More Ras and Kaze

RasoirJ's Book Notes: Olive Kitteridge

2010-04-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009) (Rating = 5 = I loved it)

Elizabeth Strout’s marvelous story collection/novel makes a quiet, unpretentious splash. It’s a book of 13 short stories, some intertwined and many featuring Olive Kitteridge as the protagonist. What I like best:

• The very credible portraits of real people in a real place, a small town on the Maine coast.

• Strout’s ability to limn the complex, ambivalent emotions of aging among longtime married couples. The stories are filled with longing, loss, accommodation – and the power of deeply sublimated feelings.

• Strout’s facility as a prose stylist, the way she repeatedly comes up with the memorable phrase salted into the right spot.

• The character of Olive – a big woman, physically and emotionally. She’s angry, tough, blunt, stoic, donut-eating, and while not always very self-aware, always a fully rounded human. Whether or not you can appreciate Olive is a good gauge of whether I’ll be able to be a good friend of yours.

QUOTES:

On a young woman in “Incoming Tide; “…she was lovely, the way a sapling might be as the afternoon sun moved over it.”

Olive in “A Little Burst” on why her grown son doesn’t have many friends: “He is like her in that way, can’t stand the blah-blah-blah.”

Olive at her son’s wedding: “They probably think they’re through with loneliness too.”

RasoirJ's Movie Notes: The Ghost Writer

2010-04-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

The Ghost Writer (2010) director: Roman Polanski (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

Polanski is a great filmmaker, and he’s in top form here. He knows how to keep the suspense churning and your brain working as his everyman (Ewan McGregor as the intrepidly clever ghost writer) unravels a chain of conspiracy that begins with his assignment to ghost the autobiography of an ex-Prime Minister, a Tony Blair-like charmer played by Pierce Brosnan. Delicious acting turns by Brosnan, Olivia Williams as his livid, neglected wife and counselor, Tom Wilkinson as a shady Harvard professor with great connections, and 94-year-old Eli Wallach as a Martha’s Vinyard hermit with a vital bit of information. This is a movie about atmospherics, and Polanski turns it into the grayest, rainiest movie I’ve ever seen. The isolated Vinyard beach house setting in winter (really a North Sea beach house) nicely mirrors the mood of foul doings in high places.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 17

2010-03-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Rope (1948) ***
The murder victim is stuffed into a chest in the parlor just before the party guests arrive. Jimmy Stewart’s job is to rattle the murderers; gets a little rattled himself. Lesser Hitchcock.

Detective Story (1951) *****
Kirk Douglas is nothing short of volcanic as the tormented cop who can’t show anyone a little mercy--including himself. A cast full of pros helps him out, and he makes one of the all-time great movie exits.

Pickup on South Street (1953) ***
Richard Widmark cold-cocks Jean Peters, then wakes her by pouring a beer on her face. It’s tough-guy noir all the way. Historical interest.

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) **
Cyber-terrorists crash the country’s electronic infrastructure, not realizing that it's bad to mess with John McClane. Willis still cool but CGI now allows for stunts too implausible to thrill you.

Crimson Tide (1995) ***
Serious silliness onboard as Hackman and Denzel keep taking and retaking control of a nuclear sub readying launch, with the clock, as usual, ticking like mad. Suspense, holes galore.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 16

2010-03-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

Brothers (2005) ***
Psychologically rich but terribly sad tale of an honorable man who, in wartime and under duress, commits an act for which he cannot forgive himself. When he returns home, nothing’s the same.

Island in the Sky (1953) ***
Guy stuff. John Wayne and crew of four go down at 70-below. A host of well-liked Warner Brothers supporting actors fly repeated missions to find them. Courage, gentlemen.

Romance and Cigarettes (2005) **
Ten minutes in, James Gandolfini fights with his wife Susan Sarandon, goes out into the street and breaks into “Lonely Is a Man Without Love.” All the neighborhood guys join in. From there, it’s all downhill.

Sunshine (2007) **
First half: intriguing space mission to reignite the sun. Second half: psycho killer onboard. Too bad. Visually spectacular throughout, and the tone is mostly serious, but the plot lets us down.

Eastern Promises (2007) *****
A great thriller. Possibly too brutal, but the Russian mob brutality raises the stakes for everyone--morally and mortally. All you can do is hang on tight and hope things turn out okay. See it.

RasoirJ's Movie Notes: The Blue Angel

2010-03-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

The Blue Angel (1930) director: Josef von Sternberg (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

A wonderfully entertaining film that stands up better than anything else I’ve seen from the early talkie era. Germans with their hierarchical educational institutions, rigid social class distinctions, and capacity for angst can really nail a humiliation story. In the decline and fall of Professer Rath under the spell of the cabaret singer Lola Lola, director Josef von Sternberg has created on one level a brilliant farce, maybe the first screwball comedy on screen. We see Herr Professor first as the lord of all he surveys in his classroom and the keeper of social order – the supreme superego. When he enters the Blue Angel, he encounters a cluttered, confusing, yet deeply seductive backstage world where all that the classroom represses is loosed. I found myself chuckling again and again at how Von Sternberg crams the dressing rooms with silent clowns, props, cops, floozies, students, and assorted low-lifes in constant bustle.

Emil Jannings as the professor dazzled by Lola Lola puts on an acting workshop in his disintegration from august deity of the gymnasium to cuckolded clown who crows for a living onstage. And it’s a grand pleasure to be there at the birth of the Marlene Dietrich legend. As the good-hearted realist Lola Lola, Dietrich seems to spend most of her camera time changing her extraordinary skirts backstage, but there are also plenty of those iconic shots of Marlene onstage in lingerie and top hat stretching out those legs as she sings “Falling in Love Again.” Pure movie bliss.

RasoirJ's Movie Notes: Bright Star

2010-03-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Bright Star (2009) Director: Jane Campion (Rating = 3 - I liked it.)

Jane Campion and her two stars, Ben Whishaw as the poet Keats and Abbie Cornish as his great love Fanny Brawne, manage the remarkable feat of making this sad, tortured yet enduring love story both credible and moving. I feared the costume-drama prettiness and attitudinizing that often mars historical biographies of the British type, but Whishaw and Cornish are compelling as the young lovers fate frowns upon. It helps that both actors are fresh faces. Whishaw nicely embodies Keats’s diffidence and dedication as well as his quiet genius. Cornish, with her severe hairdo and extreme self-possession, is a little jarrring at first, but soon wins us over with her capacity for devotion. There’s nothing of the giddy girl about her.

This is a tough story to make interesting – a poet dies young of TB while everybody looks on, able to do nothing – and it lags some in the second half, but Campion makes up in authenticity what she lacks in dramatic action. Warning: Much poetry gets recited on screen, so this film is recommended for those who appreciate Keats and the English Romantic poets.

RasoirJ's Movie Notes: Pandora's Box

2010-03-13T16:59:00.000-08:00

Pandora’s Box (1929) – Director: F.W. Pabst (Rating = 3 = I liked it)

Has there ever been a greater life force on screen than Louise Brooks as the large-hearted vamp Lulu? Now I see what Howard Hawks meant with his famous remark: “The camera loves some people.” The camera loves her eyes, her black bob hairdo, her every gesture. Men are helpless before her charm, but the sheer power of her cheerfully non-discriminating need to capture every man who strolls across her path destroys them one by one. The source material - Frank Wedekind's plays - infuses the film with a withering irony that seems quite comntemporary. This is the first silent film I’ve seen with credible psychological realism, though of course Lulu, as incarnated in Louise, is larger than life. A star is born. Too bad Louise Brooks did not have as big a career as Marilyn Monroe.

RasoirJ's Movie Notes: Up in the Air

2010-03-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

Up in the Air (2009) - Director: Jason Reitman (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

It takes the charm of a Cary Grant or a George Clooney to pull off the role of a corporate downsizer who travels the country to fire people and is perfectly adapted to his ecological niche. Like a shark, he has to keep moving to stay alive. Also, there are very fine women’s turns by Vera Formiga as Clooney’s female equivalent and girlfriend (when their travel schedules match up) and Anna Kendrick as the fresh-out-of-Cornell kid who tries to learn the firing game from old master Clooney. The script provides much smart, ironic humor here threaded with big serious themes. We get to see a lot of firings up close, and the array of responses from actors who look like real people is a fine index of how much we invest in our jobs.

RasoirJ's Movie Notes; The Holy Mountain

2010-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

The Holy Mountain (1925) Director: Arnold Fanck (rating = 2 = I tolerated it)

One of the very popular German genre in the 1920s of “mountain films,” in which the mountains stand for a kind of noble purity that elevates those who climb the highest peaks as beings beyond common humanity. Very German – the love of nature, the fascistic-religious exaltation of nature. The young Leni Riefenstahl, no slim chick, adds sex to the mix as she plays a dancer who hooks two mountain men in a classic love triangle. One guy winds up dangling by a rope over an abyss on a dark, stormy night on the north face while his buddy and rival for Leni locks into holding that rope. A remarkably lengthy and well shot cross-country ski race is a highlight. We cannot judge silent films of this era by the standards of realism that we bring to contemporary films. This move is a precursor of today’s action films, with the ski race as a chase and those craggy shots of men on mountain peaks standing in for derring-do. Hokey, yes, but also something more. The indelible money shot is the face of the senior mountain guy holding that rope on the ledge all night long as his eyebrows freeze in place and he turns into a kind of god. If nothing else, Fanck understood what visual story telling is all about.

RasoirJ's Book Notes: My Losing Season

2010-02-28T08:05:00.000-08:00

My Losing Season, a memoir by Pat Conroy (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

Conroy is a florid writer for my taste. He seems to love every metaphor that occurs to him, is not at all troubled by clichés, and has a streak of sentimentality astonishing in a military college grad. But still. The stories he has to tell of his senior year as point guard on the The Citadel basketball team are marvelous. He’s got the deadpan locker-room humor of athletes cutting on each other down beautifully. Of course, this book is about much more than basketball, though it’s one of the top five inside-sports books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot). It’s also about a writer finding his vocation and voice. And no one has have ever had to cope with a tougher, meaner SOB of a father than Conroy. On top it all, the portrait of the driven, egomaniacal Citadel coach Mel Thompson is a classic of the type.

Quotes:
“Athletics are mercilessly fair.”

“Coaching at a military college is the hardest coaching job in America.”

“America is a good enough country to die for, even when she is wrong.”

RasoirJ's Book Notes: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-02-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a novel by Muriel Barbery (Rating =1 = I hated it)
I’ve seldom disliked a book as much as this one, and would never have finished it if not for it being a book club selection. Told mostly from the point of view of a lowly yet intellectually sterling concierge, the novel is pretentious in the extreme – full of pseudo-profound arty and philosophical bushwa as well as constant scorn for the French bourgeoisie and the intellectual classes who live in the apartment building. The concierge narrator’s superior stance and her stream of invective make her a tough character to live with for a whole book. Just as bad and even less plausible – the alternate narrator is a preciously precocious 12-year-old kid who lives in the same building and has the same attitudes as the concierge. No wonder they turn into sentimental soul-mates by the conclusion. What unadulterated claptrap.

Quotes:
“The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.”

“Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them.”

“I take the measure of how the ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact guardians of life’s good and joyful moments.”

RasoirJ's Book Notes: The Bookshop

2010-02-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

The Bookshop, a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald (Rating = 3 = I liked it)
Fitzgerald is a quirky writer who constantly surprises in this story of a middle-aged woman who opens a book shop in a bleak Sussex town aptly called Hardborough. The atmosphere and the landscape of a seaside village in the 1950s are convincing. There’s no sentimentality in Fitzgerald – a surprise and a strength. You have to like a book in which a crucial incident is whether to sell and display Lolita.

Quotes: “It’s a peculiar thing to take a step forward in middle age.”

“Men and women aren’t quite the right people for each other.”

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 15

2010-01-28T07:39:00.000-08:00

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) *****
We see most of this movie out of the one working eye of a paralyzed man. A tough watch but a richly rewarding one. Worth it as well for Max von Sydow’s stirring presence as his aged father.

Bend of the River (1952) ***
James Stewart hauls winter supplies to peaceful settlers, overcomes tough terrain and treacheries galore, singlehandedly taking on all the bad guys and winning the girl. A fine western of the big-outdoors variety.

The Golden Compass (2007) **
Fantasy adventure featuring a spunky little kid, computer-generated talking animals, witches, armored warrior polar bears, a little of this, a little of that. Being 12 would add to the experience.

Under Siege II: Dark Territory (1995) ***
Steven Seagal may never play “A Man for All Seasons,” but he can single-handedly kill about 50 highly-trained commandos who’ve hijacked a train and plan to blow up the world. Good enough.

There Will Be Blood (2007) **
Bravura acting by Daniel Day-Lewis, but his irredeemably cruel character, the oilman Daniel Plainview, is no one to spend 25 years with, which is what this feels like. Missable despite him.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 14

2009-12-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

The Hoax (2006) ***
Richard Gere terrific as the dead-ended writer Clifford Irving, whose kamikaze mission is to gin up Howard Hughes’s autobiography. He does it, and almost—oh, it’s so close—gets away with it.

The Grifters (1990) **
Anjelica Huston is the spidery mom, Annette Bening the oh-so-sexy moll, and John Cusack the conflicted young con man caught in the middle. Stylish acting, but in the end a fairly unsavory experience.

Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) ***
The incomparable Burt Lancaster is quietly superb, but John Frankenheimer’s a great action director who doesn’t get to do much here. Some nice moments, but tick tock, tick tock.

Bulworth (1998) ***
Risky business here: Warren Beatty’s despairing politician freaks out, starts rapping. Beatty quite a vision in hip-hop gear, though often hard to know whether to laugh or cringe. Sometimes a great satire.

House of Sand and Fog (2003) ****
Ben Kingsley the proud Iranian exile, Jennifer Connelly the recovering alcoholic who, by error, loses her house to the county. He buys it for his family. She wants it back. Neither will yield. Superb tragedy.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 13

2009-12-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) *****
Maybe filmdom’s most ambitious meditation on man in the universe. Demanding on your time and patience, it repays you with mystery and transcendence. After 40 years, still the rarest of movies.

Tears of the Sun (2003) ****
Bruce Willis at his grim best, leading his Navy SEALs and a ragtag bunch of Nigerian refugees through the sopping jungle, with genocidal rebels in pursuit. War hokum, but it grabs you.

In Bruges (2008) ****
Tightrope walking between gangster doings and farce, here’s a kind of quirky Irish cousin to “Pulp Fiction.” This is a far better movie. Ralph Fiennes’s accent uncannily like the GEICO gecko’s.

Microcosmos (1996) ****
A reminder that the world is full of wonders. We’re allowed to see and hear in startling close-up the lives of everyday creatures in woods and meadows. Food for jaded eyes and ears.

Fort Apache (1948) *****
A cavalry picture, one of Ford’s great “print the legend” parables of the West, made in the decade following WWII when screen westerns reached their zenith. Fonda, Wayne, Monument Valley.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 12

2009-11-24T05:34:00.000-08:00

The Band’s Visit (2007) ****
Sweet but never sticky-sweet story of ships passing in the night. Israeli townsfolk put up unexpected guests--a lost group of musicians--from Eqypt. Lovely, lonely moments, with music to match.

Casablanca (1942) *****
One of the greatest things America ever gave the world was Hollywood in its prime, and the very greatest thing Hollywood in its prime ever gave the world was “Casablanca.” Pure joy again and again.

Network (1976) *****
Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, “the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves,” in a satire about the TV industry so prophetic you might think it’s a clever fake. Chayefsky wrote it, Lumet directed. Pure gold.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) *****
A crackling political thriller—alert, quirky, and satirical. Angela Lansbury a great arch-villain with equally great hair-do; Laurence Harvey’s insufferable self well-used as her brain-washed assassin-son.

The Furies (1950) **
Cattle baron Walter Huston and his willful daughter, the always loathsome Barbara Stanwyck, chew the scenery for what seems like hours. Gilbert Roland a redeeming presence.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 11

2009-11-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

Young@Heart (2008) ***
Mixed feelings over this documentary about a chorus of very old folks singing songs by the Clash, Sonic Youth, etc. Some very affecting moments, but also a nagging sense they’re being exploited.

Redbelt (2008) ***
Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pidgeon . . . must be a David Mamet scam movie! And it is, but this time making a solemn big deal about martial arts. An odd blending of themes, but good stuff.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) *****
From RKO’s glory days, the perfect studio picture. Impossible not to be moved by this grand story, which has at its heart the impossibility of beauty loving the beast. Charles Laughton miraculous.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) ****
Basic Woody Allen types, this time in sunny Spain, wondering, as always, why we can’t be happy. Old wine in new bottles, but charming as the Dickens, especially the irresistible Javier Bardem.

The Hospital (1971) *
Just about zero entertainment value in this overwritten piece of hysteria from the usually lucid Paddy Chayefsky. George C. Scott just furious throughout; Diana Rigg very taken with herself, as usual.

Gadget Archives 4

2009-11-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

Blog of Week
Ulysses “Seen”
A cross between a Classics comic and a graphic novel, this blog showcases a monumental effort to turn Joyce’s masterwork into visual story telling.

Writers on Writing
"Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." John Keats

Nice Openings
“ “So now get up!’ Walter is roaring down at him, working out where to kick him next. He lifts his head an inch or two, and moves forward, on his belly, trying to do it without exposing his hands, on which Walter enjoys stamping. “What are you, an eel?” his parent asks. He trots backward, gathers pace, and aims another kick. It knocks the last breath out of him; he thinks it may be his last. His forehead returns to the ground; he lies waiting, for Walter to jump on him. The dog, Bella, is barking, shut away in an outhouse. I’ll miss my dog, he thinks.”
From Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall

RasoirJ’s Movie Notes
Friday Night Lights (2004) **
Superb book, top-notch TV show, but the movie suffers by comparison. Even the great Billy Bob Thornton as a small-town Texas football coach can't bring enough complexity to the story.

Good Reads
Are Stories Still Hip?
Can 8,000-word articles – let alone novels – stories survive Web 2.0 attention spans? Joel Achenbach lines up some big thinkers to weigh in.
Washington Post

Favorite Words
Gimcrack – a cheap, gaudy, tasteless object; a geegaw. “…if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and her carelessness before she left ...from James Joyce’s Ulysses

Gadget Archive 3

2009-11-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

Blog of Week
Screenwriting Basics
For those with the screenplay bug, a one-stop aggregator of useful articles, blogs, comments, books for the wannabes among us.

Writers on Writing
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,…”
Emily Dickinson

Nice Openings
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach.”
From Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway

RasoirJ’s Movie Notes
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) *****
Still fabulous after all these years. A movie fan's movie. Funny as hell, with wonderful acting in every part. Producer Warren Beatty and director Arthur Penn deserve all their glory.

Good Reads
NaNoWriMo: First-Aid Pack for Needy Characters
Cranking out a novel in November means 1,667 words a day. That leaves no time to ponder when one of your characters fails to come alive. Marg McAlister has some practical advice for how to freshen them up.
Suite 101

Favorite Words
Pentimento – “Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible in some pictures, to see the original line: a tree will show through a woman’s dress….That is called pentimento because the painter “repented,” changed his mind.” From Lillian Hellman’s memoir Pentimento

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 10

2009-10-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

Butterfly (1999) ***
Dreamy tale of a little boy whose kindly old crinkly-eyed teacher becomes a kind of surrogate grandfather. But this is the Spanish Republic, and here comes history. Elegiacal till the final scenes.

The Son’s Room (2001) ****
Many truthful moments in this story of a modern Italian family going about its everyday business and suddenly losing a son. Sympathetic, well-drawn characters. A movie with a lived-in feeling.

Hud (1963) ***
Paul Newman is a method-acting rat in this tale of adolescent rebellion lingering way too long into adulthood. He poses maybe one time too many with his thumbs in his britches. Well done but bleak.

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927) **
Historical interest, as Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack fashion a simple adventure story from footage shot in Siam. Lots of jungle critters. Six years later, these men made “King Kong.”

Iron Man (2008) ****
Two hours of genuine fun. Robert Downey Jr. carries “Iron Man” the way George C. Scott carried “Patton.” You can't take your eyes off him, except to watch Gwyneth Paltrow as his gal Pepper Potts.

Good Reads; 10.26.09

2009-10-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

Anyone for Vidlit?
Blogger Liz Dubelman explains a new form – online video of author reading story plus visual pizzazz. Check out her “Craziest” on YouTube to see what we mean.
The Huffington Post

Top Five Creative Writing Programs
The just-released Poets&Writers magazine ranking of the top 50 creative writing programs is generating controversy. Jimmy Chen ranks the top five based on the photos on their Web sites.
HTML Giant

Master Storyteller Bill Cosby
In DC to accept the Twain Prize, Bill Cosby reminisces about the roots of his story-telling techniques – his grandfather.
Washington Post

Stan Lee at 86
Wired magazine interviews the guy who invented Spider-Man and the Hulk on the future of comics. His latest story project: Time Jumper for iPhone.
Wired

Bulwer-Lytton Winner: David McKenzie
In honor of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of the famous “It was a dark and stormy night” opener, here’s this year’s winner of the contest for worst first sentence.
Bulwer-Lytton Contest

Shirley Jackson’s Enduring Lottery
Dorothy Parker called Shirley Jackson the "unparalleled leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders." And her story “The Lottery” has probably been read by more ninth-graders than any in history. Emma Hagestadt suggests why.
The Independent

Gadget Archive 2

2009-10-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

Writers on Writing
“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Mark Twain

Nice Openings
“Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he’s twenty-six and six three.”
From John Updike’s novel Rabbit Run

RasoirJ’s Movie Notes
Cheri (2009) **
The great Michelle Pfeiffer cannot save this effete concoction. Emotions of courtesan class in Belle Epoque too big a leap for mid-class Americans. R. Friend as Cheri exudes callowness but lacks pizzazz.

Favorite Words
Gossoon – an Irish lad, often a servant boy and messenger. “I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you.” From Joyce’s Ulysses

Blog of Week
Paulo Coelho’s Blog
He blogs, he tweets, he Facebooks, he publishes in his own books in pirate versions. Paulo Coelho is a big-time Brazilian novelist who sees writing as a communal art form.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 9

2009-10-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

Toots (2006) **
Portrait of Manhattan saloon owner and old-school lug Toots Shor, who was once a friend to everybody who was somebody. No great shakes, but some interesting old footage of New York in the good years.

The Dancer Upstairs (2002) ***
Is there a revolution brewing in the countryside? The Honest Cop tries to puzzle it out. That he does, but getting there involves just one too many coincidences. Javier Bardem magnetic, as always.

The Visitor (2007) ****
A post-9/11 story in which a withdrawn widower meets a pair of Muslim illegals in New York. Immigration issues may be global, but love and loneliness are always local. A sad story, movingly told.

I Am Legend (2007) **
Will Smith appealing in one of those “last man on Earth, Manhattan edition” scenarios (see “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil”). Special effects of empty city are extraordinary. Otherwise, so-so.

Time Out (2001) **
Semi-tense tale of a consultant who’s been fired and can't bring himself to tell his family. Creates a whopper about a new job with the U.N. Will he be found out? Might have made a better comedy.

Good Reads: 10.23.09

2009-10-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

Laura Fabiani’s Writing Room
Not sure why, but writers find other writers’ work spaces fascinating. Here’s where the Canadian novelist writes and why she likes it.
Love Ms. Julie’s Blog

John Irving’s Factual Fiction
Kurt Vonnegut mentored the hero of Irving’s new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, just as he did John Irving, and Daniel Baciagalupuo’s tale coincides with the author’s life in countless other ways. Still, he’s not Irving and Irving explains why.
Toronto Star

NaNoWriMo: First-Aid Pack for Needy Characters
Cranking out a novel in November means 1,667 words a day. That leaves no time to ponder when one of your characters fails to come alive. Marg McAlister has some practical advice for how to freshen them up.
Suite 101

FTC Disclosure Rules for Book Reviewers
You don’t need a lawyer. Liz B of the Tea Cozy children’s lit blog has done her homework and will explain it all to you.
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

A Good Season for Vampires
Vampires are hot and not just at Halloween. It all began with Polidori’s 1819 story “The Vampyre.” Douglas Brown explores their appeal to teenagers.
Detroit News

Good Reads: 10.20.09

2009-10-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Was Shakespeare a Collaborator?
A British professor uses plagiarism software to detect the Bard’s “linguistic footprint” and hypothesize that Shakespeare worked with Thomas Kyd on the play Edward III.
Times of London

NaNoWriMo
50,000 words in one month? Is National Novel Writing Month a publicity stunt or a useful prod for wannabe novelists?
Web Worker Daily

Industry Rankings
There are 140 full-residency creative-writing programs in the USA. Poets&Writers magazine explains the system it will use to rank the top 50 in its next issue.
Poets&Writers

New Science Fiction Magazine
Next year Fantasy Magazine will start up LIGHTSPEED, an online magazine seeking four stories a month. Submissions accepted as of Jan. 1, 2010.
John Joseph Adams

Creepy Classics
The short story grew out of tales of horror by the likes Edgar Allan Poe. It seems fitting, then, that the Library of America has got round to publishing American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny.
Boston Globe

The Plot Against Plot
“A good story is a dirty secret we all share,” says novelist and critic Lev Grossman. He predicts a return to the kind of story telling banished by the great Modernist novelists of the 20th century.
Wall Street Journal

Gadget Archive 1

2009-10-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

Writers on Writing
“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead.”
Gene Fowler

Nice Openings
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he’s preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest.”
From the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Rasoir J’s Movie Notes
In the Heat of the Night (1987) ****
Matchup of Steiger's gut-jutting, gum-chewing sheriff & Poitier's cool, livid detective (be sure to call him Mr. Tibbs) remains riveting after all these years. Jewison made a classic on $2 million.

Favorite Words
Bladderwrack – a kind of seaweed with flattened plant parts and air bladders. “A bloated carcass of a dead dog lay lolled on the bladder wrack.” Ulysses by James Joyce

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 8

2009-10-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

The Dark Knight (2008) ***
It’s just Gotham again, but Heath Ledger reaches through all the CGI shenanigans to give you the willies. His Joker makes you remember that evil’s always out there frolicking. What do we do?

Chinatown (1974) *****
Twenty-five years after the heyday of film noir, here’s the best. Roman Polanski, whose own biography has taught him plenty about evil, uncovers the devil’s face in John Huston. A great film.

Violent Summer (1959) ***
Real world of politics and family ties intrudes on love affair between privileged kid and older woman (she’s all of 30). A walk down a well-worn path, but several perfect moments. Very Italian.

Shane (1953) *****
An iconic western, but wouldn’t it have been more interesting if Jack Palance rather than Alan Ladd had played Shane? If a remake were in order, here’s a vote for Russell Crowe.

Rescue Dawn (2006) ***
Visceral account of a downed American flyer’s escape through the Laotian jungle. Christian Bale eats maggots, loses weight, gets drenched, but keeps that gleam in his eye. Well done.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 7

2009-10-16T05:33:00.000-07:00

The Rundown (2003) ***
So here we are cruising along again with The Rock—this time in the jungles of Brazil—and who do we run into? Christopher Walken! As the villain! It’s like finding a new bike under the Christmas tree.

Hollywoodland (2006) ***
TV’s Superman is dead. Was it suicide or murder? Adrien Brody unconvincing as a tough-guy shamus, but Ben Affleck eerily right as the modestly talented prettyboy George Reeves. Some good moments.

Manhunter (1986) ***
Stylish 80’s serial-killer procedural is the first Hannibal Lecter movie, and unmistakably Michael Mann. Way cool. Highlight of William Petersen’s film career, on the road to television’s “CSI.”

The Fall (2006) **
Imagine “The Princess Bride” gone terribly, terribly wrong. Here the lovelorn storyteller puts a poor little girl’s emotions through the wringer as he works out his issues. Shame on him, no?

The Edge of Heaven (2007) ****
The heart, as they say, is a lonely hunter. This is a movie on that theme, and about what happens among ordinary Turks and Germans, parents and children, lovers. Mysterious and thought-provoking.

RasoirJ on The Flight of the Red Balloon

2009-10-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

The Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) **

Be wary of New York Times critics who plug French films. NYT critic Manola Darghis gives this one 4.5 stars and describes it as “the latest wonderment from the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien.” Hmmm. Guess this is the sort of movie that separates the cineastes from the real movie-goers, as Sarah Palin might say.

For me this flic needs a warning label, something like: “Caution: wistful, enigmatically symbolic French bushwa at its most pretentious.” What’s more, it’s filled with puppetry, magic realism, and a curly-haired little boy so pretty as to be indistinguishable from a little girl. The plot is easy to summarize – nothing much happens. Mostly, the kid and his Chinese baby-sitter, a film student with video camera in hand, hang out on the streets of Paris. And there’s this hovering red balloon – apparently left over from a famous 1956 French short that won an Oscar. The balloon is definitely a character, though an enigmatic one since it never speaks. Mr. Red Balloon is like a special friend of lonely kids or something.

The only thing that feels real here is the great Juliette Binoche playing a single-parent mom. She’s a dreamer, always scrambling for money, living in a teeny disorderly apartment, with little time for the kid. Her job? Puppet actress – I kid you not – a tough way to make a living. The movie’s big action scenes are things like a neighbor invading the tiny kitchen to cook mutton stew, piano movers carrying a piano up steps, a blind piano tuner doing his thing, little slices of a little life. Just when boredom began to reach the truly unbearable level for me, the cumulative portrait of the Juliette B character clicked.

I also began to appreciate the director’s sense of the slow, infinite time of childhood, and the streets of Paris are always a wonderful backdrop. Still, be prepared.

Good Reads: 10.15.09

2009-10-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

Hollywood’s Comic Book Connection
Film critic Michael Sragow on how the fan base for comic books and graphic novels has enriched Hollywood films.

Why Read Dickens?
The life of Charles Dickens has spawned four published novels in the last year. A teacher discovers the roots of our long-lasting attraction to the vintage Victorian in a high school student’s paper.
The Guardian

In Defense of Creative Writing Programs
Some believe they are responsible for a rise in the quality of American fiction since the 1950s. Philip Marchand says they also provide a system of patronage for writers – not to mention generating a lot of first-rate readers.
The Afterword

Why Book Clubs Don’t Read Short Stories
Nor do they read much poetry. What gives? Audra Otto attributes this reluctance to lack of short story guides for book clubs.
MinnPost.com

How To Write Adventure Stories
A crime-fiction pro breaks down the elements of a good adventure story and reveals a few trade secrets.
Criminal Brief

NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest
“The nurse left work at five o’clock.” This was the required opening sentence for Round 2 of NPR’s short fiction contest. Read the winner by Cathy Formusa. Her prize? A copy of How Fiction Works by James Wood.
National Public Radio

Ralph Nader on His New “Novel”
If Ralph can do it, you can too. He inserts real people like Warren Buffett and Yoko Ono into what he calls his “practical utopia.”
Time

RasoirJ on Frost/Nixon

2009-10-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

Frost/Nixon (2008) ****
For me there’s a persistent problem with biopics – at least film biographies of well-known figures from the age of television. I keep thinking: “You’re not JFK, Malcolm X, LBJ, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, or Diana Ross.” With the real thing so fresh, it’s hard to make the required leap of a faith into the movie’s reality. I begin to wonder how much is taken from actuality and how much depends on the demands of story-telling.

Director Ron Howard, working from a cleverly adapted stage play by Peter Morgan, clears this belief hurdle simply by casting Frank Langella as Nixon. Langella, a vet actor at the top of his game, makes his Nixon far more compelling – that is, watchable and, dare I say, charismatic than the original. The film is best seen, then, not as history or the truth about Tricky Dick, but as rip-roaring entertainment. It has the elements of good stage drama – two worthy antagonists, each a giant in his realm and each ruthless, fighting for a grand prize, their reputations in history. At their first meeting Langella/Nixon says to Frost, “So, Mr. Frost, you’ve challenged me to a duel.” Exactly.

Michael Sheen, solid as Tony Blair in The Queen, has a less showy part here as the TV genius/huckster Frost, but he handles it well. The battle is framed in the minds of each man’s aides, who see the interviews as the public trial Nixon never got after he was pardoned. At times the film plays as an insider’s guide on how talking points get prepared.

But in end this is Langella’s movie. His Nixon has a self-ironic, disarming reflectiveness, and Langella, amazingly, makes the crafty old devil likable. The climax, 10 seconds screen time where he gets nailed with an unanticipated question and acts only with his face in close-up, is a great screen moment. There is a sense, perhaps unanticipated by the filmmakers, in which the movie rehabs Nixon. It makes me want to dig out those old Frost interview tapes. Could I have been wrong all these years about the old boy?

RasoirJ on Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days

2009-10-13T04:13:00.000-07:00

Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days (2008) ****
A young woman in Ceaucescu’s Romania during the last years of Communist rule seeks an abortion and things do not go well. Hard to imagine a less appealing story, but this is a film whose great reviews are merited.

Writer-director Cristian Mungiu begins in near-documentary style. Two college students, both seeming innocents, have to deal with an impossible pregnancy in a society where abortion is a criminal offense. Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is the girl in trouble, a dreamer and procrastinator, and she relies on Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), her far more practical roommate to handle things. It is clear that a certain savvy toughness is the minimum one needs. Just watch Otilia as she tries to get the key to a reserved hotel room and has to deal with one of those unmovable Iron Curtain desk clerks. We begin to understand what it means for a society to be so corrupt that every action is tainted with manipulation.

Mungiu is a truly gifted filmmaker who can convey an entire set of social relations in five minutes of dialogue. When Otilia meets her boy friend, we grasp instantly their can’t-kept-hands-off passion, yet also surmise the difficulties in store for their relationship. Another gem is the scene where Otilia gets coerced into attending her boyfriend’s mother’s birthday. It’s a devastating mini-portrait of the gaping class divisions in this “classless” society. The table talk rings true and terrible, and we understand why it suffocates Otilia.

Mungiu gets the best out of all his actors; in fact, the cast never seems to be acting at all. And every relationship is more complex than it appears. Vlad Ivanov as Bebe, the icy abortionist, is about as big a creep as you’ll see on screen, but he’s also a credible human being, not a cardboard villain. And even sweet little Gabita – is she a feckless victim or herself a passive-aggressive manipulator of her friend Otilia? To the movie’s credit, you’ll debate this point long afterwards with your friends.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 6

2009-10-12T07:39:00.000-07:00

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) ****
Technology-wise, a miracle, as real actors and classic cartoon characters share the screen—and no cheesy Pixar types, either. As a bonus, some thought-provoking echoes of “Chinatown.”

Flic Story (1975) **
French knock-off of American cops and robbers. Alain Delon’s acting consists entirely of smoking and stubbing, smoking and stubbing. Jean-Louis Trintignant wasted as the dead-eyed killer.

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) *****
Rainer Werner Fassbinder intended a historical/political allegory about Germany, but what’s important is his almost Shakespearean heroine Maria Braun—unforgettable temptress, builder, destroyer.

Classe Tous Risques (1960) **
Brutal gangster Lino Ventura finds his world collapsing, is unaccountably befriended by a surprisingly sweet Jean-Paul Belmondo. Some classic ambitions for this noirish B-movie; pass.

Saddle the Wind (1958) ****
The usually wooden Robert Taylor does just fine as rancher and older brother of psycho John Cassavetes, who’s raising hell here in the valley. Script by Rod Serling a beauty, and so is Julie London.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 5

2009-10-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

Billy Budd (1962) ****
Melville’s magnificent allegory of the martyred innocent. Terence Stamp as Billy appears to have descended on a sunbeam. Superbly done, but the film averts its eyes: We should see Billy hang.

Body of Lies (2008) ***
DiCaprio the CIA operative gets beaten, bitten, and generally smooshed in this high-octane Middle East thriller. Russell Crowe’s his manipulative boss. Implausible story, but watchable every minute.

Girl with a Suitcase (1961) ***
An excuse to watch Claudia Cardinale for two hours—as if one were needed. Interesting companion piece to “Violent Summer,” by the same director, the oft-neglected Valerio Zurlini.

Angel Face (1952) **
Jean Simmons a rich-girl nut job with designs on poor Robert Mitchum, clearly bored and boggled by a script that can't decide if he’s canny or stupid. Sexual chemistry required here; none on tap.

Age of Consent (1969) *
Excruciating art-house picture about a weary painter who goes off to a sunny paradise, brings along his cute dog, meets a headstrong island girl, deals with eccentric types, etc. Artist/muse hokum.

RasoirJ on Elegy

2009-10-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Elegy (2008) **
It’s hard to like a narcissist, and it’s hard to like a movie without a winning protagonist. Philip Roth’s short novel The Dying Animal, the source of this film, worked better than the movie. Roth has a way of putting a knife into conventional behavior and twisting it. His great virtue is to have his characters act out the politically incorrect, nasty truths of the human psyche that few among the thinking classes are willing to acknowledge.

So where does Elegy go wrong? Let’s begin with Ben Kingsley as the womanizing professor David Kepesh. Kepesh is a New York intellectual, the sort who writes reviews for the New Yorker, appears on Charlie Rose, and seduces the best-looking girls in his classes at the end of each term. As Sir Ben plays him, Kepesh’s main trick is a basilisk gaze of high-intensity attention that for this viewer very soon becomes wearing. Kingsley’s shaved skull and gnomic pronouncements suggest nothing so much as Gollum become a randy old dude. In short, the old boy needs to be much more charming if he is to win the love of his obsession, a little 24-year-old Cuban goddess embodied by Penelope Cruz.

At times with all its bare-chested rolling around in the sack, the movie resembles a face-off between the matted Brillo pad that is Kingsley’s chest these days versus the alabaster beauty of fair Penelope. Cruz is not asked to do much here except show off her exquisite breasts. While her boobs are sterling, she needs to be a deeper person to interest us. Kapesh’s buddy, a weathered poet played by Dennis Hopper, keeps telling him that “beautiful women are invisible.” Get it: no man can get beyond the boobs – er, make that beauty – to grasp the real woman underneath.

This must have seemed a promising project to Hollywood suits – lots of skin plus the edgy pairing of the youthful director Isabel Coixet, that old devil Roth, and Sir Ben to elevate the tone. What a combo. Somebody just forget to make the romantic couplings onscreen worth caring about.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 4

2009-10-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Comfort of Strangers (1991) *****
A few days in Venice turn out to be a few too many for a bored English couple whose romance has lost that certain something. Christopher Walken appears before them in a white Armani suit. Genius-level creepiness.

Elegy (2007) **
Beware! Self-loathing intellectual! 60-ish, surprisingly buff celebrity academic Ben Kingsley goes through coeds like kleenex, but can't be happy, even when the latest is (Lord have mercy!) Penelope Cruz. Gosh.

Vengeance Valley (1951) ***
Unexceptional brother vs. brother western notable only for Robert Walker as the scheming younger of the two, practicing up for his psycho Bruno Anthony in “Strangers on a Train” later that year.

Crossfire (1947) ***
Some good stuff in this noir-flavored mystery, with Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, and Gloria Grahame (bless her heart) all on hand. Robert Young a surprisingly cool cat as the police captain.

Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) ****
Gable and Lancaster carry this top-drawer submarine flick--the old-fashioned kind in which the crew includes Don Rickles. Toy boats in tubs and an anticlimactic ending, but endearing nevertheless.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 3

2009-10-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

Cassandra’s Dream (2007) ***
Fitfully absorbing but, in the end, unconvincing drama of two brothers who get in too deep. Eerily similar to Sidney Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows You're Dead,” which was harrowing. This one is not.

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001) ****
Enthralling documentary of Bronx-born genius Stanley Kubrick covers his life and all his films. Doesn't uncover the source of his vision, his detachment, his lethal cinematic decadence—but who could?

Revolutionary Road (2008) ***
Grim! Maybe not an argument against marriage and the suburbs per se, but certainly one against entering either with airy expectations. Sam Mendes also did “American Beauty.” Probably no coincidence.

Robin and Marian (1976) ****
Truly lovely. Sean Connery as Robin, an ever-luminous Audrey Hepburn as Marian, and an awareness of love, lost youth, death, and time. See this when you’re young, then wait, then see it again.

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) ****
Sally Hawkins’s soulful Poppy is a genuine character—in both senses of the word—who will click with some viewers but not with others. For the lucky ones, this movie is like making a friend.

RasoirJ on The Band's Visit

2009-10-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

The Band’s Visit (2007) ****

How do you like the song “My Funny Valentine”? Your take on this quiet charmer of a comedy from Israel is likely to be directly related to whether you love or hate that melancholy masterpiece from Rodgers and Hart– let’s say, in the exquisitely down-tempo trumpet-solo version by Chet Baker.

The plot here kicks off with an old-fashioned Egyptian police band, faintly absurd in their grand powder-blue uniforms, which finds itself in Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center. Problem is they wind up in the wrong village, a settlement as desolate as an Arizona truck stop. Forced to spend the night in a town with no hotel, the band’s eight members, experience a series of brief encounters built around the theme of love. Though everybody learns a little something, this is not a heartening film about cross-cultural communication, one of those “if only we understood each other better” movies. No, the theme is the core loneliness of humans, the longing for closeness and the inability to maintain it, a longing best embodied in music.

“Music is the shorthand of emotion,” Tolstoy said, and that could be the tag line for this film. Dina, a take-charge woman in her 40s well played by Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz, runs the town’s one café. The central romance is her one-night pas de deux with the Egyptian band leader (Sasson Gabai), a gentleman of the old school, and a man of dignity, reserve, and constant sorrow. Gabai, blessed with an astonishing nose and a face that registers nuances of emotion without words, gives an understated yet indelible performance. Perhaps the greatest virtue of this promising first feature from writer-director Eran Kolirin is, in fact, its understatement.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 2

2009-10-12T05:58:00.002-07:00

Gran Torino (2008) ****
A satisfying fantasy about living next door to Clint Eastwood. Ostensibly he’s a retired auto worker, but really he’s Dirty Harry, bitter and withdrawn, waiting for redemption. Remarkably, he gets it.

Mata Hari (1931) ***
Catch Greta Garbo at the right angle, lit just so, and your heart stops. The fact is that moving pictures seem to have been invented for her. “Mata Hari” a badly dated melodrama, but who cares?

Glory (1989) *****
Watching the officers and men of the 54th Massachusetts grow together into soldiers, each aware of his role in history, is a stirring screen experience. Required viewing.

Proof of Life (2000) ***
Husband kidnapped by guerillas, wife at wits’ end. Enter noble, laconic hostage retrieval specialist. Not much better than okay, but fun to see the look in Meg Ryan’s eyes when she looks at Russell Crowe.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) ***
Big doings under the big top, with trapeze acts and elephants, Charleton Heston's profile, Gloria Grahame (sigh), parades, clowns, a train wreck, etc. Cornier than Kansas in August, but huge fun.

Kaze's Movie Notes: Archive 1

2009-10-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

Strange Cargo (1940) ***
Ain't every day that Christ himself shows up to reform Clark Gable, but he does in this black-and-white tropical adventure, notable also for the chemistry between Gable and real-life flame Joan Crawford. Novelty value.

The Third Man (1949) *****
Hapless good guy meets the underworld in post-war Vienna. Directed by Carol Reed, scripted (mainly) by Graham Greene, nonetheless this looks and feels like the greatest Orson Welles picture ever made.

Deception (1946) **
Unconvincing melodrama that grows more tedious by the minute as Bette Davis just won’t stop denying she’s been Claude Rains’s mistress. Paul Henreid’s the one she’s deceiving. It’s the cast of “Now, Voyager,” but don’t be taken in by that.

Everybody Wins (1990) **
Puzzling failure of a detective picture, apparently intended to make the point that the world is a corrupt place. Debra Winger plays a woman who is 90 miles of bad road, and poor Nick Nolte gets to drive most of them.

Out of the Past (1947) ****
Gold-standard film noir. The plot’s not exactly sleek, but Kirk Douglas’s menacing gangster certainly is, and Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer just sizzle. Is she lying? Mitchum says, “Baby, I don't care.”