Oh dear, with the lateness. It's time to post my November wrapups, and I still have this October one left.
OK, first off we watched more Marx Brothers: A Day at the Races, Go West, The Big Store, Room Service and At the Circus. I've got too much to say about the Marx Brothers to possibly cover it here; I'll have to do a whole other post just on them. (Watch for it!). In the meantime, I dug up this clip on YouTube of Harpo's one "speaking" role... in a silent film. It's the comments here that amuse me. I'm not the only one who thinks Harpo is a little hottie.
I saw two films I can put in the category of irreverance: Bill Maher's Religulous and Year One. Religulous was entertaining. Bill Maher talks to a wide range of people from different religious backgrounds. I was afraid I would find this too mocking, but Bill pretty much stepped back and let them make fools of themselves. Year One was funny in a more family friendly way; the boys sure enjoyed it. I was impressed with the look of the film; the costumes and sets were fantastic. I'm hoping for a Year Two, but only if it's as funny.
I watched a slew of Bollywood films, namely Sangdil Sanam, Jaagruti, Bandhan, Baaghi, Sanam Bewafa and Paheli. Some I enjoyed more than others, but they all sort of blend in my head now.
Inkheart I enjoyed, particularly Andy Serkis. I have this book; I'm totally going to read it someday.
We saw Where the Wild Things Are in the theater. It was well worth it. Most films for children that deal with empathy oversimplify it horribly. I particularly appreciated how the wild things are not 1:1 correspondences with the main character's mother, sister, etc. They share some characteristics with them (and with him), and some of the situations are similar, but nothing is a direct metaphor. The boy learns from interacting with all these different personalities and watching them interact with each other. Getting along with others is a messy business, and often hard work. Outside of that, the special effects are wonderful. There is no "uncanny valley" between the boy and the monsters; they both look real from every angle.
TV on DVD: I caught up with How I Met Your Mother season 4 and Two and a Half Men season 6. How I Met Your Mother is still going strong, I think, but Two and a Half Men is getting repetitious. But the jokes are still funny; I'll probably be back again for season 7.
Lastly is the miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth. With the team down to just Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto I was expecting lots of naked hide and seek highjinks. So the darker tone caught me off guard, but this was an excellent finish to a show I've enjoyed. The characters had to make some hideously hard choices that had consequences. I'm sorry this is the end of Torchwood, but at least it ended with a bang.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Books in October
My suspicion that I'm really a Steven Barnes fan deepens. This month I read The California VooDoo Game, The Descent of Anansi, Achille's Choice and Saturn's Race, all collaborations between Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. They mesh cool ideas from science combined with compelling, believable characters. Together they make some of my favorite books since I started this Niven kick. I've already added Steven Barnes' name to my list of writers to check out next; I suspect he writes some good women characters.
I also read A World Out of Time by Larry Niven alone. I like a lot of the ideas in here (the cat tails are particularly cool), but the idea where without sex the world would devolve into a nation of girls and a nation of boys who never have contact with each other gave me the terrors. The very idea, living my whole life only with other girls for companionship, and me with nonfunctioning reproductive organs, so why should it matter anyway... Outside of my personal prejudices; I find it a bit unbelievable. My own childhood experience was of mixed genders that only really formed distinct gender-specific groups around the onset of puberty (and I never did the distinct group thing myself). But then I've been told I'm a bit odd.
And the first novel I bought and read entirely on my Kindle (until this point I've been using it to convert and read my critique group's work on the treadmill): Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter. I read this on the way to and from Rapid City, South Dakota. By a weird coincidence, on my last anniversary that involved a trip out of town (to Duluth two years ago) I was reading Ally's last book, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. These are great books; a terrific premise well-executed. Hopefully book four will be out by next October.
I read three nonfiction books in October as well: a memoir, a pop science, and a foreign language grammar book. Cause that's just how I roll. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali was thoroughly engrossing, a tale of her childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya and her escape from an arranged marriage into Holland, leading up to her election to parliament there, the murder of her partner in filmmaking Theo Van Gogh by an Muslim extremist, and her removal from parliament on petty bureaucratic grounds and relocation to the US. I hope we've been treating her well; she's a sharp one with plenty to say. I highly recommend this book, and hope to hear more from her.
Having seen him speak a bit in Bill Maher's Religulous, I picked up Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg MD. Dr. Newberg performed functional MRIs of Buddhists monks, Catholic nuns, Pentecostals and even an aetheist while they prayed, meditated, or spoke in tongues. The results are intriguing, but it left me wanting more data. I'd like to see him keep on with more "normal" people. There is something to be learned from the people at the extremes, certainly, but I'm more interested in the rest of us normal folks. What's going on in our brains?
The last book for Ocober was Introduction to Hindi Grammar by Usha R. Jain. This is another textbook with no answer key (so no true friend to the self-learner) but a good resource. The grammar is broken down in an easy to understand manner, I just wish I had some way of checking if I'm on track, or if I only think I'm on track.
I also read A World Out of Time by Larry Niven alone. I like a lot of the ideas in here (the cat tails are particularly cool), but the idea where without sex the world would devolve into a nation of girls and a nation of boys who never have contact with each other gave me the terrors. The very idea, living my whole life only with other girls for companionship, and me with nonfunctioning reproductive organs, so why should it matter anyway... Outside of my personal prejudices; I find it a bit unbelievable. My own childhood experience was of mixed genders that only really formed distinct gender-specific groups around the onset of puberty (and I never did the distinct group thing myself). But then I've been told I'm a bit odd.
And the first novel I bought and read entirely on my Kindle (until this point I've been using it to convert and read my critique group's work on the treadmill): Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter. I read this on the way to and from Rapid City, South Dakota. By a weird coincidence, on my last anniversary that involved a trip out of town (to Duluth two years ago) I was reading Ally's last book, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. These are great books; a terrific premise well-executed. Hopefully book four will be out by next October. I read three nonfiction books in October as well: a memoir, a pop science, and a foreign language grammar book. Cause that's just how I roll. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali was thoroughly engrossing, a tale of her childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya and her escape from an arranged marriage into Holland, leading up to her election to parliament there, the murder of her partner in filmmaking Theo Van Gogh by an Muslim extremist, and her removal from parliament on petty bureaucratic grounds and relocation to the US. I hope we've been treating her well; she's a sharp one with plenty to say. I highly recommend this book, and hope to hear more from her.
Having seen him speak a bit in Bill Maher's Religulous, I picked up Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg MD. Dr. Newberg performed functional MRIs of Buddhists monks, Catholic nuns, Pentecostals and even an aetheist while they prayed, meditated, or spoke in tongues. The results are intriguing, but it left me wanting more data. I'd like to see him keep on with more "normal" people. There is something to be learned from the people at the extremes, certainly, but I'm more interested in the rest of us normal folks. What's going on in our brains?
The last book for Ocober was Introduction to Hindi Grammar by Usha R. Jain. This is another textbook with no answer key (so no true friend to the self-learner) but a good resource. The grammar is broken down in an easy to understand manner, I just wish I had some way of checking if I'm on track, or if I only think I'm on track.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Movies in September
Where does the month go? You'd think with a week off I would have had time to catch up, but no. More swamped than ever. Well, let's wrap this up before October ends.
Our family favorite: the Marx Brothers. We watched four of these in September. Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts had all four Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca just three. If only Zeppo had had a schtick. A Night at the Opera is justly revered. I think Oliver in particular liked the bit where Groucho moved through the audience during the performance, heckling the opera. But then he would.
Other things we watched all together: Wolverine, which was more fun than I was expecting (but then my expectations were low).
Gundam Wing I found horrible to slog through. The episodes were an endless series of infodumps and the plot was convoluted, and not in a good way. There was no real story, but the look of the show was top notch. The boys of course like the Gundams but I thought even the character design was well done. Alas for the writing. I wonder if the dialogue sounds more natural in Japanese? In the end I took to heckling this show myself, which the boys found amusing, and Quin took to taking long Gundam naps.
Wallace and Grommit: Loaf or Death was clever and charming, natch. I can always rely on Wallace and Grommit to give me a warm glow.
Watched with Quin: Heroes Season 3. The show is starting to irk me. There are two main problems here. Half the time the characters are acting in ways that make no sense for who they are, like Matt Parkman suddenly deciding he's going to kill innocent people to get back at the guy who let his girlfriend die. I never quite bought that he felt as strongly for the speedy girl as we were meant to believe he did, and the little bit of faith I was giving that in the name of playing along was destroyed when he promptly forget her and went back to his wife. Quite a bit like Peter totally forgetting the girlfriend he left behind in some alternate future. Sure he can't get back to her now, but he doesn't ever even seem to think about her. The other problem is pretty much the opposite, the endless circularity of what I'm sure the writers have decided are the characters' primary motivations. Claire is the worst offender here: every conversation she has with anybody sounds just like the last ten conversations she had with them; why is she still tearing up as if these emotions were fresh? Ugh. If the actors weren't so likeable I wouldn't bother anymore.
We also watched to foreign films: Run Lola Run in German and Sin Nombre in Spanish. I'm late to the Run Lola Run party, but it is a seriously cool flick. Sin Nombre is about how much life sucks when you're poor in the slums of Central America, to the point where risking your life to ride on the top of a train in the hopes of reaching the US is worth it. Well done, but very depressing.
And on my own: Bollywood. I watched another sort of Heroes, this time a movie about the families of soldiers in the Indian army who had died in Kashmir. There were some nice bits (particularly Salman Khan in a beard and Panjab accent), but it took too long to get started and I don't think ever really made its point.
A better movie about Kashmir is Mission Kashmir. This was one of the first movies from Hrithik Roshan and he is amazing in it as an adult survivor of a horribly traumatic childhood. He is so convincingly traumatized, though, that the happy ending felt false to me. I was expecting his character to die, which would have been a horrible downer but, I think, more honest. Jackie Shroff is also very good here, wonderfully creepy (I thought his character was always hunched the way he was because it made his gaze so intense, but there's a real piece of back story there). A good film despite the ending.
I had more mixed feelings about Aamir Khan's Ghajini. It is similar to, and was certainly inspired by, Memento, but unlike many Bollywood takeoffs of American films the stories themselves are very different. Khan's character (who is very, very buff) also can't remember more than 20 minutes at a time and takes pictures and leaves notes for himself in his quest to find his fiancee's murderer, but it's clear early on that unlike Memento he isn't to blame, and the actual story is very uniquely Mumbai, with gangsters and girls from villages enslaved in brothels (after having their kidneys stolen; this isn't a happy story). The darkness of that story is offset by the lightness of the back story, of how Khan's character met and wooed his fiancee. Personally, I liked the back story better; the actress playing the fiancee had a great energy and their romance was very believable (a film rarity in any language, I find). Alas, the present time story was too violent for me, and I had to cover my face in two places because I didn't want to risk seeing what I was afraid I was going to see (having watched Salman Khan have his skull crushed twice I no longer take any chances when villains approach with blunt instruments). And the ending was very drawn out. It felt like a video game, and as it's since been made into one I guess that's not a coincidence.
The last film was one Aamir Khan produced, starring his nephew Imran Khan, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. This was written and directed by Abbas Tyrewala, a guy who's got a writing credit in a ton of other films I've enjoyed. The characters feel like real people (even the two guys wearing Western gear and riding on horses to all the clubs of Mumbai, and that's saying something). Tyrewala also wrote the lyrics to the songs in the film, which was a nice touch. Here the music feels more a part of the story, less a pop music intrusion. Of course having AR Rahman do the music is always a nice touch. I linked before to "Pappu Can't Dance" back when Rahman won his Oscar, so here I'll put "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi", the song Imran's character sings to cheer up Aditi, who has just suffered a major loss: her cat has died (hence the kitty in the basket):
Our family favorite: the Marx Brothers. We watched four of these in September. Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts had all four Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca just three. If only Zeppo had had a schtick. A Night at the Opera is justly revered. I think Oliver in particular liked the bit where Groucho moved through the audience during the performance, heckling the opera. But then he would.
Other things we watched all together: Wolverine, which was more fun than I was expecting (but then my expectations were low).
Gundam Wing I found horrible to slog through. The episodes were an endless series of infodumps and the plot was convoluted, and not in a good way. There was no real story, but the look of the show was top notch. The boys of course like the Gundams but I thought even the character design was well done. Alas for the writing. I wonder if the dialogue sounds more natural in Japanese? In the end I took to heckling this show myself, which the boys found amusing, and Quin took to taking long Gundam naps.
Wallace and Grommit: Loaf or Death was clever and charming, natch. I can always rely on Wallace and Grommit to give me a warm glow.
Watched with Quin: Heroes Season 3. The show is starting to irk me. There are two main problems here. Half the time the characters are acting in ways that make no sense for who they are, like Matt Parkman suddenly deciding he's going to kill innocent people to get back at the guy who let his girlfriend die. I never quite bought that he felt as strongly for the speedy girl as we were meant to believe he did, and the little bit of faith I was giving that in the name of playing along was destroyed when he promptly forget her and went back to his wife. Quite a bit like Peter totally forgetting the girlfriend he left behind in some alternate future. Sure he can't get back to her now, but he doesn't ever even seem to think about her. The other problem is pretty much the opposite, the endless circularity of what I'm sure the writers have decided are the characters' primary motivations. Claire is the worst offender here: every conversation she has with anybody sounds just like the last ten conversations she had with them; why is she still tearing up as if these emotions were fresh? Ugh. If the actors weren't so likeable I wouldn't bother anymore.
We also watched to foreign films: Run Lola Run in German and Sin Nombre in Spanish. I'm late to the Run Lola Run party, but it is a seriously cool flick. Sin Nombre is about how much life sucks when you're poor in the slums of Central America, to the point where risking your life to ride on the top of a train in the hopes of reaching the US is worth it. Well done, but very depressing.
And on my own: Bollywood. I watched another sort of Heroes, this time a movie about the families of soldiers in the Indian army who had died in Kashmir. There were some nice bits (particularly Salman Khan in a beard and Panjab accent), but it took too long to get started and I don't think ever really made its point.
A better movie about Kashmir is Mission Kashmir. This was one of the first movies from Hrithik Roshan and he is amazing in it as an adult survivor of a horribly traumatic childhood. He is so convincingly traumatized, though, that the happy ending felt false to me. I was expecting his character to die, which would have been a horrible downer but, I think, more honest. Jackie Shroff is also very good here, wonderfully creepy (I thought his character was always hunched the way he was because it made his gaze so intense, but there's a real piece of back story there). A good film despite the ending.
I had more mixed feelings about Aamir Khan's Ghajini. It is similar to, and was certainly inspired by, Memento, but unlike many Bollywood takeoffs of American films the stories themselves are very different. Khan's character (who is very, very buff) also can't remember more than 20 minutes at a time and takes pictures and leaves notes for himself in his quest to find his fiancee's murderer, but it's clear early on that unlike Memento he isn't to blame, and the actual story is very uniquely Mumbai, with gangsters and girls from villages enslaved in brothels (after having their kidneys stolen; this isn't a happy story). The darkness of that story is offset by the lightness of the back story, of how Khan's character met and wooed his fiancee. Personally, I liked the back story better; the actress playing the fiancee had a great energy and their romance was very believable (a film rarity in any language, I find). Alas, the present time story was too violent for me, and I had to cover my face in two places because I didn't want to risk seeing what I was afraid I was going to see (having watched Salman Khan have his skull crushed twice I no longer take any chances when villains approach with blunt instruments). And the ending was very drawn out. It felt like a video game, and as it's since been made into one I guess that's not a coincidence.
The last film was one Aamir Khan produced, starring his nephew Imran Khan, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. This was written and directed by Abbas Tyrewala, a guy who's got a writing credit in a ton of other films I've enjoyed. The characters feel like real people (even the two guys wearing Western gear and riding on horses to all the clubs of Mumbai, and that's saying something). Tyrewala also wrote the lyrics to the songs in the film, which was a nice touch. Here the music feels more a part of the story, less a pop music intrusion. Of course having AR Rahman do the music is always a nice touch. I linked before to "Pappu Can't Dance" back when Rahman won his Oscar, so here I'll put "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi", the song Imran's character sings to cheer up Aditi, who has just suffered a major loss: her cat has died (hence the kitty in the basket):
Monday, October 26, 2009
Mount Rushmore (with pictures!)
Back from our whirlwind two-day trip to South Dakota and Wyoming. I'm going to have to spread these pictures out over a few blog posts here. (And I'm not sure when I'll figure out how to upload the video I shot).
It rained nearly the entire way to Rapid City, so we didn't get to see much fall color, and it was dark by the time we got to our hotel. It was in the low 30s when we woke up in the morning, but we had come prepared with parkas, hats and mittens.
When we got to Mount Rushmore it was foggy and covered with frost and patches of snow: very pretty.
We spent the morning around Mount Rushmore. They have a walking trail made from that plastic lumber, all steps and patios with lots of benches. The snow melted as we walked, and we saw a few mountain goats skipping through the rubble or eating the lichen.
In the afternoon we went to Jewel Cave. We took the hour and a half tour through the cave plus hiked some trails near there. The boys did a series of activities with the park rangers and earned ranger patches and badges both. After that we headed to Custer Park, but got there too late to see much. We just drove through and saw tons of deer, but alas couldn't find the bison.
After nearly two hours underground:
The cave tour follows these metal walkways up and down and around; it's quite dizzying. The cave didn't get much narrower than this; good thing, as we weren't supposed to touch any of the rocks.
It rained nearly the entire way to Rapid City, so we didn't get to see much fall color, and it was dark by the time we got to our hotel. It was in the low 30s when we woke up in the morning, but we had come prepared with parkas, hats and mittens.
When we got to Mount Rushmore it was foggy and covered with frost and patches of snow: very pretty.
We spent the morning around Mount Rushmore. They have a walking trail made from that plastic lumber, all steps and patios with lots of benches. The snow melted as we walked, and we saw a few mountain goats skipping through the rubble or eating the lichen.
In the afternoon we went to Jewel Cave. We took the hour and a half tour through the cave plus hiked some trails near there. The boys did a series of activities with the park rangers and earned ranger patches and badges both. After that we headed to Custer Park, but got there too late to see much. We just drove through and saw tons of deer, but alas couldn't find the bison.
After nearly two hours underground:
I was still learning all the features of the camera, so most of my shots of the cave didn't turn out, but I got a few:
The cave tour follows these metal walkways up and down and around; it's quite dizzying. The cave didn't get much narrower than this; good thing, as we weren't supposed to touch any of the rocks.
More Mount Rushmore (with pictures!)
Watching the mountain goat eat:
Pushing snow off the bannisters while walking (you think they'd never seen snow before):
What pictures can't convey: the smell. Particularly on the trails around the Jewel Cave where they had just done a controlled fire; it was a smokey, piney smell that was just lovely.
Pushing snow off the bannisters while walking (you think they'd never seen snow before):
What pictures can't convey: the smell. Particularly on the trails around the Jewel Cave where they had just done a controlled fire; it was a smokey, piney smell that was just lovely.
This is still at Mount Rushmore before the snow melted:
By the time we left to go to Jewel Cave the snow was gone, but when we arrived in the bust of Borgeum had a nice snow toupee.
By the time we left to go to Jewel Cave the snow was gone, but when we arrived in the bust of Borgeum had a nice snow toupee.
Devil's Tower (with pictures!)
On the day we were going to come back home we decided to head west to Wyoming first and see Devil's Tower. Which took quite a bit longer than I thought it would; we didn't get home until 1 in the morning. That was a long, long day. But the trail winds around the base of Devil's Tower was cool, and it was nice to get a good hike in before spending 12ish hours in a car.
This is from an overlook on the way to Devil's Tower (see it there, in the back?). Waiting for someone to click a picture while staring straight into the sun, but trying not to stare straight into the sun:
Climbing the rocks around Devil's Tower:
Me and the boys:
This is from an overlook on the way to Devil's Tower (see it there, in the back?). Waiting for someone to click a picture while staring straight into the sun, but trying not to stare straight into the sun:
Climbing the rocks around Devil's Tower:
A nice overlook at the valley below. We could hear the cows bellowing. Quin and the boys:
Me and the boys:
More Devil's Tower (with pictures!)
Someone is always looking for a pose that just has to be a picture:
Pretending to stack rocks (they were like that when we got there):
The one picture where you can kind of see that we are in fact at the foot of Devil's Tower:
The three of us standing at the bottom of Devil's Tower:
Pretending to stack rocks (they were like that when we got there):
The one picture where you can kind of see that we are in fact at the foot of Devil's Tower:
The three of us standing at the bottom of Devil's Tower:
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Books in September
Still working my way through the Niven catalog. First was the Niven/Pournelle/Barnes sequel to The Legacy of Heorot, Beowulf's Children. Not quite as "this should be a movie" as the first book, but the fact that this felt more novel-like is a good thing. My only quibble: I wasn't buying the evolved, more intelligent grendel conceiving of a grendel god. Deities are such social constructs, I don't see how or why a solitary animal would create one, or feel the need to create one. That aside, it was a killer story.
In the Niven and Barnes sans Pournelle category, I read Dream Park and its sequel The Barsoom Project. These were both awesome too. In these books and the two above, the women characters feel so much more real and complete in a way I don't find them in books just by Niven or Niven and Pournelle that I'm beginning to suspect I might be a bit of a Steven Barnes fan. I'll have to add his name to the list of writers I plan to read up on.
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. What can I say? I just found one of the spines for my high school biology curriculum. This book is amazing. Part of my reason for homeschooling my boys was the way public schools tiptoe around evolution. They mention it (which is enough to piss off certain people), but they never actually teach it, what it is, how it works, and most of all the wealth of evidence we have for it. This book does all those things, and Dawkins with his wit is such a pleasure to read. My own understanding of evolution is mainly from the medical end, genetics and comparative anatomy, so the chapters on geology and fossils I found particularly informative. I've never really read up on all that before, and it is dead interesting. I highly, highly recommend this one. I don't know how anyone could look at life this way and not be overwhelmed with awe and wonder at how it all works. We live in an amazing world.
In the Niven and Barnes sans Pournelle category, I read Dream Park and its sequel The Barsoom Project. These were both awesome too. In these books and the two above, the women characters feel so much more real and complete in a way I don't find them in books just by Niven or Niven and Pournelle that I'm beginning to suspect I might be a bit of a Steven Barnes fan. I'll have to add his name to the list of writers I plan to read up on.
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. What can I say? I just found one of the spines for my high school biology curriculum. This book is amazing. Part of my reason for homeschooling my boys was the way public schools tiptoe around evolution. They mention it (which is enough to piss off certain people), but they never actually teach it, what it is, how it works, and most of all the wealth of evidence we have for it. This book does all those things, and Dawkins with his wit is such a pleasure to read. My own understanding of evolution is mainly from the medical end, genetics and comparative anatomy, so the chapters on geology and fossils I found particularly informative. I've never really read up on all that before, and it is dead interesting. I highly, highly recommend this one. I don't know how anyone could look at life this way and not be overwhelmed with awe and wonder at how it all works. We live in an amazing world.
Lastly, A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi by Michael J. Shapiro. I've actually been working on this one for a while. It starts assuming no knowledge of Hindi and then builds to a level I found to be just about where Teach Yourself Hindi ends, so it was perfect for me. It contains a selection of snippets from actual readers used in schools in India, little stories about the gardens of Kashmir, or folk tales, even the opening of Alice in Wonderland all in Hindi. There was also a thorough discussion of the grammar. I'm such a grammar geek sentences like "It is possible to arrange a number of the most common Hindi adverbial forms into a highly systematic paradigm" actually make me swoon a little.
.
But I suppose that's just me.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Movies In August
I went to an actual movie theater in August! The whole family went to see Ponyo. I would say it was completely enchanting, animated with such a loving attention to detail, with warm-hearted characters and beautiful storytelling. But I could just say "it's the new Miyazaki film" and if you know Miyazaki, the rest is redundant. It's not my favorite of his, but that still makes it superior to most of the rest of what's out there. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again.
TV on DVD this month: two more seasons of Two and a Half Men. Still funny, still no real character growth here. Comfort TV, I guess. It's not really a show to watch all the episodes back to back. But it is just amusing enough to have running in the background while you balance the checkbook or make dinner.
Battlestar Galactica 4.5 I found disappointing. On the one hand, each individual character finished off their arc nicely. but it never resolved any of the issues that were the themes of the show. Instead of learning to live together, they basically hit the big REBOOT button and started all over again. Lame. Plus I hate Adam and Eve stories, even if they are mitochondrial Eve. (And I'm totally not buying that all the survivors who couldn't agree on anything for five years all agreed to forgo civilization in favor of the short life spans and high infant mortality and lack of higher culture that goes with deciding to blend with the neanderthals).
Of course Dollhouse was better. I'm not sure about that last episode; postapocalyptic stories are nearly as over done as Adam and Eve. But it's Joss Whedon, I'm willing to withhold judgement until I see what he does with it.
Cinematic Titanic: The Blood of the Vampires. Filipinos pretending to be 19th century Mexican hacienda owners? Other Filipinos in blackface pretending to be the servants? How could that ever be cheesy?
TV on DVD this month: two more seasons of Two and a Half Men. Still funny, still no real character growth here. Comfort TV, I guess. It's not really a show to watch all the episodes back to back. But it is just amusing enough to have running in the background while you balance the checkbook or make dinner.
Battlestar Galactica 4.5 I found disappointing. On the one hand, each individual character finished off their arc nicely. but it never resolved any of the issues that were the themes of the show. Instead of learning to live together, they basically hit the big REBOOT button and started all over again. Lame. Plus I hate Adam and Eve stories, even if they are mitochondrial Eve. (And I'm totally not buying that all the survivors who couldn't agree on anything for five years all agreed to forgo civilization in favor of the short life spans and high infant mortality and lack of higher culture that goes with deciding to blend with the neanderthals).
Of course Dollhouse was better. I'm not sure about that last episode; postapocalyptic stories are nearly as over done as Adam and Eve. But it's Joss Whedon, I'm willing to withhold judgement until I see what he does with it.
Cinematic Titanic: The Blood of the Vampires. Filipinos pretending to be 19th century Mexican hacienda owners? Other Filipinos in blackface pretending to be the servants? How could that ever be cheesy?
In brief, movies I didn't like at all: Revolution Road. I kept hearing Spike's voice in my head: "And by the way, I would be insanely happy if I heard bugger all about sodding France." Boondock Saints. Because life would be so much better if we got rid of the police and court system and just killed all the bad guys ourselves. There's never any mystery who they are, and innocent bystanders would never get hurt. Sounds like a plan. Fast & Furious (Reloaded) has none of the cheesy goodness of the second F&F movie, and is not fresh and new like the third. It's not exactly a rehashing of the first one either, though. The characters have evolved. It wasn't bad, just completely superfluous. Expelled, where Ben Stein insists that teaching evolution will make us all Nazis. Quin wanted to watch this one. I found it silly and depressing.
The Wrong Guy was nice low-key comedy from Dave Foley. He plays a fellow who thinks he's been mistaken for his boss's murderer and goes on the lam, when in fact no one actually thinks he did it. He falls in with Jennifer Tilly, a narcoleptic, and her father Joe Flaherty, who owns an S&L in a farm town where he's bullied by the local farmer who runs the town, buying up businesses so he can turn them into more fields. Not hardhitting comedy by any means, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
An even bigger surprise was how much the whole family is loving the Marx Brothers movies. In August we watched Duck Soup, Animal Crackers and Horse Feathers, three of the early films from when there were still a foursome. I'm actually crushing on Harpo Marx a bit.
OK, finishing off as always with Bollywood. I saw two Salman Khan films, one old and one new. The new was Yuvvraaj, which had elements of Rain Man, Shine, etc. with Anil Kapoor from Slumdog Millionaire playing a man with some sort of autism-type thing who inherits all of his father's money. The other two brothers, Salman and Zayed Khan, at first attempt to find a way to get the money from him but of course grow to love him as a brother in the end. But music is what eventually brings them together, particularly Salman and Anil with Katerina Kaif as the cello player that is the bridge between them. I've never been particularly impressed with Kaif; she's a model turned actress who started out having her dialogue dubbed over by better actresses. She does her own lines now and she's not sounding too bad here. But in particular I was impressed with her ability to pretend to play the cello. In most Bollywood movies, the instrument playing makes Robert Palmer's backup band look like masters of the craft. But Katerina Kaif manages to look like she's seen a cello before, and knows where the high and low notes are and how to move between them. Of course I don't actually play the cello, but she looked pretty good to me. And she is gorgeous.
Chal Mere Bhai was an older Salman Khan movie, and it's a total bromance with Sanjay Dutt. Sure, the story is about two brothers in a love triangle with Karishma Kapoor, who is cute as a button as always. But really, this movie is all about Khan and Dutt being affectionate with each other. It was one of the first cultural differences Quin and I found when we started watching Bollywood movies with Andaz Apna Apna and Sholay. Are these two guys supposed to be gay? I later found that gay characters in Bollywood films are done so broadly there is never any question. Think Hollywood Montrose in the movie Mannequin. The men in Bollywood movies are just much more comfortable being physical with each other than Hollywood men are (hobbits aside).
Sometimes it's not just a matter of tickle fights in bed or getting up on each other's shoulders, though. Point in fact: Zayed Khan's beret and neckerchief:
Honestly, I love this song. All of the music in Yuvvraaj is fantastic (by Oscar winner AR Rahman), which in a movie about the power of music to connect people is a good thing.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Books in August
Is September the month from hell much? Or is it just me who's crazy busy?
At any rate - books. In August it was three nonfic and four fic books read. The nonfic books were all in the aetheist/freethinker vein.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Well. I largely agreed with him in content, but not in tone. Those reading this on Blogspot are familiar with the quote that I've put in my banner:
I fared better with Raising Freethinkers by Dale McGowan. I enjoyed his earlier collection of essays from various people, Parenting Beyond Belief. This is sort of a practical guide on that subject, with lots of books and weblinks for further exploration. And he gets a huge thank you from me for putting secular homeschooling in the spotlight for a moment. We're in the minority, but we do exist!
Your Religion is False by Joel Grus is perhaps even more divisive than Sam Harris, but it's just so damn funny. Grus is an equal opportunity offender. Richard Dawkins often point out that atheists only don't believe in one more god than most folks; Grus runs with that premise, with chapters on all of the religions we don't believe in and why, including the flying spaghetti monster.
And then it was back at the Niven. I read an omnibus of The Magic Goes Away, The Magic Returns, and More Magic. A novella and two short story collections from various writers all set in the same world where magic is going out of the world and it's resetting itself to become the world as we now know it. It's a cool premise. I don't often like fantasy written by sci-fi writers, but these stories I enjoyed. My favorites were "Manaspell" by Dean Ing and "Talisman" by Larry Niven and Dian Girand.
Burning City and Burning Tower by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are set in the same world. Burning City I liked up until I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered it's meant to be an allegory about LA riots. Gah, I hate allegory. But I didn't catch the allegorical elements until after the fact, so it can be safely ignored. It's not like LA is the only place where people went batshit crazy and went after their neighbors under indefensible pretexts (I'm looking at you, Partition). Read in that universal sense, I like it. Read as a commentary on just one event, not so much.
Also some of the fantasy elements weren't thought through. If you're going to set a story in ancient CA, make it feel like CA, not like Europe. I was happier when I was wondering what the redwoods were doing in the Mediterranean. Also, there's a moment when a character wonders when someone is going to "turn off" the ocean. Where did he form this concept? And elsewhere someone's drawing is described as "cartoonish". They have cartoons in this world?
Back in the world of sci-fi: The Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle and Steven Barnes is all kinds of awesome. How has no one ever made this into a movie? Plus there were women here who felt real and complicated and genuine, particularly Carolyn whom no one likes and is sent off on a suicide mission with a bunch of horses and to everyone's shock survives. I liked her immensely. Perhaps just because she was unpopular.
At any rate - books. In August it was three nonfic and four fic books read. The nonfic books were all in the aetheist/freethinker vein.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Well. I largely agreed with him in content, but not in tone. Those reading this on Blogspot are familiar with the quote that I've put in my banner:
Every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things—connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. I try to make a connection with someone every time I talk to them, because a connection can be made. People can be treated with respect. I'm shocked that there are so many people that live to divide. - Joss WhedonEven more to the point, or at least my point is this clip of Joss talking about cultural humanism, which really gets to the core of what I feel, that the enemy of humanism isn't faith:
I fared better with Raising Freethinkers by Dale McGowan. I enjoyed his earlier collection of essays from various people, Parenting Beyond Belief. This is sort of a practical guide on that subject, with lots of books and weblinks for further exploration. And he gets a huge thank you from me for putting secular homeschooling in the spotlight for a moment. We're in the minority, but we do exist!
Your Religion is False by Joel Grus is perhaps even more divisive than Sam Harris, but it's just so damn funny. Grus is an equal opportunity offender. Richard Dawkins often point out that atheists only don't believe in one more god than most folks; Grus runs with that premise, with chapters on all of the religions we don't believe in and why, including the flying spaghetti monster.
And then it was back at the Niven. I read an omnibus of The Magic Goes Away, The Magic Returns, and More Magic. A novella and two short story collections from various writers all set in the same world where magic is going out of the world and it's resetting itself to become the world as we now know it. It's a cool premise. I don't often like fantasy written by sci-fi writers, but these stories I enjoyed. My favorites were "Manaspell" by Dean Ing and "Talisman" by Larry Niven and Dian Girand.
Burning City and Burning Tower by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are set in the same world. Burning City I liked up until I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered it's meant to be an allegory about LA riots. Gah, I hate allegory. But I didn't catch the allegorical elements until after the fact, so it can be safely ignored. It's not like LA is the only place where people went batshit crazy and went after their neighbors under indefensible pretexts (I'm looking at you, Partition). Read in that universal sense, I like it. Read as a commentary on just one event, not so much.
Also some of the fantasy elements weren't thought through. If you're going to set a story in ancient CA, make it feel like CA, not like Europe. I was happier when I was wondering what the redwoods were doing in the Mediterranean. Also, there's a moment when a character wonders when someone is going to "turn off" the ocean. Where did he form this concept? And elsewhere someone's drawing is described as "cartoonish". They have cartoons in this world?
Back in the world of sci-fi: The Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle and Steven Barnes is all kinds of awesome. How has no one ever made this into a movie? Plus there were women here who felt real and complicated and genuine, particularly Carolyn whom no one likes and is sent off on a suicide mission with a bunch of horses and to everyone's shock survives. I liked her immensely. Perhaps just because she was unpopular.
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