Still finishing up on some Woody Allen I've been missing. Don't Drink the Water was originally a play, but this version with Julie Kavner, Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik was done for TV. That cast probably dates it a bit. The story of a couple travelling behind the iron curtain with their daughter and inadvertently getting into trouble while taking pictures, forcing them to seek sanctuary in the US embassy for an extended stay, feels even more out of the past (although taking pictures anywhere can get you into trouble these days). I do like when Allen does the old married thing, and Julie Kavner is great. It does make me wish he'd do another film with Diane Keaton, though; she's the best of all his costars.
We also watched the last of the three James Dean films, East of Eden, based on the Steinbeck novel, which I haven't read. I ought to; I think this movie probably changed some things and I'm betting I'd like the book better.
I also used my birthday and Christmas money to pick up the last two Ang Lee movies, Lust Caution and Taking Woodstock. Both excellent films, but so very different from each other. Lust Caution is an NC-17 film with very graphic sex, and yet I've never seen a film where the sex was less gratuitous. There is so much going on with those two characters in those scenes, and the two actors do such marvellous work conveying what's not being spoken. I can't even imagine what it must be like as an actor to go to those places, but they both really nail it (ooh, bad choice of words. Perhaps I should go with the Olympic: they stick the landing. Better?). The movie made me acutely uncomfortable, but then it was supposed to. Good job, Ang Lee. Taking Woodstock is more lighthearted fare, starring a favorite in my family: Demtri Martin. I don't think I've seen a movie about the 60s as cynicism-free as this one. And Liev Schreiber is fabulous.
Hangover. Let's just say I'm not the target demographic for this one and let it go at that. (Adding, I've seen enough movies, TV shows and good god commercials that divide the world into slacker underachieving men and shrewish women. It misrepresents both genders, and it stopped being funny long ago, surely.) (But the baby was cute.)
District 9 I didn't like as well as Quin did. I thought the "message" was simplistic, and the movie itself way too splatter-gore. Conversely, I liked Cloverfield much more than Quin did. It was like a cooler, more thought-out The Blair Witch Project. In any case, it's nice to see more sci-fi movies being made that aren't big blockbuster popcorn flicks. Hopefully with special effects being cheaper and easier to do, we'll see more.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Given that my favorite Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix, was made into my least favorite movie, and they let that director have another go, my expectations were low. So low we didn't bother seeing this in the theater. There were still things that bothered me, and I don't think this director has any storytelling instincts at all, but the cast is top notch and make the best of it. Daniel Radcliffe in particular, playing Harry under the influence of the luck potion, was surprisingly fun. I wonder what he'll tackle after the last movie, what sorts of characters he'll play. Harry Potter is a great part, but it's still a lot of being earnest and brave and not much else.
The Transporter 3. Jason Statham, not in Crank. 'nuff said.
Finally, one Hindi movie, not really a Bollywood move: Ek Ruka Hua Faisla. It's the Indian Twelve Angry Men, and it's a very faithful retelling, just a few India-specific details thrown in for flavor. It's a great story in any language, and the actors in this, not one of which was familiar to me (and I suspect they might be more stage than film actors, they have that vibe), were all wonderful.
Alas, no song and dance numbers in that one (I said it wasn't really Bollywood). But you saw these two skating to a great Bollywood medley in the Olympics, didn't you?
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
What I did on my week's vacation
1. Had three not-really-moles removed with liquid nitrogen by a dermatologist who actually explained what these things are, why I always get them, and more importantly that they are always benign (and how to tell when I'm looking at something else). New dermatologist, he's a little bit the bomb, you know?
2. Did taxes, first year with writing income. I think without the internet and some very specifically worded Googling TurboTax would have kept me running in circles forever.
3. Reinstalled the operating system and all the software on the upstairs computer, found it still acting wonky in suspicious ways and did it all over again four days later. Man, that makes two long, long days of watching progress bars move so I can be there to click the OK button. Seems fine now, but it's starting to show its age. New computer, pretty low on the list of things I can afford to spring for at the moment, though.
4. Cleaned the house in the moving all the heavy furniture way. Including the boys' rooms. Mom goes through and pulls everything apart, digging detritus out of every nook and cranny, then they get to sort through the resulting pile in the center of the room and figure out what's going to be kept, what's going to charity, and what's just garbage.
5. I also got to watch a few more of my birthday movies (although I still have a few left to go), and I got to go out to an Indian restaurant and talk to grown ups for nearly three hours. Ah, bliss!
What I didn't do on my week's vacation:
Write. Because random notes of what I want to change don't count (even if there are pages and pages of them. Thinking and writing are related, but not the same thing).
And now it's back to work.
2. Did taxes, first year with writing income. I think without the internet and some very specifically worded Googling TurboTax would have kept me running in circles forever.
3. Reinstalled the operating system and all the software on the upstairs computer, found it still acting wonky in suspicious ways and did it all over again four days later. Man, that makes two long, long days of watching progress bars move so I can be there to click the OK button. Seems fine now, but it's starting to show its age. New computer, pretty low on the list of things I can afford to spring for at the moment, though.
4. Cleaned the house in the moving all the heavy furniture way. Including the boys' rooms. Mom goes through and pulls everything apart, digging detritus out of every nook and cranny, then they get to sort through the resulting pile in the center of the room and figure out what's going to be kept, what's going to charity, and what's just garbage.
5. I also got to watch a few more of my birthday movies (although I still have a few left to go), and I got to go out to an Indian restaurant and talk to grown ups for nearly three hours. Ah, bliss!
What I didn't do on my week's vacation:
Write. Because random notes of what I want to change don't count (even if there are pages and pages of them. Thinking and writing are related, but not the same thing).
And now it's back to work.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Books in January
Starting with the sci-fi: I read two books by John Scalzi. Well, sort of. Judge Sn Goes Golfing is really a short story done up as a chapbook with illustrations. It's a fun story and the green-based illustrations make for a handsome little book. Even cooler (and longer, although still on the short end, I'm guessing novella length) is The God Engines. Loved the premise.
I also read Destroyer of Worlds, the third in the series written by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner. Very readable. I like the puppeteers and the Pak, but the Gw'oth, little fellows that look like starfish, are seriously cool. Their entire culture is very thoroughly thought through (although again we have an entire alien species that doesn't seem to have any women. Perhaps they're meant to be asexual, neither male nor female, but they come across as male. And I don't think that's just because of the pronouns).
Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer isn't a how to write book, it's a book about how to live the writing life. I found it completely awesome, full of great information about marketing and publicity, all the things a professional writer has to do besides just write.
He also had a few pages recommending books that truly were about writing, but not on the basics, on the more advanced aspects of the craft. I've been working my way through his list and with one exception (which I shan't name) I've really enjoyed those books as well. The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, aside from some wrongheaded thinking about genre fiction which seems based on the only two genre books he's read (and they aren't even the same genre), was interesting, full of examples of the techniques being described from various novels. More and more books these days, genre or not, read too much like written down movies to me and a lot of that is the lack of subtext. I like a book that requires me as a reader to actually do something, to notice things and reach conclusions that aren't completely spelled out. Of course I like movies that do that as well...
How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ is no where near as strident as it sounds, and led me to another book I never would have found on my own (see Books in February). Having had such a tough time lately even finding time to write, the stories of other women writers struggling to do the same thing, only doing it centuries ago in a much less woman-friendly world, was particularly heartbreaking. But this book read to me more like a celebration of what women have managed to do despite it all than anything.
But even before reading Russ's book I had decided that this year rather than tackling another science fiction writer's entire catalogue as I've done in the past two years that I would make a point to read more of the "big" books by women. You know, the literary ones. I decided to start with Austen, re-reading Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before tackling all the rest which I've not read before. Mansfield Park had some wonderful observations and secondary characters (by which I mean, Ms. Austen always gives good snark), but the main character was so reactive rather than proactive, so different from Austen's other women, I found her hard to bond with. Emma, on the other hand, is perhaps my favorite Austen woman. She is more master of her own fate than the others, but she also is the one that goes through the most growth over the course of the story.
More Austen to come in February...
I also read Destroyer of Worlds, the third in the series written by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner. Very readable. I like the puppeteers and the Pak, but the Gw'oth, little fellows that look like starfish, are seriously cool. Their entire culture is very thoroughly thought through (although again we have an entire alien species that doesn't seem to have any women. Perhaps they're meant to be asexual, neither male nor female, but they come across as male. And I don't think that's just because of the pronouns).
Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer isn't a how to write book, it's a book about how to live the writing life. I found it completely awesome, full of great information about marketing and publicity, all the things a professional writer has to do besides just write.
He also had a few pages recommending books that truly were about writing, but not on the basics, on the more advanced aspects of the craft. I've been working my way through his list and with one exception (which I shan't name) I've really enjoyed those books as well. The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, aside from some wrongheaded thinking about genre fiction which seems based on the only two genre books he's read (and they aren't even the same genre), was interesting, full of examples of the techniques being described from various novels. More and more books these days, genre or not, read too much like written down movies to me and a lot of that is the lack of subtext. I like a book that requires me as a reader to actually do something, to notice things and reach conclusions that aren't completely spelled out. Of course I like movies that do that as well...
How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ is no where near as strident as it sounds, and led me to another book I never would have found on my own (see Books in February). Having had such a tough time lately even finding time to write, the stories of other women writers struggling to do the same thing, only doing it centuries ago in a much less woman-friendly world, was particularly heartbreaking. But this book read to me more like a celebration of what women have managed to do despite it all than anything.
But even before reading Russ's book I had decided that this year rather than tackling another science fiction writer's entire catalogue as I've done in the past two years that I would make a point to read more of the "big" books by women. You know, the literary ones. I decided to start with Austen, re-reading Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before tackling all the rest which I've not read before. Mansfield Park had some wonderful observations and secondary characters (by which I mean, Ms. Austen always gives good snark), but the main character was so reactive rather than proactive, so different from Austen's other women, I found her hard to bond with. Emma, on the other hand, is perhaps my favorite Austen woman. She is more master of her own fate than the others, but she also is the one that goes through the most growth over the course of the story.
More Austen to come in February...
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