The difficulty with making films about historical characters is that the audience comes armed with prejudice. The face is familiar to us in a way that creates rather than closes a distance. It is a face that stands for something so that the person the face belongs becomes a kind of shorthand for an ideal or a moment in time. That person ceases to be a human being. He is
February 6, 2012
We Need to Talk About Kevin
I had heard great things about Tilda Swinton’s performance. She is a mother racked with guilt and duty. She lives her life in a hollow-eyed state of post traumatic stress. What I wanted most from this movie was a character arc. I was disappointed. In an interview with Swinton that played before the film, she said she most enjoyed playing characters whose basic foundation was shaken–who were forced to change.
January 2, 2012
Retribution Falls
This was recommended to me as a fun bit of fluff, “Firefly in airships.” So I didn’t approach it with the bar set high. Even so, I apparently expect more from my fluff because I was disappointed. Reading it I spent most of my time wondering why it kept missing the mark. What sets a good book apart? What makes the beloved motley crew of Serenity beloved and the pale
December 29, 2011
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is straight forward action from beginning to end. In fact, it is very much like The Adventures of Tintin and I like them both for the same reason: simplicity. The good guys are good and the bad guys must be stopped. There’s a job to do and our heroes get it done. The focus is on the method not the motive. I also appreciate that Ghost
November 26, 2011
Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress
Enchanted by the movie, I searched for a used copy of the book for about half a year. In my impatience, I finally bought the paperback edition new from Amazon. When it arrived, I read it in a night. After all my anticipation, I felt a little let down. The book is slight. In fact, without the movie to provide detail and context, it would not have had much of
November 6, 2011
Maps of the Sounds of Tokyo
This 2009 Spanish film starts out very promising and so is all the more disappointing when it doesn’t fulfill its promise. Watching the first third of it I became deeply aware that the way a film is shot and edited, the language of film-making, has a distinctive national accent. I’m used to the flavor of Japanese films and American films set in Japan. I think Map of the Sounds of
August 17, 2011
Super 8
As movies go, 2011 is the summer of the aliens. Of the three I’ve seen this month, I think that Super 8 captures a kind of innocent magic that is lacking in Attack the Block or Cowboys and Aliens. Maybe it’s manufactured Spielbergian magic but, somehow, J.J. Abrams never falls completely into the schmaltz that the man he’s paying homage does. (Spielberg produced and Abrams worked with him on earlier
June 28, 2011
Shirley
I snapped up an old Everyman’s Library copy of Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley at Recycled Reads for $2. Although worn and covered with library stamps, the little volume is sturdy. Physically, they are wonderful books, just the right size for the hand and well bound. Most of Shirley is written in a voice that sounds like Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. I think it interesting to imagine that Charlotte Bronte identified more
June 11, 2011
Midnight in Paris
Manhattan meets Back to the Future meets Before Sunset. The story is thin, more of a short story subject than a novel. Not enough to flesh out an entire movie. It’s concept-driven rather than character-driven. The concept being that when we let nostalgia light up the past we become blind to the beauty of the present. We romanticize the good ole days at the expense of living fully in the
May 28, 2011
Thor
Pretty much what you’d expect. I know. That isn’t really biting analysis. The boy and I had good fun splurging (diet-wise) on a couple of beers and the Alamo Drafthouse’s “The Godfather” pizza. The theater was dark and air-conditioned. Summer’s here. Bring on the mindless entertainment. The movie was competent but predictable. We both felt that the earthbound scenes brought the movie down. Those scenes were mundane in both its
May 18, 2011
Fuzzy Nation
I enjoyed John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. So, when I heard he had a new book out, I suggested that AJM buy it for me for my birthday as a “Homer buys Marge a bowling ball” type gift. Something we both can enjoy. We went all out to support John Scalzi and local business and plunked down the full $24.99 list price for the hardback at BookPeople. As it
May 17, 2011
Three Came Home
War stories that interest me have nothing to do with battle. Combat heroics are not something I’ve ever identified with despite being the images of war I grew up with, the images from TV and movies, books, and listening to my dad’s stories. With the exception of Anne Frank, who I first learned of when I was ten, it was not until I was an adult that I discovered the
May 5, 2011
At Her Majesty’s Request
Although the title sounds reminiscent of a James Bond thriller, At Her Majesty’s Request is actually a biography of an African princess who became a ward of sorts of Queen Victoria in the 1850s. Her christened name is Sarah Forbes Bonita. As a child, she is captured by another African nation who murders who family and destroys her village. She is kept for two years as a prisoner and then