Posted by: Sally Ingraham | February 1, 2011

Movie Mayhem: Jan. 29th-31st

I finally got to spend some time with CP this weekend by going to visit him at his housesitting gig. We competed for worst movie pick of January, and he won. That is an honor I am willing to concede to him. Our dueling movies were:

Me – Jonah Hex – Dir. Jimmy Hayward. Writ. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Stars Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox. USA, 2010.
Him – The Last Rites of Ransom Pride – Dir. Tiller Russell. Writ. Tiller Russell and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Stars Dwight Yoakam, Lizzy Caplan, and Jon Foster. Canada, 2009.

At least my movie had a fun cast! I wanted to watch Jonah Hex because a friend of mine actually worked on the film production. She made smoothies out of Brolin’s food so that he could get it into his distorted mouth – Jonah Hex is severely disfigured on one side of his face. That’s not his only problem. He also wants REVENGE, which is never a healthy thing to want. Malkovich plays the evil ex-Confederacy general who killed Hex’s family and is plotting to blow up Washington D.C. The movie is a mess, with western-type gunslinging mixed with oddly colored dream sequences. And then there’s the fact that Hex can talk to dead people. Weirdness abounds, and not in a good way. Both CP and I are convinced that the animated version of the movie shown as a trailer before this one looks infinitely better. I’ll get back to you on that.

last ritesThe Last Rites of Ransom Pride is just plain awful. There isn’t a single frame of the film that wasn’t tampered with – all the coloring and light is artsy and artificial. Occasionally this is done to good effect (like in O Brother, Where Art Thou?) In this movie it just seemed contrived. The plot is difficult to follow, and the frequent flashbacks (sometimes to the past, but more often to something that happened moments before…??) did not help. Another sort-of-western, it’s about how Ransom Pride’s brother and girlfriend got his body back from a witch after he was killed in Mexico. There are half a dozen bizarre characters who either help or hinder them. Instead of this being a quirky and weird (in a good way) story, it was just…really bad. So the prize goes to CP.

While I am still trying to recover the brain cells that these two movies maimed, the last two movies I watched in January helped a little.

Despicable Me – Dir. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud. Writ. Ken Daurio. Stars Steve Carell. USA, 2010.
I had seen most of this while working at the theater, but it was nice to watch it all in one sitting. It’s pretty funny and pretty sweet. A fumbling villain gets his heart melted by three children whom he adopted as part of one of his brilliant schemes. Animated, with the right balance of slap-stick humor and jokes for the adults, it’s enjoyable on several levels.

inceptionInception – Writ. & Dir. Christopher Nolan. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, and Ken Wantanabe. USA, 2010.
Third time is the charm! Sort of. I didn’t like this movie when I first saw it, but it’s grown on me. I understood most of the plot and was impressed by the visuals, but I wasn’t blown away by the thing. The second time I watched it was simply because it was the only thing playing at the drive-in theater I visited while on a road trip. It still didn’t excite me much. CP announced that he wanted to see it again the other day, so we rented it. I put the last few puzzle pieces together and satisfied my need to fully understand the various plot twists, etc., and this time I actually found myself enjoying the movie. Maybe I’m just familiar with it now. Like can certainly develop with familiarity. Whatever. I guess Inception is all right with me.

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Posted in animation, Famous People, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Non-sense | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 31, 2011

Bread Givers

bread giversby Anzia Yezierska

The first book on The Wolves reading list for 2011 proved difficult for me to approach. It reminded me too strongly of books I read as a kid growing up in a somewhat conservative Christian home – moralistic books about the extremes of religion. For example, I was disturbed by tales of Amish children being shunned by their entire communities for longing for things of the world, and not too impressed when they repented and returned to their families. Books about courtship, where the father had to approve the husband, stories about submissive wives quietly resigning themselves to men of powerful (and godly) will. Books of that sort, written simply and lacking characters who seemed real to me. Written to prove something. I shrunk from their version of the world, and I snuck things like Tamera Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness quartet under my covers, to prove to myself that there were other versions (perhaps equally odd, but at least Alanna could kick some serious butt!)

While I am not as religious as I used to be, I am still perplexed and absolutely infuriated by the attitudes and beliefs shown in Bread Givers. Here we find Orthodox Judaism and a Talmudic scholar who spends all his time reading the Torah and praying. Back in Poland he was supported by his community and the little bit of money his wife got out of her father’s business. Having moved to America, he finds New York’s Lower East Side less than willing to support his lifestyle and therefore fully expects his wife and daughters to pick up the slack. And they do, because he tells them that it says in the Torah “What’s a woman without a man? Less than nothing–a blotted-out existence. No life on earth and no hope of Heaven.” Only through service to husbands and fathers can a woman hope to reach heaven. What?!!

The existence that this 1920s immigrant family endures is miserable. The daughters work all day to put a meager bit of food on the table, the best of which goes to their father who has been comfortably reading and praying all day. Instead of lovingly passing on the bits of wisdom he’s picked up in this studies, Reb Smolinsky complains and reminds the girls of how wretched they are and smothers any chances at happiness that comes their way. The narrator of the tale is Sara, the youngest. She watches her father marry her three elder sisters off to men who make them utterly miserable, and she vows never to let him do the same to her.

‘More and more I began to think inside myself, I don’t want to sell herring for the rest of my days. I want to learn something. I want to do something. I want some day to make myself for a person and come among people.‘ (p. 66)

Sara escapes at 17, moving into a rented room and going to work in a laundry. She goes to night school, sacrificing everything – her looks, any chance of making friends or meeting a lover, even visits to her mother – in order to study and eventually go to college. There she desperately hopes to meet like-minded people, and become that ‘person‘ she believes she can be.

Episodic, leaping through time and leaving out details (like how did she actually manage to go to college?), the story has moments of brilliant detail, and an odd writing style that stems from the author speaking Yiddish first and English second. The complex relationship between Sara and her father is the book’s strength, and in spite of how awful he is, as Sara comes to understand him better a degree of sympathy for him is drummed up.

Overall I wouldn’t say that Bread Givers appealed to me. I wouldn’t have minded if the story was filled out somewhat, or if it was slightly less obvious. For all her determination and spunk, Sara seemed a bit flat, and while her father was lively, the rest of the characters suffered. It all felt a bit threadbare to me. Still, there were interesting topics and settings, briefly visited, that made the book interesting. The details about the author that are found in the introduction are quite compelling. Yezierska sounds like quite the person. I almost feel inclined to read more about her.

See E.L. Fay’s excellent review for another opinion. Thanks is due to her for picking this one out for us. Join The Wolves next month for Rosalind Belben’s Our Horses in Egypt.

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Posted in Anzia Yezierska, Authors, Books, Non-sense, Novels, Reading, Reading Challenges, The Wolves | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 31, 2011

Palace of Desire

palace of desireby Naguib Mahfouz
translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Lorne M. Kenny, and Olive E. Kenny

I read the first half of this second installment in The Cairo Trilogy rather eagerly. Granted, I was couped up in buses and planes at the time, but for awhile I was really getting a kick out of the relentless drama of romantic encounters and family squabbles. Then it all got to be a bit too much.

In this segment the children are all grown and married, with the exception of Kamal who is still living at home and is in school. Al-Sayyid Ahmad, their tyrannical father, has loosened his grip significantly, and Kamal marvels at one point that it has been over two years since he has been the recipient of screaming curses from his father. While the sisters deal with their husbands and children and mother-in-law, and Yasin rampages through wives and other women, Kamal is in love. Bringing a refreshing change from the animal desires of Yasin, Kamal sees his beloved as the most perfect, the most exquisite being in creation. His love for her is pure, unattached to the base needs of the body. In fact he’s almost more in love with his idea of love than he is with Aida. Although his love was doomed from the beginning, he suffers mightily when rejection and dismissal are his bitter fate. In an interesting twist, al-Sayyid Ahmad, while struggling to accept the fact that he’s aging, also falls in love and for the first time in his life he finds himself utterly ruled by the whims of a young and beautiful musician. When he finally pulls himself together and tosses the girl aside, his son Yasin is standing in line right behind him and he loses no time before divorcing his second wife and marrying her. So it goes.

While the romances and womanizing in the book quickly grew tiresome, I did find Kamal’s intellectual journey interesting. Always a good scholar, he decides that he wants to devote himself to learning. He joins the Teacher’s College simply to go on learning about every topic he can, turning more and more to science and philosophy to help explain existence. Devoutly religious for most of his life, he can’t reconcile the new ideas that are flooding his mind with the belief system he grew up with. While there are less politics in this volume, the discussions between Kamal and his friends show how rapidly Egypt was changing at the time, offering a variety of social and political views.

There was a slight change in the narrative style in this book. Instead of being so much in the third-person, there were frequent long internal dialogs voiced by the characters themselves. Overall I enjoyed this, and occasionally Mahfouz offered up a bit of psychological insight that was somewhat profound (and reminiscent of Proust…). And there were some bizarrely fantastic turns of phrase!

My opinion of the work hangs on the last book, but so far the journey is still a frustrating one. I liked this section less than the last. It lacked the common enemy that al-Sayyid Ahmad provided in the first book, and so became a seemingly endless parade of annoying and demanding characters acting outrageously. Tough. But still oddly entertaining. I guess I’ll finish the ride and see where it takes me.

Thanks again to Richard for hosting The Cairo Trilogy readalong. Here’s his post with links to others. The final discussion will be held Feb. 27th-28th. My thoughts on the first book are here. I’ll meet you back in Cairo next month!

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Posted in Authors, Books, Naguib Mahfouz, Non-sense, Novels, Read-Along, Reading, Reading Challenges | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 28, 2011

Movie Mayhem: Jan. 9th-28th

The emphasis is definitely on mayhem in this post. There’s a whole pile of things here. The last three weeks have been odd. I spent about 7 days traveling, and the rest of the time on my couch. Illness and lack of ambition kept me there, and Netflix instant play kept my brain cells firing – barely. I watched a random assortment of things, all quite interesting.

Before I left for Atlanta I finally got around to watching Howards End (Dir. James Ivory. Writ. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster. Stars Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Helena Bohnem Carter. UK, 1992.) The story is one of clashing social classes in England at the beginning of the century – well drawn characters from the very wealthy, the enlightened bourgeois, and the working class have encounters that challenge and profoundly change them all. There are tangled romances, attempts at philanthropy, a passionate love for place, failure and quiet success. The performances are all excellent and the filming is lovely. I’ll have to dig up the book someday – to all reports the movie is a fairly close adaptation.

prince achmedThe Adventures of Prince Achmed – Writ. & Dir. Lotte Reiniger. Germany, 1926.
Considered to be the first feature-length animated film, this is one of those incredibly impressive examples of early film making. Drawing from The Arabian Nights, the story is told using a silhouette technique that employs cutouts posed in front of illuminated glass. The detail is wonderful, and the amount of work that must have went into the film is amazing. The story is pretty entertaining, but watch this for the visual delight. Very cool.

On the 5 hour bus ride from the airport back home I watched Get Smart (Dir. Peter Segal. Writ. Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember. Stars Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Arkin. USA, 2008.) and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Dir. Chris Colombus. Writ. Craig Titley. Based on the novel by Rick Riordan. Stars Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, and Alexandra Daddario. USA, 2010.). Get Smart stood up to a second viewing, although it is pure ridiculousness. And I enjoyed Percy Jackson much more than I had expected to. I’m a sucker for Greek myths, and it was fun to guess which characters and events would show up in a modern adventure. I was a little appalled by Pierce Brosnan as a centaur, but I’ve seen him in worse situations. (Yes, I’m referring to Mamma Mia!) Not a bad way to kill time on a long bus ride!

supermanWaiting for ‘Superman’ (Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Writ. Davis Guggenheim and Billy Kimball. USA, 2010.) was the only movie I watched at the theater. Since ending my employment there (a necessary move, but a very sad one…) I’ve been having trouble contemplating actually paying for a movie. I finally broke the ice because a friend wanted to see this and I needed to get out of the house in a bad way. It’s a documentary about the failure of the public education system in this country, with a focus on the charter schools that a few lucky kids manage to attend. There were a lot of interesting facts and a few pointed fingers. It’s a very tough topic to approach, and I think Guggenheim did a tolerably decent job of presenting his argument. I’m not sure he convinced me though, and I left the film feeling frustrated more than anything else…

North & South – Dir. Brian Percival. Writ. Sandy Welch. Based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. Stars Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage. UK, 2004.
After working my way through a couple of seasons of TV shows I turned to TV mini-series. This one was pretty good. It is about Margaret Hale, a middle-class southern Englishwoman who moved with her parents to the northern milling town of Milton. There she struggles to adapt to a new type of life while also trying to understand John Thornton, the owner of a mill and a philosophy student of her father. At first appalled by the conditions in the mill and Thornton’s treatment of his workers, she comes to appreciate the steps he takes to make things as good as they can be. There is a very Pride & Prejudice-like arc to the story, with opinions quickly formed and changed only after trials and tribulation. I liked the bit of romance and enjoyed the story overall.

cousinsCousins – Dir. Joel Schumacher. Writ. Stephen Metcalfe. Based on the movie Cousin Cousine writ. Jean-Charles Tacchella. Stars Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini. USA, 1989.
I’ve been on an Isabella Rossellini kick lately (at least theoretically – I think I’ve only seen one other movie with her in it recently – but I intend to watch more!) She’s just so lovely, and can infuse even a boring role with grace and mystery. Not that her role in this movie was boring – she and Ted Danson played distant cousins whose spouses are cheating on them. They know what’s going on and decide to play a trick on their spouses and pretend to have an affair of their own. They end up totally falling for each other though, which complicates matters. The story is funny and sad, and Ted Danson is surprisingly great. It’s a nice little movie about finding that special someone when you’re least expecting to.

The Buccaneers – Dir. Philip Saville. Writ. Maggie Wadey. Based on the novel by Edith Wharton. Stars Carla Gugino, Laura Testvalley, Greg Wise, and James Frain. UK, 1995.
Another TV mini-series, this time about a quartet of rich American beauties who go to England to find husbands. Havoc and disasters abound, as well as a small amount of success and happiness. I thought the production was lush and the movie well shot, but it was a bit excruciating. I found myself muttering, “Good grief, can’t anything go right?” From the little bit of Wharton I’ve read this seemed entirely fitting though. I’d like to read the book, since I know the quality of her writing would overcome my desire for a happy ending.

beningValmont – Dir. Milos Forman. Writ. Jean-Claude Carriere. Based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. Stars Colin Firth and Annette Bening. France/USA, 1989.
Mmm, Colin Firth. Except he’s so sleazy in this film! It’s about two jaded French aristocrats who have a long and messy history. The beautiful widow and the flamboyant rascal make a bet regarding the corruption of a pretty and innocent girl who is soon to be married. Transforming her into a puppet that they use to satisfy their every selfish whim, the two find themselves on the slippery slope of love and disaster. Annette Bening is fantastic in her role, and the settings and costumes are gorgeous. I was more than a little horrified by the heartlessness of these two characters, but mesmerized all the same. I guess I should follow this up with watching Dangerous Liaisons?

The Pillars of the Earth – Dir. Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. Writ. John Pielmeier. Based on the novel by Ken Follett. Stars Ian McShane, Matthew Macfadyen, Eddie and Redmayne. Canada, 2010.
I didn’t ever really connect with this story, which is too bad since it was 8 hours long! It more than satisfied my TV mini-series thirst for the moment. A huge, epic tale set in 12th century England, it careens through the political strife that followed the death of Henry I, who left his daughter Maud and nephew Stephen to squabble over the throne for many years. The chess game between lords and bishops aiming to get titles and land for their loyalty to one ruler or the other, is paired with the construction of a radically designed cathedral in Kingsbridge. The cast of characters is immense, ranging from Master Builder Tom, his children, his lover the supposed witch Ellen, and her son the artist, to good Prior Philip and nasty Bishop Waleran, to the utterly awful Lord William and his henchman and scheming mother… The story was essentially interesting, and the piece was decently done, but I wasn’t blown away. Maybe it was all just a bit too much.

social clubThe Buena Vista Social Club – Writ. & Dir. Wim Wenders. USA, 1999.
Exhausted after enduring The Pillars of the Earth, I turned to music. This is a fantastic movie about a group of aging and all but forgotten Cuban musicians who are brought out of obscurity by Ry Cooder. He traveled to Havana to find and bring the musicians together to make a recording, and ended up totally resurrecting their careers. There is such joy in this movie – these are men and women who have experienced life to the fullest, and while some of them are in their 90s, they are still vibrant and brilliant people. The talent and skill they posses is amazing. The music in the film is exciting, and I just felt so GLAD while watching the performances. I highly recommend this one.

In Search of Beethoven – Writ. & Dir. Phil Grabsky. UK, 2009.
I was so excited and inspired by The Buena Vista Social Club that I dug my cello out and tuned it and started playing it again. I felt like I needed more music in my life, so I sought out this documentary on Beethoven. It is excellent. It covers his whole life, and features conversations with many contemporary musicians and historians. They offer interesting details and insights into his life and music, and there are a ton of musical performances. It’s especially neat to see pianists sitting at the piano and going through a piece by Beethoven, describing the near-impossibility of some of the things he wrote and marveling at his skill at playing the piano. Grabsky’s main point with the film seemed to be to show that Beethoven wasn’t so much a crazy grouch as he is sometimes represented. The focus is on the immense joy and passion for life that is found in Beethoven’s music. I really enjoyed this one too, and recommend it.

With a few days left in January, I’m sure I’ll cram a few more movies in, including a trip to the theater to watch True Grit. What are you looking forward to watching?

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Posted in animation, Documentary, Famous People, Foreign Films, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Music, Non-sense, State of the World, Work | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 23, 2011

January Funkiness

Since returning from my trip to Atlanta last Monday I have been in a bit of a funk.

I’m enduring my second cold of the year and the month, and my desire to cure it with fresh air has been thwarted by Arctic temperatures that I’m reluctant to face or lose my face to. At the end of my driveway is a ridiculous pile of snow that I haven’t taken a shovel to yet, because of the potential coughing attack the exertion will win me. My car, like myself, is stuck on the wrong side of this blockade (and CP with all his helpful energy is housesitting for a friend while being similarly crushed by a bout of illness…) When I look outside I feel rather overcome, so I’ve stopped doing so.

I have not been reading either. This comes as a shock to me every time I notice my small pile of books. Why am I not picking them up? Why am I finding Palace of Desire less than enthralling all of a sudden? Why have I not even started Bread Givers? Why are Ann Beattie’s New Yorker stories not enticing me? Granted, my head has been in a fog all week, but the words don’t go swimming around when I attempt to read. They sit patiently on the page waiting to grab my interest. But for the time being they are failing.

When I have not been sleeping, I have been resolutely working through the first seasons of Arrested Development and Heroes. Once I finished those I turned to lavish BBC costume dramas like North & South, and The Buccaneers. My attention span is as long as ever, but I just can’t focus it on reading or projects or even (until tonight) playing on the computer.

This will pass. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow I will go outside and poke that pile of snow with my shovel. I’ll start Bread Givers. I’ll watch Pillars of the Earth. I’ll get caught up on the new items in my Google Reader. The cloud of funk will dissipate. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow…

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Posted in Book related, Books, Movies, Non-sense, Personal, Reading, snow | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 10, 2011

Off to Atlanta Again

After scrambling to reorganize travel plans due to the threat of snowy weather both here and in Atlanta, I will be heading to The Atlanta International Gifts & Home Furnishings Market tomorrow instead of Wednesday. I will be leaving my computer behind this year, since last year it quickly became obvious that 12 hour days spent shopping for new merch for ONECS left little time or energy for blogging! I expect to get some reading done on the plane and bus rides though. I’ll be taking Palace of Desire and The Bread Givers.

Dare I admit that I’m half hoping that I’ll win a Kindle at the show…? They’re giving one away each day, so I have 5 chances. I am warming to the idea of owning a Kindle, and I even have theories about how it will help me build a better personal library – of physical books! Hmmm. We’ll see.

I’ll be offline until next Monday. I hope everyone has a great week!

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Posted in Adventure, Book related, Non-sense, Personal, Reading, Traveling, Work | Tags: , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 9, 2011

The Maine Solar System Model

I took a break today from my sedentary and completely delightful life of sleeping, reading, watching movies, and blogging to go on a road trip. In CP’s new orange Ford Explorer – transformed into my very own Magic School Bus for the day – we drove up to the end of I-95 and then hopped onto Rt. 1 to venture even farther north. Our destination? Outer space!

In the Dec. issue of Downeast Magazine we had read about the world’s largest scale model of the solar system. Located on the 40 mile stretch of road between Houlton and Presque Isle, within view for the length of it of the Canadian wilds, and beneath the shadow of the fittingly named Mars Hill, with its futuristic (and strangely gorgeous) ridge lined with windmills…is The Maine Solar System Model. The scale is 1:93,000,000 which converts Pluto to 1 inch in diameter and Jupiter to 61.4 inches in diameter. It was built by the people of Aroostook County in collaboration with the University of Maine at Presque Isle. How cool is that?

We traveled through the solar system from the far reaches of space, encountering Pluto first. On a scavenger hunt through several small snowy towns, we traveled faster than the speed of light (which at this scale would have been 7 mph!). We found the planets in fields, beside houses, at the tops of hills, and incorporated into bits of landscaping. Each planet inspired gleeful delight, and a certain amount of awe (scaled to size). It was really pretty neat. I highly recommend keeping an eye out if you’re ever in the area. While some of the planets could be easily missed, you would have difficulty not hitting the breaks if you encountered this:

Jupiter
Jupiter above, with Venus and Neptune below.
VenusNeptune

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Posted in Adventure, Maine, Non-sense, Periodicals, Photography, snow, Traveling | Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 8, 2011

Movie Mayhem: Jan. 1st-8th

The first week of 2011 has been fantastic on the movie watching front. I’ve seen a whole pile of foreign films, and pretty much enjoyed them all. There’s some interesting stuff here.

arnArn: The Knight Templar – Dir. Peter Flinth. Writ. Hans Gunnarsson. Based on the novels by Jan Guillou. Stars Joakim Natterqvist, Sofia Helin, and Stellan Skarsgard. Sweden, 2007.
Thanks to Caroline for her recommendation to watch this movie! It was an excellent crusade movie, medieval drama, and love story. It follows the escapades of Arn, the son of a Swedish nobleman (who, true to the time, is as glamorous as a hard working farmer can be). After falling in love with his lovely neighbor Cecilia, who is promised to another man, things go epically wrong for Arn. He is excommunicated from the Catholic church and banished into the ranks of the Templar Knights to serve in the crusades for 20 years. Cecilia is tossed into a nunnery for a similarly lengthy sentence. While she is tormented by a particularly nasty nun, he is fighting to remain alive while maintaining his dignity, and his (gratifyingly) open mind. The movie is lavish, with many characters and settings, and it is believable in all its gritty detail. The battle scenes are brutal, the love scenes are tender. If you’re in the mood for a nearly 3 hour sweep of medieval costumes and locals, definitely watch this.

The Fifth Element – Writ. & Dir. Luc Besson. Stars Bruce Willis, Mila Jovovich, and Gary Oldman. France, 1997.
I’ve been meaning to watch this forever, and I’m glad I finally got around to it. A sci-fi extravaganza that is awesome in its visual scope and a bit puzzling in its plot lines, The Fifth Element is a whole lot of fun. The basic story of a great evil coming to wipe out all goodness left in the world, and the plucky and destiny driven heroes who save the day, is amped up a decimal or two by outrageous settings and costumes and the most bizarre side-kicks and villains. A great cast (with crazy performances from Ian Holm and Chris Tucker, in addition to the package listed above) rounds out a hilarious and whacked vision of future life.

District B13 – Dir. Pierre Morel. Writ. Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri. Stars Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, and Tony D’Amario. France, 2004.
After watching The Fifth Element, I was scanning the Netflix instant play options and noticed that it’s director, Luc Besson, was involved in District B13. In a Paris of 2010 where the worst of the violent ghettos have been walled off from the rest of the city, a good punk and a good cop join forces to take down a vicious crime lord, while simultaneously stopping a stray bomb from going off and blowing the entire ghetto to kingdom come. The energetic and highly skilled stars of the movie are both stunt men, trained in martial arts and Parkour. While the storyline is fairly ho hum and the acting is a little weak, there is no denying the bolts of adrenaline that ricochet out of the screen when these guys get going – whether they are fighting or simply running away, they do it with insane athletic style which is just exciting enough to make up for what else the movie lacks.

oskarLet the Right One In – Dir. Tomas Alfredson. Writ. John Ajvide Lindqvist. Stars Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. Sweden, 2008.
I don’t venture into the horror realms very often, but I had heard a lot of interesting things about this film. In the bright daylight of late morning I attempted it, and was glad that I did. This is not your average vampire movie. 12-year old Oskar is being bullied at school, and doesn’t seem to have any friends until a strange girl moves in next door. He is immediately drawn to her, and a friendship develops, in spite of her odd aversion to light and food, and the rash of ugly murders that begin to take place in the surrounding snowy suburbs. As Oskar gets closer to the truth he must decide exactly what sins love can forgive. The movie is mesmerizingly slow, with long quiet shots. Both Kare Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli are fantastic. The choice of when to show gruesome details and when to hid them in shadow is particularly unsettling, and the creepiness is confounded by the sweetness of lonely hearts finding companionship. And yet by the end I questioned even that sweetness, perplexed by a subtle suspicion that there was more going on beneath the surface. I liked that the movie gave me time to really consider the circumstances, and did not try to lead me to any particular conclusion. A well crafted and strange movie.

The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner – Writ. & Dir. Werner Herzog. Stars Walter Steiner. West Germany, 1974.
Before this I had only seen some of Herzog’s fictional work. This documentary about ski flyer and woodcarver Walter Steiner was quite interesting. Ski flying, to my understanding, is bigger and badder ski jumping, and Steiner was a champion. The film followed him through a competition where he was challenged to break records for distance. A ramp and jump had been built that he felt was too dangerous for a flyer of his immense skill, and even as he landed (and crashed through) the longest jumps in history, he knew that he had reached the limits of what men and skis could do. His love of flying and his quiet, stoic nature are compelling, and the incredible footage of ski jumps and some of the intense crashes makes for riveting watching. Some of the slow motion shots of a ski flyer in flight, set to haunting music, are really exquisite. Not my favorite Herzog, but a good introduction to his documentary work.

jackalThe Jackal of Nahueltoro – Writ. & Dir. Miguel Littin. Stars Nelson Villagra. Chile, 1969.
The Miguel Littin thread! This movie retold the true story of a poor, uneducated man who in a drunken stupor murdered a mother and her five children. After being sent to prison for this hideous crime, he learned to read and became a Catholic and picked up skills in basket weaving and guitar making. He faced his eventual death sentence with dignity and remorse. The story as Littin tells it draws out a complex sympathy for Jose, who was given the short straw from day one. With its documentary style and handheld camera work, I got the feeling that I was being presented the facts as they were. While questions were raised – could Jose’s death by the Chilean state also be called murder, if such a government and society could stand to see a child raised to become like him? – no specific answers were given. Visually the movie had some very interesting parts, with the actual murder scene being the most peculiar and unsettling. Overall I was intrigued by Littin’s work, and I would be interested in seeing more, if I ever find any.

What have you been watching in this first week of 2011?

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Posted in Documentary, Foreign Films, Miguel Littin, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Non-sense, Werner Herzog | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 7, 2011

The Fugitive

DSC00879by Marcel Proust
translated by Peter Collier

While overall I prefer Proust’s lyrical and explosive descriptions of places and scenes and weather and hawthorn hedges, in The Fugitive he really blew me away with his single minded pursuit of the ins and outs of Marcel’s thoughts and feelings after Albertine leaves him. Here is the confusion and conceit and sorrow and suffering in all its gritty glory. My duel reactions to Marcel were blown out of proportion here – my sympathy overflowed, while I ground my teeth in frustration and bemusement. By the time Marcel came to the end of his grief and the end of his interest in what Albertine’s life had been with and without him, I was exhausted – and he gratified me by admitting to his own fatigue with the entire topic.

Memory and the corrosive power of forgetting are main themes in this work, of course, but here we come round full circle to ideas and concepts that Proust addressed in Swann’s Way, with potent results. The ending to The Fugitive is especially haunting, with its ghostly memory of a childhood incident. I was completely flummoxed by some honest-to-god plot twists in this volume. Somehow I have avoided reading any kind of synopsis of the work, so I was nearly as shocked as Marcel when…well you know, if you’ve read it. I was not expecting that!

I am eager to finish now, amazed that the end is in view – only Finding Time Again between me and the pressing question of where Proust is going with all this. I can’t comprehend what will be contained in the final volume, what Proust’s sum up will resemble. I imagine it will be beautifully perplexing. I can’t wait.

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Posted in Authors, Books, Famous People, Marcel Proust, Non-sense, Novels, Reading | Tags: ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 4, 2011

Unfinished Reading

Inspired by Amateur Reader’s recent post – a list of new year’s resolutions – I began a list of my own tonight. Let me respectfully and blatantly steal a paragraph from his post to help me explain:

‘3. Finish fewer books. Dr. Johnson, who read more than anyone, was pressed about a new book. Had he read it through? “No, Sir, do YOU read books through?”* Johnson was correct. You are perhaps thinking of all of the marvelous books that it would be a crying shame not to enjoy from beginning to end and then back to the beginning. Yes, yes. But what about all of the other books?‘

When I read this I felt a thrill. I’ve always been one for sticking it out to the bitter end, and only in the last few years have I determined not to finish a book if I am hating it. I’m adjusting to this concept slowly. Greater freedom in book abandonment is desired. I can certainly resolve to finish fewer books that are just not appealing to me. Another idea came to me while reading Amateur Reader’s words though – the thought of all of the other books. If I could loose myself from the bonds of finishing the books I started (and thus beginning only as many books as I thought I could finish), how many more books would I be able to start?! All those tempting and tantalizing books on the library shelves with their fascinating topics (I’m thinking mostly of non-fiction here) that I wish I had the time to read. I could at least start them, leaf through them, dive into a chapter or two, jot down a note, and then calmly not finish them if fancy or time caused me to pause. I resolve to finish fewer books!

Because I am a habitual list keeper, I feel compelled to make a list of such endeavors. To kick off my new found sense of freedom, I recorded the abandonment of two books that I was enjoying quite a bit but not making much progress in – books that have been on loan from distant libraries for many, many weeks and must be returned. I noted down that I would like to delve into both again in the future (although I did not claim that I meant to finish them!), and without further ado I removed their bookmarks and set them on the counter by the door. I do not feel regret! I feel only optimism.

I’m rather excited about this. Of course I have no intention of throwing all caution to the wind and starting a dozen books at once, nor am I opposed to finishing something if it particularly grabs me. I’m just eager to embrace a greater guilt-free state of reading, and adopt a way of thinking that allows me to read more by reading less. Brilliant.

——
‘* James Boswell, Life of Johnson, somewhere in April 1773.‘ – also filched from Amateur Reader’s post

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Posted in Book related, Books, Non-sense, Reading | Tags: , ,

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