Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Movies in December

Our first month with Netflix, which put way too many films at our fingertips. I was warned that it could get addictive, but I'm not worried. I only have a few times a week when I can even sit down in front of the TV, and that's all I'm expecting to do with that time anyway. It's a tight schedule I have, no possibility for cheating. I'm just enjoying all the options with the time I already have.

Like finally seeing An Affair to Remember. I already know the story from Sleepless in Seattle and from the Bollywood version of this movie (Mann). It holds up well; Cary Grant is of course awesome as hell, and the banter between him and Debra Kerr is top notch.

Oliver putting his own name in the search box brought us to the musical Oliver! with a very, very young Oliver Reed. So that's where that song came from...

The African Queen is another one I've been meaning to see since forever. I loved the little steam boat, and Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn were great.

The Maiden Heist stars Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and a super-buff William H. Macy as art musuem security guards who each have one specific work they adore. When a museum in Holland buys their obsessions, they turn thieves to steal what they can't live without. It's a quiet little movie, but has so many really wonderful touches about how subjective our reaction to art is. These guys can understand each other's obsession but can't quite get the focus of each other's obsessions (I love Morgan Freeman's attempt to replicate Christopher Walken's favorite painting - oh, he didn't get it at all).

Less compelling was the French film The Ultimate Heist. "Ultimate" here doesn't mean the heist to end all heists, it just means the last one. So I went in expecting one sort of film and got another. Still, Jean Reno reading a phonebook is worth watching once just to see.

Constant Gardener was about what I expected, a deserved Oscar winner but not a film I expect will be remembered much in ten years. (From my research on slums, it's my understanding that the slums of Nairobi are by far the worst place to live in the world, and this movie doesn't scratch the surface of what it's like. But then what it does show is harrowing enough).

Boondocks Season 3 was just as sharply written, just as lovingly animated, as the first two seasons. I love the way the old Peanuts cartoons' influence can be felt, especially in the music, and the intrusion of anime elements in a suburban setting always brightens my nerdy little heart. This is one of my favorite shows.

Toy Story 3 was not as good as the first two, but still a fun show. Mr. Potato Head left sans potato, making do with a tortilla, was brilliant, and the character of Ken was a great addition (they never say metrosexual, but it's implied). Some clever bits and the ending was just perfect, but the minimal influence of the original filmmakers was felt. Also finishing up a series was Shrek the Final Chapter, which also had some elements I liked (like Fiona rescuing herself, and she and Shrek sparring as a prelude to romance. Which it totally is). But on the final score, this is a series that's gone a bit past it's best by date. Time to retire it. It's a Trap!, the final of the Family Guy Star Wars parodies also feels less than fresh, although I loved the Seth Green jokes, and when Mon Mothma shows up and suddenly Leia is no longer the only woman in the galaxy. "I don't like her," she says. Yeah, that made me laugh.

Bollywood, y'all. Jawani Zindagi had pretty low production values, which was a shame because I really liked the story, about how dowries suck, and not just for women.

London Dreams had a cool premise: Amadeus done as two competing rock stars in the same band. Ajay Devgan (who was awesome as the lead in the Hindi version of Othello, Omkara) makes a delicious Salieri, and Salman Khan is the perfect choice for the never serious Amadeus. Sadly, a movie with a plot built around music and who makes it well and who doesn't needs to have really awesome music, and the songs in this one just didn't do it. The scene were Khan's character riffs on Devgan's snippet of song, playing it in several styles and improving on it a la Mozart, was good, but the songs they were performing before stadium crowds just weren't the sorts of songs that fill stadiums.

As opposed to Dabangg, which had awesome songs. Plus a sweet little love story, Salman Khan as a policeman with the universally recognized policeman's moustache, and action scenes that show just how much Salman Khan loved Sherlock Holmes and the Matrix. All that, and Malaika Arora Khan too. There was an episode of Friends where the guys were picking out the names of five celebrities they would sleep with if given the chance and their partners couldn't object because they were on the list (Ross laminates his, natch). My husband has just one name on his list: Malaika Arora Khan. And he insisted I put this song up on the blog (I was torn between this one and, well, every other song in the movie). It is a great number; Salman Khan looks like he's having all sorts of fun here.


Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Books in December

Lots of books read in December. Alas I still didn't meet my goal of 100 books read in the year, and actually read less than 2009. In 2011 I'll have to be sure to read more graphic novels to pad my numbers.

Lots of books by Backspacers this month. Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler has a great concept: an anorexic girl becomes the Horseman Famine. The details of being anorexic really brought this story to life, and although it was often sad there are some fun moments as well (like Kurt Cobain as Death; very cool). This feels like a standalone, but I'd love to see a whole Horseman of the Apocalypse series.

Twelfth Grade Kills by Heather Brewer finishes off the chronicles of Vladimir Todd. It's a good ending with lots of surprises, but it feels like there's more story here. Maybe Vlad will go to college.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by AS King really got me at a gut level. Dealing with the death of a close friend on top of already dealing with high school and family issues - Vera Dietz was very really for me. Plus the writing is just top notch; this is another book on my Kindle with pages and pages of highlighted quotes. (This was all around a tough month to winnow down the quote list).

Stealing the Marbles by EJ Knapp is a great heist story with great score: the main character is aiming to steal the Elgin marbles from the British Museum so he can give them back to the Greeks. I love me a heist story, and this one had a lot of fun twists and details. This would make an awesome George Clooney movie (but an even awesomer Cary Grant one, if such a thing were possible).

Tongues of Serpents is the latest Temeraire novel from Naomi Novik, this time set in Australia. She really brought the geography to life; man, I'd love to go to Australia some day. The naval battle with the sea monsters - straightup awesome.

Two short story collections from M. Rickert: Map of Dreams has a lot of her stories that I'd originally read in FSF. They're just as engrossing the second time through. The only weak entry is actually the first piece, the title story. For me it took too long to get where I always figured it was going. But all of the stories in Holiday were darkly wonderful, and the structure of a year's cycle of a story for each holiday gave it a nice rhythm. Of course any book that ends with "The Christmas Witch" is doing something right. I don't think I've ever read a young child POV so convincingly written.

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold is the latest Miles Vorkosigan novel and doesn't disappoint. Some old characters are back, but the new ones hold their own.


A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan is hands-down my favorite of that series so far. It might just be the time it's set in, but when science starts to come into its own, things get very interesting for magical creatures. I really love how Haley's comet is used, and the missing days from when the calendars were corrected. Very cool.

And now some of my favorite quotes, in no particular order:

She sipped, realizing that at least when food was involved, she was able to feel. Maybe the emotion was bitter and hateful, but it was better than the vacuum she otherwise seemed to dwell in. Food was real. Everything else paled. - Hunger

I turn to the pond and eye a bright pink fish the size of my forearm shimmering his way from shadow to shadow, and I toss in the penny and make a wish. I wish for world peace, because it’s about as likely to occur as anything else I can wish for. -
Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Mulling this over, Vlad wiped her lip gloss from his lips with the back of his hand. Vampires, after all, didn’t sparkle. - Twelfth Grade Kills

Hell hath no fury like a woman whose boyfriend is tied to a chair and being tortured in a dingy garage. - Stealing the Marbles

Privately, Temeraire was forced to admit that Laurence was unreasonably deadly on the subject of superstition, even though it did not make any sense, as he was equally firm on the subject of the Holy Spirit; Temeraire did not see how one could deny other spirits, when you had allowed one. - Tongues of Serpents

Some say she had a glow about her, which, it is also reasoned, is no difficulty for the devil to conjure such a thing if the CIA can make the whole world believe that Russia is no longer a threat, then certainly it is no problem for them to make a girl glow. - "Angel Face" in A Map of Dreams

“She and that Escobaran medtech she married plan to pop their second kid from the uterine replicator any day now.”
“Not cloned, eh?”
“No, it was all done the old-fashioned way, an egg and a sperm in a test tube.” - Cryoburn

The sisters themselves looked like a pair of poetic country housewives, rendered in three-foot miniature. At least until Gertrude Goodemeade advanced on him with the demeanor of an overwhelmingly friendly army sergeant. - A Star Shall Fall