Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 3, 2011

Movie Mayhem Dec. 18th-Dec. 31st + Year End Wrap-up

Composing these notes on my movie watching activities throughout 2010 has been fun for me. It has definitely become a permanent feature on my blog and I’ll be continuing the record keeping in 2011. I am a huge fan of lists and by keeping a movie list in 2010, aside from noting just how many movies I can watch in a month (in a busy month only 8 or 9, in a month with more free time anywhere between 15 and 29,) what has been of greatest interest to me is following the patterns. While I am given to haphazard viewing, more often than not a movie I am currently watching ties in to something else I have seen recently, whether it shares an actor, a director, a writer, or a country. I like to follow the threads, and keeping these notes helps me to track that journey. I like that. It may or may not be interesting to anyone beside me, but I have seen evidence over the past year that more than a few of the movies I have discovered were in turn welcome discoveries for others. That’s pretty cool. And the give and take of suggestions is my favorite part of sharing my random movie thoughts. I have watched movies recommended by people reading my blog that I might otherwise have never bothered with, and enjoyed them. Thanks for that! Let’s keep all this going in the new year, shall we?

The last couple of movies I watched in December were mostly all fun. I was cornered by my sisters while home for Christmas and forced to watch Valentine’s Day (Garry Marshal-USA-2010) which tried too hard to be endearing and was a little too gooey for me. I enjoyed Life (Ted Demme-USA-1999) way more than I expected to. It was a bit like a comical version of The Shawshank Redemption, with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence delivering a bit more than just frienemy buddy roles. The outtakes at the end were hysterical! Another movie that I liked more than I expected to was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (John Turteltaub-USA-2010). I was appalled by the ratty long hair that adorned Nicolas Cage’s head, and while I couldn’t get the character that Jay Baruchel gave voice to in How to Train Your Dragon to sit quietly in the back of my head anytime the guy spoke, I was thrilled by the music made by electricity (even though I know it wouldn’t work in real life, but hello, this world has magic too so…!). The out of control mops scene straight out of Fantasia was pretty fun too.

plowrightI watched Tea With Mussolini (Franco Zeffirelli-Italy, UK-1999) and Twelfth Night (John Sichel-UK-1969-an ITV Saturday Night Theatre production) after Caroline reminded me of how fantastic Joan Plowright is. I saw Tea With Mussolini as a kid, and it stood up to a re-watch. Based on events in the director’s childhood, the movie is about an illegitimate boy who is raised by Mary Wallace (Joan Plowright) and her friends among a group of British women in pre-WWII Fascist Italy. Lovers of art and culture, they refuse to leave Florence when the war starts, as their leader – an ambassador’s widow played by the always wonderful Maggie Smith – believes they are under the protection of Mussolini, whom she once had tea with. They are interned, and their secret American benefactor, the glamorous Elsa (Cher), ends up with them and in fear for her life when it turns out that she is a Jew. The scenery is lovely, the characters are endearing, and the story has the proper balance of the poignant and the amusing. It’s a very nice movie.

Twelfth Night was kind of a mind trip, because Joan Plowright is so young! She plays both Viola and Sebastian and does a decent job of it. The production was very staged, presented like a play but with quite a few locations and sets. It was just rather formal I guess. It was almost the whole Shakespeare play, and the cast was pretty strong with Alec Guinness as Malvolio and Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby. Tommy Steele was a bit too perky as Feste for me, but I am used to Ben Kingsley in the 1996 Trevor Nunn production which I’ve seen a dozen times. Overall not bad, and totally fun to see Joan Plowright was a young woman. I definitely need to explore more of her work.

amelieI got one more Jean-Pierre Jeunet film in before the end of the year, finally watching Amelie (France-2001) which I loved of course. How could you not? It is such a cute love story, and the weirdness of Jeunet is mellowed out just enough so that a wider audience can appreciate it. I think I prefer Delicatessen, but there is very little wrong with Amelie.

Of the 194 movies I watched in 2010 (some more than once, but each viewing counts as a movie seen,) 64 were not made in the USA. I would like to watch more foreign films in 2011, and I’m off to a good start so far, since of the 4 movies I’ve watched in 2011 all of them are foreign. 2010 was the year I finished watching all of Stanley Kubrick’s films, and now I want to focus on Werner Herzog and Jim Jarmusch and Aleksandr Sokurov among others. I don’t really make movie watching goals though since, like I already said, I like to follow the threads. The threads that I’m currently following are…the Peter Lorre thread, the Miguel Littin thread, the Jeunet thread. Whatever catches my fancy really. I’ve been watching a lot of Ashtun Kutcher movies by accident lately. Maybe I should follow that thread?

Whatever threads I end up following through the maze of movie mayhem, I can assure you that I will report back on my findings here. Happy movie watching in 2011 everyone!

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Posted in Famous People, Foreign Films, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Non-sense | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | January 2, 2011

Looking Back and Looking Forward

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time sleeping of late. My last bout of sickness in 2010 is my first cold of 2011 – nothing alarming, just a bit of a sniffle and a cough that startles my cats. I had grand plans to barrel through The Fugitive by Marcel Proust in the last few days of the year, and I got a good start on it Tuesday before being tackled by the sore throat and watery eyes that my co-workers had been passing around at the movie theater. Harumph. Since then I have been luxuriating in sleeping in very, very late and then dashing off to work, which leaves a pitiful amount of time for doing anything productive, like writing year-end wrap-up posts for example.

This morning I got an e-mail from WordPress that shook me out of my bleary dreamy fog and caused me to get out of bed and make a pot of coffee and sit down before my computer to examine my blogging life. The “stats helper monkeys” of the WordPress universe cheerily informed me that the health of my blog, according to the “Blog-Health-o-Meter” was in the green – the “Wow” green. Apparently I posted 95 times in 2010, and was viewed around 17,000 times. And what were my visitors coming calling for? This cracks me up – the search term that causes my blog to rise to the surface of the Internet ocean most frequently is “best Halloween costume ever”. A round of applause to that giant piece of popped corn that I adorned myself with in 2008!

Another stat is hopefully a better example of how my blogging life has developed in the past year: my busiest day ever on this blog was Jan. 15th, the day the discussion for Mrs. Dalloway began as part of the Woolf in Winter project. What fun that was! Hosted by Emily, Frances, Claire, and myself it was an experience that blew open Virginia Woolf’s doors to a whole slew of readers who had never dared approach her house before. It was an amazing thing to be part of, and it has figured on quite a few ‘best of 2010’ lists aside from my own. A wonderful start to a fantastic year of reading.

In 2010 I read 53 books, mostly fiction. 14 were translated works, 6 were graphic novels, 2 were works of poetry, 2 were collections of short stories. In addition, I delved into a few other collections of short stories but will complete those books at a future date. I read books by 28 male authors and 15 female authors.

Besides Woolf in Winter I participated in The Big Read V: The Woman in White which was excellent fun, and read The Brothers Karamazov with Bellezza’s encouragement. The only reading challenge I joined was the extremely self indulgent and devilishly enjoyable R.I.P. V hosted by Carl V.

While I picked up many books out of pure curiosity or personal interest or after a good recommendation, what lent the most structure to my reading year was The Wolves book group (formerly and ironically dubbed ‘The Non-Structured Reading Group’). At Richard’s prompting he, Emily, Frances, Claire, and I all picked a couple of books to read together after Woolf in Winter ended. This lead to one of the most rewarding reading experiences I have ever had. An eclectic mix of international literature, covering a broad range of topics and styles, the books we picked have challenged and thrilled each of us by turns. The discussions each month have been exciting, invigorating, and often hilarious. We’ve made new blogging friends and found new favorite authors. In fact we had so much fun that we’re continuing, under our new name – The Wolves – and with a new official member – the fabulous EL Fay of This Book and I Could Be Friends.

Since this post is already a tangled mass of random information, I may as well toss in The Wolves‘ very exciting reading list for 2011:

January – The Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska (EL Fay)
February – Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben (Emily)
March – Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa (Richard)
April – The Dodecahedron, or a Frame for Frames by Paul Glennon (me)
May – What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici (Frances)
June – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Claire)
July – Snow by Orhan Pamuk (EL Fay)
August – The End of the Story by Lydia Davis (Frances)
September – Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (Richard)
October – House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (me)
November – The Planetarium by Nathalie Sarraute (Emily)
December – One Man’s Bible or Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather by Gao Xingjian (Claire)

Discussions for the book of the month will begin on the last weekend of that month (so we will be discussing The Bread Givers between the 28th and 30th of Jan., etc.). Any adventurous or otherwise interested readers are eagerly encouraged to join us!

What else, what else to examine in 2010? Favorite newly discovered author? Georges Perec, without a doubt. And Life, A User’s Manual could probably be called my favorite book of 2010. I’m still get giddy when I think about it. Author whom I read the most? Definitely Virginia Woolf, at 4. Authors who continue to impress? Shirley Jackson, Roberto Bolano, John Crowley. A book I’m relieved to have knocked off the TBR list? The Brothers Karamazov. A book I’m still working on knocking off the TBR list? In Search of Lost Time.

I could go on, but I’m ready to stop looking back (even if ever so fondly) and start looking forward to the new reading year. I haven’t quite formulated any specific goals beyond finishing In Search of Lost Time, and aiming to read more international literature, more Bolano, more Perec, more female authors, more of the classics, maybe something really, really old… One thing is certain – I’m going to have a grand time, whatever mischief I get up to in the new year!

Happy New Year once again to all my fellow readers, bloggers, and friends. I’m glad to be journeying on with you for another year. 🙂

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Posted in Adventure, Authors, Book related, Books, Co-Workers, Famous People, Holidays, My cats, Non-sense, Reading, Reading Challenges, The Wolves | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 31, 2010

Clandestine in Chile

chileby Gabriel Garcia Marquez
translated by Asa Zatz

It makes me happy that the image on the cover of this book is a still from Miguel Littin’s film Acta General de Chile, the film that is the subject of Clandestine in Chile. In his introduction to the book Francisco Goldman says that he doesn’t know anyone who has actually seen the film, and after a quick poke around it doesn’t look like I’ll be adding myself to the list of people who have seen it any time soon. Which is probably okay, because the tale of how it came into being provides plenty of entertainment for the moment.

Clandestine in Chile is a piece of reporting, a brief 116 pages gleaned from 18 hours of interviews. While the text is Garcia Marquez’s, he retained the first person voice of Miguel Littin, and it is his story – the story of how he reentered Chile after 12 years of exile, disguised so that even his own mother had trouble recognizing him, to make a film about life under the dictatorship of Pinochet. Struggling with intense nostalgia, and the identity crisis brought on by his extreme disguise, Littin traveled through Chile for 6 weeks. Using three international film crews and the complex network of the underground resistance, he escaped in the end with 105,000 feet of film – a long donkey’s tail to pin on the backside of Pinochet!

The book is filled with a certain amount of tension and suspense (after all, Littin is on the list of people absolutely forbidden to ever return to Chile) but in spite of the sense of urgency and the close calls it is not a rip-roaring adventure. There is a subtlety to it all. Littin senses the change in his country and its people – there is a heavy dread in the air, a somber silence – but it is at times difficult to see what is wrong with the picture in the brightly lit, clean streets of Santiago. Comic and surreal by turns, the story is definitely an interesting one – all the more so because it is true.

Being a film lover myself, I got a kick out of Littin’s escape into a movie theater when he needed to clear his mind, and how he stalled his project for a few hours to watch Amadeus. He mentions the first film he ever saw as well as a few other films that impressed him. I wrote them all down for future reference. Of Littin’s own films, the only one I have located so far is The Jackal of Nahueltoro, the movie that kind of saved his life when he was escaping Chile in the chaos of the coup. I’ll be watching that in the next few days.

This was the last book on The Wolves reading list for 2010. What a fantastic year of reading! Three cheers for us all. We have a new list for the new year which I am very excited about and will actually post about soon. For the moment, Happy New Year and happy reading in the new year.

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Posted in Authors, Book design, Books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Movies, Non-Fiction, Non-sense, NYRB, Read-Along, Reading, Reading Challenges, The Wolves | Tags: ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 26, 2010

Palace Walk

palace walkby Naguib Mahfouz
translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny

The first in a trilogy that follows an Egyptian family through several generations and charts their course through a rapidly changing culture and country, Palace Walk was a fascinating and frustrating read for me. Dare I say that it reminded me of the infamous Kristin Lavransdatter…? I’ll point out right away that the major difference is that I LIKED Palace Walk! However, aside from the obvious similarities (both are trilogies, both are historical fiction, both won the Nobel Prize for Literature,) there were other things that made me think of Undset’s book, in spite of myself.

Essentially, Palace Walk covers the disintegration of al-Sayyid Ahmad’s tyrannical rule of his family. From the beginning al-Sayyid Ahmad is a difficult but interesting character. At home he uses his fierce temper and terrible wrath to keep his timid wife, three sons, and two daughters on the narrow path of obedience. In public and with his friends he is a charming and generous man, quick to laugh, and a lover of music and women and fun. He finds within himself a balance between his hardcore religious beliefs and his pursuit of all the good things in life. This balancing act of course ultimately brings his downfall, for his children can’t help noticing that ‘ “Nobody else lives like us” ‘ – including their own father! His belief in the power of the love and fear he inspires in his children blinds him to the possibility of rebellion in any form, and so it is both awful and awfully amusing to witness the destruction of his hold over them.

Like Undset, Mahfouz infused his story with a sense of time and place without being super obvious about it, and the details of how al-Sayyid Ahmad and his family went about their daily lives in post-WW I Egypt was definitely a large part of what I enjoyed about the book. The culture is one I am unfamiliar with except in a general sense, so I felt like I was embarking on a full immersion experience whenever I opened the book. In addition to the details of what life was like for the majority of the population, it was especially interesting to see the difference between them and the ‘ultraconservative, Hanbali bias in religion‘ that Al-Sayyid Ahmad imposed on himself and his family.

Due to the contrast between the life I live and the culture and traditions of Egypt at that time, my notes on the book are full of incensed exclamations and the verbal pounding of fists. While the mantra “Time and place” helped me to understand the general treatment of women, I had a hard time with the attitudes toward women displayed by al-Sayyid Ahmad, and the reincarnation and exaggeration of those ideas in his eldest son Yasin. I had to stop at one point and verify that Mahfouz’s feelings were hurt as much as mine by this, and I was pleased to learn that the role of women in this society was something he was very interested in and was definitely exploring. Later in the book it was interesting to see the contrast between al-Sayyid Ahmad’s daughters and a young woman raised by a much more liberal family. This is something I believe Mahfouz will continue to discuss in the following books.

Another thing that reminded me of Kristin L. was a similar mix of religion and superstition. From the first chapter when Amina, the docile wife, is introduced, the jinn are mentioned. The jinn are a kind of demon, but they seem to come from a different world than the God of Amina’s faith, and to her they are an extremely real, nearly physical presence in her life. Further on, I believe it is her son Fahmy who is pointed out for not submitting to such superstitious beliefs. Religion is an incredibly huge part of life for these people – they can’t get through a simple conversation without asking for God’s blessing, or forgiveness, or submitting events to His will in almost every sentence. I was pleased that Mahfouz detailed various degrees of actual belief though – religion is ingrained in the culture, but it is still a deeply personal thing.

Stylistically, the tone of the book was very straightforward. While being extremely descriptive, Mahfouz wasn’t given to using particularly lyrical language. It’s pretty blow by blow. This could be partially the translation, of course. I don’t remember The Thief and the Dogs being quite so…wordy, but being a stream of consciousness narrative it was quite different in style. In spite of the wordiness of Palace Walk, I found the reading experience to be a bit bland. Again, this kind of reminded me of Undset.

With two more books ahead of me I am reserving the majority of my judgement. For the time being, while it took me awhile to get invested in any of the characters (and I still feel like I’m looking at them from across a wall,) at this point I am definitely eager to see what happens next. I’m not blown away by the overall experience thus far, but I am interested in what Mahfouz is doing and I’m curious to see where he’s going with it.

Thanks to Richard for hosting this readalong. Follow this link to his post, where you will also find links to other reviews. Next up, Palace of Desire, with the discussion taking place around January 30-31.

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

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 23, 2010

Middlesex

middlesexby Jeffrey Eugenides
read by Kristoffer Tabori

I continue to find it amusing that I’ll readily pick up a book in audio format that I haven’t felt any compelling desire to read. ‘International bestsellers’, pulp, or just ridiculously long – something about getting to this type of book while simultaneously killing time during car rides works for me. In this case, I was willing to venture into an entire genre that I normally stay clear of.

The ‘Modern Family Epic’. In my normal life, when I pick a book up and read something like ‘Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family‘ I cringe and put it down. I’m not entirely sure why. Multi-generational stories can be hugely fascinating, flinging themselves across time and place as they do. I’m less concerned with this type of story when it deals with a distant time and place – after all I am cheerfully busting through The Cairo Trilogy at this very moment, which at least fits the ‘Family Epic’ description. I’m pretty interested in American history, so I shouldn’t mind the ‘American Epic’ either. Regardless, I have a strange resistance to this genre.

And regardless of that, I took all 17 CDs of Middlesex along with me over a month ago and proceeded to listen with varying degrees of interest to Calliope’s tale. Certainly the fact that the narrator of the story is a hermaphrodite adds a whole new level of intrigue to the classic tale of immigration, life during Prohibition-era Detroit, the Depression, WWII, the race riots of 1967, and suburban life in middle class America… I was entertained by a lot about the story, which was rich in guilty family secrets and of course that interesting genetic history that turned Callie into Cal.

As a sort of ‘radio drama’ it worked quite well, and although I didn’t care for Kristoffer Tabori’s voice, I can’t deny that he was an excellent reader. I found the narrative style a little odd though. In an interview at the end of the audio Eugenides explained why it was necessary to use both a first person narrative and a third person omniscient. The tale is told by Cal in the first person, which makes sense because of the complication of having to call Cal “she” for part of the book and “he” for the rest. Annoying, and not a true representation of who the character is. The story begins with Cal’s grandparents in a tiny village in Greece though, and throughout the story there is a massive amount of information that Cal couldn’t possibly have known – and he admits this, asking to be excused for letting his imagination fill in the gaps. The story is therefore stranded in a curious state between fact and fiction (while in reality being entirely fiction, at least to the extent that any book written by an author who is alive and has experienced life is fictional.) I had moments of difficulty while trying to wrap my head around this – the suspension of belief involved, and how that interfered with my belief in Cal or the trustworthiness of the narrative. Or something. Ahem.

Anyway. The historical details of the book interested me and the genetic stuff was quite fascinating, but overall I wasn’t impressed with it. One of the major reasons for this was made crystal clear to me when I read Emily’s recent review at Evening All Afternoon. We shared a mutual disgruntlement over the seeming lack of trust Eugenides had in our abilities as readers. There was a great deal of foreshadowing and coincidences in the story, which can be mildly annoying if they aren’t dealt with subtly (and thrilling when they seem to come naturally). In Middlesex, these structural ploys were not only not subtle (Callie will soon be revealed to be between sexes, and meanwhile the family moves to a house in Grosse Pointe that is on a street named Middlesex?!) but Eugenides felt the need to remind his readers of earlier plot points or themes that paralleled or elaborated on the current ones, as though they couldn’t be trusted to remember on their own… Irritating. And eye-roll inducing in some cases.

While it wasn’t by any means all bad, Middlesex didn’t really help me overcome my aversion to the Modern Family Epic, and I also don’t feel any compelling need to read Eugenides’ other book, The Virgin Suicides. (Which doesn’t mean that I won’t pick up the audio version if I see it…!) It did help me knock out 21 hours worth of commuting time though, so thanks for that I guess. I’m curious to see what audio book sucks me in next…! 🙂

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Posted in Audiobooks, Authors, Book related, Books, Jeffrey Eugenides, Non-sense, Novels | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 17, 2010

Movie Mayhem: Dec. 8th – Dec. 17th

Has anyone else noted that Mark Wahlburg hasn’t lost his hip-hop walk? I watched Shooter (Antoine Fuqua-USA-2007) and The Corrupter (James Foley-USA-1999) days apart, and aside from being reminded that a Mark Wahlburg performance is pretty much the same thing regardless of what it appears in, I couldn’t help giggling a few times during both movies on account of Marky Mark seeping through Wahlburg’s shoulders. I had to follow this up with a viewing of the Good Vibrations music video, which makes my cup of Wahlburg overflow. Moving on.

In addition to those two shoot-em-up tales of bad guys and good guys, I watched The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone-USA-2010), which was long on star power and short (so very short) on storyline. Great snicker-worth cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger though.

stone of destinyI came across Stone of Destiny (Charles Martin Smith-UK-2008) while surfing the instant streaming lists on Netflix. It’s an uncomplicated and rather uninspired telling of the true story of Ian Hamilton’s daring theft of the Stone of Scone (pronounced ‘skoon’) from Westminster Abby in the 1950’s. A young Scottish Nationalist, he enlisted the help of some fellow patriotic students to take back the Stone, which the English filched from Scotland centuries before. The premise is interesting, but the movie overall didn’t quite deliver. It was mildly amusing, with decent performances from it’s cast (which included Billy Boyd, Kate Mara, and Charlie Cox) but something just didn’t really click. Still, it’s kind of great that the heist actually did get pulled off – ballsy move on Hamilton’s part! I hadn’t heard about the incident before, so that’s worth something.

valhalla risingI have to give props to L of omphaloskepsis for giving Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn-Denmark -2009) a go and then writing so intriguingly about it. I had already glanced at this movie and pushed it to the far end of my TBW list, but her notes on the film sent it straight into my living room the other night. This is a weird, weird film. After reading a scattering of reviews about it, I am struck by the one thing that they all agree on, whether the reviewer liked it or not – everyone’s initial response seems to be “Um…what??” In 1000 A.D., somewhere in some rather striking looking mountains (the Scottish highlands in reality, but as for the movie, who knows?) a possibly Norse warrior named One-Eye (for apparent reasons,) has been captured by a chieftain and his men and is used in daily battles to the death, put on for entertainment and gambling purposes. Without fail he wins the bouts, with graphic and grotesque skill. Then he escapes, allowing only the young boy who brought him food and whatnot, to live. This child can sense One-Eye’s thoughts (one of many otherworldly aspects of the film) and serves as a translator for him (he’s mute, and has visions to boot) when they encounter a roving band of Christian soldiers headed for the Holy Land. They join the mission in hopes of finding home, wherever that may be, but after a interminable journey via longboat through a dense fog, they end up somewhere that looks like the New World. Their experiences there quickly lead the soldiers to wonder if they’ve wound up in hell, and as they’re slowly picked off by an unseen menace, they turn to One-Eye in hopes that he can guide them to safety. Even though everyone else has already said this, I can’t avoid agreeing that the film reminded me of Aguirre: The Wrath of God. It had the same excruciating pacing, the same inevitable sense of doom, the same dang boat on a river complete with arrows winging from unseen hands to settle with emphatic thuds in quickly slumping bodies… Mads Mikkelson delivered an oddly riveting performance as One-Eye, considering that he never spoke and barely changed his expression. The unabashed goriness at times was balanced by incredible cinematography, with framing and color that kept me mesmerized even as I sunk lower and lower into the couch cushions in an attempt to deal with the bizarreness dripping out of my TV. I’m utterly incapable of answering that “Um…what??” question, since attempting to find sense of a movie like this makes my brain go gooey. “Pure experience” is what I would call it – like those movies that are pure entertainment, but “entertaining” is not a word I would associate with this one. Do read L’s more coherent notes on this, or just watch it if you have a strong stomach and a dedicated attention span! Interesting stuff.

kristin lToday I finally devoted three more hours of my life to the notorious Kristin Lavransdatter – and I hope they will be the last hours I ever donate to her! The movie (Liv Ullmann-Norway-1995) was as good as the book, which isn’t a compliment in this case. It brought the events of the first volume of Sigrid Undset’s tale to life in an excellent book-to-movie transformation, but it’s not possible to make something enjoyable out of The Wreath. While this was my favorite of the three books (which I read last Oct., Nov., and Dec. respectively, and basically hated), I found revisiting those events rather excruciating. I had to watch it though – a sick curiosity compelled me. For what it’s worth, the casting was excellent. Elisabeth Matheson as Kristin was exactly how I pictured her – nowhere near as beautiful as everyone claimed! And nearly mute and annoying… And Bjørn Skagestad as Erlend was totally sleazy. The only 100% positive thing I have to say about the movie was that it gave plenty of screen time to the only story that I found interesting in the book – the relationship between Kristin’s parents. How else were they going to fill three hours though? There was a ridiculous amount of passionate staring and weighty silences in this, and a great deal of crying and carrying on. In fact, this movie didn’t disappoint me at all – it was as laughably awful and squirm-inducing as I had expected. So I guess for me it was a success? Not the type of success I aim to encounter again though. Good riddance once again Kristin Lavransdatter – this glutton for punishment has been satisfied! 🙂

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Posted in Book related, Books, Famous People, Foreign Films, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Non-sense, Novels, Sigrid Undset, Werner Herzog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 17, 2010

I’m A Lukcy Basartd

Although I have been tempted to write about my beery adventures since having so much fun in Sept. and Oct. with my spooky book and beer combos, I haven’t encountered a brew that I felt I simply MUST point out – until now.

Brewed in celebration of Stone Brewing Company’s 13th anniversary, the Lukcy Basartd Ale has several things about it that excite me. First of all, indulging in my love of all things wordy, the scrambled text that appears all over the 22 oz. bottle is a delight to my eye and brain. Remember that study about how the brain can read scrambled text as long as the first and last letters of the word remain in their usual place? It’s a phenomena that amuses me greatly, although due to the curve of the bottle it’s a bit harder than usual for me to decipher the three paragraphs of text that begins with ‘Oepn yuor mnid. Use a craobwr if you msut‘, goes on to congratulate you for deviating from the norm by picking this odd bottle up, and finishes with a call to ‘gsarp enitghnelnemt anmog tihs mnid-nmubnig culettr‘ with ‘coinscous itnent‘, saying to those who accept the norm without thought, ‘ “Setp asdie, and get the hlel out of our way.” ‘ Thrilling stuff from the brewers of the famous Arrogant Bastard Ale, ripe with their usual overbearing conceit!

While I have been known to drink my share of fizzy yellow beer, (in spite of Arrogant Bastard’s sneering claim that it is “for Wussies“) the Lukcy Basartd is no fizzy yellow beer. It is a gorgeous amber color actually. A blend of the three Arrogant Bastard ales, oaked and double-dry hopped, the Lukcy Basartd is an astonishing thing. I’ve never encountered a beer that had three separate drinking experiences in one swig – there is the initial taste, the swish through the mouth, and the swallow. At the taste, I got all the sweet malty pow that I expect from Arrogant Bastard. Then my mouth was flooded with a grapefruity zing that at the same time was…vanillay…? Before I could quite decide what I was tasting, the swallow was roaring down my throat and I was rocked by the extra hops from the dry-hopping. WOW! I liked it, but I kept having to assure CP that this was the case, because my startled reaction after every single drink made him think I was suffering. This beer sent me reeling – but in a good way. I still can’t quite figure out what the flavor of the mid-drink was (pineapple? orange? sugar cookie??) but I was thoroughly impressed, and I definitely want to scoot back to the beer store to grab a few more of this limited release. And you should too, if you have any boldness in you – or any “blodenss” for that matter!

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Posted in Beer, Brewery, Non-sense | Tags: ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 15, 2010

Crosby and Bowie and Ferrell and Reilly wish you…a Merry Christmas

Thanks to listening to The Current all day today while working on Christmas presents, I came across this fantastically weird duet:

If that’s not strange or awesome enough for you, follow this link to watch Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly do an almost word for word reenactment of it.

Hee! Funny stuff. 🙂

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Posted in Famous People, Holidays, Music, Non-sense | Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 13, 2010

The Prisoner

The Prisonerby Marcel Proust
translated by Carol Clark

When I finished Sodom and Gomorrah in May, I proclaimed that Marcel and his love life annoyed me. I was informed that if this was the case, I was in for a long haul with the remaining books. More (so much more) from the tortured soul of Marcel was in store. I heaved a deep sigh, but forged on.

Seven months later, four of which were spent actively reading the 6th volume of In Search of Lost Time (off and on, you know), I can report that I am finally seeing the humor in the situation that my fellow readers mentioned as their reason for sticking with Marcel. In The Prisoner it becomes abundantly clear that “Proust the author understands what a tool Marcel the character is being” (to borrow a brilliant comment from Emily of Evening All Afternoon!)

In this volume, Marcel has Albertine right where he wants her – living in his house, at his constant beck and call and under his suffocating supervision. He is certain that he can keep her away from the eyes and hands of her girlfriends, real or imaginary, which at this point seems to be his very reason for living. Or at least he has a few precious moments of certainty, surrounded by hours and hours (and pages and pages) of agonized worry that this is far from the truth. His own attraction to her varies from day to day, careening from utter loathing to boredom to a devotion that compels him to buy her dresses and sweets and perhaps even a yacht if one catches her fancy. He obsessively tracks her every move, sending friends to spy on her and then suspecting those very spies of being her lovers. At the same time, he longs for other women and entertainments and even though he knows it would destroy him, he wishes Albertine would throw off her fetters and leave him. In the end, his own jealousies cause him endless suffering, and ‘the prisoner’ of the title begins to seem more and more to be Marcel himself, and not Albertine.

Do I feel sorry for this poor sap? There is a degree of sympathy in me, buried in mounds of mirth. Marcel, Marcel, Marcel…what am I going to do with you? The frustration I felt after finishing Sodom and Gomorrah has boiled over into something else – a giddy fascination in the inevitable and amusing ability of human beings to muck up their lives and the lives of those around them. We all have it to a degree, and perhaps that is why Proust’s story is so compelling. On some level almost anyone can identify with this character. Perhaps we can learn a few things from him too – I know I am.

As always, the moments of incredible insight into the workings of the mind, memory, and music, among other things, continue to make Proust’s book worth reading. At this point though, I am finally invested in the character of Marcel too. And with only a couple more volumes to see where Proust is going with all this, I’m eager to keep reading. Next up, The Fugitive.

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

Posted by: Sally Ingraham | December 8, 2010

Movie Mayhem: Dec. 1st – Dec. 7th

We finally set up the home theater system in our new place, complete with a Roku Player for instant streaming, and I must say it is blissful to watch movies again. The first movie I watched this month I found on TV though, and due to the luxury of 3 months of free DVR service, I was able to record it and watch it at my leisure – fast-forwarding through those darn commercials! I revisited some old favorites, indulging in a sci-fi afternoon (to work the quirks out of the speaker setup of course!) and aside from viewing Fantastic Four (Tim Story-USA-2005) I knocked out Iron Man (Jon Favreau-USA-2008), and Star Trek (J. J. Abrams-USA-2009) for the last time this year I hope (dare I admit that I’ve watched Iron Man 3 times and Star Trek 4 times this year, not including the times I watched parts of the movies before falling asleep…?)

Possession (Neil LaBute-USA-2002) was being played on TV during Ovation Channel’s Tall Dark and Steamy marathon a few weeks ago. Having recently read a great review of the book, I was more than curious. The movie, while interesting, seemed a little flat and I had the distinct feeling that a great deal must have been left out. Maybe not plot points, but detail. (I also have to wonder if the movie was parred down to fit a 2 hour TV block…) When I get around to reading the book, I’m sure I will be mesmerized. A historical mystery about an affair between Victorian era poets, with academic detectives and plenty of romance both past and present is certainly something I would enjoy. As for the movie, I did not find either Gwyneth Paltrow or Aaron Eckhart particularly compelling, and their chemistry was definitely off. I was left curious about both of the characters they played, and hope that the details I want are in the book. In fact my strongest reaction (instead of the usual, “This book would make a great movie”) is “This movie is probably an excellent book!”

mr. motoFollowing up on my Peter Lorre interest, I watched Think Fast, Mr. Moto (Norman Foster-USA-1937), which is the first of 8 movies in which Lorre played a deceptively quiet and clever Japanese detective. I wouldn’t say I was blown away by it. While some of the action was good, the story was somewhat hard to follow and I didn’t care for Mr. Moto. Perhaps that was partially due to the inherent creepiness I find in Lorre, but I often have trouble believing in Hollywood’s Oriental characters who are played by decisively not Oriental actors. Lorre was Austrian! I’m not sure that I will be watching more in this series, although I still want to explore more of Lorre’s work.

Throw Down Your Heart (Sascha Paladino-USA-2008) is a documentary about banjo playing wizard Bela Fleck’s adventures in Africa. He wanted to bring the banjo back to the land it originated in, and find and record with musicians who still played the instruments that are the ancestors of the modern day banjo. He traveled to Gambia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Mali, meeting master musicians and singers in tiny native villages and in fancy hotel rooms and modern recording studios. What the movie ends up being is a fantastic jam session – the music is incredible, and the chance to see ancient instruments being played with such skill is amazing. I turned my speakers up, rocking my house with the incredible sound of a 9 foot marimba being played by seven people at a time, accompanied by Bela Fleck’s energetic attempt to improvise and keep up. The music ranged from traditional folk songs to songs composed by Bela Fleck on the spot. His skill was evident, but it was also fun to see him watching in awe as D’Gary riped apart a complex string of notes on the acoustic guitar, and Bassekou Kouyate made the ngoni sing. The give and take among musicians is so amazing! I highly recommend this documentary, simply for the listen. I’m definitely buying the soundtrack.

big nightBig Night (Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci-USA-1996) is a great movie. It’s weird and quirky and kind of sad but at the same time so satisfying. Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci play brothers who have immigrated from Italy to open a restaurant in America. Primo (Shalhoub) is an extraordinary chef who isn’t willing to compromise his cooking to please the expectations of his infrequent customers, who are used to mediocre Italian food. Business isn’t so good for the brothers, and with the bank threatening to foreclose on their restaurant, Secondo (Tucci) makes a last ditch effort to save the restaurant and realize his dream of becoming a wealthy businessman like Pascal (Ian Holm), who owns the ridiculously successful restaurant across the street. Pascal (always plotting, but seemingly friendly) convinces Secondo that if the brothers host a big party, he will call up his big-time jazz playing friend and get him to come. The press will do wonders for the failing restaurant. Secondo has his hands full talking Primo into the scheme, keeping his two girlfriends from finding out about each other, and shopping for the Cadillac that represents the successful man he wants to be. Primo’s feast, when served, is the most astonishing meal the guests have ever eaten, but that surprise is only the first of many on the big night. Shalhoub is brilliant in this – shy but fiercely passionate. Tucci also delivers a fine performance, and the fantastic supporting cast (including Minnie Driver and Isabella Rossellini) only adds to the general greatness of the film. The script is really interesting – conversations flow with an odd naturalness, almost as though they were improvised but at the same time there is a studied feel to them. It’s slightly strange, but effective. I was reminded of the bizarre delivery of lines in The Spanish Prisoner, which incidentally stars Campbell Scott, who co-directed and played a small role in Big Night. Anyway, very enjoyable movie – one of my favorites of this year.

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Posted in Book related, Documentary, Famous People, Movie Mayhem, Movies, Music, Non-sense | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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