Girl Detective

#25 in my 2007 movie challenge was Superman Returns, a good movie for geeks. The reviews when it came out were mixed, plus it clocked in at two and a half hours, so I skipped in in the theater. I’m very glad I watched it, though. Singer pulled off a very tricky thing. He made Superman Returns both an homage to, as well as a continuation of, Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. Brandon Routh does a credible job as Superman, and evokes Christopher Reeve so strongly that it was almost eerie. His fake blue contacts over his brown eyes (a look I find distracting) bothered me throughout the movie. Kate Bosworth did a decent job as Lois Lane, and was certainly attractive, but she has become a character for our time, trying to juggle motherhood and a high-powered career. It’s a striking difference from Margot Kidder’s ERA-era feminist Lois Lane.

#24 in my 2007 movie challenge.That Romeo + Juliet came out over ten years ago surprised me. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I saw this in the theater. This is a cheeky, flamboyant adaptation by Baz Luhrmann. Danes and DiCaprio are luminous as the titular couple, but of the two, only DiCaprio acts well enough to do more than look good. This has a slow start, but builds toward its tragic, inevitable conclusion. The play is the thing here–the interpretation, the music and the sets, not so much the acting. We purchased the recently released Music Edition DVD, and it was well worth the time to watch the extras. They increased our appreciation of this odd and outrageous interpretation.

#16 in my 2007 book challenge was Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritual memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert is an engaging, believable narrator, and is direct about her own foibles, an essential ingredient to a good memoir. The book is by turns funny and sad as it details her bad divorce, worse rebound relationship, and the crushing depression that spurred her to plan a year abroad, with four months apiece in Italy, India, and Indonesia. I found the segment on India the most compelling. Throughout, her transformations–emotional, physical and spiritual–are related with clear and intelligent prose.

….when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt–this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. (115)

I have two small reservations about the book. One, Gilbert used male pronouns to refer to God; I would have preferred gender neutrality. Two, Gilbert relates that she was raised in a Christian church and chose to study and practice Eastern religion as an adult.

I think this is a little like growing up in one small state in the US, then saying the whole country is terrible, and moving to Japan. Christianity is not a monolith. Even the various sects are so complex that they vary by church, and by individuals within each church. There is a long and interesting history of physical practices, meditation, and even feminism, WITHIN the broad umbrella that is Christianity. One need not leave the country, or even one’s church or sect, to learn about and practice them.

I am by no means discounting the value of Gilbert’s spiritual choices. I loved reading about them, and they have given me much to think about; I highly recommend this book. But one need not go East in search of meaning and unexplored territory. As Gilbert herself notes in the book, there are many paths up the mountain.

#15 in my 2007 book challenge was Embroideries, another memoir by Satrapi about women’s life in Iran. This is a short but sad and entertaining book. She wrote it between the Persepolis volumes as a way of distancing herself from the many painful memories. This is a sexy, frank portrayal of a women’s tea-time get together. They discuss sex, marriage and divorce. As with the Persepolis volumes, Satrapi does a wonderful job conveying difference while also noting common truths. I enjoyed it at least as much as I did when I read it last year.

#14 in my 2007 book challenge was the second part of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic-novel memoir, Persepolis 2. It is aptly titled, because it’s more like the second chapter in Satrapi’s memoirs than a different book from Persepolis. Again, the stark black and white art is used to good effect to convey complex emotions and events. Satrapi ably manages to make herself sympathetic in spite of being a somewhat spoiled and selfish teenager; she communicates a believable portrait of herself that is not too flattering or too self-deprecating. This segment follows the author out of Iran to Europe for school, then back again, and finally away again. Her story effectively shows the push/pull of family and place and the counterbalances of curiosity and individual growth. This is the second time I’ve read the book, and it is a rich reading experience, as before.

Sometimes Bunty feels as if the whole world is trying to climb on her body. (17)

Bunty….is irritated….(does she actually possess any other emotion?)…., disguising her thoughts with a bright artificial smile….Bunty maintains a Madonna-like expression of serenity and silence for as long as she can before her impatience suddenly boils over and she yanks the bars of [Gillian's] tricycle to hurry it along….

Is this a good mother? (19-20), Behind the Scenes at the Museum

A good mother? Maybe not. But a flawed, normal human that I can empathize with? Yes, yes, yes.

Poor Bunty, the main character’s mother in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. She was abandoned by a fiance, married to a pet-shop owner who has a series of affairs, and gives birth to a gaggle of girls for whom she feels scant connection. This might seem unempathizable, until we learn about the dearth of affection Bunty received from her own mother.

Nearly every day I fight the urge to shake off one or the other of my sons, as they cling like barnacles to my legs and cry out for affection beyond what I’ve given already, and beyond what I feel I possess. Just yesterday, I took 3yo Drake out to the sidewalk to ride his tricycle. I was quickly frustrated because he didn’t want to ride it; he just pushed it back and forth. To complicate matters, 1yo Guppy also wanted to push it, so several screaming fights ensued. I’m happy to say my screams weren’t part of the chorus, though they did clamor rather loudly in my head to be let out.

I frequently berate myself that I SHOULD be playing with the children, and that I SHOULDN’T have expectations of how that play should go. One part of me, the Bunty-self, can’t believe that riding a tricycle is so fracking difficult, and wonders why Guppy can’t be distracted by bubbles, and why he insists on spilling bubble juice over my lap, and trying to drink it from the bottle. Another part, the person who is trying to be a good mother (and yet who feels the sting of consistent failure), says that my kids are doing what kids do, interested in what they’re interested in, and ready when they are, not when I want them to be. Yet another part reminds me that my kids are clothed, fed, safe, healthy, learning, and mostly happy. I can’t be failing if all these are true.

So me as mother is a messy amalgam of all these parts. Perhaps I can be as compassionate to myself as I am to the character of Bunty.

#13 in my 2007 book challenge was Marjane Satrapi’s memoir and graphic novel, Persepolis. A friend who heard Satrapi speak said the author disputes that label, and that she is a cartoonist.

Satrapi’s first volume of her memoir details her childhood in 1980s Iran. Since she and I are roughly the same age, I found it fascinating to learn the perspective of someone who lived in Iran when I was just beginning to watch the news and hear the media and adult perspectives in the United States. My perception at that time was that the Shah was a good man, unfairly ousted by the religious fanatic Khomeini; the US welcomed the Shah because that was the just thing to do. Both time, education, and Satrapi’s memoir have helped me gain a much more nuanced picture of what happened.

Satrapi manages, through her stark black/white contrasts, to convey a child’s perspective, though adult insight murmurs between the lines, both of her cartoon panels and her narration. My favorite pages may be 70 and 71, on which we learn the fate of Marji’s uncle. The art, panelling, and text combine for a bittersweet synthesis.

This is a touching, beautiful book, and one that gave up further rewards and insights on this beyond what I had on my first reading.

Richard III was #23 in my 2007 movie challenge. I am abashed to admit that we removed the plastic off our dvd copy that I’m fairly sure we bought new, i.e., in 2000, and two abodes ago. I wanted to watch in it preparation for Looking for Richard, a film I’d recorded on our Tivo soon after we moved to our new abode. In a spate of impulsive programming, G. Grod and I plied our DVR with too many requests, and Looking for Richard was deleted. (Yet, A Better Way to Die was not. And Looking for Richard is at none of my three libraries, and is no longer available. Oh, Irony, up yours.) But I digress.

Richard III was directed by Richard Loncraine, and starred Sir Ian McKellan.

The reasoning behind the film was to bring classical actor McKellen together with a director who has avoided the Bard; the result is a fresh, unified vision which may add lines and make cuts, but does a fine job of turning Shakespeare’s grand design into a veritable world at war.

The costumes and settings are a mythic 1930s fascist England. I had a brief moment of trepidation as the film began, and I wondered if I’d understand the language, and the story. The film, though, soon whisked me through the first demanding scene and through to the end at breakneck, exhilarating speed. The language of Shakespeare required a bit of acclimation, and the modern setting required a bit of temporal translating, but things quickly fell into place.

Dark, intense, and satisfying. Very much like a good, scary, roller-coaster ride.

#22 in my 2007 movie challenge was Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan It was sometimes hilarious, and frequently cringe inducing–I often watched through a lattice of my fingers in front of my eyes. Sacha Baron Cohen has a strange, extreme sense of humor. The DVD is cleverly and thoroughly set up to look like it’s an illegal bootleg, and all extras are titled in Borat-ese. This movie was funny, but also worthwhile because it became a comedic touchstone so quickly; it’s useful to know what everyone else is referring to.

Isn’t that a fab title? Too long, but funny enough to deserve its length. #12 in my 2007 book challenge was You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi.

My husband G. Grod started reading Scalzi’s blog, The Whatever, a while back, and frequently shares entries with me. Scalzi is funny (Chapter 4: Science Fiction, or, Don’t Skip This Chapter, You Damned Writing Snobs), smart, and not shy about sharing how he manages to make a decent living as a writer. (Hint: it’s not book tours and Oprah, though he is coming to a city near you very soon to promote his new novel, The Last Colony.) Scalzi is a pragmatist, not a romantic. He writes for hire, and for fun. He picked the topic of his novel, Old Man’s War, by going to the bookstore and studying which sci-fi books sold well. He lives in what I grew up calling BFE Ohio, where the cost of living is low, the politics swing right, and culture isn’t entirely absent, though I would argue that fine dining pretty much is. (Scalzi also claims that central-ish Ohio is a great place to raise a kid. He’s entitled to that opinion. I was a kid raised in Ohio. I left at 19 with a drinking problem and a decided lack of worldliness. Both of those got better once I was out of Ohio.)

YNFA is a collection of his blog entries. Check out the archives at The Whatever. If you like what you read, you’ll like YNFA. Why buy it if the individual entries are available for free? One, you’ll contribute to the decent living that one writer makes. If you’re a writer aspiring to make money and be published, that’s gotta help to slough some karma. Two, the edition, by Subterranean Press, is very nice. It’s cloth bound with good typefaces. My quibbles? Page 271 has a typeface goof, and there are a sprinkling of errors throughout the text that a more careful editing should have caught.

Heartening, humbling, and fun to read.

P.S. YNFA sold out of its initial print run! If you’re interested, feedback to Subterranean Press might encourage a second printing.

Three more things, which I feel are distinct enough to merit their own postscript, rather than me cramming them retroactively into yesterday’s post on Stephen King and Fieldwork.

One: M., who blogs at Mental Multivitamin, is also a fan of Entertainment Weekly. She is erudite, but not elitist. She, too, liked the essay by King.

Two: I forgot one of the reasons I was so attracted to Gilead when I first saw it in hardcover. Not only was it physically beautiful to look at, but it also felt good in the hand. It was a good size and weight; its slight heft bespoke substance, not the overwhelming weight of pretension. And the cover was textured, so the weathered pastels felt as good as they looked.

Three: one more thing urged me to buy and read Gilead, but I felt it was too long to add to yesterday’s already long post. My writing instructor told this story, which I hope is true, of an editor at Farrar, Straus, Giroux who appeared at the door of another editor, holding an unremarkable box in his hand.

“Guess what I’m holding?” editor #1 asked, holding the box aloft.

He paused dramatically; he knew editor #2 had no idea.

He continued, his voice reverent and excited. “The manuscript for Marilynne Robinson’s second novel.”

How could I not want to read the book that inspired such a reaction?

I am an unapologetic reader of Entertainment Weekly. For all the swearing off of magazines I’ve done, there are a few that rise above the crowd to earn my attention. EW is one of those. I find it smart, funny, and a good, quick review of many things important to me: books, movies, tv and music. Sneer if you must, but in this case I’m no snob. I like EW because it embraces popular culture, though whether it’s high, medium or low is anyone’s call.

Stephen King is a columnist for EW. I haven’t read a King novel in many years, but I enjoy his “The Pop of King” and his sense of humor. In April 6, 2007’s “How to Bury a Book,” he accuses publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux of dropping the ball with its treatment of the new novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. King takes issue with the cover and the title. He feels they tell nothing about, and therefore don’t sell, the book. King picked Fieldwork up on impulse, in spite of the cover and title, and was pleasantly surprised. He says that FSG has burdened the book with a smeary image and vague title because they’re afraid to market a literary novel overtly:

Hey, guys, why not put the heroine on the jacket….why not actually sell this baby a little?

I found it interesting that King also took issue with the cover and title of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, also from FSG, because I clearly remember the first time I saw that book in a store. I had to sternly restrain myself from buying Gilead in hardcover. Oh, how I wanted that book. The cover was a lovely wash of bleached-out color. It looked like the door of an old church. That plus the title told me it would be a book about religion and spirituality. I didn’t buy the book, because I managed to adhere to whatever “if I’m not about to read it next I can’t buy it, and I certainly can’t buy it in hardcover because by the time I read it, not only will it be out in paperback, it will probably have gone through a trade paperback printing into a mass market printing and I’ll have spent $25+ on a book that’s harder to read because of its lack of portability, and I’ll long for the lighter weight, and smaller pocketbook dent, of a paperback” vow I had taken at the time. I continued to visit that hardcover on subsequent bookstore trips, even after I borrowed Gilead from the library. I bought it as soon as it came out in trade paperback.

I went to amazon.com to check out Fieldwork after I read King’s column. Based on the description of the book, the cover and King’s endorsement, I would get this book, in spite of the mixed editorial reviews at amazon. (I don’t take the editorial reviews as gospel, and I pretty much ignore the personal reviews–too little signal to noise. But the ed. reviews usually point me in the right direction: check it out/meh/avoid.) I might not buy Fieldwork in hardcover (see para. above). But I would certainly reserve it from the library, which notifies them that the book is in demand, and encourages them to purchase more copies. The smudgey cover and title, along with the book description, point to a messy tale about anthropologists. The image and title both appeal to me, and make sense.

I find King’s complaints interesting. He may have a point that publishers are afraid to market literary fiction. Yet his argument sounds to me like he’s taking his opinion–that the cover and title should be more obvious in order to better sell the book–and universalizing it. Given that King is mostly a writer in the horror genre, and genre books tend to have more representative and less impressionistic covers and titles, I think he has a bias for what he likes that may not be as true for “ordinary readers,” as he believes.

Let me be clear. He is Stephen Freakin’ King, the bestselling author, many of whose books I’ve read and bought over the years. I am merely the author of this little weblog, and mostly unpublished. His opinion counts for more than mine. But since I consider myself one of the “ordinary readers” whom he validates, I wanted to voice my difference of opinion.

In the end, it feels unfair to quibble with King. He’s using the considerable power of his good opinion to support Fieldwork. In fact, his closing words are so good they should be repeated:

Under the drab title and drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother. It’s called Fieldwork.

#21 in my 2007 movie challenge was Over the Hedge, which we rented from the library and allowed Drake to watch. When I asked him what the movie was about, he answered, “A crash.” So I’m not sure Drake is quite ready for prolonged narratives, even of the animated kind. I liked the movie, too, and thought it was about more than a crash but about natural versus junk food, and the suburban desire to mimic nature while really avoiding it. There’s some very good voice work here by Steve Carell, as Hammy the hyperactive squirrel. Shatner as a daddy opossum does brilliant work playing dead. This is a decent movie for both adults and kids.

But be warned; it gave me a serious craving for Pringles. Oh, excuse me, “Spuddies”.

#20 in my 2007 movie challenge was Brad Anderson’s The Machinist, starring a skeletal Christian Bale. Since I’ve seen both Memento and Fight Club, the reveals at the end weren’t particularly surprising. I was disappointed to see Jennifer Jason Leigh in the thankless role of a hooker with a heart of gold who will leave her job for Bale. What’s compelling, though, is the look of the film. It’s heavily stylized with dark, Hitchcockian flair. Most arresting, though, is Bale’s gaunt physique, and the haunted look this brings to his character. I enjoyed two of Anderson’s previous films, Next Stop Wonderland and Happy Accidents. Both those were quirky romantic dramedies, decidedly different from the dark horror of this film.

#19 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Devil Wears Prada. I couldn’t read the book when it came out. I put it down at the 50-page mark because it was so poorly written, and because the main character was so unlikeable. I wanted to see the movie because I’d heard good things about the performances. Streep, Tucci, and Blunt all bring nuance and dimension to characters that could easily have been caricatures. I’m not sure that the creepily doe-eyed Hathaway did much to redeem the main character for me, though. She was still a fashion-ignorant intellectual snob who underwent a Cinderella makeover and saw the humanity in her co-workers; no surprises here.

Streep’s platinum forelock looked so distinct that I suspect it was a wig. And the gag reel was well worth watching for the many shots of the main characters falling down in their high heels.

#18 in my 2007 movie challenge was Tapeheads. My recent viewing of Repo Man reminded me that I’d never seen this 80’s oddity, even though it starred two favorites of mine, John Cusack and Tim Robbins. I enjoyed this tale of a team of video nerds more than I did Repo Man. Both movies share a similar whacked-out humor, perhaps because both were produced by Michael Nesmith, the smart Monkee and heir to the Liquid Paper fortune. I was amused to see that Robbins’s character could very well be an early prototype of Dwight Schrute from The Office, and some of the movie’s music was done by Fishbone, explaining the provenance of the T-shirt that Robbins sports in Bull Durham.

#17 in my 2007 movie challenge was Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. I loved Mann’s 2004 Collateral, but I found Vice deeply, disappointingly silly. And I am officially over the plot device of putting a woman in danger in order to manipulate a man. It’s a crap cliche, and I’ve had enough of it.

#16 in my 2007 movie challenge was 21 Grams, the 2003 effort by Alexander Gonzalez Inarritu, nominated for Oscars this year for Babel. 21 Grams, like Amores Perros, is a criss-crossing lives story that does not unfold in linear time. Eventually, the story settles into a coherent narrative but it’s the performances by Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro that grabbed my attention. Depressing yet redemptive.

#11 in my 2007 book challenge was Breaking Up, a graphic novel written Aimee Friedman with art by Christine Norrie. I’ve admired Norrie’s work on the Hopeless Savages series, as well as her previous book Cheat. I’d not read Friedman before. This is the story of four friends at an arts high school nicknamed “Fashion High”. The friends bicker over boys, then “break up” and get back together. The narrator, Chloe, is a painter. She falls for a geek boy; her friends don’t approve. In the end, everyone is wiser and more tolerant, and Chloe and the (very cutely drawn) geek boy are together. This felt a little like a mishmash of 90210 episodes. And while that inspires affection in me, it also disappoints, because there was little that was new here. The dilemmas the girls faced felt real–desire for popularity, overly strict parents, pressuring boyfriend, inappropriate crush–but more young teen than young adult. I did very much like the sneaky, specific, and cruel revenge exacted on the pretty blond by the popularity queen, whose boyfriend the blond was trying to steal.

I suspect that Friedman’s lack of experience writing for the comics format is what made the prose feel a bit stiff to me. But what made this book stand out was Norrie’s art, and her interpretation of the fairly straightforward teen story. Her art gave the characters depth, made them sympathetic, and added both humor and pathos to Friedman’s story. Norrie did a very good job showing what Friedman was telling. The art infuses the story with a sweetness and empathy for its confused teen protagonists that ultimately elevates this above standard YA fare.

from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson.

Poor Bunty. (12)

….suddenly, an unwelcome note of reality interrupts [her] reverie, somebody’s pulling at Bunty’s dressing-gown and whining in a not very pleasant fashion. (15)

Bunty unclenches the little fists that have fastened on to her hair, and deposits Gillian back on the floor.

Get down,’ Bunty says grimly. ‘Mummy’s thinking.’ (Although what Mummy’s actually doing is wondering what it would be like if her entire family was wiped out and she could start again.) Poor Gillian!

Gillian refuses to be ignored for long–she’s not that kind of child–and hardly have we had our first sip of tea before we have to attend to Gillian’s needs. For breakfast, Bunty makes porridge….

‘I don’t like porridge,’ Patricia ventures to Bunty. This is the first time she’s tried this direct approach….

‘Pardon me?’ Bunty says, the words dropping like icicles on the linoleum of the kitchen floor (our mother’s not really a morning person.)

‘I don’t like porridge,’ Patricia says, looking more doubtful now.

As fast as a snake, Bunty hisses back, ‘Well I don’t like children, so that’s too bad for you, isnt’ it?’ She’s joking of course. Isn’t she? (16)

I’m sure the first time I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum that I pitied the children. But on my most recent reading, it became clear that those children also grew up to be parents, who repeated the sins and omissions they’d been bequeathed through generations. The mothers were less obvious, but nonetheless sympathetic, characters. Every mother had been mothered inexpertly herself. Each generation of mothers was unprepared for the physical demands of motherhood, and ill-equipped for the emotional ones.

It’s tough being a child, but it’s also tough being a mother. Does anyone feel prepared for it, or good at it? Or do we all just muddle through as best we can, with the light we have at the time (as my own mother likes to say)?