later

Well it was almost fun while it lasted.

I've hardly watched movies this year--I doubt I'll even watch one fifth of the movies I saw last year. I am reading a bit more due to my two-hour commuting time, but now that I have goodreads.com, I don't feel like writing about books here.

So I probably won't be posting much more, at least not comprehensively. I may occasionally write about an exceptional book or movie. Or I may keep track of new music that I find interesting. Other than that, I'm giving up on this blog.

Cheers!

science fiction and physics

Book #3: Philip K. Dick - VALIS
Book #4: Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Book #5: Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

I'm way behind on books, so let's get to it. Philip K. Dick always came highly recommended, but I didn't really know what to expect. His books have been made into movies like Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. VALIS starts out with a great concept: Horselover Fat believes God is revealed to him through a pink laser. But the character gets mixed up in his own fantasy and the book drags through this mire. There's a drastic change, though, once a friend takes him to a movie that validates his alternate reality. I thought this second half redeemed the first. Overall I was glad I read it, but it will probably be a while before I revisit it or bother to read another Dick novel.

Every now and then I read a book that most people read in high school. Fahrenheit 451 is on the same level as To Kill A Mockingbird as far as high school ubiquity, but somehow I hadn't read it. For a book that is as old as my parents, it did a pretty accurate job of anticipating the future, as most of the advanced technologies described in the book can be found in the present. Bradbury writes of earpieces that allow people to shut out the rest of the world. Somewhere, students are listening to a podcast of this book on their iPods.

I go back and forth with Dave Eggers. With A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he established himself as the voice of our generation. That's not really a compliment; it's just that Eggers found creative ways to show us how much he is in love with himself. After getting through that autobiographical fiction-wankery, I was reluctant to go through it again. I thought You Shall Know Our Velocity would be different, but it was more of the same. More than anything, this book just frustrated me because I constantly bought into the gimmicks that Eggers laid down. Silly meta-narratives: as soon as I started thinking the book was lame, there was an interruption that talked about how lame the book was. Whatever, this post is lame, too. See? I'm a genius.

playing catch up

026: Children of Men
027: Gwoemul
028: Grindhouse

As usual, I'm behind. I guess that's what happens when you don't post for three weeks. This will get me caught up with movies, but I'll still be behind on seven or eight books. So anyway, Children of Men: I seem to remember liking this when I saw it, but now I can't remember much that I really liked. The setting was nice and the setup was promising, but the rest of the movie was a little vague, so the conclusion didn't seem like one. Cuaron should go back to directing threesomes.

Gwoemul, better known as The Host, was fun. It had a good sense of humor without being too campy or cheesy. For all of its anti-American sentiment, the movie had plenty of American cliches. Then again, it skimped on the special effects: when the Host finally goes down in flames (spoiler alert), it looks like someone took a yellow highlighter to the reel.

So I'm trying to measure the greatness of Grindhouse and I can't find the words. I had the fortune of seeing it opening night in New York; the movie ended with standing ovation. Because America is stupid, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder came in first place this weekend while Grindhouse came in fourth. I expect that to change, as Grindhouse should spread by word-of-mouth like wildfire. It's hilarious, disgusting, suspenseful, and very, very rewarding. It's hard to think of a recent movie that paid off as much as Tarantino's segment did. I can't recommend it highly enough. DON'T pass it up.

departed from hong kong

023: Mou gaan dou
024: Mou gaan dou II
025: Mou gaan dou III: Jung gik mou gaan

It was a somewhat historic event: the American Film Institute's Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD was showing its first ever triple-feature: all three Internal Affairs movies. The first of these was remade by Martin Scorsese and renamed The Departed.

I was surprised how faithful The Departed was to the first installment of Internal Affairs. It even replicated the overcast setting and witty humor, things I assumed Scorsese injected. Obviously it was the same storyline: two moles, one in the mob, one in the police force, trying to extinguish each other. It was great--as much as I love The Departed, it's hard to say that it vastly improved its Hong Kong predecessor.

Amazingly, the sequel was also near-perfect. It jumped back and forth in time to provide more character development for the mob boss and police chief, as well as fleshing out more aspects of what happened in the first movie. It was almost like a Godfather II formula for following up a classic movie.

So, like Godfather III, the third installment paled in comparison. They took the time-jumping aspect of the second movie and extended the gimmick well beyond its limit. By the end (or what we thought was the end) the audience was laughing each time the movie would fade to black and come back up with "Two years later" or "Four weeks before" and somehow add a twist to an already tortuous storyline. Like The Return of the King, it felt like the movie had a dozen endings before the credits finally appeared. Rather than doing justice to the first two movies, it felt like the directors just pasted together some deleted scenes and bonus footage and relied on the time-jumping gimmick to pull them through.

Overall I would definitely recommend the first two movies. I could only recommend the third movie if you feel like you've invested a lot of time in the story and you're in need of a good laugh.

in theaters now

019: Reno 911!: Miami
020: Black Snake Moan
021: Zodiac
022: Panic Room

I've got a list of about ten movies that I've watched but not posted here. When that's the case, I don't feel like devoting much time to this. So with that, I'll say Reno 911!: Miami was funny but unfortunately many of the best moments were ruined by the trailer. Like Borat, I'll be anxious to see the DVD release for the extra scenes, as I'm sure they had plenty of funny bits that might not have fit into the rough context of the story.

Black Snake Moan is not worth writing about. I wish I had known John Singleton was involved (as producer) so I could've saved nine bucks.

Zodiac is as great as it is long. I don't think it's going to be a classic, but it's certainly good for what it is. With most movies, I reach my marginal propensity to consume at around the 100-minute mark and I was definitely feeling that during this movie. Looking back, I can't really pick out scenes that should have been cut, but surely some economy could've been practiced along the way. Strong casting with the exception of Jake Gyllenhaal; then again, perhaps that's what the character deserved.

After enjoying Zodiac, there was a need to catch up on some of his previous work, so we watched Panic Room. Though I'm not typically a fan of androgynous Jodie Foster (or her amazingly more androgynous son/daughter), this movie was great. It had every bit of economy that Zodiac lacked. Each scene and every bit of dialogue was used to advance the narrative. It had the feeling of a much older movie, maybe Hitchcock-era, but refreshed with a new style and advanced technology.

alleged comedies

014: Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
015: Eddie Murphy Raw
016: Eddie Murphy Delirious
017: Saturday Night Live: The Best of Eddie Murphy
018: Shakes the Clown

I guess it would be best to sum these up with the number of laughs per hour: Zach Galifianakis would score about a six. Eddie Murphy gets a two for SNL, seven for Delirious, and nine for Raw. Shakes the Clown receives a negative score, maybe around negative four. Shame on you, Bobcat Goldthwait.

All in all, it's hardly worth watching seven or eight hours of stand-up for a few dozen laughs. I've still got a George Carlin stand-up special to run through--I expect it to bring the funny. After that, I'm going to swear off stand-ups for a while.

cinema sleep

012: Insomnia
013: Dreamgirls

Insomnia is a Criterion release that I've had on my list for a while but never gotten around to it. The original is a 1997 movie by Swedish director Erik Skjoldbaerg; it was remade for America in 2002 by Memento director Christopher Nolan, featuring Al Pacino and Robin Williams.

The direction here is suited to the movie's theme and Stellan Skarsgard is perfect as the police detective who can't sleep in northern Norway's "midnight sun" season. After he accidentally kills his partner in a fog, he is haunted by his actions and tries to cover up the mistake. Meanwhile, he's tracking down an elusive killer who preys on high-school girls. It's a very arresting movie with a final shot that haunts well past the end of the credits.

I also watched Dreamgirls, as I was in a situation where I needed to waste time with friends and family. It's sad to think Eddie Murphy might win an Oscar for his role here. Being an actor who makes things like Norbit should automatically blacklist you. Anyway, I've been watching some prime Eddie Murphy standup and SNL-era material to balance out my Murphy intake.

magnificent

Book #2: John Fowles - The Magus

John Fowles was an author I was entirely unfamiliar with. The Magus, however, was highly recommended by two well-read friends, so I picked up a copy at a used book store. The cover is strange: a young woman splayed out on an altar just below a large, black ram's head with a red candle between its horns.

A young man leaves behind dreary England and his Australian girlfriend for a teaching job in an island near Greece. Once there, he becomes depressed and takes long solitary walks, eventually stumbling across an isolated home. Here, he encounters and old, slightly eccentric and very wealthy man. Tired of novels and other conventional forms of fiction, the old man creates alternate realities which become puzzles for the young man.

Everything is a facade and behind those facades are just more facades. A play within a play within a play within a play, a 'godgame' superbly orchestrated and set to familiar themes of classic literature. This book made me wish I had paid more attention to the Shakespeare we read in high school. There are numerous other references: T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, Jungian psychology, Greek mythology. It even ends with a Latin quote.

The book must've been a hit when it was released, as it was adapted to a movie featuring Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine, Anna Karina, and Candace Bergen. I cannot imagine what the film-makers were thinking by trying to compact the story into two hours. Anyway, Fowles' imagery is better than any celluloid could create. I started watching it and had to stop after about twenty minutes.

I intend to return to The Magus in the coming years; I just hope by then I can forget the movie and instead retain my original mental images of the sun-bleached landscapes and mystical happenings that Fowles described. Woody Allen went as far as saying if he had to live his life over again, he would do everything the same with the exception of watching The Magus.

Though the accolade doesn't mean much, I would still count this book as one of the best I've ever read. Perhaps I can catch up on my Shakespeare, Eliot, etc and return to this in a few years.

vice times

010: Hard Times
011: Miami Vice

Last year I tried to watch some more James Coburn movies, most of which were pretty rewarding. There were a few duds, like Pat Garret and Billy the Kid or The President's Analyst. Hard Times also features Charles Bronson, upping my expectations. It's also the directorial debut of Walter Hill, who went on to do The Warriors. So, yes, I had expectations. They were not met. Basically Charles Bronson comes to town to beat up some people and then he leaves. I think that's been done before.

Likewise, Michael Mann's adaptation of Miami Vice was a let-down. I'm such a huge fan of The Insider and I would say Collateral holds up as one of the better stylistic movies of the past few years. Miami Vice was shot in the same vein but felt too phony. It was a movie about the '80s, so maybe phony was legitimately real then, but that's a level I'm not willing to appreciate. The desperately bumbling storyline and the Nickelback-to-the-future soundtrack were painful.

never let me go

Book #1: Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

I believe I got this book for Christmas 2005, but I just now got around to reading it. It was on Time magazine's Best Novels list; it was the newest book on the list, meaning it hadn't stood the test of time like Fitzgerald or Faulkner. Anyway, Ishiguro is considered one of the best living writers; Remains of the Day is perhaps his best-known work.

It's hard to describe Never Let Me Go without it sounding like science fiction. I suppose it is, but it's not the kind of Tek Jensen literature associated with most sci-fi. I also find it impossible to talk about anything in the book without giving away what it's about. All I can say is that it's set in present-day England, mostly with narration of events that took place in the late '80s-early '90s at an isolated boarding school. So beyond that, I will just acknowledge that it was a quick and very worthwhile read. I'm unsure if, twenty years from now, it will warrant the classic status that Time thrust on it, but in the meanwhile it's definitely worth checking out.

animal house

007: Horse Feathers
008: At the Circus
009: Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel, Die

After watching Duck Soup late last year, I wanted to watch a few more Marx brothers movies. Horse Feathers was another movie whose title had nothing to do with the plot. I wonder why they chose these animal-related titles (also, Monkey Business, Animal Crackers). Anyway, Horse Feathers was quite fun. At any rate, I liked it a little better than At the Circus.

The other movie translates to The Story of the Weeping Camel. That sounds like a metaphor-laden Sony Pictures Classic title, but it's really pretty literal. This is a story about a baby camel who cries because its mother hates her. Yes, a mother spends two days in labor delivering an albino camel, but after the birth, the mother rejects the kid. The Mongolian nomads who raise the camels try to get the two to bond, but their methods don't work. Finally they call in a musician who basically serenades them until they come together. It was a nice enough film to watch--it was done by National Geographic, so the photography is amazing. Also, they capture the simple lives of an isolated Mongolian family, complete with kids who just want to watch that fascinating picture box called the 'television,' even if it means selling all their camels and sheep. I guess some things are universal.

aka pan's labyrinth

006: Laberinto del Fauno, El

Last year around Halloween, I watched two films by director Guillermo del Toro: Cronos and The Devil's Backbone. I thought they were okay but not really spectacular. Plus, I thought they would be like horror movies, but they combined a few different genres. Anyway, the previews for Pan's Labyrinth looked amazing: a rich, vivid fantasy world filled with mythical characters.

It turns out the mythical part with Pan is only about one tenth of what's going on in the movie. I also wasn't expecting it to be so violent; there were more people shot point-blank in the face than The Departed. I really loved this movie much more than I expected to. It's also a rare gem that is truly worth seeing in theaters for the visuals and especially for the sound. The sound editing is so crisp and detailed--hard to describe but definitely noticeable in a good theater system.

The strange thing is, I now see del Toro's previous movies in a different light. I guess when I watched those, they were pretty hyped up and I thought they fell short. Pan's Labyrinth, however, lived up to the hype and more, so I'm willing to reconsider del Toro and give him another chance, at least for his non-Hellboy fare.

last book of '06

Book #24: Erik Larson - The Devil in the White City

I had seen this book around since it came out in early 2004. I thought it was a work of fiction, but a second glance revealed it is not. It is a non-fiction book written in a fictional style. Much like Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, Erik Larson sets two concurrent paths: one of the noble builder of the 1983 World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago's World Fair) and the other a charming psychopath who lures and coolly murders young girls in Chicago.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's perfect for light reading, as most of the chapters are further broken down into short snippets of the daily lives and endeavors of the main characters. Even better, there are dozens of anecdotes about the World's Fair and what a wonderful, magical time it was in American history.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in American history or fun works of non-fiction (or fiction for that matter, as the style straddles the two genres). This book has led me to research the Columbian Exposition further; I fully intend on visiting a few of the remaining parts of the fair on my next trip to Chicago. Actually, I've already been to the two remaining buildings: one holds the Museum of Science and Industry, the other holds the Art Institute of Chicago.

Still, the exhaustive research that Erik Larson went through implies that there is still much to be found in Chicago's current cityscape. It's disheartening to think that something this amazing could never happen in today's world, but Larson has done a tremendous job of providing a vivid snapshot of what it would've been like to attend the White City at the dusk of the 19th century.

the samurai trilogy

003: Miyamoto Musashi
004: Zoku Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijôji no kettô
005: Miyamoto Musashi kanketsuhen: kettô Ganryûjima

I don't know Japanese, but these are the titles provided by IMDb for the three movies in The Samurai Trilogy. The first one is basically an introduction to the young, brave and brash Takezo, who leaves his village to go to war. He sets out to become a famous samurai but he's beset by his friends, past relationships, and his own stubbornness. Regardless, he becomes a samurai and takes the name Musashi Miyamoto.

Anyway, the next two movies center around duels, which are much more interesting. The second movie, Duel at Ichijoji Temple, like most middle parts of trilogies, is bookended well but not much is resolved. Still, it starts out with Musashi battling a guy with a chain and sickle. By the end of this movie, Musashi is a complete samurai and considered the best fencer in Japan.

So what's left for the final installment? Well, this is where the love triangle gets resolved and Musashi duels the only other man who could even be considered a peer. Overall I enjoyed the trilogy but I really wish Criterion had devoted more time to cleaning up the print. This series was one of the first Criterion DVD releases, so maybe they weren't too involved in the restoration process yet. The trilogy, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, doesn't have quite the reputation as, say, some of Kurosawa or Ozu's movies, so maybe Criterion won't be too quick to restore these movies to their original glory.

when prequels go wrong

002: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

The trend in Hollywood today is not to bother with sequels, but focus on prequels. This allows us to see the initial character development behind, say, Batman or James Bond. Some producers thought we needed to see the beginnings of Leatherface so that decades-old questions could be answered: How did he get his 'leather' face? Why does he use a chainsaw? This prequel may answer those questions, but the answers are too boring.

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was such a scary movie but hardly a bloody one. That's what made it scary: it left so much up to the imagination. Rather than seeing Leatherface stomp through blood-muddied waters and drive a meat cleaver into someone, you saw him slam the door with such finality that you knew there was no hope for that poor soul. The prequel, though, bathes in blood. Within twenty minutes, the characters are covered in blood. By the end, the sole survivor is nestled down in a vat of blood. Ok, we get it, it's a bloody movie. It's also very unnecessary--there is so much blood that it makes the death scenes redundant.

The acting was pathetic and it was sad to see R. Lee 'golfball through a garden hose' Ermey continue to be so willingly typecast. Oh, and it turns out Leatherface is wearing one of his victim's faces and he uses a chainsaw for completely arbitrary reasons. Way to go, movie.