My reading usually has a certain flow to it, whether it's reading through one writer's life work, or swinging from writer to influence to their influence. Sometimes my reading is fueled by my writing, either researching something I'm trying to write, or reading things that will end up being research for things they prompt me to write.
Then there are months like February, where it's all pretty random.
The last thing I read in January was Among Others which was so perfect and wonderful I immediately wanted to read more Jo Walton. Not everything she's written is on Kindle, though, so I grabbed (being the theme of the month, at random) Tooth and Claw, a sort of Masterpiece Theater story of alliances and marriages and people being polite to the extreme. Only the people here are dragons. It may sound silly, but the details are just so perfect, both in the Jane Austenesque setting and in the physiology of dragons this just really worked. I loved that the females turned pink and darkened to red as they got older, a wonderful image which is such a cool plot point as well (females are only supposed to turn pink when they are affianced).
I also finally finished off all three volumes of Clockwork Phoenix. I've taken plunges into them before, reading this or that story, but in February I went through and read them all in order. They do have a lovely flow from one to the next when read in order, a neat trick in an anthology of different writers. In all three volumes, there were only one or two stories that didn't do it for me, and many that transported me to farflung places as I read them. A nice series of books, I'm hoping there will be a Clockwork Phoenix 4.
I read some Houdini last year, and it's been gnawing at the edges of my mind since. In February I read two biographies, to fill in some gaps and maybe tease out what my subconscious is working on. The latter is still a mystery, but at least the bios were good. The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kallush and Larry Sloman is based on the idea that Houdini worked as a spy. They didn't remotely sell me on more than the hint of a possibility of that, but it was still a thorough look at his life. Still, I found Houdini!!! by Kenneth Silverman the superior book. Both worth a read if you're curious about Houdini.
Finally, when buying those Houdini books at Amazon.com, the "people who bought that also bought" widget tossed up Sock by Penn Jillette. I love Penn & Teller and especially their show Bullshit but this was a work of fiction, I wasn't sure what to expect. It's definitely a different sort of book, narrated by an aetheist sock puppet prone to rants (but also to deep love of his people). It reads a bit like beat poetry, with song lyrics woven in (many I knew, some I didn't). The ending was perfection, and I'm not going to give it away. The whole novel is filled with sharp humor, equal parts laugh out loud and thought-provoking. It was hard to pick just one quote from it, so much of it is highlighted on my Kindle.
In the escape business, as the Amazing Randi put it, “If you are not an egotist, you are a failure.” What but a megalomaniacal brassballed self-assurance could have dragged Houdini inside a riveted boiler or to the depths of the Mississippi River? – Kennether Silverman
Molly is a person of conviction too. She just never managed to distill her convictions to a size that will fit on a t-shirt. This man had found a way around that. His t-shirt is almost the size of a billboard. – “They Tarrying Messenger” by Michael DeLuca from Clockwork Phoenix
So many kings, so few rulers. - "At The Edge of Dying", Mary Robinette Kowal, Clockwork Phoenix 2
The blazing glory of Hathirekhmet, pitiless as stone, but not cruel; cruelty implied a desire for suffing in others. Hathirekhmet did not desire. She simply was. - "Once a Goddess" by Marie Brennan from Clockwork Phoenix 2
He gave his creation a mother's love and a father's protection, a sibling's tolerance and a friend's rivalry, a teacher's admiration and an enemy's respect. - "Your Name is Eve" by Michael M. Jones from Clockwork Phoenix 3
When you touch a decomposed body that's been in the water for a while the body feels kinda, sorta good until you figure out what it is. Then it feels very bad. - Sock
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Movies in January
Time is short, and the list is long. The Pianist and Network: two films you don't need me to tell you are quite good. Withnail and I was strange but wonderful. I should have seen this years ago (but then the same is true of Network). The Sunshine Boys was written Neil Simon by and stars (at least the version I watched) Woody Allen and Peter Falk as a vaudeville team that can no longer stand each other but are trying to work together on one last gig. A good story and Woody and Peter are perfect.
Death at a Funeral is a perfect streaming Netflix movie. Funny enough once but I'm unlikely to watch it again.
The Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet starring David Tennant was quite good. I liked having Patrick Stewart play both the father and the uncle, and Hamlet cutting his palm when he swears his oath to the ghost and having the knotted bandage there to see for the next few acts, a constant reminder, very cool.
Season 1 of Rome I liked quite a lot. My only gripe is that it's just a shade too intense for my boys to watch it, which is a shame as it really brings the history to life.
I've been trying to watch more French films lately (another Netflix bonus). I quite liked OSS 117 Cairo, Nest of Spies. It's a parody of a series of films you just know Mike Myers was looking at when he was crafting Austin Powers. The lead actor is wonderful; he does smarmy so well. My favorite scene is one where he knocks back a couple of scotches in his boss's office, and then gets more than a little buzzed. It was well played, the slowly building sense that our hero isn't all there that culminates in his attempt to get down the hall. How does Bond do it? I had watched this after seeing a trailer for the sequel OSS 117 Lost in Rio because a French spy film featuring Nazi luchadores simply must be seen. Alas, it was not as sharply written as the first.
3 idiots has Aamir Khan and Vidhu Vinod Chopra joining forces to tell a story about the cruel pressures of college in India. Think Tiger Mom, times ten. An excellent film. I particularly liked all of the inventions the engineering students came up with; very clever and clearly they really work.
My Name is Khan also has a few scenes of engineering inventiveness, but mostly it's a story about how not all Muslims are bad. It also features Shah Rukh Khan as an autistic man. The filmmakers did their research, and his performance is quite good. The fact that I kept hearing Robert Downey Jr. talking about not going "full retard" is clearly just my own baggage.
Mela was apparently a box office bomb, and I'm not sure why as I found it rather fun. Aamir Khan is a traveling actor and while there's some sort of A story that involves a woman (Twinkle Khanna in I think her last role?) who needs to avenge her brother or something, there is a lovely B story between Khan and his buddy that drives the truck. They had a wonderful chemistry together. Wikipediaing later, I see that's probably because the buddy was played by Khan's real-life brother. He looks more like Salman than Aamir. But I liked him; he played a good buddy. (And I think I answered my own question there; when the most interesting thing you've got going on is your B plot, your going to bomb in the box office. But you know I'll always love you, because I'm very forgiving of crummy A plots. I'm looking at you The Last Legion. I never seem to remember you're a movie about King Arthur. Aish is so distractingly cool).
Besides being one of or the last film from Twinkle Khanna, Mela also seems to be the point in Aamir Khan's career where he decided to do movies that had some deeper value. He followed it up with Lagaan, after all. 3 idiots is a more current example. But he also produces more interesting films, such as Peepli Live, a very dark comedy indeed about farmers in rural India who discover there's money to be had in suicide. This movie is as much a critique of politicians and the media as it is about the plight of farmers. Very sharply written.
I'll finish up with two starring Ranbir Kapoor. Wake Up Sid is about a young man in danger of remaining a perpetual adolescent, and the friend that gives him just enough of a poke to get going. All of the characters in this one are well-written with good arcs (Sid has some pretty cool friends). A little more old school song and dance is Bachna Ae Haseeno, a movie that takes it's title from a song from one of Ranbir's dad's movies. A movie I've never seen, so I don't know why the song was instantly familiar to me. I must have heard it somewhere. It is quite awesome, original or remix. Love the horns. It's worth taking a look at the original on youtube just for Rishi's outfit, and the girls in go-go boots. But I digress. This is another very modern story about a young man who gets on the receiving end of rejection and looks up all the girls he's wronged to apologise. It has its moments (his best friend certainly has some interesting T-shirts). Still, for me, it's all about that song:
Death at a Funeral is a perfect streaming Netflix movie. Funny enough once but I'm unlikely to watch it again.
The Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet starring David Tennant was quite good. I liked having Patrick Stewart play both the father and the uncle, and Hamlet cutting his palm when he swears his oath to the ghost and having the knotted bandage there to see for the next few acts, a constant reminder, very cool.
Season 1 of Rome I liked quite a lot. My only gripe is that it's just a shade too intense for my boys to watch it, which is a shame as it really brings the history to life.
I've been trying to watch more French films lately (another Netflix bonus). I quite liked OSS 117 Cairo, Nest of Spies. It's a parody of a series of films you just know Mike Myers was looking at when he was crafting Austin Powers. The lead actor is wonderful; he does smarmy so well. My favorite scene is one where he knocks back a couple of scotches in his boss's office, and then gets more than a little buzzed. It was well played, the slowly building sense that our hero isn't all there that culminates in his attempt to get down the hall. How does Bond do it? I had watched this after seeing a trailer for the sequel OSS 117 Lost in Rio because a French spy film featuring Nazi luchadores simply must be seen. Alas, it was not as sharply written as the first.
3 idiots has Aamir Khan and Vidhu Vinod Chopra joining forces to tell a story about the cruel pressures of college in India. Think Tiger Mom, times ten. An excellent film. I particularly liked all of the inventions the engineering students came up with; very clever and clearly they really work.
My Name is Khan also has a few scenes of engineering inventiveness, but mostly it's a story about how not all Muslims are bad. It also features Shah Rukh Khan as an autistic man. The filmmakers did their research, and his performance is quite good. The fact that I kept hearing Robert Downey Jr. talking about not going "full retard" is clearly just my own baggage.
Mela was apparently a box office bomb, and I'm not sure why as I found it rather fun. Aamir Khan is a traveling actor and while there's some sort of A story that involves a woman (Twinkle Khanna in I think her last role?) who needs to avenge her brother or something, there is a lovely B story between Khan and his buddy that drives the truck. They had a wonderful chemistry together. Wikipediaing later, I see that's probably because the buddy was played by Khan's real-life brother. He looks more like Salman than Aamir. But I liked him; he played a good buddy. (And I think I answered my own question there; when the most interesting thing you've got going on is your B plot, your going to bomb in the box office. But you know I'll always love you, because I'm very forgiving of crummy A plots. I'm looking at you The Last Legion. I never seem to remember you're a movie about King Arthur. Aish is so distractingly cool).
Besides being one of or the last film from Twinkle Khanna, Mela also seems to be the point in Aamir Khan's career where he decided to do movies that had some deeper value. He followed it up with Lagaan, after all. 3 idiots is a more current example. But he also produces more interesting films, such as Peepli Live, a very dark comedy indeed about farmers in rural India who discover there's money to be had in suicide. This movie is as much a critique of politicians and the media as it is about the plight of farmers. Very sharply written.
I'll finish up with two starring Ranbir Kapoor. Wake Up Sid is about a young man in danger of remaining a perpetual adolescent, and the friend that gives him just enough of a poke to get going. All of the characters in this one are well-written with good arcs (Sid has some pretty cool friends). A little more old school song and dance is Bachna Ae Haseeno, a movie that takes it's title from a song from one of Ranbir's dad's movies. A movie I've never seen, so I don't know why the song was instantly familiar to me. I must have heard it somewhere. It is quite awesome, original or remix. Love the horns. It's worth taking a look at the original on youtube just for Rishi's outfit, and the girls in go-go boots. But I digress. This is another very modern story about a young man who gets on the receiving end of rejection and looks up all the girls he's wronged to apologise. It has its moments (his best friend certainly has some interesting T-shirts). Still, for me, it's all about that song:
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