Girl Detective

I’m a frequent user of the library reserve system. My favorite of the three nearby library systems has a great site with a good search function. I’ve been true to my 2007 vow to use the library less for books, but I am still using it to reserve and borrow new DVDs and CDs. There’s a high demand for these, so the lists are long. I am often flirting with the upper limit allowed of reservable items, since some take months to come in. But last time I went to reserve items, I saw a notice that the library was limiting reserves to twenty items, down from fifty.

My first response? How can they do this? (Disbelief; I think it’s the Kubler Ross first stage of loss.) Then I was angry, then I was defiant. I went online and put several more items on reserve, pushing myself very close to the previous limit of fifty. Ha, I thought. Whatever this new limit is, it isn’t working yet.

I wondered if I should get a card for 3yo Drake so I could double my reserves. Then I realized, who am I fooling? Mightn’t I have a problem if twenty reserve items isn’t nearly enough? Are there support groups for library ab/users?

The next time I tried to reserve something, I got this message: There is a problem with your account. Please see a librarian.

I don’t need to see a librarian. The gig is up.

#3 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Queen. Mirren conveyed a lot of emotion with great economy. I loved the strength and independence of the queen, and enjoyed her wardobes of pearls and scarves–the queen has really good accessories. I was also reminded of what a terrible deal Diana got–bad marriage, divorce, then hounded literally to death by paparazzi. Too many overlook the irony of romanticizing princesses while also mourning her tragic death.

#2 in my 2007 movie challenge was the 1944 film Jane Eyre. I consulted Time Out, so I wasn’t expecting much, and wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to watch in advance of the Masterpiece Theater Jane Eyre, part I of which is airing in the US this Sunday, 21 January 2007. The 1944 film is worthwhile, but uneven. A very young Elizabeth Taylor is Jane’s childhood friend Helen. Jane’s Aunt Reeves is played with cruel glee by Agnes Moorehead, better known as Endora from the TV show, Bewitched. The adult Jane is played by Joan Fontaine, too pretty and moist eyed for me to accept as pale, plain, indomitable Jane. Orson Welles seems to have a good time as Rochester, and was more convincing to me in that role. I didn’t care for the movie’s combination of text and voiceover. The last part of the book, with St. John Rivers, was deleted from the film version, and made for a more conventional, and less interesting, story than the book.

#1 in my 2007 movie challenge, Brick was from the library, so I broke my vow of borrowing less right away. It’s a noir thriller set in high school. The humor is dark, and the dialogue fast, jargon-y, and often hard to follow. It’s entertaining, and I like Joseph Gordon Levitt, and thought he did a credible job as the bitter loner trying to find his ex. But I found the movie as a whole faintly absurd, often purposely so, as in the kitchen scene with a character’s mom. The heavy dialogue and the often brutal actions (only one of which was shown, and then not closely) hung strangely on the young actors, as if they were playing dress-up in a movie beyond their years.

I’m going to continue with book and movie goals of fifty apiece, with three clarifications.

One, I want to read and watch more of what I already have than I did in 2006. I’ll need to continue the reined-in book buying, and be more selective about what I put in my library reserve queue.

Two, I want to read better books. There weren’t many “wow” books for me last year, even including the four I liked enough to purchase after borrowing them from the library. I read a lot of books that made me go “meh” last year. To do this, I’m going to try and worry less about how many books I’m reading, since fifty seems to be an attainable goal.

Three, I’m going to try not to make lists in advance. They spoil some of the fun of seeking out a new book, whether it’s from the library, store, or my own bookshelves.

I watched 58 movies in 2006, averaging nearly 5 a month. Apologies for no italics or links, but all are linked in the 2006 Movie Challenge category on the right. I saw only ten in theaters, but I enjoyed all of them. I was more selective this year about what films I saw in theaters, and this made them worth the effort and cost of childcare, movie snacks, and non-matinee prices:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Cars
Casino Royale
Good Night, and Good Luck
Lawrence of Arabia
New World, The
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Thank You for Smoking
Walk the Line

Eighteen were from our home library, either on DVD or Tivo. I often skip over what we have unwatched at home in favor of something new from the library. As with books, I’m going to try and improve on the ratio, because there were fewer disappointments (Alfie, The Quiet Man, Sense & Sensibility) than delights (Happy Accidents, The Palm Beach Story, Triplets of Belleville, Wuthering Heights):

Alfie (1966)
Happy Accidents
Lady Eve, The
Nausicaa
Palm Beach Story, The
Pride & Prejudice (1940)
Producers, The (1968)
Quiet Man, The
Ref, The
Sense & Sensibility
Silverado
Spellbound (2002)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Triplets of Belleville
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
What’s Cooking
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Wuthering Heights (1939)

I borrowed thirty-two from the library, but only finished thirty of them, since I couldn’t stay awake for either Ong-Bak or Hero. There were a lot of disappointments here (13 Conversations About One Thing, The Family Stone, Junebug, Made, Nicholas Nickleby, Rumor Has It, Sky High, and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill), especially compared to the few I thought were really good (The Constant Gardener and Inside Man). It’s further reason to be more selective about reserving items from the library. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they’re worth my time.

13 Conversations about One Thing
40 Year-Old Virgin, The
Anchorman
Broken Flowers
Bruce Almighty
Constant Gardener, The
Crash
Family Stone, The
Fever Pitch (2005)
Graduate, The
Grizzly Man
Hustle & Flow
In Her Shoes
Inside Man
Junebug
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Last Holiday
Lord of War
Made
Matador, The
Millions
Mysterious Skin
Nicholas Nickleby
Proof
Rumor Has It
Sky High
Syriana
Upside of Anger, The
Wedding Crashers
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

#58 in my movie challenge, Spellbound, the documentary not the Hitchcock film, was my last movie of the year. I finished watching just after midnight. It focuses on the kids, and doesn’t take cheap shots at them or their parents. It shows them all as complex people and does a fair job at showing why spelling is important to each of the kids. While the variance in economic background of those who made it to the finals was wide, it narrowed significantly as the spellers moved to the finals.

I went to the state spelling bee in 7th grade. I can’t remember if I got beyond the first round, but I will always remember the word I missed: jacamar. It’s a type of bird.

#57 in my movie challenge for the year was Wrath of Khan. My husband has joked that he married me even though I’d never seen this. Having befriended and dated geeks, though, I knew all the basic points. I was surprised to find Kirk’s “Khan!” not nearly as drawn out as it is in parody. Bad hair, bad wigs, bad costumes. Weirdly smooth pecs on Ricardo Montalban. Like many things geeks hold dear, its impact is not as strong for those of us who come to it later in life.

Not bad, but hardly epic.

#56 in my movie challenge for the year was Happy Accidents, a weird indie mystery/romance from 2000. Marisa Tomei (who with red hair bears a startling resemblance to one of my friends from college) starts dating Vincent D’onofrio, who may or may not be from the future.

Funny, kooky and sweet.

#55 in my movie challenge for the year was Spike Lee’s Inside Man. A solid thriller with a great cast, I found it oddly charming.

#54 in my movie challenge was Anchorman. Will Ferrell is funny, but it is (again) Steve Carell who makes this movie worthwhile. The humor was of the bizarre, often painful kind, but there was enough wacky charm to make me like the movie, in spite of its excesses.

#53 in my movie challenge was Bruce Almighty. Borrowed from the library when I read that a sequel, Evan Almighty, will star Steve Carell, the only reason to watch this fairly awful movie.

#52 in my movie challenge for the year was The Ref. My husband G. Grod chose this Chrismas flick instead of a feel-good holiday classic like It’s a Wonderful Life or The Shop Around the Corner. A thief (Denis Leary) takes a bickering couple hostage on Christmas Eve. Life lessons are learned. Leary is funny, though a bit too nobly wise. I suspect he was trying to emulate Bogart in To Have and Have Not, as a good guy with flexible ethics and a drunk partner.

Funny enough.

(Weird fact about me: I’ve never seen It’s a Wonderful Life. As a child, I watched the Marlo Thomas remake, with Trapper John as her husband. Years later, when a friend described It’s a Wonderful Life, I realized I’d been watching a remake, then never got around to seeing the original.)

# 51 in my movie challenge for the year. Yet another date night, and we managed to do both dinner and a movie, because the pizza at the newest Punch is ridiculously quick, and decent to boot. My husband G. Grod’s and my second date was Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan’s debut as Bond. It wasn’t great, but we’ve gone on these eleven years to have a pretty decent relationship in spite of merely OK movies on our first and second dates. (The first was Get Shorty.) But Casino Royale was something I wasn’t expecting: a very good Bond movie. It was fun to watch, it didn’t rely overmuch on gadgets, it had a nice homage to a classic Aston Martin, and it gave Judi Dench a good number of scenes in which to chew up the screen. Daniel Craig makes a very good Bond. He’s fit, he’s handsome, he’s a good actor. My only complaint is that he’s yet a bit long in the tooth to be playing the early-career Bond from this story. But I think it’s a problem inherent in the character. By the time an actor has enough panache to play the worldly Bond, they’re old enough that the three year gap between movies means for a quick obsolescence.

Oh, ouch. Craig is almost the exact same age as I am, even a few days younger. Then again, I’m just a midwestern American mother of two; I have no plans to appear as an action hero anytime soon.

The last two films we’ve borrowed from the library were Hero and Ong Bak. Yet they don’t make my movie challenge for the year, because I was unable to stay awake through either of them. What I saw was pretty (Hero) and fun to watch (Ong Bak) but both were long, and without strong narrative lines. My husband G. Grod enjoyed them for what they were, though.

#49 in my movie challenge for the year was Mysterious Skin, based on the novel by Scott Heim. I do movie and book challenges to remind myself of what’s important, and to show it’s possible to have small kids and still find time to read and watch movies. It’s not easy, and many things go undone (our house is messy; we’ve all but given up on our yard), but it can be done.

I liked but didn’t love the book when I read it last year, and I felt similarly about the movie. It was a good, faithful adaptation of the book. Joseph Gordon Levitt was mesmerizing in the role of Neil, a young, small-town hustler. There’s rough, graphic sex and child abuse in the movie, so this is not for the faint of heart. But it is a well-done indie that handles tough subjects well, and has strong performances.

#55 in my book challenge for the year is The Film Snob’s Dictionary by David Kamp and Lawrence Levi. A slim volume packed with definitions of key phrases, films, and people beloved by so-called Film Snobs. The book not-so-gently mocks Film Snobs, and takes pleasure in knocking down some of their sacred cows. It’s a weird conceit, since it’s not a compendium of actual good things, but rather things that some people think are good and that authors sometimes agree with, or sometimes not. For example, there is no Truffaut entry but there is one for Office Space, a film that only snobs “get”. While of dubious utility unless you’re soon to be attending a gathering of Film Snobs, it is clever, entertaining and informative. Its short entries make it an idea bathroom book.

#48 in my movie challenge for the year was our first family movie, Cars. All four of us went! Drake sat on G. Grod’s lap, and I had baby Guppy in the sling, where he mostly slept. Drake was attentive for the first hour, and rather wiggly but OK for the second. Cars was a long movie to pick as his first theater experience, but he did great. He mentioned popcorn several times the next day, and his Lightning McQueen and Sally cereal-box cars have been favorites ever since. I really enjoyed the movie as well. The animation was well done and I liked how the characters looked like the actors who voiced them. I thought it was a sweet story that wasn’t saccharine, and I only wish Owen Wilson could find a live action movie role so good.