Posted in January 2011 …

Jan 30 2011
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the resolution project

The Resolution Project Book Seven: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970)

What can I say about this book, really? It was very short, and mostly about stuff I couldn’t really relate to much. Definitely a lot more cheerful than the last book I read, that’s for sure (American Pastoral, for those of you keeping track at home).

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret cover

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

It has actually taken far more time for me to figure out what to say about this book than it took to read it, which only took an hour and a half. Margaret is an almost-twelve year old girl who moves from New York City to the bucolic New Jersey suburbs. While she misses her grandma who remains in town and can only see her occasionally, Margaret makes a bunch of new friends, forms a club, interacts with boys and starts to notice changes in her body, all over the course of Grade Six. Like I said, this book is definitely not aimed at me, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy reading it.

Margaret’s biggest character trait is that she talks to God on a regular basis, asking his advice about things that occur in her life. She undertakes a school project over the year to try and see if she likes the Jewish approach to worship, or the Christian way, as her parents never imposed any specific dogma on her growing up (they were both sort of refugees from either side, as the mother’s Catholic family seems to have sort of disowned her for eloping and marrying a Jewish guy). There is a frankness about different approaches to religion that I didn’t think I’d see from a book published in 1970, but again, what do I know really. I can’t say I’m any great scholar when it comes to YA fiction in the broader sense, much less those books designed specifically for girls anyway, so my base of knowledge is not quite there to see if this is indeed out of the ordinary for the time period.

While the portrayal of girls at that age seems pretty spot on, with the caveat that it’s been twelve years since I was the same age, the boys in the book are presented as being inscrutable, primal forces that completely confound girl culture at every turn. The girls in Margaret’s club (the PTSs, or Pre-Teen Sensations) pass around “boy books” at their meetings, keeping a running tally of which boys they like in the class. Margaret’s afraid to put the one she actually likes in there though, as he’s a friend of Nancy’s dickweed older brother, so she follows along with the rest of them and puts the prettiest boy in the class at the top of the heap every time. The handsome guy, Philip, turns out to be kind of a douche, though.

A lot of the other parts of the book are about these young girls beginning to become young women. This was handled pretty tastefully, I found, and some parts were actually pretty funny; my favorite part of the whole book was when the girls had to skip gym class and watch a video about the changes in their bodies, which Margaret figures out pretty quickly to be more of a commercial for a specific line of feminine hygiene products being shilled for by a visiting “authority” – she vows to never buy anything by that company. I also liked how funny the kids thought it was that the grownups were telling them all this stuff they already “knew”, which of course I remember feeling as well (and, obviously, they don’t really know everything, they just think they do).

So yeah, probably the perfect book for a young girl growing up, and for parents of a young girl who need to remember what it was like at that age. Since I fall into neither of those categories I can’t say I absolutely loved it or anything, but I can see that it’s probably the best of its type. Here’s what Grossman has to say about the book, I must admit that I really had no previous knowledge of teen girl literature from the era to base my reading of the book on, so some of the revolutionariness he remarks on may not have rubbed off on me.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1951936_1952095,00.html

The List

1. The Adventures of Augie March

2. All the King’s Men

3. American Pastoral

4. An American Tragedy

5. Animal Farm

6. Appointment in Samarra

7. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Total Pages read: 1917 pp

Next up on the Resolution Project: Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant (1957). Still waiting on the Dreiser book at number 4, so I’m going to forge on ahead.

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Jan 27 2011
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The Resolution Project Book Three: American Pastoral (1997)

“Of old. Stories of old. There were no longer stories of old. There was nothing. There was a mattress, discolored and waterlogged, like a cartoon strip drunk slumped against a pole. The pole still held up a sign telling you what corner you were on. And that’s all there was.” (p. 236)

American Pastoral cover

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth

Phew, what a relief to be done this book. While it is undeniably brilliant, it is a very difficult read, owing to the depths of despair and inhumanity that it delves into on a regular basis, with the above quotation being one of my favorite descriptions of how bad things can get.

Seymour “Swede” Levov is a man who ends up getting eaten up by history. An athletic star nigh-worshiped by his hero-seeking community in a 1940s New Jersey reeling from the Second World War, the Swede finds out just how far he can fall from grace by the end of the book’s core narrative in the 1970s. This is due to his daughter Merry, who becomes a violent radical in the SDS/Weathermen mold during the Vietnam War, and becomes involved with a bombing that irrevocably changes the life of her family, allowing for the layers of artifice that held the Swede’s American “pastoral” ideal life to start sloughing off like so many layers of decaying wallpaper in a shitty apartment.

This novel presents, to me, the greatest argument ever in favor of corporal punishment for disciplining children that has ever existed. Yes, I know this is nowhere near the real point of the book, but to me, the entire problem could have been solved with a few swats on the ass of Merry Levov, the world’s most indulged terrorist. I spent most of the book hoping, almost pleading with the Swede to finally just snap and beat the shit out of some of the people who were ruining his life, but he never indulged me. His sin is that he only ever wanted everyone else to be happy. He was so happy himself early on, after getting back from a hitch in the Army and marrying Miss New Jersey, that he could not even fathom the idea that the other people around him were, for the most part, miserable sacks of neuroses and yearning.

I must say though, for as depressing and frustrating as I found the Swede’s inability to recognize how much he was truly being screwed over, and his reluctance to do anything about it, American Pastoral taught me a lot. For one thing, I certainly know a lot more about how gloves were made over the first half of the last century, far more than I really needed to know, but still. Also, Roth definitely helped me get into the mindset of how a radical ideologue was constructed during this era. This is a period in history I find very interesting; I wrote what I feel was my best paper in university about the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, and the respective reactions of the FBI to them both. Note of course that Merry was not actually old enough to be an original member of the Weathermen; she instead takes their philosophy and runs with it let’s say. The book doesn’t go into much detail about the groups she gets tangled up with, but other SDS offshoots are mentioned.

Weather Underground logo

Roth doesn’t really spell out what drove Merry to start chucking bombs around, at least that I saw, but he does lay out a series of social pressures put upon her, that could in turn perhaps drive her to radical behaviour: being precociously smart at a young age, having something that marks you out as different to your peers (in this case a stutter), having parents who either dote on you or do not attempt to sympathize with you at all, etc. Where it’s fairly easy to see where the Black Panthers were coming from, what with the centuries of oppression and all, I’ve always had a little difficult of a time seeing how a member of the Weather Underground could be forged. I always saw them as dilettante-y, but this book at least gave some background into how at least one of them could have gotten to that point.

The structure of the novel is interesting too. I didn’t know until after reading it that it technically falls into Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman series of novels, because I found him to be of limited use to the narrative. Zuckerman, a writer, narrates in the first part of the book, “Paradise Remembered”, where among other things he attends his 50th high school reunion and shows us how he and the Swede’s other high school classmates saw him from the outside. Later on he eats dinner with the Swede, who wants him to eulogize his father, Lou Levov, with a book. Zuckerman spends most of this sequence being bored by the Swede’s pleasant descriptions of his life and believing that it is as bland as it appears. Most if not all of the commentators I’ve read just now indicate that the second and third parts of the novel, “The Fall” and “Paradise Lost” are Zuckerman’s  retelling of the Swede’s downfall. How Zuckerman finds out all this stuff, I’m not too sure, he has a brief conversation with the Swede’s brother but that’s it. I guess he’s just an amazing writer or something.

Apparently this book is being made into a movie for 2012. There are definitely going to be some things taken out so as to not get an NC-17. And Hollywood? Paul Bettany is not the Swede. Jon Hamm with bleached hair is the Swede.

“He’d had it backwards. He had made his fantasy and Merry had unmade it for him. It was not the specific war that she’d had in mind, but it was a war, nonetheless, that she brought home to America – home into her very own house.” (p. 418)

The List

1. The Adventures of Augie March

2. All the King’s Men

3. American Pastoral

4. An American Tragedy

5. Animal Farm

6. Appointment in Samarra

Total Pages read: 1768 pp

Next up on the Resolution Project: Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (1970)

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Jan 20 2011
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The Resolution Project Book Six: Appointment in Samarra (1934)

“What was there about Reilly that caused him to say to himself: ‘If he starts on more of those moth-eaten stories I’ll throw this drink in his face.’” – Julian English

So, as expected, my scheme to read all of the books in alphabetical order has become a dismal failure, owing to the vagaries of the Edmonton Public Library’s holds system, which seems to favour people who were there first, for whatever reason. Still, I plan to keep the convention of naming these entries according to their placement on the Time Magazine list, as it will make searching for books I’ve read previously a lot easier to do this way. Oh, and for the record, the fifth book on the list, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, is a skip book for me, as I read it in high school. I wouldn’t mind going back to it though, perhaps after my task is through.

Cover for Appointment in Samara, by John O'Hara

Appointment in Samarra, by John O’Hara

In the fictional city of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, Julian English is a moderately successful Cadillac dealer, a status owing more to his distinguished parentage more than any sort of merit he himself possesses. English and his wife Caroline are one of the main power couples in their circle of the hardscrabble (for poor people) coal-mining town, part of an elite group of country club-frequenting upper class folk for whom reputation is absolutely everything. With the aforementioned thought briefly passing through the head of Julian English, though, the fate of the young man is set in stone with everything coming to a head in three days over a post-Christmas weekend. After he throws his drink at nouveau-riche douchebag Harry Reilly, the clock starts ticking for English’s own meeting with death (the title refers to a folk tale about a man who freaks out after meeting the embodiment of Death in a marketplace, then runs to Samarra, not knowing that Death was actually planning to meet him there as well).

For me, the real draw of this novel, other than its short length, was how it describes the lives and petty squabbles of upper-class country club types in 1930s America. Unlike Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, whose eponymous hero also frequented such places when he was in the company of a well-heeled dame (but never really set the stage for you much), O’Hara definitely brings you into the club lifestyle, which on the one hand sounds absolutely decadent to me, while at the same time incredibly boring. Drinking bootlegged scotch and rye (or in some cases straight-up bathtub gin, heh) all day while passing time with your cronies at the club sounds fairly entertaining to me, especially when you describe some of the alternatives to this lifestyle with passages like this one, from the mind of low-level mafioso Al Grecco:

“But that was not possible here, at the Stage Coach. It was a woman’s place. All dance places. night clubs, road houses, stores, churches, and even whorehouses – all were women’s places. And probably the worst kind of woman’s place was a place like this, where men put on monkey suits and cut their necks with stiff collars and got drunk without the simple fun of getting drunk but with the presence of women to louse things up.” (p. 144)

The descriptions of the minutiae of dancing, though, sounded both boring and exasperating to me (not to read about, but if you actually had to do this sort of thing on a regular basis, of course). It’s interesting on a sociological level to see how stag lines worked, and how many dances you should have with married women and unmarried ones, but it just seemed like a lot of work when everyone hates each other anyway. While I’ve never really enjoyed frequenting nightclubs on a regular basis in our time, there’s something to be said for drunkenly groping people on the dance floor rather than being all civilized about it. It is interesting to see the 1930s societal attitude towards dating though, which hinges on having many dates with different people in order to increase your prospects, which our STI-fearing culture has made a relic of the past and Archie Comics.

If I had to describe the relationship between the main couple of the book, in addition to their attitudes toward the scene occurring around them, the closest I can come up with would be Revolutionary Road, the movie of which definitely made me think twice about ever getting married. I haven’t read the book, it’s on the list though, so I anticipate I’ll encounter it around October or so.

Here’s what Lacayo says about this book: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1951936_1952091,00.html

“‘Don’t go,’ he said. He wanted to call her all kinds of bitches.’” Julian English, upon his being rebuffed by a gossip columnist. Possibly one of the greatest lines ever written.

The List

1. The Adventures of Augie March

2. All the King’s Men

3. American Pastoral

4. An American Tragedy

5. Animal Farm

6. Appointment in Samarra

Total Pages read: 1345 pp

Next up on the Resolution Project: Philip Roth’s American Pastoral (1997), for real this time.

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Jan 17 2011
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Pretty Ladies, Only Partially Clothed

My friend C. came by the store today and kept me entertained as it was an incredibly slow day. She wanted to buy an Olivia Bettie Page book I was supposed to have stashed away for her, but it looks like it had been sold in the interim, so we looked through some other art books. The one she ended up enjoying the most is the new Juxtapoz book, Juxtapoz Erotica.

Juxtapoz Erotica Cover

Cover to Juxtapoz Erotica, "Much Ado About Nothing" by Mimi S.

The two artists I enjoyed the most in the book (in addition to Tara McPherson, of course), were Mimi S., who provided the sweet cover picture, and Audrey Kawasaki, who does the most amazing portraits on to pieces of wood. Mimi S. proved slightly difficult for me to to track down online, but here’s a bio from her gallery in Berlin, Strychnin:

“Mimi S. was born in Berlin in 1974. In her digital paintings, she mostly draws girls with a special attitude and allure, an obstinate personality and a strange beauty. The defiant and moody expression on their faces often reminds her of female members or ancestors of her own family. Although she loves to tell emotional stories of the dark side of female nature, it always has to be accompanied by a portion of evil humour and sarcasm, which is mostly hidden in the detail.” Source.

There’s also a really sweet tiki picture in the book, found here at http://www.iheartberlin.de/?s=strychnin. It looks like they had a Tiki Christmas party at their gallery, which sounds amazing, click through the picture to find some more stuff.

"The Final Cut", by Mimi S.

"The Final Cut", by Mimi S.

Audrey Kawasaki proves much easier to find online, her website’s really nice: http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/index.php. Here’s one of my favorites.

"Karasu no Jyou" からすの女王 the bird queen

"Karasu no Jyou" The Bird Queen, by Audrey Kawasaki

Here’s another one I really liked:

Daydream, by Audrey Kawasaki

Daydream, by Audrey Kawasaki

I get a strong James Jean impression from Kawasaki’s work, it must be the soft watercolours? I’m sure someone more versed in the ways of artistic expression could help me out with that. Oh, if only I had a few thousand dollars to spend on these lovely pieces…

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Jan 16 2011
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The Resolution Project Book One: The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

“I always believed that for what I wanted there wasn’t much hope if you had to be a specialist, like a doctor or other expert. If so, as an expert, you’d be dealing with other experts. You wouldn’t care for amateurs, for experts are like that about amateurs. And besides specialization means difficulty, or what’s there to be a specialist about?” – Augie March

So here’s the first book on the list completed. This list is going to be jumbled as all hell, I think, as there are a lot of holds on the books I need to read. Oh well. This book took much longer to read than the last one, owing perhaps to its sheer density.

The Adventures of Augie March cover

The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow

Augie March comes from a single-mother household in Chicago, and comes of age in the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. Along the way he falls in and out of money, jobs, clothes and the hearts of many women. Eventually he leaves Chicago and his family behind, first for Mexico on a wild scheme to train an eagle to hunt giant iguanas, then to Europe to take part in the Second World War.

I had some difficult times reading this entry on the list, mostly at the beginning of the book. Bellow is lavish in his descriptions of Augie’s friends, family, their families, where they live, what the weather was like, what smells there were, etc. I tried to follow along and remember all of this stuff, until I realized that none of it was that important, serving instead to set the themes of the novel in place, those being (to me anyways) transience, new love affairs and a struggle with the place of money in the world. Unlike some other commentators I quite liked Augie as a main character (IAmTheBookie on youtube has some very erudite and well thought out comments towards this end here), he’s if anything unbearably earnest, a quality which leads him to be semi-adopted by seemingly everyone he meets. You can almost tell eventually when someone is first described whether they’ll become a teacher or lover to Augie, culminating in the hilarious circumstance of Augie being lectured to about morality and science in a lifeboat by the only other survivor of his ship’s destruction.

So while some people might think of all this mentor-ship as a thinly-veiled way for Bellow to impart ideas about society and the fragility of human existence in the minds of his readers, it’s also a source of comedy as Augie very rarely listens to what they’re saying and stumbles into new ways of life every chapter.

I’m actually really glad that the publication date on this book was 1953, rather than 1943 or even 1933. The distance afforded by Augie March‘s being written long after the Great Depression does two things: 1. it allows for the “mature” Augie, who is full of quotations, allusions and historical facts (mostly gleaned from his stint as a book thief for university students, who spent most of the time reading the stuff he stole rather than selling it) to comment on his past in a way that is pretty funny and knowing (while sidestepping the fact that he’s learned almost nothing since), and 2. It allows for Bellow to use the common vernacular, sprinkling “fucks” and “cunts” around in a way that I feel like people would have talked in the Thirties (because they’ve always talked that way), but few books would have been allowed to print at the time.

This book is often touted as the return of Dickensian richness to the American novel (so sez Lacayo on the Time list, anyway), which was really good for me because I’ve never really enjoyed reading Dickens on his own. With the richness and depth of allusion and description in Dickens’ work, I always felt like I was reading the footnotes more often than the actual text, but in Bellow’s book, I got most of the allusions and was never really confused by antique language or anything. My copy of the book was also pretty sparse when it came to notation, stuffing it all at the back, and that was mostly explaining things in other languages, most of which I knew or could at least glean a meaning from the text.

To continue my sad allusions of classic novels to modern pop culture (as seen in my earlier post on All the King’s Men), if I were to describe the character of Augie March to someone prospectively looking at reading the book (because, rest assured, Augie and maybe one or two others are the only deeply detailed characters in the piece), I’d compare him most to Don Draper on Mad Men. Both are inventive, attractive characters who keep making the same mistakes over and over, mainly wanting to sleep with women but never commit to them. Both men are drawn to very strong women who would easily make their lives better, but they can never reconcile themselves to that fact. Both are outraged when a woman brings up lovers and affairs from their past, obviously forgetting that they are more than culpable for the same offence. Arrested development is the adjective I’d bring to bear on both of them.

I’m going to be meeting up with Bellow again in a few months when I get to reading his Herzog (1964), and I’ve got to say I am looking forward to it.

“To tell the truth, I’m good and tired of all these big personalities, destiny molders, and heavy-water brains, Machiavellis and wizard evildoers, big-wheels and imposers-upon, absolutists.” Augie March. You and me both, pal.

The List:

1. The Adventures of Augie March

2. All the King’s Men

Total Pages read: 1076 pp

Next up on the Resolution Project: Philip Roth’s American Pastoral (1997)

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Jan 07 2011
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The Resolution Project Book Two: All the King’s Men (1946)

“Gimme that meat ax!” – Governor Willie Stark

Yeah, you read that correctly, the first book I read for this project was actually the second one on the list. My library took it’s time finding both the number one book (Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March), but got this one to me right away. So it goes. Aside from having to forfeit the competition altogether by not following the rules to the letter (just kidding), I quite enjoyed this book, tearing through it in about three days.

All the King's Men Cover

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

The story is about a former history PhD student turned hard-bitten 1930s newspaperman named Jack Burden. When he is tasked with reporting on county treasurer turned gubernatorial candidate Willie Stark, he finds out that not only is history far more tied to the present than we realize, it can actually reach out and bite you if you root around in it too long. Burden joins Stark on the campaign trail, eventually becoming one of his brightest cronies once he reaches the Governor’s Mansion.

Apparently Warren himself never thought of it as a political novel, saying as much in his introduction to the Modern Library edition, and I’m inclined to believe him. While for most of the book Burden acts as a sort of bagman/blackmailer for the Stark Administration (Stark is referred to either as the friendly “Willie” by his constituents, who see him as just an ol’ country boy made good, or “The Boss” by those who toil beneath him and recognize his capacity for great rage), the real meat of the story is not found in back-room bargains and stump speeches; it is actually about Burden realizing just how connected everything in his world really is, and his attempts to first back away from this fact, then reconcile himself with it. Burden is a man drowning in the past; he puts off his PhD dissertation on a distant ancestor named Cass Mastern indefinitely and becomes a reporter after discovering his research subject’s great sins act as a mirror for his own.

The “Cass Mastern” section of the novel initially read to me as almost like Warren was throwing a short story he’d written before into the mix in a sort of metatextual exercise. Boy was I ever wrong, that part was basically the groundwork for the entire second half of the piece, which devolves into a sort of Southern Gothic Grand Guignol. I was struck many times throughout the narrative as to how completely unsuited this fantastic novel would be to Hollywood, but apparently I was only half right, as the 1949 feature film did very well, while the 2006 re-imagining didn’t do as well. I’d actually really like to watch both versions now, but the movie watching this year is to primarily be undertaken by my better half. Oh well, into the book of movies you go.

All the King's Men (1949) poster All the King's Men (2006) poster

Actually, speaking of movies, one film that this book really did remind me of was the Coen Brothers’ 1990 film Miller’s Crossing. Jack Burden’s initial aloof attitude towards the people around him really reminded me of Tom Reagan (played by Gabriel Byrne), the consigliere to two Irish mobs in a 1930s city. Both men have a difficult relationship with their bosses, and are forced to dig around in the muck of history to try and cover their employers’ asses, uncovering things that should have stayed down there. I’m also sure there’s a little bit of Willie Stark in any portrayal of a Southern populist-type politico since the book’s publication, be they Southern Democrat like in the Depression era, or staunch Republicans in modern times. The West Wing, anyone? More than anything, though, All the King’s Men would have its closest ressemblance to The Wire, which also teaches us how interconnected our world is when it really doesn’t look that way all the time.

I don’t have too much left to say about the novel, if you’ve noticed I’ve basically been writing this blog “automatically”, in a sort of stream of consciousness style. I really wanted to get all this down before I forgot anything, as there’s a whole bunch more books I have to read ahead of me this year. Maybe I’ll come back to All the King’s Men in the future, when I have more time to think about it. Anyway, I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a good book.

Here’s what Time magazine had to say about it: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1951793_1951936_1952076,00.html

The List

1. The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

2. All the King’s Men (1946)

Total Pages Read so far: 464 pp

Next on the Resolution Project: Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March (1953)!

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Jan 06 2011
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Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2010: The Rundown

Movie theatre picture

And we’re back. This is the fourth year in a row I’ve made a list of the movies I watched, so I’ve actually got data to compare this to by this point. Here’s a stats-plosion!

The list in its entirety:

1. Inception

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

3. Toy Story 3

4. The Social Network

5. True Grit

6. Black Swan

7. Shutter Island

8. Hot Tub Time Machine

9. Mother

10. House (Hausu)

11. Machete

12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

13. Iron Man 2

14. Splice

15. The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights

16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One

17. Kick-Ass

18. The Girl Who Played With Fire

19. Get Him to the Greek

20. Let Me In

21. Predators

22. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

23. The Town

24. Tron Legacy

25. Best Worst Movie

26. The Losers

27. Repo Men

28. The A-Team

29. How to Train Your Dragon

30. Pirahna 3D

31. I’m Still Here

32. Red

33. The Crazies

34. The Last Airbender

35. Bitch Slap

36. The Expendables

37. Macgruber

- Movie attendance by me was up about 10% from 2009. I hope this trend continues, but with better movies (not likely, we just got tickets to the new Vince Vaughn/Kevin James opus in, if that’s any indication).

- A little under 60% of the movies I saw for free, mostly from studio pre-screenings but also from my friends at theatres throughout the city being really cool.

- Favorite theatres: Metro Cinema, followed by Empire City Centre, Garneau and Princess I/II.

Things I didn’t get a chance to see this year and would still like to at some point:

Mesrine

Mesrine Killer Instinct

The American

Tamara Drewe

Jackass 3D

Casino Jack and the United States of Money

Winter’s Bone

The Killer Inside Me

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel

Middle Men

Carlos

Carlos poster

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Jan 06 2011
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film, sitting in the dark with strangers 2010

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2010: Part Four

At long(ish) last, the top 10 movies I saw in 2010! WARNING SPOILERS.

Hausu poster

10. Hausu (House) (saw at the Metro): This is probably the most obscure movie I saw this year, but I would recommend it to you instantly. If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese horror films like Tokyo Gore Police or The Machine Girl are so weird, I’d list off Hausu as potentially a cult classic/forerunner for that sort of genre. While it isn’t as, well, gory, as its successors, I found that Hausu had a similar approach to body horror to them, a sort of familiarity, I suppose, with dismemberment and the contorted human body. Add this to the fact that it’s completely meta and weird and kind of soap-opera-y and what you have is something definitely worth seeing.

Mother poster

9. Mother (saw at the Metro): Here’s another fantastic Asian import that takes a few genres and blends them into a creamy whole, this time combining domestic melodrama, crime and comedy. I have not seen The Host, director Joon-ho Bong’s take on the giant monster movie, but I would like to sometime in the future if it’s anywhere near as good as this old lady mystery.

Hot Tub Time Machine poster

8. Hot Tub Time Machine (saw for free from work): The farther I go up this list, the harder it is for me to think of justifications for why I liked movies, but this one might need a little bit. This was probably the funniest movie I saw all year; a year that, looking back, seemed to be all about drama, horror, action and movies about sad old men reliving their glory days (that would be The Expendables, if you’re keeping track). Why did I like this one better than, say Get Him to the Greek? Well, I felt this one was a lot less meandering and self-aware. I also really enjoyed the bit parts played by Chevy Chase and especially Crispin Glover. Plus it had at least one naked girl in it, which definitely bumps it up a notch.

Shutter Island imdb

7. Shutter Island (rented, but it still came out in 2010 so whatever): You know who had a good year? Leonardo DiCaprio. I was somewhat reticent to go see this one when it came out in theatres (which is stupid, I know, not least for the fact that I’ve really enjoyed every Scorsese movie I’ve ever seen), so I rented it from the Movie Studio. I think I was put off by the trailers, come to think of it, which to me marketed the film as having a very easy to solve mystery. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy mysteries, but they have to be pretty well put together for me to not just sit there and pick them apart (I’m also more of a fan of the Raymond Chandler school of mystery solving, i.e. just shaking people down for clues). This movie, however, was all about the ride, the ending was more of a foregone conclusion. It’s like watching Penn and Teller dissect a magic trick on stage, briefly letting you behind the veil; and instead of attempting to puzzle you narratively, letting you revel in the way the trick is put together.

Black Swan poster

6. Black Swan (paid to see): Do yourself a favor, go see this if you haven’t. Lots of other people online will expound upon how good this movie is, but I will say this: I felt like I learned more about ballet, and more than that, I really cared about it. Also, if that didn’t convince you, this is also the scariest movie of the entire year. Believe it.

True Grit poster

5. True Grit (paid to see): A better display of badassery you will not get in this decade. And, what a striking and cool-looking poster as well, although the best actor in the movie’s not on there. No, not the guy in the bear suit, it’s Hailee Steinfeld, but I’m sure she will have many years of headlining films to look forward to in her future. (I’m really running out of stuff to say on the really good movies here, aren’t I?)

4. The Social Network (saw for free from work): You all know this movie’s the tits, so let’s talk about security at pre-screenings instead. Usually, it’s not too bad, for example at MacGruber, I was afraid they were going to search E’s bag (and find the booze hidden within), but we got there a little late and no one cared. It was great, the lack of security, I mean. The movie itself was utter garbage. They also occasionally watch the crowd with an infrared camcorder to see if anyone is trying to make a movie of their own during the screening. Again, this too happened at MacGruber, so I was a little paranoid about pouring schnapps into my comically large movie cup, but again they didn’t care because come on. MacGruber. Anyway, there is a point to this story, and it concerns the screening of The Social Network. At this screening, instead of just telling us to turn our phones off, they made us check anything electronic at the door, wrapping phones and cameras up in brown paper bags. It was kind of ridiculous, but possibly prudent in regards to this tech-heavy film. I think maybe the studio was really worried about social networks picking up negative early reviews on the “facebook movie.” Thus ends today’s “First World Problems” segment.

Toy Story 3 imdb

3. Toy Story 3: (saw twice, in two countries, paid each time): If Pixar is ever to win a Best Picture, it’ll probably be for this one, even though I feel that the award would be more for Wall-E. The same thing happened with Scorsese’s The Departed winning when it really should have been The Aviator. There’s scenes in this film that still haunt me, and for your information, yeah, I cried a little, fuck you. The part in the incinerator, where the toys accept their fate, that shit would be unthinkably dark in a live-action film, much less something ostensibly designed for children. I’m reading Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men right now (for the Resolution Project), and while I know the Southern Demagogue Willie Stark in the novel is supposed to evoke Huey “The Kingfish” Long, in my mind at least, he speaks in the sweet dulcet tones of Ned Beatty, aka Lotso Huggin’ Bear. Not too sure what that says about me, but whatever. Toy Story 3 is one of the most sophisticated entertainments (and biggest heartbreakers) you could inflict on your friends and family in 2010.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World poster

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (saw for free, then paid to see again): I was really torn between this film and the number one on this list. I eventually stuck it at number 2 due to the fact that I knew this movie was going to be great, whereas the number one was more of a crapshoot. If you were one of the (obviously) many who chose to skip this one because of some sort of “anti-hipster” d-bag bias, you definitely missed out, and will probably tell your kids you saw it on opening night once you realize your mistake. Actually, I do have a theory about this, I think this is definitely a young people’s movie and it’s actually that what scared people away. The depth of allusion and metaphor in Scott Pilgrim would definitely prove challenging if you didn’t have the requisite background at Bruise-Thumb Academy, I suppose.

Inception poster

1. Inception (paid to see twice, in two different countries): In retrospect, this one had to be number one. It was, as Film-Crit Hulk says, a real game-changer.

And that’s all for this year, everyone! I’ll be back soon with some data I’ve accrued from my lists over the years, though, and we’ll have a Resolution Project post done soon and also perhaps some D&D stuff too. Seeya!

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Jan 03 2011
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film, sitting in the dark with strangers 2010

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2010: Part Three

Here’s numbers 20-11 on my list for last year. As usual the rules I laid out before still apply. SPOILER WARNINGS for crybabies are still in effect.

Let Me In poster

20. Let Me In (saw for free from work): It’s been a little while now since I saw this film, and thinking back I did still enjoy it. I don’t know how much merit there is in comparing it to Let the Right One In, the Swedish original, as they both do a pretty good job within the accepted film language of their home country. The original is a bit slower-paced, the remake plays around with time a bit more, but they both do an acceptable job with the subject material. I will say the CGI speedy-vampire stuff was a little lame, but some other scenes more than make up for that. The scene that salon.com has selected from this film for their “scene of the year” was also one of my favorites (you can see their play-by-play analysis on it here: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/12/31/scenes_2010_let_me_in, one thing they do not mention very much is how well the music on the radio works, too.

Get Him to the Greek poster

19. Get Him to the Greek (paid to see): While it wasn’t as good as Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which felt so raw and real to me, it could have been a real story re-interpreted for all I know), Get Him to the Greek was pretty funny in its own right. All the stuff with Puff Daddy was pretty great, and Colm Meaney played a pretty douchey father, a far cry from the Miles O’Brien I know and love. Can’t really think of anything else to say, the threesome was pretty funny as well.

The Girl Who Played with Fire poster

18. The Girl Who Played with Fire (saw at the Princess): This was my favorite of the three books, but only my second favorite of the movies. Probably due to the fact that the novel had more time to develop the new characters who join the Millennium team, where the film feels like it takes place maybe a week after the first movie. I also liked the scenes in the book where Lisbeth flits around the Caribbean using Wennerstrom’s ill gotten gains, but I completely understand why that was excised. What is it about Sweden and the girl-revenge genre? Does it have something to do with Pippi Longstocking? On that topic, what North American children’s book character will Daniel Craig’s character be named after in the remake, maybe Encyclopedia Brown or something like that?

Kick-Ass poster

17. Kick-Ass (paid to see): Full disclosure: I don’t really care for much for Mark Millar’s output. Wanted was only okay (I still wish the movie version would have gone with the kid as being a descendant of a Deadshot-type character and heir to a world of supervillainy rather than just ripping off Assassin’s Creed as they did, but getting rid of the idea of having Eminem be the main character was a good idea), I outright despised Civil War, and the only one I’ve really enjoyed so far was Marvel 1985. This being said, I ended up really enjoying Kick-Ass the Movie. I really liked the way the bad guy planned on revealing Kick-Ass and Big Daddy’s identities online, that was pretty nice, and Chloe Moretz as Hit-Girl was pretty great. There’s only one real qualm I had with the film (other than the fact that a jetpack with guns is pretty stupid) which was the Bazooka Issue. Listen, I’m no Batman or anything, but don’t you think Hit-Girl and Big Daddy could have just set up in an apartment across the street from the villain’s place, then shot the bazooka at his house when they saw him through the giant windows? You know, at basically any point during the proceedings? And don’t go saying to me “The bazooka was in the movie for the exciting finale, don’t overthink it so much!”, no! Call it a Reverse Chekhov’s Gun technique: yes, the gun is going to be used at some point, but it should be used in a way that makes sense, and isn’t a cheap sight gag.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One poster

16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One (paid to see): Just a solidly-crafted film. I’m still pretty sure that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is still my favorite movie, but this one’s probably a solid second place. I do have some difficulty telling them apart after all this time, though, and reading through each book in one day also compounds this issue as I don’t really remember the sequence of events that well either. The absolute desperation on display was more palatable than it was in the book, for me, as it took a lot less time. I’m still kind of hoping that they retcon Ginny and Harry out of getting together for the last movie, that always struck me false. Probably not going to happen, but I can still dream. We spent a long time hemming and hawing over whether to watch this one, so by the time we did, we were treated to the experience of teenage girls on clearly their second or third viewing giggling  at things that were just about to happen. That was pretty irritating.

The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights poster

15. The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights (saw at the Metro): Just a lovely rock documentary, and it even featured a concert I was at! Why was Meg crying at the end though?

Splice poster

14. Splice (paid to see, then the studio sent me a free DVD): This was another one I watched after listening to Moviebob. He’s probably correct about the sorts of movies I’d like to see about 60% of the time. This was a lot cooler than I thought it could be, descending into a sort of Cronenburgian body horror right at the very end. I liked this bitter little pill quite a bit in the end.

Iron Man 2 poster

13. Iron Man 2 (saw for free): Nowhere near as good as the first one, but decent none the less. It’s weird, the things I thought I wasn’t going to like ended up being the things I liked the most, and vice versa. I was worried that Mickey Rourke would accent the place up too much as Whiplash, but he turned out to be really restrained. Whereas I thought I’d like Don Cheadle as Rhodey, but he was nowhere near as bombastic enough as he needed to be to stand his ground against the rest of the cast. I also really hated how Rhodey sold Stark out to the U.S. government and gave them the Iron Man armor, that was lame. It was during this movie that I started to notice a weird effect in the audience, particularly on some of the people I saw it with. When a scene from the trailer was about to occur, everyone tenses up and gets all excited, which is weird because shouldn’t they be doing this at parts they haven’t seen yet? I’m sure you could go all Baudrillardian on it and say that they’ve taken control of that image by repeatedly seeing it in the trailer, or something, but it still felt really weird to me. Also, I still don’t like Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Yes, I know Ultimate Nick Fury is specifically drawn to look like him, but nothing else in the film was that much like the Ultimates (thankfully). He just seems to act as his own cool self all the time these days, rather than as any “character”. I suppose we can thank Quentin Tarantino for that, can’t we? I liked John Slattery as Stark’s dad, that was pretty inspired casting.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo poster

12. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (saw for free from work): When I was typing the title just now, I originally wrote “The Girl With the Dagon Tattoo.” That’s just too good an idea to be true, someone should start a Call of Cthulhu campaign based on that premise right now! Go do it! Anyway, I liked this the best of the three Millennium films, but I have to say, if the American one is going to be anywhere near as good as the three originals, we should be in for a treat. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s sort of like Star Wars: A New Hope. You can watch it and get a pretty good experience without really feeling the need to delve more into the mythology, whereas I feel the sequels would be incomprehensible on their own. E. was a little disturbed by how the pleased the audience was with Bjurman’s ultimate fate, but I found that the resolution to that storyline had the cathartic effect you’d find in a good slasher movie. Sometimes it’s nice to see someone wronged get revenge, and this doesn’t (to me) take away from the wrongs inflicted by Lisbeth’s guardian. I’m willing to bet they’ll tone that shit down considerably in the American version, for sure.

Machete poster

11. Machete (paid to see): Probably the most fun I had at the movies this year. I love that old grindhousey-type shit, almost to a fault. My brother and I seem to be the only people who can stomach watching all the way through any of the 42nd Street Forever trailer DVDs in one sitting, and even then there’s a bit of a dulling-feeling after a while. This movie definitely comes from that sort of tradition, as is as awesome as any movie can be. Roger Ebert was bemoaning the current cinema’s lack of “casual” nudity, but this one definitely covers that, even if they used a body double for Lindsay Lohan. Other than maybe being 10 minutes too long, I absolutely loved this thing.

Coming next time, the exciting conclusion to this year’s Sitting in the Dark With Strangers! Who’ll be Number One?

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Jan 01 2011
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film

A brief interjection…

I’ll get back to finishing up my movie list most likely tonight, but if you’ve got some time to kill on New Year’s Day, why not spend it with Mr. Plinkett? For those of you not in the know, Mr. Plinkett is the guy doing reviews of the Star Wars prequels, and by reviews I mean “mercilessly ripping them apart for your viewing pleasure”. I haven’t seen this one yet, so I’m not sure how much of his kind of lame serial-killer shtick he’s got in this one, but the insights into how to make a movie work and why the Prequels failed so miserably are definitely worth seeing.

http://www.redlettermedia.com/sith.html

Happy New Year’s Everyone!

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