Too Fond of Books

Jin and Mugen pretty much sum up my reaction to the works below, although I'm not quite as appalled as they are. :)

In Books:

Night Child & A Flash of Hex, by Jes Battis: It's a pleasure to read a series of books set in a city I know well, and Battis has a light touch with his descriptions of Vancouver. For me, mentions of the Downtown East Side and Kitsilano are more than name-dropping and his descriptions of the neighborhoods are spot on; for a reader unfamiliar with the city, the same descriptions are never labored or distracting. The concept for these books (occult CSI!) sounded cheesy at the outset, but it works well, and I like the main characters very much. Science and magic mix very, very well in these books, and it's clear that Battis has done his homework on crime scene investigation techniques. It all pays off in a very neat, exciting package. New readers should beware, though: the descriptions of the gore in these pages spare no expense. (The violence is never sexualized and the main character's reaction to it is often what I suspect mine would be, given the circumstances.) Still, the gore's not the major part of the plot, and the rest of the books are well worth the read.

Catching Fire & Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins: ( Insert your own Capslock of Spoilery Flail here and click only if you don't mind having the entire series spoiled for you. )

Spoiler-y discussion aside, I can say that I really did enjoy these books, and I do recommend them to all and sundry. They're shelved in Young Adult, but these are books for very mature young adults, and I see no reason why adults won't gain from reading these as well. I only hope now that rumors of a feature film vanish. There is no way to make this movie and do the book justice, not without an R rating, which will bar the much-sought-after kid audience. Honestly? I'm not sure I want to see it in movie form anyway.

On DVD:

Dexter, Season 4: Not since I read Graceling (by Kristin Cashore, last blogged about here) have I wanted a villain to die quite as much as I did when we watched this season. And it's a testament to all of the actors involved in the show that I cared as much about all of the characters as I did. Having said that, I knew a MAJOR SPOILER going into this season, and watching the show with that knowledge in mind certainly changed the experience. ( More, with me dancing around this spoiler as best as I can, although I make no promises... )

On reading/watching disturbing material, in general: A while back, when I was in a very depressed state, I obsessively read Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville, which is a book that I really, really love, despite its very disturbing imagery and plot. (My bargain with myself at the time was that I would read the book anywhere but in my bedroom, lest the images take root in my dreams.) When I mentioned the book to my therapist at the time, she got that "concerned therapist face" on, and suggested that perhaps I shouldn't read disturbing material when I was trying to sort out my mental turmoil. "But it's so good!" I protested. And that's what I find with the books and TV shows above: they're disturbing as all get out, but they're too damned captivating to put down. There's a thin line between escapism and fetishizing a dark mental state, and I like to think I know myself well enough to realize when I have to put a book down/turn the TV off. But there's a strange thing that I notice lately, which is my genuine interest in said dark/disturbing material. I suppose part of this is my brain wanting examples of how best to deal with bad situations so that I can cherry pick solutions and coping strategies. But another part of it involves perspective. You'd think that just looking around or watching the news would provide that: there's bad crap going on all over the world, but seen through the two-minute news bite, it's way too big to comprehend. Books and TV episodes provide me with enough depth to develop these ideas, but in a finite package, and perspective, when presented that way, is more easily digestible. My life may have scary challenges, but at least I don't have a Dark Passenger goading me into murder, or life and death choices presented to me every thirty seconds in an arena of death for the sake of a government-sponsored reality show. I couldn't articulate this my therapist at the time, but I firmly believe I'm not doing anything unhealthy by seeking these things out, then or now.

That said, my next book choice will definitely involve happy puppies and no one getting hurt. ^-^;;

My viewing experience was somewhat colored by the fact that I had an entire 20-oz. Coke around 7:00. I hadn't drunk that much caffeine and sugar in about four months, and the effect (at least, at first) was a laser-like precision focus on the show. (This is the effect that I imagine Ritalin has.) Later, though, the high wore off and I felt myself crashing in slow motion, getting cranky as yebisu9 grew increasingly dissatisfied with the overall plot of the show and feeling like I had to defend it. This lead to a sugar hangover this morning, coupled with the flat-out weirdest dreams I've had in a while. (When the Daleks started attacking the apartment next to mine that inexplicably had an ocean in it, I knew that trouble lay ahead.)

Needless to say, I'm laying off the caffeine for another five months, at the very least.

Anyway, as mentioned above, Yebisu was often unsatisfied with the entire thing, especially the ending. My thoughts were generally along the lines of "haters to the left" because I thought it was a fine ending--not as definitive in some areas, but entirely conclusive in the others that counted. ( Spoilers ahead. )

Regarding the series as a whole, I realized about halfway through last night's episode that I had no desire to watch the whole thing over again now that the story was over. Maybe in ten years or so, or when I'm ordered by a doctor to have significant bed rest time (which is hopefully never.) (And I will either watch Lost again or finally get around to reading The Stand, which one of the book group guys swears is the best thing since sliced bread.) I feel like a second time around, the continuity errors would be more glaring, certain characters more annoying than ever, etc. etc.

I also wonder what the lasting impact of this show is going to be. I pointed at the Oceanic bottled water and said that it would make for a great Comic Con freebie; Yebisu snarked that by July, people will already have forgotten it. But I suspect it's not going to fade away as quickly as that, especially since I've heard several people say that they were waiting for all DVDs to come out before they started watching (and I honestly cannot say that I blame them for this strategy at all. Much easier on the viewing nerves!) I like that there was a show on non-cable TV that proved (yet again) that mainstream, largely character-driven sci-fi, could work and, for the most part, did not jump the shark. I also liked that there was no movement to sanitize this show for younger audiences; the marketing stayed firmly in adult viewing territory. I hope that one of the legacies of this show will be the realization that fans are willing to buy into a long-term program with a rich mythology/strong storytelling and the development of similar shows down the line.

EDIT to add: I forgot to mention one of the funniest parts of the show: right as the island started to shake, San Diego experienced a small tremor, an aftershock from the Easter earthquake. It was as if the forces of TV wanted us to have extra verisimilitude in our viewing experience! ;)

What better way to celebrate International Women's Day 2010 than with the win of Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win an Oscar for outstanding directing? And as for "The Hurt Locker" winning Best Picture... well, all I have to say is: In your face, Avatar! Quality over quantity!

I really enjoyed "The Hurt Locker", which surprised me: war movies and I don't get along, and I only get a hankering for them about once every six months or so. But this movie, whether it's 100% accurate or not (and apparently there are disputes about its accuracy, which I wasn't previously aware of) held my attention from the get-go, and built up the suspense so neatly that I had to remind myself to breathe several times. But the best thing about this movie was that it wasn't only about war, it was also about its consequences: the damage to the souls of the citizens involved, the sensation of being an Occupying Other (with two academic capital O's, yes, I'm serious), and addiction. It was a beautifully made film, too; there were shots of small details that were achingly touching, like the stray feral cats wandering through the battered city landscape, or the eerily over-lit supermarket that one of the characters returns to in the U.S. It also utilized points of view in magnificent ways. At various times in the movie, I was seeing the action from the soldier's point of view, then of the Iraqi civilians' who were watching him dismantle the bombs, and then from the unknown insurgent's (or were they?). I highly recommend this movie, and I'm glad to be able to do so. It's a universal statement about the toll of violence on the human soul.

10 Movies for Best Picture is a lot... and it was hard to see them all. I ended up having seen "Precious", "District 9", "Up", "Avatar", and "The Hurt Locker". I meant to see "An Education" and "Up in the Air" but lost track of both of them before I had the chance. While it's great that more films were up there, I can't help thinking it was easier to be on top of things when I only needed to have seen five, total.

Stray observations about the Oscars, the ceremony, the fashion, etc. etc. can be found underneath the ( cut: )

My Mom and I will have our annual Friday-after-the-Oscars buying People magazine and dissecting the fashion ritual this year, too. Huzzah!

In Books:

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell: Who were the Puritans, other than the image of them I have from elementary school history class, a bunch of white people in buckled shoes with funny hats? Vowell aims to answer this in great detail and traces the Puritans' influence in modern America to great effect, both sobering and funny. Her light touch of self-deprecation and truthfulness adds to the narrative in wonderful ways, yet again affirming my suspicion that I would really love to meet her for coffee someday.

Alice in Sunderland, by Brian Talbot: OK, full disclosure: it wasn't until halfway through this book that I realized that Brian Talbot was maybe pulling a fast one on me, that maybe, just maybe, Sunderland didn't exist. And, ironically enough, it came from a part of the text where Talbot himself wonders if Sunderland is even real. At that moment, I put down the book and FINALLY read the blurb on the back where it presented the idea, from the beginning, that Sunderland might be an invented place. What a fool I felt at that moment! But then I considered the idea from the angle that Talbot had done so well with his invented history that I *had* completely fallen for it, thus proving one of book's theses: History is stories built upon stories and whether they're true or not, some of them take on a life of their own and spring up into history, unbidden, like weeds. Then I still felt a little stupid, but not as much as before.

Anyway, Alice in Sunderland is a dense and beautiful text and highly worth a look from anyone with an interest in history, fantasy, fairy tales, military history, Alice in Wonderland and its author, comic narrative, and the evolution of British society. (One Talbot's strongest points is when he makes a stirring anti-racist, pro-immigration statement, citing right-wing parties in Britain who self-admittedly twist the "too many immigrants" myth into fodder for their racist grandstanding.) Over the course of the book, Talbot examines every wrinkle of the Alice story and the popular myth that surrounds it; the way stories have shaped history, both world and local, and the way that being a storyteller influences his own view of the world. This was a slow read, but it was a spectacular and thought-provoking one that I'm sure I'll be chewing over for weeks and months to come. (I.e., the best kind.)

Honestly, if Talbot, Vowell, and Kate Beaton would get together and write about history, they would be my OT3 of history-related AWESOME.

In Movies:

Food, Inc.: I really wanted to like this film, but I got bogged down in annoyance over the poor presentation of the argument and over-reliance on emotional appeals rather than presentation of logical evidence of why the factory/food industrial complex is harming America. There's a lot of stuff to get angry about in this story (the sequence with Monsanto and its patented soybeans is one of the most depressing and wrong applications of law I've ever seen) but the movie ends up being spread a little thin in places. I wish the editors of the film could have picked and chosen a little better and focused on one or two stories. Still, an important film, and one I'm glad I saw.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: MST3K provided the two quotations I need to summarize this movie (or the half of it we watched before we got bored and wandered off to watch The Daily Show.)

On Bill Nighy's "acting" in this production: "C'mon, skull, pop out of my skin!" (I mean, dude, seriously. He had these weirdo, almost glow-in-the-dark contacts, and I know he was going for Mysterious!Intense!Vampire, but damned if he didn't look like he was trying to learn pyrokinesis from a correspondence course.)

On the central conflict and love story: "Y'know what makes this movie so exciting? The fact that we care about the characters." (There was nothing to care about in this movie, except possibly some special effects. However, even those got boring after a while.)

The Men Who Stare at Goats: So preposterous that it must be true, but maybe it isn't? I don't know. I've read a lot of unkind reviews of this movie (the chief accusation has been that it's "smug") and I'm not sure what the reviewers were expecting when they went in. Did they want an insightful analysis of modern military morale? Or maybe some logic? Given that the final revelation of this story has to do with a mass orgy of LSD-inspired crazyness at a secret para-military base somewhere in Iraq, I don't think you're going to get either one of those two. But it was so crazy that it was tremendously entertaining and Clooney and MacGregor are awfully easy on the eyes. There are some very funny running jokes about Jedi warriors. And there's the world's cutest kitten and puppy (granted, their screen time is comparatively short). It was not a waste of time, and I did not find it particularly smug. Preposterous, yes. Worst movie of the year? By no means.

With "Twilight" coming put this week, I've been working to resist the lure of the books and the pallid, pouting stars of the movie. Your brain cells!, they alternately hiss and purr, Feed us with them! Our sparkles demand power, attention, and sweet, sweet BRAAAAINNNSSS! I'm over-saturated with images of apples in hands, chess pieces, flowing pieces of red cloth, and high cheekbones. I feel a little like Ulysses instructing his men to tie him to the mast and row him past the sirens as I think of the inevitable entertainment that these books might bring me. But I haven't read them, and don't plan to. How, exactly, have I managed to keep my brains cells, my readerly dignity, and my sanity?

By watching another vampire romance movie: Let the Right One In, a Swedish horror/real life movie, that truly moved and entertained me, and gave me hope that there's non-cliched (and non-sparkly) life left in the vampire movie genre. (Check out the trailer here, at Apple. There are also a lot of fast-disappearing clips on Youtube, some with subtitles and some without.) The plot of the film is as simple as it gets: Boy meets girl (vampire). (Girl) Vampire meets boy. Boy, who reads a lot, quickly realizes that girl is, in fact, a vampire, but cannot bring himself to leave her. Vampire saves Boy, but not entirely in the way you might expect. The beauty of this film comes from the tremendous acting skills of the two lead characters, the disquietingly simple special effects and judicious use of make-up, the eerily silent setting of the Swedish winter, and the loving approach the filmmakers have to everyday life (at one point, the main character and his mother have a tooth-brushing contest, and it's the sweetest darn thing I've ever seen.) This is a vampire attempting to live life, or as close as she will get to it, since she's stuck at 12 years old forever. And while it's not clear at first why she might want to live life, it becomes more and more clear as the story goes on and her emotional investment in the main character begins to get the better of her. At one point, she asks him if she would love him if she were not a girl, and naively he answers 'yes', not realizing that the unspoken question she's asking him is, would you still love me if I were a monster? The answer, not surprisingly, is that she's not as much of a monster as humans are, and that he does love her. How this unfolds, however, is surprising and beautiful.

This film shows, in no uncertain terms, what happens to vampire who enter a human space without permission. This sequence was hard to watch, but utterly and completely fascinating. It was the sort of gritty scare that I sometimes wish "Buffy" had had more of. Fairy tale rules start sounding arbitrary and stupid when they're used as plot devices; when you see that there are rules for a reason, that's when the story heats up.

This is not a "normal" horror movie, and the pacing is very different from most Hollywood blockbusters. But the investment pays off in so many ways--not the least of which is watching a vampire girl who kick Edward Cullen's sparkly ass seven ways from Sunday finding her place in the world. This is highly recommended, to horror fans and non-horror fans alike.