeps trying to tell her something. She goes about her "research" (which really consists of reading a book loaned to her by Patricia Russell, the priest's granddaughter who has just returned to town) and is oblivious to the similarities in what she finds out about Candelmas Eve (when the witches sacrifice a girl) and what's going on right now in her life even though she's reading a book describing what's happening right now and Alan Driscoll told her that Elizabeth Selwyn was supposedly still alive and well and Driscoll looks ominous and threatening ALL the time. There's a completely gratuitous lingerie shot and then she's trapped and sacrificed. Her brother, boyfriend, and Patricia (who the brother obviously has a thing for and vice versa) try to figure out what has happened to Nan after she mysteriously disappears--the brother and the boyfriend both descend upon Whitewood. Then, low and behold, it's the Witches' Sabbath, the other night when the witches have to sacrifice a girl. Patricia is marked for sacrifice and the brother has to save her. Remarkably, the flirtation between Patricia and the brother doesn't amount to much and no one seems very sad or upset when they finally figure out that Nan has been killed . . . . it's as if saving Patricia stacks up to saving Nan. As long as we save the one girl . . . .



Not a terrible movie but sleepy, definitely, and full of plot holes (like the lack of emotion over the dead sister/girlfriend)--we watched it because it was the first on Joel's new "Horror Classic Movies" boxed set.

Stand by Me (1986) (nat)

No, I've somehow never seen this movie. I knew the basic plot and cultural knowledge associated with it but never actually saw the movie. I would have been too young to see it when it first came out and somehow missed it ever since. And since even I knew the plot, I won't rehash it here. Regardless, I liked it. Little boys get interesting ideas in their heads, though. It would have never been appealing to me to go find a dead body but it seems to make sense that these kids would go in search of the dead boy to escape their lives for a little bit. The movie did remind me of two more things I could do without in movies (and, really, in life in general): eating contests and leeches.

Clerks (1994) (nat)

I think I needed to have seen this one when I was younger (well, meaning closer to the release of the movie). Then I would have loved it. I like it now but only sort of chuckled at the funny parts . . . . except Silent Bob dancing, that made the whole movie for me but we all know how I feel about awkward running and funny dancing in movies.

Everyone else on earth has seen it--but it's about a day in the lives of a convenience store clerk and a movie rental store clerk including a hockey game, a chewing gum rep who rebukes cigarette smoking, a dead guy in the bathroom, a wake for a dead ex-girlfriend, encounters with the current girlfriend, the reappearance of another ex-girlfriend and her encounter with the dead guy in the bathroom . . . .

It's funny and I'm glad I saw it but I like the Kevin Smith movies I saw closer to their release date better: Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, even Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

City of God (2002) (nat)

I have a terrible memory for movies. I swore I'd seen Fight Club only to find out while showing it a class of freshmen that I had not. I swore I'd seen Like Water for Chocolate, even bought it, but, no, I'd seen another movie (that I still haven't identified) with a somewhat similar plot. I swore I'd seen Emma with Gwenyth Paltrow and bought that one too, nope, hadn't seen it. And it works the other way around, too. I have City of God from Netflix and went to watch it tonight, to make 193 of the list. Ten seconds in, I knew I'd watched it before. And, not only watched it, but gotten it from Netflix. I looked and, yes, I'd watched it a year ago June. Nothing is more aggravating (at this moment, anyway) than getting geared up and settling in to watch a movie that's over two hours long and realizing that you've seen it. Grrr, but I guess that's a super great rationale for this blog. I'd end up watching the same three movies over and over while swearing I'd seen ten others that I haven't.

Anyway, I did like the movie last time I saw it. I'm not going to watch it again because I didn't think it was super. It's about two boys growing up in Argentina and having to navigate the violence in order to just be able to grow up. The movie is beautifully shot and, if I remember right (which we know may not be true particularly given the subject of this post), it doesn't seem like the two hours ten minutes it runs. Not one I feel the need to own but definitely one to watch.

Meanwhile, Netflix really should help a absent-minded girl out and say, "you already saw that one, sure you want it sent again?" Oh well, off to see what else I can watch. . . .

Gone Baby Gone(r) (2007) (nat)

Super good movie. Bit of a downer but that's ok. Casey Affleck is Patrick Kenzie and Michelle Monaghan is Angie Gennaro. The two are living together and have a private investigation business (more or less a repo business) when they are approached by the frantic aunt of a missing little girl. They take on the case, against Angie's intuition, and find themselves in the middle of a lot of sticky, morally ambiguous situations.

Affleck is brilliant. Who knew he could pull off a well-rounded, well-thought-out, serious character with any real emotion or talent? (Well, I guess Ben thought maybe that would work out). He's at his best, I think, when he's giving the seemingly off the cuff, million words a minute, I'm-telling-you-exactly-what-the-situation-is-and-I'm-not-taking-any-of-your-nonsense speaches. Ed Harris is good as Det. Remy Bressant. But too much depends on the intense plot twists to say too much about the characters themselves. I did like and appreciate that they didn't make Angie the advocate of the mother as if all women bond over being mothers or the potential to be mothers.

Definitely a morally tricky movie. It's not a feel good story at all. It might be interesting to teach--it's based on a Dennis Lehane novel of the same name but I've never heard of him much less read any of his books (I'm guessing it may be a little airport-fictiony?)

William Carlos Williams (1920s) (nat)

I don't get poetry. I try. I really do. But the little things in my brain that would make poetry work are lost to the darkness with whatever would help me read Cormac McCarthy.

The anthology has two selections from Williams: "To Elsie" and "All the Fancy Things." And that's all I can say about the actual poems.

I do want to take the introduction to Williams for task. Without knowing much about the man or his poetry, I think the information is just plain wrongheaded. It quotes, Julio Marzan's (accent on that last a) "groundbreaking study" The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams. He says that Williams's need to understand and possess America is due to his "mixed ancestry" and that

the 'America' in the question is not narrowly the United States, but the hemispheric America that Columbus stumbled onto. Elena's [Williams's mother] being from Puerto Rico, one of the sites where Columbus is believed to have actually set foot, and from a Spanish-speaking line that mingles its blood with the continent, made that 'America' Williams' legacy. He was an American and a 'pure product of America' because his mother was Puerto Rican.

What? He was American because he grew up in the country. I know the pc connotations of the word and that all North and South Americans are "American." But I think the critic is really reaching for it by making the "because his mother was Puerto Rican" and because Columbus might have "set foot" in Puerto Rico that means Williams is a real American. That's just nonsense. Most immigrant fiction (especially that of children born in the US of immigrant parents) is about trying to be more like the people in the US, to fit in with the clothes, the food, the language. Like any kid trying to be cool and brush off the dust of their parents' generation, the children of immigrants are trying to fit in and, more often than not, trying to sever their roots at their own feet. Puerto Rico, despite being a US territory or whatever it's called, is just not like the mainland of the country. And, despite any of that, the critic fails to pay any attention (at least in this quote, which may have been poorly chosen) to the father, who was of Caribbean (no mention of which country) descent but was born in and immigrated to the US from England. That means he's half British (via the Caribbean somehow), which is most certainly not American. I just think it's an incredibly silly and ill-founded argument to say that Williams is trying to be American because his mother was from a territory (and Columbus really has nothing to do with any of it).

"The Rebel Is a Girl" from The Rebel (1920) (nat)

This is part of my new effort to read some "ethnic" literature so as to please the job market gods who will inevitably laugh uproariously at my pale white girl self for even feigning to read anything "ethnic." Regardless, here I go. All of these are in an anthology, The Latino Reader (it's not like they make an "ethnic" reader--and thanks to JD for the recommendation), so some of them are excerpts.

Anyway, the first is "The Rebel Is a Girl" from the autobiographical novel The Rebel by Leonor Villegas de Magnon (supposed to be an accent on that last o). The selection is a little schizophrenic. It begins detailing the poor people who live on the banks of the Rio Grande until storms come and raise the water level, threatening their homes, possessions, and lives with drowning. The story then moves to a group of bandits who ride through the poor sections looting but with the ultimate goal of arriving at the home of Don Joaquin (accent on the i) who has just gotten a stock of wine. They go, drink Don Joaquin's wine, and threaten his home only to be stopped by the sight of his wife having just given birth. Moments later the Federals come knocking, looking for the rebels (who have scattered). Don Joaquin shows them to the rebel--his newborn daughter. The Federals say, "a man child" and the don replies "the rebel is a girl," which prompts the Federals to leave. We then join The Rebel all grown up with a husband and kids of her own while she is a revolutionary working against the government in the Mexican Revolution. She and another woman rescue imprisoned soldiers with the help of the faithful Pancho (who was her father's servant). They also encounter a woman who brings telegrams with important information to The Rebel. And that's about it.

I'm just not sure what to do with this. All of that happened in a little over 13 pages--not much was devoted to any of the plot points and it seems just as I'm getting interested in one aspect, the author switches modes dramatically. I actually was more interested in the poor people moving house away from the river and that's only about a page of the selection. There is also a fair amount of awkward exposition about the historical situation--odd, out of narrative voice, let's give you a history lesson so you can understand the impact this story should have on you sections--when the author really should have been able to get me that information and make it more dynamic and important to the action of the story that I felt how important The Rebel was to the movement. Instead, I have little to no idea about the historical situation, what exactly The Rebel was doing, how it impacted the situation, nothing. I would hope the novel as a whole is much better or I'd feel schizophrenic after a few chapters and would wonder at the use of "recovering" this one (the author tried to publish it in Spanish in the 20s, failed, tried to publish it in English in the 40s, failed, a scholar found it and campaigned for it, finally getting it published in 94--39 years after the author's death).

We're off to a roaring positive start with my new project, huh? Next is William Carlos Williams. We all know how well I do with poetry . . . .

Run (2007) (nat)

Ok. So. This is not Bel Canto. I know that's my refrain if you've talked to me in the past few days. But I love that book. And Run is not Bel Canto. I have to remind myself to let this newer book try to make it on its own instead of being smushed by the earlier (better) book. Regardless, Run (by Anne Patchett) isn't bad. I love the way Patchett writes and I like the general idea of the storyline and I found myself genuinely interested in all of the characters. Ok, that's all of the general information--the rest contains spoilers (which I'm going to try to put in the same color as the background so it should only be seen if you highlight it--we'll see if that works out for me).





My first concern is that the reviewers let it slip that Tennessee dies. She doesn't die until the penultimate chapter and at the very very end of that chapter. We get an idea she might die in an earlier chapter but nothing is confirmed until later. I don't like knowing about the end before it happens unless the author has intimated something. And I don't like waiting for that event to happen, thinking that the book will actually "happen" after that point. It was like waiting for the murder/trial in Stranger in the Kingdom. It's unsettling and leaves me less than invested in a character that isn't dead yet.

My second concern is the conversation between Tennessee and Tennessee. So, it's a dream or hallucination or step into the afterlife, whatever. But are we to take that information seriously? If we are, Kenya is not the dying woman's daughter and, therefore, is not the sister of Tip and Teddy. Yet there are several points at which her hands are noticed as similar to Tip/Teddy, her running ability matched to Tip/Teddy, her personality, etc. This is where there's the slight possibility of a "they all look alike" statement, making Patchett racist. I don't think that's the case and think the argument is a stretch. But I don't know what we are to do with the information that the dying Tennessee is not Kenya's mother. That makes me question whether she is Teddy's mother (because he was placed first and she assumed from only a photo that he was her child). I can deal with Tennessee not being Kenya's mother but then that seems to make some sort of "better with the white man even though she's not the boys' sister" statement that I'm not comfortable with. I can handle a "family no matter what, regardless of blood relation, etc" statement. But that seems problematic because parents aren't the most reliable thing in this novel. Tennessee gives up Tip and Teddy. Bernadette dies. Kenya's father is somewhere but not with her. Kenya's birth mother dies. Kenya is "adopted" by Tennessee who drags her around to look at her "real" children. And Bernard Doyle trades in children every now and then; Sullivan wasn't working out so he paid more attention to Tip/Teddy and then Tip/Teddy weren't doing what he wanted so Kenya became his favorite. He's a good dad but he's made some major mistakes. And all of this seems to say that mothers are not all that necessary. Three of them die in the novel and the best case scenario for Kenya is to live with Doyle. Regardless of all of that, I don't know what we are supposed to do with the information. That's a pretty big thing to drop in the lap of the reader--Oh yeah, this woman who you think is Kenya's mother? She's not but no one knows that. Meanwhile Kenya feels a strong bond to men she's never met because she's been lied to about a biological relationship. Ok. We're done with that. On with the story I want to be telling about Kenya being related to Tip/Teddy. That's a problem.

MAJOR PROBLEM! Kenya being promised the statue of the Virgin. She never met Bernadette! I don't like that one bit. I think Sullivan or Teddy should have gotten it because there were no girls before Bernadette died and the statue was passed on based on appearance or disposition--Sullivan looks most like the statue and Teddy acts most like her. It should probably go to Sullivan because he really got the short end of the stick in this whole situation. That scene at the end at the graduation where its finally realized that Doyle is making Kenya a favorite and Sullivan has been knocked further down on the totem pole is very sad. I wanted to know more about Sullivan.

Ok. I think those are my major issues with the book. And, even though that's a big rant up there about the Kenya's biological mother situation, if you can get past that problem, the book works on every other level.

I do wish there had been more about Sullivan. He was probably my favorite although it is unnerving to see my name in a novel--I don't know if it's happened before now. I almost would have preferred that he adopt Kenya rather than Doyle. Hmmmm.

I didn't read with a pen in hand (I know, silly me) so I didn't underline anything but a line stuck out nonetheless--when the older Sullivan, the priest, is thinking about his healing powers and his death he says something like, it would be a shame to miss God looking for Him. I just think that's a wonderfully simple but important idea. Religious or no, looking for the all-important, end-all-be-all of anything will often result in overlooking the thing itself which is quite often very simple.

I love the scenes where each man finds his bond with Kenya. Teddy comforting her at the scene of the accident (does he have a bonding moment with her after he finds out she's his sister?). Tip being thrilled that she's interested in the fish. Doyle loving that she hears the stream in his music. And Sullivan's first meeting with her--maybe that's why I like him the most, he seems the least reserved, the least outwardly concerned with how all of this will effect him and understands that at the moment it's about a little girl whose mother has been hit by a car.

And I like Kenya. I like that she reminds herself to be honest (having no idea who Thoreau is). And I think Patchett just nailed her character with things like being simultaneously scared and thrilled that there were new things to be discovered (I had to laugh at her thinking all of the birds had yet to be discovered). And the cadence of the writing seems to mimic Kenya's movement--that calm that builds and builds until she just bursts with energy and has to run.

I do like the book a good bit. I just wish I could cut out that Tennessee/Tennessee conversation.

The Jazz Singer (1927) (nat)

Oh. My. God.

First, this is a silent movie; the first to have synchronized talking/singing sequences (i.e. lip-synching). So that's painful for me.

Second, it's terribly terribly racist. Terribly.

So little Jakie Rabinowitz is Jewish and living in a New York "ghetto" with his mother and father. His father is the cantor and wants Jakie to follow his lead. Jakie is a quite good singer and knows all of the songs. The little boy, however, has other plans. He wants to be a jazz singer. He sneaks off to the beer garden to sing and makes his father mad. Little Jakie persists, leaving home to pursue his dream, at which point his father disowns him. He stays in contact with his mother and changes his name to Jack Robin, much to the chagrin of his father. He gets to play Broadway, finds a nice non-Jewish girl, and gets to be a jazz singer. Then his father falls ill and his mother comes to retrieve him so that Jakie can sing on the Day of Atonement. He finishes the dress rehearsal that's in progress first but then goes home to see his dying father. Jakie sings for the Day of Atonement the next night, cancelling the opening night of his show, and his father dies while he sings. His jazz singing begins again the following night as his show opens.

So, all of that, in and of itself, isn't too terribly bad. He's rejecting his Jewish heritage for something less traditional but kids do that every single day. While it's not a great portrayal of the Jewish faith, it's no worse than if the kid decided he wanted to be a singer instead of a baker like his parents. And, while he leaves his faith, he doesn't dismiss is as useless and he does come back to it when it matters (when there would be no cantor for the Day of Atonement, when his father needs him most). Where this movie becomes incredibly problematic is the inexplicable use of blackface. When Jack Robin is on stage as a jazz singer, he's in full on blackface with a nappy wig. Why? Who knows. One could say jazz is a black tradition. Sure. No one is going to argue with that. But in the 20s jazz went Broadway (which is where Robing was performing) and big band, which is to say it went white. So there is no overwhelming reason for Robin to be in blackface. And it makes today's viewer uncomfortable for no real reason. Historically interesting as the first integration of synchronized talking/singing so I can at least see why it's on the list but otherwise . . . . not so much my cup of tea.

Barbarian Invasions (2003) (nat)

The 2003 winner of the best foreign language film Oscar is D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G!! But not in a it's-still-a-good-movie way. In a I-can't-believe-I-just-watched-someone-die-and-didn't-learn-a-thing-from-it way. The basic plot is that Remy is dying of cancer. He's in a hospital in Montreal and thanks to the poor healthcare situation, he's in a room with two other guys (he's lucky he's not in the hallway) and he's not receiving the best care ever. His ex-wife Louise calls their son Sebastien (all of these names have accents I can't replicate here) who lives in London and is quite rich; she asks Sebastien to come and help with his father. He and his fiancee, Gaelle, come and shake things up. More or less, Sebastien bribes everyone he comes in contact with to get "the best" for his father even though his father is a womanizing cad who cheated on his mother 6 months after they were married and kept up multiple affairs throughout his life and the father/son duo never had a real relationship. Sebastien bribes his way into a private room (on a closed floor of the hospital), bribes the union to get their help, bribes the nurses, takes his father to the US for expensive tests that he sends to a friend overseas to interpret, bribes his father's former students to visit, essentially bribes his father's friends to come visit . . . . . The apparent moral of the story is if you've got a stack of bills, you, too, can connect with your dying father. Further adding to the morality of the story is that the overseas doctor friend recommends heroine over the prescribed morphine. To the dr's credit, he recommends a trial that is testing the benefits. St. Sebastien, however, goes to the local police department and asks a couple of narcotics officers where to score. That only sort of works in that they tell him to ask some "musicians and poets"---ta da--his father's friends are just that, a bunch of academic sorts who have illicit affairs, drink a lot of wine, eat things like scrambled eggs and truffles, smoke pot, change political alliances frequently . . . . . you know the sort. Well, low and behold, one of his father's former mistresses (that's right, in that group of friends is not one, but two, former mistresses--visiting while the ex-wife is there and there seem to be no grudges) has a daughter (named Nathalie) who just happens to be a junkie. She scores for herself and the father and, along the way (of course!) learns the errors of her junky ways. The heroine "helps" (really in the same way morphine would, just lessening the pain) but then they all decide to take the dying man to the lake house of one of the friends where he miraculously does not get better and the junky (who is now on methadone) helps euthanize him. Meanwhile there are some longing looks at Sebastien from the junky and some semi-aware looks at her from the fiancee and the fiancee gives some sort of speech to the father about love that I didn't quite get but nothing seems to materialize out of any of this--the junky gets to live in the father's flat where he seduced many woman and Sebastien and the fiancee fly home to London. Also, it is, of course, wintery when the man dies. Overwrought pathetic fallacy, anyone?

I really can see absolutely no reason why this movie is on the list. It's not that good. The acting isn't spectacular. The story isn't that interesting. It doesn't make that much of a statement about the medical care situation in Montreal (the man was going to die anyway and the "help" the son gave was of the illegal sort not the correct-medical-neglect sort and there isn't any indication that the morphine wasn't working). It doesn't make a big statement about father/son relationships or friendships or marriages or gay relationships or father/daughter relationships (all of which are included--I mean what's an academic without a gay friend?) No big statement about academia--I couldn't even really figure out what the man taught (politics? history? philosophy?). No live life to the fullest nonsense. No give up and die already edict. No condemnation or endorsement of drug use. No condemnation or endorsement of police looking the other way. Lots of religious references but no real payoff. No going to God. No rebuttal of God. Nothing but a man dying. And that's not really movie worthy.

Michael Clayton (2007) (nat)

Because writing this is more fun than writing a "statement of current research"--yick! Anyway, Tracy and I saw this today as part of our day o' fun. It's not really a "fun" movie, but it is quite good. More of a character study than the thriller the previews make it out to be. And a much simpler plot than the previews or any of the articles I read intimated. Clooney is fantastic, as usual, and I could handle Tilda Swinton even though she scares me a little and I want to know if she was wearing padding around her middle. And she delivered my favorite line of the whole movie perfectly: "You don't want my money?" Anyway, Clayton (Clooney) is a "fixer" for a law firm--that is just the job it sounds like with all of the moral ambiguities thrown in--and he's good at his job. He also has a young son from a failed marriage, a gambling problem, and a failed bar venture. He's not a happy man and I think Clooney did a good job of showing us just how unhappy he is, just in his face and with his eyes. Swinton is Karen Crowder, a newly-minted chief counsel for uNorth, a firm that makes a pesticide that apparently kills people. Clayton's firm represents uNorth in a lawsuit filed by farmers who have been harmed by the pesticide. Another lawyer, Tom Wilkinson's Arthur Edens, goes a bit batty and threatens to blow the whole thing out of the water. Information slowly leaks out and Clayton has to navigate the moral ambiguities of his job and well as its effects on the people he loves and the world at large.

The movie begins en medias res but quickly goes back to the beginning to tell the story and I think that works in this case. You get just enough information to get to know the character and then the replay of those events once the flashback catches up is well done with enough of the original scenes interspersed with new information to move it along pretty seamlessly. And there are some interesting camera angles and shots that help the feel of the movie. I would have liked the sub-plot of the son's fantasy book/card game to have gone somewhere and to have seen the outcome of Clayton's final actions in terms of his firm. And the very end is good but a bit awkward for the viewer (which is fine, probably a bit purposeful even). Overall, I liked it a lot.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (nat)

Woo. hoo. I'm up to 190. Right. So only 10 more and I'll be 20% through the list. This takes a long time, especially when I'm not so much falling in love with any of the movies.

I did not especially care for this one but I was also dealing with a clingy drugged cat, a dog jealous that the clingy drugged cat was touching me, and my dad calling (with a reason at first but then just to chat). It's a noir about a gem heist gone wrong, really wrong. There are a bunch of players including a con-man recently released from jail who coordinates the heist, a few two-bit crooks, cops on the take, a double-crossing bankrupt rich guy who is supposed to bankroll the participation of said two-bit crooks, a private eye with his own ideas, and the police commissioner trying to partially domesticate, if not completely tame, the jungle. None of the actors are names that I know with the exception of Marilyn Monroe in a bit part (which makes it further amusing that she's on all of the posters). There isn't anything really wrong with the movie necessarily but it didn't hold my attention well enough for me to ignore the cat/dog/dad distractions (which I would have been capable of doing for a captivating movie).

My Darling Clementine (1946) (nat)

This movie makes me go back to my original assertion that I do not, in fact, like westerns. Another version of the Tombstone/Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday/OK Corral shoot-out/civilize the west story, My Darling Clementine just isn't that interesting. Wyatt Earp decides to become Marshall of Tombstone after his younger brother is shot and killed and their cattle stolen by the Clanton family (he suspects, no solid proof yet). He befriends Doc Holliday who is playing both sides of the fence with women, a fiery Mexican woman and a innocent fiancee he left back East. Holliday also has a nasty cough . . . Earp takes a liking to Clementine (the fiancee). Blah Blah Blah. Shoot out. Dead bad guys. Dead morally ambiguous guys (and girls). The truly good live to ride again. I just don't care. Not one bit.

Cat People (1942) (nat)

Not so much scary. Or even creepy. The basic premise is that Irena, who is Serbian but living in the US, meets Oliver, your average all-American and they fall in love. Well, except this is a "horror" movie so something has to go wrong. But it doesn't so much go wrong as is wrong. Oliver just doesn't listen. The people of Irena's village in Serbia had a mythology of cat people--those who were especially connected to witchcraft and the devil--who had escaped to the mountains when vanquished by Christianity and its sword. These cat people may look feline but the real problem is that when aroused (we're talking 1940s movie aroused--smashed face kissing and allusions to sex) they turn into panthers and kill people. Irena shows signs of being one of these cat people (a strange fascination with a panther at the zoo, a kitten hates her, she disrupts a pet shop, and she kills a canary accidentally) and it was rumored that her mother was one. She tells Oliver this and they never even kiss much less consummate their marriage. Oliver becomes despondent thanks to the strictly platonic nature of his marriage and hangs out a little too much with Alice, his coworker who has professed her love. Apparently, jealousy is equal to arousal and Irena is certainly jealous because she is trying to overcome her curse but, of course, can't (despite what her therapist might think). Well, surprise, surprise, Irena the cat-woman/panther goes after Alice, Oliver, and the therapist and it all ends tragically.

It's ok. Not terrible but certainly not very interesting.

A Confederacy of Dunces (pub.1980, written early 1960s) (nat)

I am happy to be finished with this one. It's long. It's the second book I've read in a row about a grotesquely overweight and annoyingly socially inept "academic" man. I don't want to hear one more word about Ignatius J. Reilly's "valve." I don't want to read anymore of his absurd social commentaries. I don't want to see him win. I don't like him. The novel, as a whole, wasn't bad but I don't like any of the characters. Not one of them. And it was painful to read some of the scenes just because I was embarrassed for them.

So, I said the novel wasn't bad and I guess that needs some backing up. It's well written and it's fairly funny. It's vaguely reminiscent, as Walker Percy points out in his brief intro, of Don Quixote. Except you like Quixote, you want him to get the girl of his dreams, you want the windmills to be giants. You don't root for Reilly. You want the police to arrest him. You want the lesbians to beat him up. You want the black workers to smash his brains in. You want his mother to finally take some real initiative and kick his 30+ year old ass out of the house. Ok. That's not helping with the "not a bad book" argument. Somehow, Toole makes the novel compelling without asking for any sympathy for the characters. You don't have to like them in order to find the book enjoyable. And that's quite a feat because there is a long list of characters. Toole manages to keep in a tight storyline that coheres and honestly involves all of them--with the exception of one, a college professor of Reilly's that pops up 3 or 4 times but really has nothing to do with the plot as a whole except as another life Reilly has ruined.

That character and the end of the novel are my huge problems. The professor doesn't need to appear. We get stories about Reilly's college days and the professor's don't add anything. We could have used Mirna's voice (Reilly's college "friend"), though. And the end. Yick. I'm giving it away because it's just terrible. He wins. He escapes the fate he's created for himself. He escapes the people who deserve to punish him. He escapes his punishments. He escapes some much needed professional mental help. And he hasn't changed. He's not a better person. He hasn't learned anything. I still don't like him. And I don't want to think that's he's continuing his absurd life in the real world somewhere (of the book, of course--I don't think he's come to life). If ever there needed to be a random, uncalled for moment of violence, it needed to be at the end of this book.

And, they (the big and ominous "they") were going to make a movie out of it?! Besides having to cut at least 50% of it, they'd have to let the audience like someone. I don't think they'd get away with a movie where everyone is unlikable. But I think the movie was cancelled or put aside anyway so no worries there.

I don't even know whether to recommend the book. I read it because my Dad LOVES it and has been after me for several years (literally) to read it. I don't dislike the book but I do dislike every character in it. Odd.