Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1918)

This was my effort to read some prize winning American authors. The Magnificent Ambersons won the 1919 Pulitzer. Apparently it is the middle novel of the "Growth trilogy" of which the first novel is The Turmoil (1915) and the third is The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). His novel Alice Adams won the Pulitzer in 1922--the only Pulitzer awarded between his two went to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. Tarkington was also awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction/Novel/Short Story in 1933.

So why don't we read Tarkington now? I should have run across him in some capacity in class or in an anthology or on my comps list. From what I can tell, Edith Wharton is simply better in that she wrote the same sort of novel about the same sort of thing and she happens to be a woman so she's not derided for writing a novel of manners in our often manner-less 21st century (and I bet Hemingway would have had a thing or two to say about the man's subject matter if not the man himself). She also then manages to fill a minority niche.

The Magnificent Ambersons isn't bad. It's very similar to The Age of Innocence but seems less of a complete novel--which now makes much more sense given it is the middle of a trilogy. The basic plot revolves around young George Amberson Minafer, the grandson of Major Amberson who essentially built the town they live in. The family had a lot of money, a lot of power, and a shortage of ambition after the Major's generation. The second generation include George's mother Isabel who marries Minafer out of spite, essentially, because the suitor in the forefront got drunk one night; George Amberson who attracts failed business deals like moths to a flame but who served in Congress for a bit; and Sydney Amberson who is just a mooch. George Amberson Minafer is coddled and babied from the minute he leaves the womb and proceeds to terrorize the town with his lack of occupation and conceitedness. He basically runs over people in his horse and carriage, beats up anyone who speaks against him, and does as he pleases. But he can't be punished because his mother thinks him an angel. He grows up and continues this line of behavior, goes to college but proclaims he will never work because he doesn't think it proper for a gentleman and intends to live on his family's money for the rest of his life while he becomes a yachtsman. This doesn't go so well thanks to the fact that only one generation of the family had earned any money at that point. George also wrecks his mother's relationships, wrecks his family relationships, and wrecks his own personal relationships (with men and women) with his haughty behavior and supposed ideals. He then, of course, gets the wind knocked out of him (a bit, not enough in my opinion) when everyone is dead and he is dirt poor and, thus, has to work. I didn't like the end because I thought it left too much undone and was too presumptuous, though this makes a little more sense if it is continued in the final part of the trilogy.

The novel's overriding themes are, of course, class and the manners that attend such matters, industry and modernization, alienation, power, etc--it's a modernist novel that clings to Victorian styles. It's not so great for black people (referred to as "darkeys") but it actually works out just fine for the women. Stragely. While constrained by society's mores, the women in the novel are actually governed by their own motives and opinions and act as they please. Yes, George controls his mother but she allows him to do so and even encourages it to a degree. And Lucy, George's love, is very much in charge of herself and her life. They don't have it any worse than the men, which is unusual for a novel from 1918, especially one about these subjects.

Anyway, it's not bad. It won't make it to any sort of recommendation list of mine unless someone asks me for a list of novels of manners . . . and who is going to so that, really. But it was an interesting read. It was entertaining and well written and engaging. I'm sort-of half curious to read the third part of the trilogy but we'll see how long that curiosity lasts.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

I was still sick. It was on tv after Catch and Release. I watched it. I didn't like it as much as Catch and Release.

Will Smith is a down on his luck independent medical scanner salesman whose wife leaves him and then tries to take his son away. He then has to sink down to a little below rock bottom before he can rise to the top. Ok, fine.

But how does he have that kid in daycare everyday when he doesn't have any money at all? I mean right after the IRS takes him money and he has $100 more or less. How is the kid in daycare then?

It was fine. I was proud of him. It just didn't catch my attention all that much. I felt like I knew what was going to happen but, unlike Catch and Release watched just before, it tried to hard and failed for that reason. It's not as bad as I thought it would be but I still didn't really like it.

Catch and Release (2006)

I was sick. It was on tv. I watched it. And, actually, it wasn't so bad.

Jennifer Garner's fiance has died before the start of the movie. We see her on the day of her wedding at the funeral and she, as a voiceover, is talking to the dead fiance. She's a bit of a shrinking violet and needed him to be the outgoing one. She always made the safe choices, was the rational one. Over the course of the movie, she gains her independence and ultimately realizes that the fiance probably wasn't the one for her after all. She lives with two mutual friends of the fiance, one an always endearing Kevin Smith, and a third has come from LA for the funeral and stays for awhile afterwards. It ends up that perfect fiance had an affair and a whole lot of secret money. This, of course, confuses, angers, upsets, etc. Garner as she tries to figure out just who she was engaged to. She manages to find out who he is, who she is, and find a new love all in one go.

It's not particularly smart. It's not mind blowing. As soon as you see the guy she ends up with on screen, you know she ends up with him. You can figure out the ends of most of the other storylines long before the end of the movie. But, nonetheless, it's charming, it's engaging, it's entertaining. A good movie to watch on tv.

Spirited Away (2001)

I don't like anime. That's just the fact of it. I find it exhausting. It's normally too long and very boring because it lacks a cohesive plot and the characters all scream in high pitched voices instead of talking. Maybe I've seen the wrong anime but that's my opinion of the genre thus far nonetheless. This one surprised me a bit. It was still too long and boring and the characters voices still annoys me but it at least had a somewhat interesting plot.

So Chihiro and her parents (who I think we're supposed to be ok with but I thought them callous and mean) are moving to a new place. Chihiro is not happy about this. Her dad misses the turn to the new house and ends up in front of what looks like a temple. The parents, dismissing Chihiro's please against the idea, decide to go into the temple and look around and then to eat some food left out in a market like area on the other side. They promptly get turned into pigs. It turns out this temple is a bathhouse for the spirits and no humans are allowed--they get turned into pigs and eaten. So Chihiro is in a bit of trouble. She gets help from Haku who is presumably an aid to the witch who runs the place but seems to have a heart. Anyway, he helps her, she has to work in the bathhouse and then rescue her parents. Meanwhile, she gets caught up in other intrigues involving witches and spirits and monsters. She perseveres and grows up a bit (which is good because she was whiny and annoying at the beginning) and saves her parents who are still mean and callous. The end.

Right. It could have been an hour long instead of the over two hours. Everyone could have talked normally--the voices were redone for an American audience. Watch it if you like anime or are punishing yourself by trying to watch a bunch of movies on a list of which it is a part. Otherwise, I'd skip it.

Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996)

This one I netflixed by mistake. I thought I clicked on the new HBO As You Like It but not so much apparently.

I knew the story even though I've not read this play and I don't think I've seen a film adaptation. Yay for an English degree. Anyway, the basic story is that boy/girl twins, Viola and Sebastian who look remarkably similar (despite having to be fraternal) are shipwrecked and each presumes the other dead. Viola pretends to be a boy in order to promote a love relationship between Count Orsino and the woman he loves, Olivia, who refuses to accept his courtship. Viola, dressed as a he, instead falls in love with the Count (unbeknownst to him) and becomes the object of Olivia's affection. Sebastian, meanwhile, wanders around somewhere else. Olivia's household is upset when the housemaid, Maria, decides to get even with the uptight manservant, Malvolio, and enlists the help of Sir Toby (whom Maria loves and who is also a drunk), Sir Andrew (who is supposedly courting Olivia but is a damned fool), and Feste (the actual Fool). Hilarity and mistaken identity ensue until all is well and everyone gets married.

Quite a few of the performances are wonderful: Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia and Ben Kingsley as Feste not to mention as Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio, Imogen Stubbs, as Viola, Toby Stephens as Duke Orsino, and Imelda Staunton as Maria. It's a little long and takes a little while to get into the Shakespearean dialogue but it's fun.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

I went in with minimal expectations. I love Harrison Ford but didn't want his cavorting like he was 20 and I didn't want old man jokes the whole time either. Luckily neither seemed to happen. He acted like a man of his age (well, Indiana Jones at that age, anyway). I don't have a problem with Shia Lebeouf. I don't love him but I don't dislike him either. He was fine although sort of a caricature of a Marlon Brando wannabe. I do love Cate Blanchett and wish she'd been a little more something in her role. It worked but it wasn't her usual genius. The other actors worked out just fine.

I didn't quite get the supposed double agent. I thought him a bit useless and Indy a bit gullible to believe him. I also thought the whole, leave a blinking red light every now and then so the Russians can follow you thing a bit trite. The technology for that thing to send a signal was there, why not use that rather than rely upon the light? And why, if he wasn't so interested in helping the Russians as himself, would he even bother continuing to leave the blinky lights? And then the end of him? He's ok? What?

And what happened to the feds being after Indy? They don't just drop that in the Cold War.

I'm also not 100% ok with the alien aspect and the "space between" rather than outer space.

And the ants? Really?! We had roaches and other creepy crawlies already in the saga, can't we just avoid insects? But, I did love the snake as rope segment.

And I liked the monkeys helping out even if it is very very cheesy and obviously CGI.

Overall it was enjoyable. I don't think I need to see it again but I'd watch another Indy sequel. Meanwhile, if they decide to do a Shia Lebeouf as main character Indy spin-off I will vanquish it to the land of Star Wars sequels and pretend it doesn't exist.

Indiana Jones 1 & 2 (1981 & 1984)

I am way behind on my posting so there will be a flurry of shorter ones today. We watched these two (with the intention of watching the third) before going to see the new Indy. I'd seen them before but didn't remember much of either (the end of the first and the roaches from the second are engraved on my brain, though). They holdup sort-of: well enough if you have a strong attachment to them from when they first came out. They're fine. They're entertaining. I just never had a particular fondness for them.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Down in the Valley (2005)

Edward Norton is definitely a reason to watch a movie. In this one he's a 30-something drifter, Harlan, who begins a relationship with a teen-aged Tobe (short for October, apparently--played by Evan Rachel Wood). She invites him to the beach with her friends in a moment of teen-aged rebellion and it all goes downhill from there. The thing is that he thinks he's a cowboy. In what I assume is the mid to late 1990s (the movie was made in 2005 but no cell phones show up so I'm guessing it must be earlier), in the San Fernando Valley (ie, anytime you hear anyone from/in LA say "the Valley"). Right. So he's not so much a cowboy but he wanders around in jeans, white shirt, boots, and hat. Talks with a twang. Carries two pistols. Claims to have worked on ranches and to be from South Dakota. Tobe is enamoured with him and continues to rebel while her younger brother (Lonnie, played by Rory Culkin) is also attracted to the idea of him. Lonnie is a bit timid and his father (Wade, played by David Morse) isn't so great at the parenting in terms of ego-boosting. Anyway, Wade eventually forbids Tobe from seeing Harlan but Harlan is convinced they are meant for each other and it all starts to go wrong.

It's a good movie but with one strange insertion of Hasidic Jews. There is a large population in LA but the way they "fit" into the story is that Harlan writes letters to "Joe," whom we never meet, twice in the film. He then goes to LA proper, goes to a synagogue, gets kicked out, and then breaks into a Jewish home, steals a menorah among other things, and leaves a letter for "Joe" and refers to "Joe" as his father. We get the idea (from Harlan who is unreliable at best) that his father left him when he was young but I don't know if we are to assume that his father left him to join the Hasidic community. This seems unlikely to me as well as random and unnecessary in the course of the film itself.

Otherwise, it's a good movie. Maybe not one to actively seek out but definitely one to watch if you come across it.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer (2008)

The book begins: "We think we know the ones we love." The rest of the book (just under 200 pages) explores this statement as well as the idea that as we realize that we don't, in fact, really know the ones we love, we assume they know us. We seem to miss the fact that we aren't more readily known than our loves.

Greer manages to pull off the voice of a black woman in 1953 San Francisco with little trouble. The novel is in her voice the whole time and it isn't labored. He allows her to slip back inside her mind, directly addressing her husband when she gets to a part of the story that hurts her heart, and allows her digressions that seem completely natural. And, most important to the conceit of the novel, he doesn't allow her omniscience. She has the luxury of hindsight because she's telling the story after the events have occurred but she doesn't get caught in the quagmire of nostalgia or regret and she doesn't know what the other characters are thinking. She, and consequently the reader, are genuinely surprised when the secrets are resolved--not a groundshaking surprise but the sort of quiet, that makes sense surprise. Greer doesn't mangle his characters to make their lives more interesting for our consumption. He just lets them live.

The plot seems fairly simple: a young housewife with a young son in 1953 learns something new and troubling about the husband she thought she knew so well. The remainder of the novel centers around her trying to simultaneously keep and alter her life to fit this new knowledge.

Greer's writing doesn't seem genius to me. I wasn't awestruck. But I was captivated. I read the book in just over 24 hours, reading half in one sitting and the other in one more. He has a talent for making you want to read the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next chapter, all without cheesy suspense or contrived cliff hangers.

It's a good, solid book about race, sexuality, gender, and war not to mention marriage and knowing the ones you love.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White (pub 1958, written 1938-1958)

I didn't read this as a child which is when it works best, I think. It's like not reading Catcher in high school--the book just doesn't resonate the same when you're older. I adored The Sword in the Stone film as a child and knew 90% of the Arthur mythology, having read Idylls of the King, a good bit of the rest of the Romantic/Victorian obsession with the myth, Chaucer's Tristram and Isolde, etc not to mention the Irish mythology White tosses in for good measure. The point of all that to say, I knew the story.

The book was enjoyable. I did not like the first book, "The Sword in the Stone," just because I knew the movie and thought the movie did a better job. But, I could see the direct source material for the movie and what the film left out--they chose wisely.

The next three books I enjoyed much more. Written for adults rather than children, the plot and language is more consistent and exciting. And I do enjoy a good Camelot story. So overall, I liked the book.

What I did not enjoy is the insertion of rambling political treatises. I got the subtext from the plot, I didn't need an in-my-face repetition of his political beliefs. I didn't disagree with what he was saying, I just didn't need to read it twelve times, especially not in the middle of some interesting plot development. AND what aggravated me the most about the book is the end. I know I have trouble with endings. I don't like at least 50% of them. But I really do not like that the book cuts what may be the most suspenseful climax of the book right before it reaches it's peak. Just stops it. No more of that, now we're just going to have some more talking about politics and rehashing of what the past 600+ pages have been about. I got the political part and I even know what happens next but I wanted the book to show me those things instead of cutting them off and making me wish I had my copy of Idylls here.

Overall, a good book. An interesting read and a good retelling of the Camelot mythology. But, because I didn't read it twenty years ago, it won't be one of my favorites.

Son of Rambow (2007)

This movie is super great. It's about a little boy, Will, in England who is trapped by his mother's wacko religion. He can't be friends with kids outside the religion ("The Brethren") and his life isn't so much filled with fun. He pretty much lives in his own world which he populates with drawings--he's filled his Bible with all sorts of colorful drawings including some flip-book animation. Anyway, Will can't watch TV so he's sent into the hallway at school while his classmates watch a video and there he meets Lee Carter (which is what Will calls him the whole movie). Lee Carter is a little demon. He's constantly getting in trouble, getting thrown out of school, lying, stealing, etc. He cons Will into doing all the stunts for a film he wants to enter into a young filmmakers contest. Will, having never seen a movie, is awestruck when he accidentally sees Rambo for the first time. His life is suddenly fun and he and Lee Carter begin making "The Son of Rambow" based on drawings by Will. Meanwhile, their school is populated by visiting French students and Will's home life grows more unstable as he lies to his mother more and more. What follows is a great movie about friendship and imagination that manages to be hilarious without being trite or childish.

Morvern Caller (2002)

I should have known. This was on Sundance one night a while ago (I just forgot to blog). There was nothing else on TV and J was at akido. It was on a "show" for which Alan Cumming chooses the films. I should have read a book.

So, ostensibly, the movie is about a Scottish woman, Samantha Morton, whose boyfriend kills himself in their shared apartment, leaving her instructions to publish his novel. Ok, fine. The trouble begins in the first five minutes when she leaves the dead beau on the floor in his own blood to go to a bar with all of her friends. Then she comes home, dead beau still on the bloody floor. Days go by with the dead beau on the floor. Days. She goes to work at the grocery store, she goes to wild parties with her female friend, with whom she later bathes (presumably platonically, although it IS a bath), and reads the beau's novel. Then she decides (this is totally a plot spoiler) to chop up the beau in the bath tub and scatter him in a field, asks the female friend to move in, takes all of the beau's money, sends the novel in as her own, and takes female friend on a vacation. She then acts strangely, sleeps with some random guy, makes the female friend leave the hotel they're in, wanders into Spain during the running of the bulls, loses friend, finds friend but then leads her into the middle of nowhere Spain. She then leaves the friend sleeping on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere Spain while she wanders into a town who knows how far away, calls the literary agents she's been avoiding the whole trip, they come to meet her and want to publish the novel. She acts oddly some more. Then she goes home, takes all of her things out of the apartment, leaves the key, and finds the abandoned female friend in a bar. The friend refuses to go on another holiday with wacko but wacko goes off anyway to who knows where to do who knows what. The girl is obviously disturbed but the movie never really tells us what caused it because I doubt very very seriously that she was well before the beau committed suicide.

No good. Don't watch it.

Monday, May 5, 2008

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Oh. My. God. I'm really not sure what to say about this one.

It's based on a novel by Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek. It won Best Actor, Best Actress, and Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes along with eight other awards internationally and was nominated for fifteen other awards. I'm not sure why. Yes, it was well-acted. Yes, it was just fine in terms of cinematography, I suppose. Yes, it seemed well-written. But, my god. I can't even really say what's eliciting that response because it would give away aspects of the plot that really should be revealed while watching if this one is to be watched. I'll say there is a vomit scene and that's really one of the least disturbing things in the film. Just when you think, jesus fuck this is screwed up, the film adds another layer and then another layer. And they linger on each layer longer than is really comfortable. And then the ending . . .

I don't know if anyone should or shouldn't see this one. I just don't know what to do with it exactly. I'm toying with the idea of reading the book but there are several others lined up in the queue and Jelinek isn't exactly on my American prize winners list . . .

The World According to Garp (1982)

I don't remember much about this book except I really liked it as a teenager. I don't even remember when I read it exactly. It wasn't assigned but I read it because it was recommended and my dad happened to have a beat-up copy with the cover image worn off. I guess it's time to re-read it.

The movie didn't bring back any memories of the book but I did like the movie. Robin Williams in his prime is always a delight and Glenn Close was wonderful. But the best part has to be John Lithgow as an ex-football player whose had a sex change. He managed to make the character real without being a caricature (very much unlike what John Travolta did in Hairspray).

Friday, May 2, 2008

Iron Man (2008)

First, there were super fantastic previews before this movie (if you ignore what I'm sure is retarded, Love Guru): Frank Miller/Will Eisner's The Spirit, The Dark Knight, and The Incredible Hulk. Yay!

Then, there was the actual movie. I have to admit to loving just about any movie whose first sounds are "Back in Black" (I don't know of any others so I may revise that statement to include, while Robert Downey, Jr. rides in a military vehicle with a drink in hand). Regardless, this is a fun, smart, uncomplicated superhero movie. RDJ is super and sexy. Gwyneth Paltrow is great at being present and good at what she does without taking over. Terrence Howard is good-ish but seems to fall a bit flat in the buttoned-up role of an army man. Jeff Bridges is almost unrecognizable and great, especially at almost 60.

The movie involves a great deal of technology that may or may not be possible in reality but the film is great at just letting it be, making it a part of that world, and making us suspend any sort of disbelief. And RDJ's character is believable as well. We don't have the aging man who suddenly is invincible in his everyday life. We don't have the sudden turn from cad to saint. Instead, the film keeps 90% of RDJ's bad habits--drinking, flirting, unpredictability, etc--and shows why and how he changed in the ways he did in a completely believable way.

Overall the movie is wry, funny, smart, well-paced, and very entertaining. Definitely one to see, probably one to own. (And, something to look forward to: Downey reprises this role in The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man is left wide open for super sequels)

Fracture (2007)

This is a pretty good "drama." It's just not all that dramatic. Anthony Hopkins kills his cheating wife and then finagles his way out of a conviction by playing on the emotions of his wife's lover--who Hopkins called in as the lead detective to report his wife's death. His opponent in the courtroom is the over-confident young DA who is about to go corporate Ryan Gosling. The film seems to be more a coming-of-age, albeit a professional bildungsroman, of Gosling's character than the tense dramatic thriller the previews made it out to be. It's much less about Hopkins than Gosling.

The film is more or less only a bit clever. The mystery about the gun is a little easy to figure out but the idea itself is interesting. I cannot, however, believe that Hopkins' personal effects were not searched after he was arrested (if they were, the whole gun mystery would have been resolved much more quickly, as in almost immediately). And I was not a fan of the whole Rosamund Pike storyline--trite and predictable without adding a bit of anything to the movie.

It's entertaining enough. Good for a lazy afternoon but don't expect genius.