fff

Capital Energy from Paul Maupoux on Vimeo.

Book 15 in Cannonball Read 2

Read for the Pajiba Book Club, but not finished in time.

Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the most famous novels in Western literature - so famous that the conversation surrounding the work can obscure the actual book. The term ‘Lolita’ is broadly used in society to denote some sort of under 18 vixen, a sexually aware seductress who looks like a younger version of a grown woman. Lolita the character is quite different - pre-pubescent, unaware, sexually curious but not sexually precocious. The fact that a 12-year-old character that hasn’t entered puberty is routinely cast in movies as a honry 17-year-old is more problematic than anything Nabokov writes.

Some background: Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a Frenchman living on the East coast of the U.S. Humbert narrates, and it is clear that he has a sexual obsession with young girls; specifically, girls who have not yet hit puberty. He is repulsed by grown women, and the only adults he finds attractive are those who remind him of the ‘nymphets’ he loves. Humbert is taken on as a lodger by a widowed woman with a 12-year-old daughter.

Lolita is not a love story. It’s a story of obsession and self-deception. Humbert is an unreliable narrator, but also painfully honest. He makes it clear that his attraction to Lo is, first of all, part of a pattern of pedophilic attraction to pre-teen girls, and also, that it will not last once she develops an adult body. I don’t know that many people could read Lolita and walk away thinking that the book either condones his behavior, or does not consider much of what is done to Lolita to be coercive and damaging. However, Nabokov does not provide easy answers, and almost traps the reader into sympathizing with Humbert.

The famous Vanity Fair review stating that Lolita is “the only convincing love story of our century” seems like a complete misread of the book, and a misunderstanding of the very concept of love as something shared, something that both parties can learn from and work towards. The divide between a loving relationship and the relationship Nabokov details is the whole point of the book. In the end, Lolita doesn’t tell us much of anything about the character of Lolita; she’s a cipher. It doesn’t matter to Humbert what goes on in her head, and it doesn’t matter much to Nabokov, either; he’s exploring Humbert’s obsession and jealousy, not an equal relationship.

Reading Lolita  with an open mind is a fascinating experience, not just because of the book itself, but because of the cultural significance it has taken on, sometimes in opposition to what is actually contained in its pages.

Book 14 in Cannonball Read 2 

I consider Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon to be the first novel I read that felt like it had changed my heart, and my life, for good. After reading Song of Solomon, mostly in one night for an English class, I devoured all the other novels she had published except for Tar Baby, which I never managed to finish. Morrison always captured my imagination, and made me feel like her books were about epic themes, about the meaning of life itself.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying, flash forward eight years, and I found myself reading Love and feeling like it was homework, not something that touched my soul. In fact, I can see why some people dislike Morrison, if they don’t get the same feeling from her other books, as Love contains many of the same themes, the same weirdness, and the same tone that usually veers towards magical realism for me, but here plays as just unconvincing and not realistic.

I could tell you more, but meh. Not a great book, and that’s coming from a Morrison fan, so if you’re not a fan, stay away. If you’ve never read Morrison, start with Song of Solomon, Beloved, or even Paradise.

Book 13 in Cannonball Read 2

Catching Fire is a sequel to Collins’ wonderful Young Adult book, The Hunger Games.  Catching Firedeals with a brewing rebellion that Katniss may have inadvertently helped to instigate. While it is not quite as compelling as The Hunger Games, and takes a bit of time to really take off, it is nevertheless worth reading to revisit the characters and see what Collins does in expanding the themes in a story about an all-powerful government that constantly reminds its citizens of their servitude and powerlessness, and requires them to convincingly feign enthusiasm at the government’s oppression.

Collins takes a long time catching the reader up on what has been happening to Katniss and Peeta, the boy she pretended to love in order to win the hunger games, a grisly fight to the death engineered by the government.  Continuing with the idea that the government demands not just obedience, but happiness at being obedient, Katniss is told by the president that during their upcoming victory tour, she must convince not just the public, but he himself, that she is in love with Peeta, though he knows this is not true (read the book for the convoluted reasons that this is necessary to quell rebellion). Of course, knowing that she must act the part or suffer the consequences only makes her more desperate and highlights the ways in which she falls short.

Collins also highlights the difference between Katniss’ poor coal-mining district and the Capitol, where they watch the games for entertainment, not because they are forced. Those who live in the Capitol are portrayed as frivolous and unaware: in one scene, Katniss must spend time comforting her hair and makeup team, although she is the one facing possible death; in another scene, Capitol partygoers gorge themselves on food, then drink a liquid that makes them vomit so they can continue to eat, unaware that Katniss and Peeta regularly see starving children back home.  It is a fairly nuanced portrayal of privilege - these characters are blissfully unaware of the hardships of others, and they act in insensitive ways not out of malice, but out of their own ignorance; yet Collins does not let them off the hook, and makes it clear that their ignorance is hurtful to others regardless of the intent.

Catching Fire really gets going in the last third or so, during the following year’s hunger games. Like the first book, there are twists, uncertain and shifting alliances, and rules that constantly change. Because of the groundwork laid in the first part of the book, the end of the book is particularly powerful. There is a third book in the works, and I definitely plan on reading it, as the world is endlessly intriguing in and of itself, not to mention the cliffhanger plot.

Book 12 in Cannonball Read 2 

Bright Lights, Big City is a novel that some folks would deem great, but I just found annoying. It’s the story of a young man in New York City who drinks and does cocaine, and doesn’t like his job.

At this point, I thought, ‘who cares?’ but I kept reading because it was for a book club, and, to be frank, it was 170 pages and an easy read.  The book is somewhat interesting because it is written in the second person (i.e. ‘you’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘my’ or ‘him’ and ‘his’), but even this device fades into the background and does not provide any great new insight.

It turns out that the main character is dealing with the failure of his marriage to a model who left early on because she was not getting what she wanted. At many points in the novel, while he was lamenting his wife leaving and mentally berating her for being so shallow and callous, I could not think anything but ‘no shit, you’re a sad sack selfish piece of shit, no wonder she wanted to leave you.’

In the end, Bright Lights, Big City was an even bigger crock than I had assumed. SPOILERS AHEAD - it turns out that he’s actually all fucked up because his mother died before his wife left him, and he has not dealt with his grief yet. This revelation comes across as a cheap ploy, and I was not impressed. You bury something like that 150 pages into a 170 page book, and it comes across as the main character being willfully obtuse.

Mostly, I just can’t feel empathy for some dude who finds his job meaningless, and wants to stay out drinking and doing drugs all night. Haven’t we all been there - at least the job-hating part? Maybe I’m just having an epic failure of sympathy, but I find little to recommend here, and little originality.

This past weekend’s viewings took in a blockbuster that was supposedly about the visuals, with a ludicrous storyline and horrific acting and characters, that lasted too long at 2 hrs 27 minutes; and a movie from 19 years ago from a writer-director full of ideas, rich characters, and dialogue-heavy scenes, with some botched visuals. Guess which one I liked better? Hint: duh.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has a silly plot that is simultaneously mind-numbingly stupid and difficult to follow. Every scene seems silly and ridiculous, the action scenes look like complete shit despite the fact that it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and the best acting in the movie comes from Josh Duhamel.  I don’t hate action movies, not at all, but I hate soulless blockbusters that make me ponder the question “which is worse - if the makers of this movie actually thought this was good, or if they knew that it would make money despite its innate shittiness?” This movie is definitely in competition for the worst movie ever made.

Grade: F

Jungle Fever is Spike Lee’s look at an interracial relationship. It is about an affair between married architect Flipper (Wesley Snipes), and his temp assistant from an Italian-American neighborhood, Angie (Annabella Sciorra). The movie also deals with the lives of their families, including Angie’s father and brothers who expect her to wait on them hand and foot; her erstwhile suitor, played by John Turturro; Flipper’s wife and child, as well as his crack addict brother (a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson) and his parents, a loving Ruby Dee and the crazy ‘reverend doctor’ Ossie Davis.

Lee’s usual strengths are on hand here. The performances are stellar - career bests from Snipes and Sciorra, and he has a strong eye for undiscovered talent, with not only Jackson but Halle Berry on hand.  The characters are well-drawn, and even when the dialogue becomes hyperbolic, it still seems consistent with the characterizations.

Lee’s weird point - for me at least - is the structuring of his ideas about race; namely, that if there is a racial issue at play, it is the only issue. Flipper cheats on his wife, which is not a big deal according to his best friend, until he reveals that it was with a white woman. His wife throws him out, apparently because he had sex with a white woman. When Flipper eventually breaks up with Angie, he tells her that they both just had jungle fever. Lee seems to be promoting this single-minded mentality. I think it’s a bit more complex - if it’s acceptable for men to cheat on their wives in Flipper’s world, could some of his wife’s anger be simply expressing her feelings about cheating in general, through a socially acceptable outlet of anger about race? If Angie lives in a working-class neighborhood and doesn’t know anybody who thinks beyond those limits, could some of her attraction to Flipper be about his upper-class status? Could Flipper be interested in cheating on his wife with a younger woman who is impressed with him, and also interested in what it would be like to be with a white woman? Lee doesn’t deal with these complexities, and that is both a strength and a weakness. He makes his points clearly, but does not leave room for complicated human emotions.

Lee’s weak point is visuals. He experiments with certain aspects of visuals, but they just don’t work. Lee stages numerous conversations where the participants are walking down the street with weird tracking shots, where it looks like the actors are floating rather than walking. It looks like shit, although not as shitty as any single scene in Transformers 2.

Despite all these flaws, Jungle Fever is, like almost all Spike Lee movies, well worth seeing due to the dialogue and characters. Jackson’s character in particular is great, showing how different members of his family deal with a fundamentally dishonest, scamming, drug-addicted brother or son. The character is only one of many that are interesting; there almost doesn’t have to be a plot to make a movie about these characters watchable. I criticize the heavy-handedness of the writing and directing, but Lee’s heavy hand is what makes his movies so interesting, and this is no exception.

Grade: B

Book 11 in Cannonball Read 2

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: a Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines is pretty much what the title promises - an overview of various themes, symbols, and literary devices that come up repeatedly throughout literature, put forth in an eminently readable format. Foster explores the various possible meanings of weather, irony, christ figures, and 20+ other recurring literary motifs, using various books to illuminate his points. It is an entertaining read, and certainly a good one to pick up if you can’t seem to find interesting books - both for the titles he recommends, and to rekindle an interest in the complexities of literature.

Foster spends 10 or so pages exploring each topic, enough to give the reader a general idea without confusing the reader who is not familiar with the literary works he uses as examples. He also doesn’t hide his tastes, and makes it clear that the novels he picks are the ones he loves.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor gets a bit frustrating if read all at once, as towards the end each chapter seems to be ‘X could represent Y…or it could be something else entirely! Sometimes it something else. Figure it out yourself.’ However, Foster gives you a fair amount of tools to do that analysis and figure it out yourself.

Book 10 in Cannonball Read 2

A Passage to India is a book that is not that great, despite my expectations. I loved Forster’s Howard’s End, and while the writing style remains the same,  A Passage to India failed to interest me; Forster uses the book to tell a parable about race and colonialism, but the story is clunky and a good portion of the characters are one dimensional.

A Passage to India ftakes place in India, and follows the story of Adela Quested & Mrs. Moore, British visitors to India, who become acquianted with Dr. Aziz, a local man.  The Brits all represent different attitudes towards India and Indians: most of the characters take the view that it is not proper to socialize with Indians beyond what is courteous and professional, and that it will lead to no good for either side. Adela and Mrs. Moore both represent a more liberal viewpoint, but in different ways: Adela challenges the other British visitors a bit, and cannot see why she shouldn’t be close friends with an Indian, whereas Mrs. Moore quietly goes about her business and treats the Indians as human beings. To think about it in modern terms, Adela would be a yuppie who makes a very big deal about how she’s not racist and ‘doesn’t see color’; Mrs. Moore would be someone who just quietly goes along treating people as individuals without ever making a big deal about her one black friend. For their part, the Indians also discuss whether or not it is possible to be friends with an English person.

Aziz takes the ladies to visit the nearby Marabar caves, loses track of Adela, and then something happens - either Adela has a hallucination, or a young man hired as a guide assaults her - and she ends up accusing the doctor of assaulting her in a cave. The British all assume he is guilty, and the Indians are outraged at his treatment.

The book, although perhaps progressive when it was written, is limited in its view of Indians and India. The Indian characters are largely defined in terms of their interactions with, and attitudes towards, the British imperialists.  There are only a handful of scenes where Indian characters take amongst themselves, and the book would not meet an Indian version of the Bechdel Test.  Most of the characters don’t go beyond the rudimentary “British = racist & Indian = noble and good” framework that Forster uses to lecture his readers. India itself is depicted as a mystical, magical place, mythologized into ‘the orient’ rather than a real place.

I could be making it sound a lot worse than it is; the truth is that, while easy to pick apart  the racial, cultural, and gender stereotypes portrayed, the book is eminently readable and fairly interesting, at least once the reader passes the slower beginning. Some of the characters, particularly Mrs. Moore, are well-written and have wonderfully fleshed out moments and interactions. The book is only disappointing as compared to the almost canonical reputation it holds.

Ah, my secret shame: awards-gazing. I follow the Oscar blogs fanatically, and I look forward to the announcement of the nominees and the awards themselves perhaps a bit too much. Inevitably, I am disappointed. This year is a bit less disappointing than usual - those 10 Best Picture nominees yielded an interesting group, and I’m solidly behind two of the locks for acting awards (Mo’Nique and Christoph Waltz). There were a few duds in the nominees, and there could be in the awards themselves - but I’ll talk about that only if it happens.

Best Picture: Avatar; The Blind Side; District 9; An Education; The Hurt Locker; Inglourious Basterds; Precious; A Serious Man; Up; Up in the Air

I have seen all 10, and I like 8 or 9, love 3 to 6 of them (the three I definitely love are A Serious Man, Inglourious Basterds, and The Hurt Locker. I might love Up, Precious, and District 9, but would probably have to see them again to be sure).

The upside to this batch is that we got an interesting mix, and that these are all movies that at least some people genuinely loved - there’s no coasters, although the quality of some nominees is debatable.

Prediction: The Hurt Locker

Spoiler: Avatar

My favorite: Don’t make me choose between Basterds and A Serious Man. OK, it’s Basterds for now.

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the conversation Ben and I had about the Live Action shorts nominated for Oscars, including our predictions for which one will be taking home the prize on Sunday night. Check out Ben’s place for some video clips of the animated nominees, too.

Ben: OK, so I finally made it to the live action shorts as well.  On the whole, I was fairly disappointed.  I saw them last year and, as a group, they were much stronger.  That said, I did enjoy seeing some different interpretations with what can be done with 20 minutes of screen time.

So, they were pretty dark and bleak.  Every single one has some sort of violence or death (at least imagined death, in the case of the true comedy of the bunch.  My favorite was definitely Miracle Fish, about an 8-year-old schoolboy is a bit of an outcast at school. He gets upset, sneaks into the nurse’s office to take a nap, and wakes up to find an empty building.  This was definitely the only one of the films where I couldn’t predict where it was going.  While it probably had the lowest production values of any of the films (it seemed a bit blurry to me), it had the most compelling story.

After that, my favorite was “Instead of Abracadabra,” a sort of Swedish Napoleon Dynamite about a 25-year-old amateur magician who still lives with his parents.  This was shown last, and you could tell the audience ate up the chance for some laughter.

“Kavi” and “The Door” were well-made, but not surprising or all that interesting.  Kavi actually seemed a touch too reminiscient of Slumdog Millionaire.  I think it even had a song by the composer from Slumdog.  The Door, about the Chernobyl disaster and its affect on one family, was beautifully made but, again, a little familiar.

“The New Tenants” started out strong, with some funny repartee between the gay couple who just moved into an apartment.  It gets a little too “wacky” for me, though, and I hated the ending.

Read the rest of this entry »