2 Movies and 1 Book

So, I finished Rennie Airth's The Blood-Dimmed Tide over the weekend-it was really good. I wish there had been a little more about the bad guy, but considering he was a sociopath, that would have been a bit difficult-and it wasn't a complete copy of his previous book, so that was good as well. I'm not sure about how genuine the language used was, or the terminology, but that's okay-Airth tells a compelling storyvery well.

Spoilers ahead for both movies....
I saw two movies over the weekend-and it's odd that the one about the magicians has stayed with longer than the one about people in three continents who are all in danger of losing people that are valuable to them. First up is Babel-and let me qualify this by saying that I really liked 21 Grams. I usually hate Sean Penn and I even liked him in 21 Grams, so I had a lot of goodwill going into Babel. Unfortunately, it was misplaced. I really didn't like this movie and I've spent a little time trying to figure out why. Was it the stock bad Americans? I'm okay with Americans being played as bad people in movies and most of the time it's justified. Was it the stock happy and partying Mexicans who show the little white kids the real world? Was it the names of the little white kids? (take it from me, people in the social class of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett would NOT name their kids Mike and Debbie-could those names be more stereotypically American?) I actually did like the deaf-mute Japanese girl-she was angry and frustrated and expressing it inappropriate ways-I've known a few people like that and Rink Keikuchi did a great job. Maybe it was how we were manipulated to feel badly for the nanny who gets busted by the border patrol and is sent back to Mexico for being illegal. Yes, she was yelled at for leaving the kids alone when she was trying to find help for them and that was unfair. And yes, it was unfair to deport her when all she wanted to do was go to her son's wedding. But if she had gone without the kids and all that bad stuff hadn't happened-what did she think would happen at the border on her return? Did she think they would just wave her on through without a pssport or any kind of documentation? That seems a bit naive-and I have to say that if she had been living in the US for 20 years, how did she get back and forth over the border without documentation? I thought it was pretty difficult these days and that (of all people) illegals knew this. Also, I juat had a friend tell me that apparently it can be quite easy for illegals to get across the border at customs, so now I don't feel badly at all. It was things like this that annoyed me-the small things that are supposed to tell a bigger story-but when the small things don't add them the picture falls apart.

But The Prestige really stayed with me. I'm not going to compare it to The Illusionist-even though both are about turn of the century magicians, they are so different that you can't really compare them fairly. Hugh Jackman (playing the American and his accent was pretty good) and Christian Bale (playing the lower-class Brit and doing that accent pretty well) start off as assistants to Ricky Jay (who I wish had been given some lines-I love him) and they are doing fairly well-although both want their own acts-until Bale ties a knot (or does he?) that Jackman's wife can't slip out of during a drowning man trick. She drowns as a result and a lifelong feud is born. Yes, Jackan tries to steal Bale's tricks-Bale is the better magician after all. Yes, Bale does his best to hurt Jackman and make fun of him right in the middle of his act-it's all in the name of getting more people into their shows and being a better magician-isn't it? Michael Caine (not phoning it in and giving a charming performance) tells them that they need to get their hands dirty in doing their magic and they both do, in different ways. The crux of the feud teuns on the trick The Transported Man, in which Bale goes through a door at one end of the stage and seemingly reappears through another door at the other end of the stage only a second or two later. How does he do it? This question torments Jackman-does he use a double? Is it a trick? He sends his assistant, Scarlett Johannsen to find out-and she ends up falling in love with Bale, despite the presence of his wife and child. Bale tells him that Nikola Tesla helped him-and Jackman goes to Colorado Springs to see Tesla (this part is true, Tesla did live in Colorado around the turn of the century and did experiments in his lab there). Tesla, does not end up transporting Jackman, but he does end up being able to create an exact copy of him. So, who has the trick? Is it magic? The truth is that Bale really DOES have a twin (who spends the whole movie in glasses, a wig and whiskers and padding to make him bigger. It really IS a trick. But Jackman does his trick every night for 100 nights-and when he does the trick, he creates a duplicate every time. so where are all the duplicates? He drowns each one, every night-until Bale comes downstairs to see how the trick is done and finds himself in the dock, being tried for Jackman's murder. So, who gets set up and who doesn't? Who wins in the end? They both have lost a part of themselves-Bales loses his twin (the one who doesn't love his wife and child) and Jackman loses....everything that he meant to win. It's a twisty movie and not particularly nice but it's very good-and David Bowie plays Tesla which was a nice surprise.