July books and movies
Books:
Ink-stained amazons and cinematic warriors : superwomen in modern
mythology,Jennifer K. Stuller. A fairly easy,
pop-culture-heavy read. Lots of references to Buffy, Wonder Woman,
Xena and some lesser known female super heros. More of an over view
than an in depth study, I didn't learn much. The Women in Refrigerators
discussion was eye opening though. Though a lot about sardonyx and her collection of Wonder Woman issues. :) Jul 5/10.
Nobel: Lust, Elfriede Jelinek (translated
by Michael Hulse). Oh, man, I hated this book. :/ Not much
happens beyond forced sex between a man and his wife, she wanders off
drunk and crushes on a college student, then her husband comes to get
her and screws her some more. A violent, dirty, demeaning book. Jul
6/10.
Squirrel machine, Hans Richeit. I forgot to note down
when I finished this one, it was one of the book club alternate choice
graphic novels, and sounded interesting enough from the synopsis to
give it a read as well. It's a one sitting book, but kind of
disturbing. Two brothers are prone to making musical instruments out
of hollowed out carcasses of animals. They find a huge, packed,
mysterious house/lab under their house, possibly installed by their
dead father. Rivalry over a woman, inherent craziness, and some
disturbing creations left me almost wishing I hadn't read it. The art
is very detailed and interesting though, the scenes in the underground
lab had me enthralled with finding all the stuff that was piled up in
there. Jul/10
Black hole, Charles Burns. The actual book club
selection, I'd voted away from it because it sounded disgusting, but
it wasn't even as bad as Lust, or maybe my brain's been
permanently broken. :) Teens are drinking, smoking dope, having sex,
and passing the bug to each other. It causes mutations, extra mouths,
fleshy protuberances, tails, and those who start showing are
ostracised. A lot end up in a loose camp in the woods, one girl is
taken in by a house of dope dealers. A few guys are obsessed with the
same girl and rivalries lead to betrayals. It felt like a slightly
shifted coming of age story, with cliques and traditional high school
heart aches magnified by the disease issues. Jul 6/10
Blankets : an illustrated novel Craig Thompson. Another
not-picked book club graphic novel, but my favourite of the set of
three I did read. A pair of teenagers meet at a religious camp and
their relationship is built up slowly over letters, phone calls and a
visit. It's very introspective and sweet, though a bit sad. Jul
6/10
Catching out : the secret world of day laborers, Dick J.
Reavis. This was sitting on a top shelf in the new books
section of the library and caught my eye as I was browsing. I've read
a few articles about people working on the edge, and the first chapter
of this drew me in. It's not a reporter's view of a hard scrabble
life, but the author's experiences of supplementing his income by
showing up at a hiring hall in hopes of being sent out on jobs, mostly
by the day. Some are cushy, like sorting papers, and some are back
breaking, like working on roads or on demolition crews. He's at
retirement age and has a bad knee, but he tries his best, and bonds
with his fellow workers. He always seems willing to talk to people,
especially the Spanish speakers, and hears many life stories, some
true, some probably not. It's not a get rich quick life, they'll often
get just above minimum wage, and have to buy their own lunch, and pay
for transportation to the jobs. They might clear $20 for a day's work.
Some people use it to pay for emergency needs, and others are there
day in and day out. On my route to work, there's a strip mall where
there's always a group of workers hanging out, but traffic hasn't been
light enough there for me to spot the temp office. Jul
8/10
Peter and Max: a Fables novel, Bill Willingham, with
illustrations by Steve Leialoha. I've read the first collected
issues of Fables and after reading a good review of this novel,
decided to give it a shot. It jumps around in time, following Peter
and Max as young adults in their fairy tale setting, where they're
Peter Piper and the Pied Piper of Hamlin, into the present day where
their centuries of hate for each other take center stage. The present
day story line is pretty bare, almost unnecessary, I enjoyed the
warping of Max into a villain much more. It did feel a bit rushed,
though, there could have been a bit more internal monologue about how
Max felt upstaged by his younger brother, cheated out of his
inheritance, and then a gradual jump to Evil rather than the abrupt
one that it felt like we were shown. Jul 11/10
Tales of the Otherworld, Kelley Armstrong. Ran across
this on the newly culled new books shelf at the library, a collection
of short stories told from different points of view than her Women of
the Otherworld novels. Enjoyable. It was neat to see Elena's
conversion from Clay's side. Jul 14/10
Nobel: The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek.
Okay, glad I persevered after hating Lust, this one was much
milder. The titular protagonist visits a peep show, and has sexual
thoughts about her music student, but it's much less vile and violent
(though there is a rape) than Lust. She's very much controlled
by her mother, though, and again not that much actually happens, her
inner life is splashed over the page. Still the same themes of
powerlessness and obsession though. Not a happy fun read, I'm done
with this author for now, but at least I don't have to dismiss her out
of hand. I'm not really interested in seeing the movie that was made
from this book. Thur Jul 22/10
Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris. Since I finished
watching season 2 of True Blood, I decided to go back and re-read the
first two books in the series. Sam feels like a much more important
character in the books, and the first season definitely padded out
the serial killer story more. Jul 24/10
Living Dead in Dallas, Charlaine Harris. Wow, the
maenad story line was just a blip in the novel, it was such a major
part of season 2 of True Blood that I was wondering why I'd forgotten
about it. The tv series also greatly expanded Tara, Eggs, and
Lafayette's roles. Jul 25/10
The Ship Who Searched, Ann McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey.
Decided to re-read this after watching Agora since the
main character in the book is also called Hypatia. This is my
favourite of all the Brain-Brawn books, McCaffrey writes them all with
co-authors but Lackey was already a favourite of mine before I found
this book. It made me cry, again, Hypatia's story is very sad at the
beginning. She's paralyzed by an alien virus when she's a 7 year old
living with her parents at an archaeological dig on a barren world.
Usually severely disabled people are put into space ships or stations
at birth or soon after, but an exception was made for her. She bonds
with her Brawn as they do courier service for the Institute, tracking
down artefact thieves and plague sources. This read through, I caught
the fact that the name of the investment company which Hypatia uses is
made up of the last names of other authors (including another
co-author in this series, as well as Tanya Huff). It's neat to see how
the language changes from when Hypatia is a child to when she's
installed in her ship. Jul 27/10
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls. An alternate
selection for the book club, I picked this up as a speed read at the
library and tore through it. I'd read her fictionalised version of her
grandmother's life and was interested in seeing how her childhood had
gone. Badly, it turns out. Her mother was a flighty artist and her dad
an alcoholic who couldn't hold down a job. They moved so often that
they couldn't remember every town they'd lived in, often leaving in
the middle of the night to escape officials. The kids were always
dressed in rags, and usually hungry and dirty to boot, but the mother
was convinced it was always a grand adventure. Every time someone
tried to sexually abuse the kids, it was brushed off as "making you
stronger". They were in fights almost every day at school as they were
easy targets for bullies. The tone in which the story is told is
almost heart breaking, you can tell that Jeanette mostly thought this
was normal, or at least survivable. It reminded me a teeny tiny bit
about growing up, having fun shopping in thrift stores and playing
in the woods. One phrase, a quote from her mother after she's been
living homeless in NYC for a while, has been popping into my head
as I clean myself up after bike rides: "I wash as far down as
possible, and as far up as possible, but I don't wash possible." :)
Jul 28/10
Look to Windward, Ian M. Banks. heatray lent
me this before the trip to Montreal, and I finished it on the way to
BC. A composer from the world Chel is on the Culture Orbital, he's the
only one of his species (two legs, two arms, one midlimb, tail,
furred) there until a major comes to bring him home. He doesn't want
to go, and he's willing to travel around the orbital, doing all sorts
of dangerous things to pass the time, until the major leaves.
Unfortunately, Ziller is supposed to conduct his latest long work just
before the light of a nova reaches the Orbital. A massive tri-limbed
being, as well as a construct and the Hub Mind itself, are all trying
to convince Ziller to meet with Quinlan, but he's adamant that the
major is trying to kill or kidnap him. The Culture had interfered with
the development of Chel and caused a deadly war, and it turns out that
the major has a secondary task, locked in his brain until certain
events trigger his memories. We find out along with him as more
becomes clear over the course of the days leading up to the concert.
This was a good stand alone Culture book, I've been trying to get at
the whole series and was stalled at around book 3 or 4. My only
quibble is that Ziller's avoidance reads like an indulgence of the
author to show off the features of the Orbital. The ways and means in
which people can be hurt are a major theme through the book. Jul
30/10
Nobel: The Caretaker and The Dumb waiter : two plays,
Harold Pinter. A very quick read, the first was a three act
play, and the second was a one act play. The Caretaker is a bit
confusing, two brothers take in a homeless man to be the caretaker of
a falling down house. It's set in a single room (as is the second
one), and mixed messages are being sent all around. The homeless man
is a pathological liar, and I think the second brother has only a
vague acquaintance with the truth. The Dumb Waiter uses the device in
the title to send down messages to a room where two gunmen await their
orders. But the orders coming down are for food rather than a deadly
mission. I was impressed with how well the two men were differentiated
just through dialog. Jul 30/10
Hamlet's dresser : a memoir, Bob Smith. This was the
book club selection, and I didn't like it as much as Glass
Castle, probably due to old white guy syndrome. He mixes together
memories of growing up with a severely developmentally disabled sister
(at one point in the narrative she spends three years holding onto the
refrigerator in their kitchen), discovering Shakespeare and getting
involved with plays, and the present day where he's leading senior
citizens through readings. Looking at his bio, there's a whole chunk
missing where he moves from being a dresser and assistant to actually
directing, and the present interactions with seniors feels short
changed. The story feels chopped up until the last few chapters where
he focuses on the past more and then the present for a bit. He was a
messed up kid, his mother was probably obsessive compulsive and
depressive, and his father was remote. His connection to the Bard just
didn't come through as strongly as I was hoping, despite frequent
quotes from the plays to illustrate how Shakespeare was applicable to
Smith's plight. Aug 1/10
Movies:
Triangle. Johnnie To is fast replacing John Woo as my
favourite Hong Kong director. This movie, as someone said while we
were watching it, is an exquisite corpse of a film: three parts all
directed by different people (same as The Signal). Tsui Hark
and Ringo Lam did the other two sections, and it flowed together
fairly well. It felt like the set up stage threw out a lot of stuff
(a jewelry heist, another heist, a cop sleeping with a getaway
driver's wife, the wife being a bit crazy, a taxi driver with a mom
who cooks at a noodle shop) and most of it was picked up and run
with but some elements were left by the wayside. There were some
hilarious parts, some confusing parts, some good stand offs and chase
scenes, and a random bad ass bike cop. :) The lurking alligator
was criminally under-used. Jul 8/10
Postmen in the Mountains. My catch up movie, I can't
recall where I'd heard about this one, but it's been on my to-watch
list for a while and I'm glad that I got to it. A middle aged man in
China is handing over his postal route in the remote mountains to his
son - his knees can't take it any more and he's being forced to
retire. It's all done on foot, carrying the mail in a sack on his
back, at one point clambering up a vertical face using a rope. The
characters that they meet on the trip are interesting, and the son
learns a lot about his father as he sees the way the villagers and the
old post man interact. He'd never been close to his father because the
postal route would keep the father away for weeks at a time (not sure
if this was a short route, they were supposed to be away 3 or 4 days).
The mother is left at home to worry, as usual. :) Gorgeous
cinematography, but the location was a star in it's own right. Jul
12/10
Mutants. A Fantasia catch up film, basically the
French 28 Days Later. I liked the misdirection of the start,
we're following someone running thorugh the woods trying to escape
being killed by zombies, and then the main characters run her over in
an ambulance. :) The protagonist-woman had been bit before and is
apparently immune, but the guy is degenerating fast as the disease
takes hold. They hole up in an abandoned hospital, but some bandits
find them before they can get air lifted out to a nearby army base.
Tense, not a lot of jump scares, and some musing on what it means to
be human, but very derivative. Jul 14/10
Woo! Time to go back to the actual Fantasia festival: 8 movies (and one play) seen over July 16-18/10.
Ip Man 2. I didn't like it as much as Ip Man, but it
was still good, it just followed a similar story arc. Ip Man and his
family have moved to a new city to escape the Japanese invasion of
their home but now they have to deal with the British, I think in Hong
Kong. He tries to open a martial arts school, but his first student is
hot headed and constantly getting into trouble, usually requiring Ip
Man to borrow money to bail him out. Then there's the martial arts
masters who require that Ip Man prove his skills before he can
teach, and of course try to extort dues. Then there's the western
boxing versus Chinese martial arts competition. Boy, the British
sure come off as thugs in this movie, there was at least some
commiseration between the Chinese and Japanese fighters in the last
one. Jul 21/10
Agora. I went to see this on the strength of Rachel
Weisz playing Hypatia, the famous female librarian at Alexandria. It
wasn't flawless, but she was luminous and smart and stubborn and loyal
and I'm glad I went to see it. The bits where she's being persecuted
by the Christians are hard to deal with. Her father was awesome
though, supporting her in her studies. And I *loved* how she would go
all intense about her studies of astronomy. They used too many zoom in
shots from outer space to Google Earth, trying to emphasise her
obsession with astronomy, but it would just break the flow. The slave
Davos was wonderful as well, though his conversion to Christianity was
a bit abrupt. Mob mentality is as scary as ever. The evolving
relationship between Hypatia and Orestes was neat to see as well,
though he was, in the end, too weak. Jul 26/10
Iron Man 2. Watched this while flying over Canada, an
hour thirty on the way to my brother's wedding, and the last 30
minutes on the way home. It wasn't as awesome as the first one, it
felt a lot more plot heavy and like the fight sequences were
truncated. Black Canary Widow was criminally under-used, but I was (heh)
happy to see Happy doing what he does best, slugging people. :) The
effects were awesome, I was a bit sad to be watching it on a screen
the size of a small piece of paper, but oh well. Aug 1/10