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Posts from the ‘Entertainment’ Category

23
Mar

Movie Review: Sophie Scholl, the Final Days

Best Part: We don’t get to hear a whole lot about the German youth-resistance over here in the states, so it was kind of fun to hear a little about it. (Although I hear there’s a Helmuth Hübener movie currently in production starring Haley Joel Osment — odd.) Plus it had some good in medias res.

Biggest Question: I found the characters’ plot-creating decision-making process questionable:

  • Hurry, we have to get out of here before they catch us!
  • Okay, but I still have some leaflets in the suitcase.
  • Oh — in that case, we should distribute them before leaving.
  • Good idea!

Too Long By: 10 min. — the leaflet distribution scene was a little long (you know they’re going to get caught) and the scene with the dude from Salzburg (Innsbrück?) getting questioned at trial seemed gratuitous.

Haiku Synopsis (in German to avoid spoiling the ending!):

Mädchen und Bruder

Als Verräter verhaftet,

Danach enthauptet.

Additional Complaint Before Stating That I Liked It: Sophie’s character is too perfect, which makes her seem less human, which makes it seem like she isn’t sacrificing so much when she gets, uh, enthauptet.

Final Score: 7/10.

14
Mar

Book Reports: Deliverance and On the Road

It’s been a few months since I read these two books. I liked Deliverance a lot and found On the Road insufferable. More interestingly maybe, the two books seemed to be about the same thing: discovering real life through voluntary suffering. Deliverance, of course, would be the more middle-aged model and On the Road the more youthful. I suppose maybe that’s why I liked Deliverance better, but I think rather it may have to do with matters of actually having a plot rather than being thinly veiled anti-everything philosophy.

Hadn’t seen the movie version of Deliverance before reading the book, so didn’t know to expect things like “squeal like a pig” (it’s been a few months, but I don’t think that’s quite in the book like that — I mean, the scene happens, just that it’s not quite as iconic as it is in the movie). And I liked the way the book conveyed the characters better than the movie version, with the main character learning to take up the cause of his buddy and grab “real life” by the horns. Kind of a Bildungsroman for a middle-aged man learning to be alive. Also was enamored of the way the book dissipated rather than resolving. Made it feel less contrived and, I think, the openness and ambiguity at the end shined an interesting light on the book’s theme.

On the Road, though, is just so self-satisfied. I’m guessing the whole beat thing is by its nature self-satisfied. And the character of Dean Moriarty is so dull to me, yet the book requires the reader to idolize him. Didn’t work. He’s too cool to be believable and I guess I was brought up to dislike self-important jackasses. Blame my parents, I guess.

I think I also liked Deliverance better from the standpoint that it’s about having experiences for the sake of personal growth. I don’t think the beat generation was really into actual personal growth — I think that’s more about clapping with one hand. Yeah, well, I don’t care for Buddhism much either.

Iconoclastically,

bkd

13
Mar

Movie Review: The Caine Mutiny

Best Feature: I find 1940s women attractive — unfortunately, there was only one woman in the movie.

Biggest Question: Was the source material as facile as this?

Most Horrifying Truth: There were a lot of similarities between Captain Queeg and several people I’ve seen try to navigate leadership situations.

Too Long By: 90 minutes — or else too short by six hours.

Haiku Synopsis:

Through a mutiny

A young ensign learns to love:

Beautiful girlfriend!

Grade: 3/10.

25
Feb

Movie Review: Hell in the Pacific

Best Feature: Really nice job of in medias res and of avoiding exposition, plus Lee Marvin was fun to watch.

Biggest Question: How did they manage to hang out together for a month (longer?) without either of them ever learning a word of the other’s language?

Too Long By: 20 minutes.

Haiku Synopsis:

On island marooned,

Old enemies become friends

And then they blow up.

Grade: 7/10 (loses a full point for the ending).

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15
Feb

Fallout 3 Is the Reason I Stopped Blogging

Because who has time to blog when there are mutants to decapitate and robot factories to explore? Probably the best adventure/RPG game ever released on a console. Seriously, I think that’s the reason. Blame Google Bart for telling me how good it was in the first place.

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23
Nov

The Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century (Mostly Suck)

A little unfair in that, in fact, I’m surprised they included so many novels that I don’t think suck. Also unfair in that I’m not sure I can confidently name more than 15-20 novels that, in my mind, don’t suck. And that I haven’t read most of the list. Ah well.

I also appreciated Game Dame’s validation for not having to finish reading books that one does not like. I’m not sure she meant to imply thereby that it’s also okay to claim to have read a book that you only read, say, 100 pages of, but I’m taking that next step. Wikipedia mentions some worthy concerns and useful details about the list (it was compiled in 1998, Darkness at Noon shouldn’t qualify, it doesn’t include anything written after 1983, etc.).

  1. ULYSSES by James Joyce – Never read it, but read #3 and drew (I’m assuming) accurate conclusions to the effect that James Joyce is the ultimate combination of Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome and Reading This Was Torture So It Must Be Art Syndrome.
  2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Deathly slow and dull. Which, I imagine, is what F. Scott was going for. OTOH, to be called The Great American Novel — I dunno, I suppose our country *is* deathly slow and dull. Hopefully Obama will fix that.
  3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce – Described above at #1. Unbearable, self-absorbed writing that shouldn’t be forced on anyone.
  4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov – Never read.
  5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley -I *liked* it. I think it’s a joke that it’s considered the fifth greatest novel in the English language. But, yeah, *liked* it.
  6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner – Never read. What I’ve read of Faulkner I’ve despised, but OTOH, I’m not sure that isn’t just because I didn’t like my Faulkner-phile AP English teacher. In retrospect, I’m *glad* I pissed her off by doing my Chemistry (Physics?) homework in her class every day.
  7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller – Oddly, the Modern Library website left the author out of their list. Are they insinuating something? The novel is *so* one-note it’s unbearable. I may use that word again in this list. The characters don’t matter, the destination is vague, very little happens, and while I can appreciate snarkiness better than most, like violence, snarkiness without substance is doofishness.
  8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler – An odd inclusion in that this book was translated from German. Oh. Well. It was okay. Interesting information and insight into post-revolution Gulaghood. But the writing was far from brilliant (although that may have been an issue with the translation).
  9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence – I think I was supposed to read this for a college class that I ended up dropping once I took a look at the middle four pages of this book. Never read. Aside from those four pages.
  10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck – Never read, but I sort of like Steinbeck, so I probably should.
  11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry – Never read.
  12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler – Never read.
  13. 1984 by George Orwell – Greatest novel in the history of mankind. Too bad no one but me learned anything from it. I should probably read it again — it’s been a couple years.
  14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves – Never read, but it *is* in my guest bathroom in case the stars ever align correctly.
  15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf – Never read.
  16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser – Never read.
  17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers – Never read.
  18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut – In my personal Top 5. The one novel Vonnegut ever needed to write. Sharp, funny, fast-moving, relatable.
  19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison – The opposite of Slaughterhouse-Five. Although I’m not sure it’s fair to claim books that I read in, yes, AP English. In 1989.
  20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright – Never read.
  21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow – Never read, but it’s in my Amazon account as being “saved for later” and has been there since October 2, 2005.
  22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara – Never read.
  23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos – Never read.
  24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson – Another AP English novel and one that I remember somewhat pleasantly. Slow but occasionally-enough engaging, IIRC.
  25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster – Never read. Saw the movie, which I know doesn’t count, but didn’t portend to a book I’d enjoy reading in any way whatsoever.
  26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James – Never read.
  27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James – Never read.
  28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Never read, but the Fitzgerald-James love bender that the Modern Library’s editorial board was on that day in 1998 seems noteworthy.
  29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell – Never read.
  30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford – Never read.
  31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell – It is amazing how applicable this novel is to Every Single Organization on Earth. If I could have two Orwell books in my personal Top 5, this would be there.
  32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James – Never read. And, oddly enough, I usually confuse Fitzgerald for Henry James (and vice versa). Or at least, the two names occupy the same compartment in my brain. The compartment of “highly respected” American writers I’ve managed, probably thankfully, to avoid reading my entire life.
  33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser – Never read.
  34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh – Never read.
  35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner – Never read. But hey, I was pretty solid back when we were doing the Top 20, right?
  36. ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren – Never read.
  37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder – Never read.
  38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster – Never read.
  39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin – Never read.
  40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene – Never read.
  41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding – Really liked it when I read it in 9th Grade Honors English. Re-read it a few years ago and, well, it was still *good*, but it didn’t seem all that brilliant. Just seemed like mass market-quality writing with an interesting, iconic story.
  42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey – Never read *or* seen the movie.
  43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell – Never read.
  44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley – Never read.
  45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway – Never read.
  46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad – Never read.
  47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad – Never read. I *did* read Heart of Darkness though. Liked Apocolypse Now better.
  48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence – Never read.
  49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence – Never read.
  50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller – Never read.
  51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer – Sucked. Tragically. I kept thinking there was something to this book, but it didn’t ever want to pay off. Or stick with the useful characters. Or end 500 pages sooner than it did.
  52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth – Never read.
  53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov – Never read.
  54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner – Never read.
  55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac – Never read, but I’ve always meant to.
  56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett – Horrifyingly unbearable. To me. Only to me. I realize the style wasn’t cliche when it was written, but it sure is now.
  57. PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford – Never read.
  58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton – Never read.
  59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm – Never read. And I thought Ian made up the name Zuleika for his underwater arcology story. Huh. Notion shattered!
  60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy – Never read.
  61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather – Honestly can’t remember if I read this or not. If I did, it was in an American Literature class at BYU. We read *something* from Willa Cather for that class. Maybe this was it. I’m gonna say yes and that it was okay.
  62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones – Haven’t read. Didn’t really dig Thin Red Line, but thought FHtE was a pretty good movie, so: maybe.
  63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever – Never read.
  64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger – I love Salinger’s writing quality, but hate his characters. Especially the ones in this book. I don’t get a lot out of understanding the inner-workings of the self-obsessed. Or maybe I do, just that I don’t need more than, say, five pages of it before it seems redundant.
  65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess – Liked it, but thought the movie was way better. [spoiler]I think the original US editor of the book made the absolutely correct call to remove the ridiculous deus ex machina ending of it. That ending was in no way deserved or established by anything that had gone on before it. Ridiculous, IMHO.[/spoiler] But the made-up language especially was brilliant. I hate it when people tag stuff as being spoiler material.
  66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham – Never read.
  67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad – Right, read it. Seemed slow. Was a long time ago.
  68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis – Never read.
  69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton – Never read.
  70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell – Never read.
  71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes – Never read.
  72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul – Never read.
  73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West – Never read.
  74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway – Read. I’m not a Hemingway fan. It seems like his real life was way more interesting than his writing.
  75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh – Never read.
  76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark – Never read.
  77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce – Never read. Maybe Joyce is more enjoyable when you’re drunk. Probably puts you in the right frame of mind.
  78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling – Never read.
  79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster – Never read.
  80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh – Never read, but why are so many of these books the subject matter for BBC-made movies and mini-series? Crazy. I don’t like BBC-made movies or mini-series I don’t think.
  81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow – Never read.
  82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner – Personal Top Five and a little surprising to me that any sort of editorial board manned up enough to include this book. This is, IMHO, without a doubt, IMHO, arguably, IMHO The Great Novel of the American West. No one else ever needs to write another one.
  83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul – Never read.
  84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen – Never read.
  85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad – Never read, but man, what’s with the Joseph Conrad love?
  86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow – Never read.
  87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett – Never read.
  88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London – I *think* I’ve read it. I like everything I’ve read by Jack London. I *know* I read White Fang. I *am* going to write a novel set in the asteroid belt that basically borrows the plot from Call.
  89. LOVING by Henry Green – Never read.
  90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie – Never read, but his name always reminds me of the fatwa that went out against him and the corresponding Dennis Miller SNL Weekly News in which was stated that his last name means “man who is in a rush to die“. I don’t remember it because it was funny, I just remember it.
  91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell – Never read.
  92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy – Never read.
  93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles – Never read.
  94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys – Never read.
  95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch – Never read.
  96. SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron – Never read.
  97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles – Never read.
  98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain – Never read.
  99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy – Never read.
  100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington – Never read.

In terms of heinous omissions, the only two that come readily to mind would be Bukowski’s Post Office and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I might also argue for Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles.

I’ve only read 20 of the above, but that still seems like a lot. Meh. You?

bkd

21
Nov

I Went to a Basketball Game in Malibu on Tuesday

Best sporting event ever. Well, not counting the MNF game, which, arguably, *was* the best sporting event ever. That I attended. Although the ‘90 BYU-Miami game was pretty amazing also. And the USA-Costa Rica World Cup qualifier. But, yeah. Comparisons are hard. And sporting events are better when the right team wins.

Assuming JL ever checks in here again, thanks again for the games.

bkd

17
Nov

Book Report: The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer wrote it. It was ranked #61 on the Modern Library 100 Greatest Novels list. Many have called it the greatest novel ever written about World War II. I have to say, the competition doesn’t seem that stiff. Oh well.

Pros:

  • Really long. Makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Sure, it’s a pyrrhic victory, but still: a victory!
  • Nice binding.
  • There were two characters I vaguely liked, Hearn and Red. Didn’t like anything that happened to them or that they did, of course, but — you know.
  • You can skip pages without missing much.
  • Some of the modernish flashback sections were nice. Others weren’t.

Cons:

  • 700 freakin’ pages. Trimming the count by 400-500 might have imbued it with some, I dunno, necessity let’s say.
  • No plot. None. Some occasional feints, but those were quickly disregarded. A few were left hanging (how poignant!).
  • Character soup. There were several characters who could have exchanged names halfway through without my noticing.
  • The collection of characters was not believable. Every single one of them was an asocial near-moron with a ridiculous array of issues. None of them were capable of making a friend, for instance. And, sure, there are people like that in the world. I’m guessing somewhere on the order of 1-2% of the US population could be described that way. If there’s a statistician out there, maybe you could calculate the likelihood of 12 members of a platoon all being plucked by random out of that 1-2%. Or, heck, *I* can do it: .02 ^ 12 = 4.1 * 10^-21 = not very likely.
  • And if you create a book with such an unlikelihood, then the book better the heck be *about* that unlikelihood.
  • I’m not sure the book was about anything, actually. It seemed hell-bent on proving that random things happen to random people in war. Huh: that’s a stunner.
  • When anything can happen, nothing matters.
  • The odds of getting 12 guys in a platoon *that* sex-obsessed are probably better than the calculation above — but still doesn’t seem very likely. They were *very* sex-obsessed.
  • Mailer shows very little capacity for language (for the most part). His constant use of the most worthless of worthless adverbs (“he stared dully”, “Ridges smiled vaguely”, etc. and repeat for 700 pages).
  • The book fits way to neatly within the sad, “we gotta feel sorry for the troops” political bent of the US left.  It just doesn’t mesh with what I’ve read about front-line fighting from a number of different sources (none of which could easily be construed as pro-war). The events in this novel were atypical, but presented as if they were typical.
  •  Meh.

Dully,

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(And the binding was actually pretty average — I was just trying to be nice.)

1
Oct

Fire Joe Morgan Indeed

This article r0×0rz (as do many of their articles). Much praise.

Although it seems to indicate that I should have kept FictionMock going.

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(Here’s a good FictionMock sample…)

9
Sep

Trip to Yankee Stadium (Before It Was Too Late)

All the convenience of a stadium built in 1923 with all the charm of one built in 1976. The building itself seemed unfortunate.

Was there back in June and, yes, am just now getting around to saying anything about it. Watched the Yankees play the Reds. I gave up Yankee-hating a few years ago and it wasn’t hard to root for them in this game. Andy Pettitte was great (until the rain delay took him out of the game).

Speaking of:

 yankee stadium reds rain delay

This never happened at the Kingdome. For as bad as it looks — and New York rain is amazing, never got anything like that in Seattle — the rain only lasted about 15 minutes, although the delay ended up running for an hour or so with all the tarp unrolling and re-rolling and field prep. It was interesting watching a game get played out with the anticipation that it might only go five innings (IIRC, the Reds brought their infield in while down one in the bottom of the fourth), even if it ended up going nine.

The stadium itself — it’s hard to say so, but I don’t think it’ll be much of a loss when they knock it down at the end of the season. The concourses are too narrow, there aren’t nearly enough entrances, concession stands, or bathrooms: classic hallmarks of its original build date. But then it was altogether too clear what happened to it in the 1976 renovation — the whole thing feels like concrete and bad signage. In style and finish, it really, honest, felt like the Kingdome (and nothing like Wrigley or even Fenway).

Seems like they’d have been better off not re-building. The LA Colosseum has tunnels that are less than six feet high, bizarre sight-lines, etc., but it at least makes sense. The place feels like its origins and you can still feel like you’re in a historic place. The re-built Yankee Stadium looks and feels like something only a Soviet could love. I feel like I saw similar in East Germany.

The impressive part of the game was the fans. And not just the guy sitting next to me who started throwing up in the first inning (he and his friend left immediately with many apologies and we felt bad for them). The people at the game actually knew baseball well, they knew the Yankees down through the farm system, and they didn’t do stupid things like cheer because they didn’t realize that a fly ball wasn’t going to make it out of the stadium. Even if I’d come in with a grudge against the Yankees, the fan quality would’ve made it a hard grudge to maintain. Quite a difference between Yankee fans and, say, Angels fans (ugh — with apologies to Joe, Elissa, and probably some other people).

I guess that’s good enough.

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