Academy Awards and The Departed.

So, my Netflix movie this week was The Departed and I have to say that I wasn't impressed. It was another movie that was less than the sum of its parts. I liked Lea, I liked Matt, I liked Jack and Vera and Mark Wahlberg and yet the movie left me wondering what the fuss was all about. I didn't think it was particularly well directed, except for a handful of scenes, mainly at the end. That being said, i was less than thrilled when it won best picture last night and Scorsese won for best director. I really don't approve of make-up awards and the Academy has been doing that a lot lately (Russell-here' your award the Gladiator. We're sorry we didn't give it to you last year for The Insider. Marty, here's your award for The Departed-we're sorry we didn't give it to you for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas or Casino). What happened to judging on its own merits, as opposed to making it a consolation prize?
I don't want to be a grinch here, I was very happy that he finally got the Best Director award, I just wish it had been for a movie that deserved it-and I wasn't happy about The Departed winning best picture. I still think Children of Men was robbed.
And my Netflix movie last week was The General, with Brenden Gleeson playing irish gangster Martin Cahill. THIS was a great movie. Gleeson plays the ever more daring Martin (who can sneak into a bedroom while people are still sleeping and steal their jewelry or leave a note on the bed for the policeman who is tracking him. It's witty and clever and very well acted (see also Hope and Glory by John Boorman), his story of a family In England during WWII-it's very funny, which is a word not usually associated with WWII...but I recommend it. yes, this is the same man the directed Deliverance and the two movies are about as different as they could possibly be.

Breach

This past weekend I went to see Breach, the new movie about FBI agent/Russian spy Robert Hanssen. I liked it-Chris Cooper was very good as Hanssen-he's very opaque and the movie never spells out his thinking and I like a movie that doesn't set it out clearly for you-that sort of dumbing down offends me. Ryan Phillippe was fine as Eric O'Neil-he could have been better, but he did the job. I will say though, that it was hard to get past how Chris Cooper looked-was he wearing lipstick? I know I'm shallow (I refused to see Alexander because Colin Farrell's dye job was so ridiculous that I couldn't get past that either) but it was distracting. One funny thing happened though-as the movie takes place during late 2000-early 2001, there's a scene at FBI headquarters in which workers take down pictures of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno and replace them with George Bush and John Ashcroft...and the audience hissed. Really loudly. It was remarkable and funny-I dislike the President (and his policies) as much as the next person but the last time I heard hissing, I was in college and we were hissing at the bad guy in an old movie-and I started it. I've never heard grown-ups do it and I think it says something about today's world (yes, it was in Georgetown and they were probably all liberals, but these people have good manners and are not prone to hissing). Despie the hissing and the maybe lipstick-wearing it was still a very good movie.

The Terror and Daniel Boulud

So, last weekend I went to NYC. I took the train, which was good as I got to do a lot of reading .I finished the 2nd Ash book, which was very good, especially as I have just decided to ignore the bickering academics and their feeble excuse for an alternative history. Please. Does there have to be a reason for an alternative history? In a book like this, you can just say "this is how it is" and the internal logic of the book will carry it (hopefully). If the book is predicated on an event, then the event needs to be described and then the story can move on from there. But to have these academics asking "why" via email is disruptive to an otherwise entertaining story. The train ride also gave me the chance to really dig into The Terror, the latest by Dan Simmons. Simmons is not a writer I usually read and I'm not sure why. I read a book by him awhile ago, involving the ghost of a soldier from WWI who treats some children badly...there may have been an evil schoolteacher...clearly, it didn't make much of an impression. But I really liked The Terror. It was creepy and atmospheric (be sure to read it while you're nice and warm because you'll feel the chill all the way through). The Terror tells the story of HMS Terror, on its way to look for the Northwest Passage, along with its sister ship Erebus. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong in its trip to the Arctic. The summer thaw never comes and both ships are trapped in the ice. Half the canned food is spoiled. The men have no idea how to hunt for local game and the lime juice has lost its potency, so scurvy is taking its toll. And they refuse to try and learn anything about how to survive from the indigenous people. Part of what I like about good horror stories, is that the good are punished along with the bad, but The Terror is fairly traditional-the the one really good guy survives (and overcomes the personal humiliation meted out to him by a thoughtless and arrogant girl by finding true love) and the evil crewmen all pretty die one by one, although the most evil don't get punished quite as badly as (I thought, anyway) as they deserved. The good do die honorable deaths though, in refusing to become cannibals and the good doctor (who started off as a weakling who didn't seem to able to pull his weight) who refuses to assist the cannibals by carving up the men they killed for food, poisons himself. It's a good death, considering his alternative.There aren't too many twists in the story, but what is there is very well told.

While I was in NYC, I had dinner at db Bistro Moderne, Daniel Boulud's newish place the Theater district. I had the house specialty-the $32 hamburger. I'm generally not a fan of burgers and I rarely eat red meat but for some reason that night I was craving it. It was one of the best things EVER. Yes, I was hungry because I hadn't eaten all day but it was wonderful. Juicy and tangy, with something really delicious in it (probably that outlawed foie gras but maybe the truffle shavings). If you ever have dinner there....

I Hated this movie (redux)

Netflix recommended Straight to Hell because I said I liked Repo Man. I saw Repo Man. I liked repo man. You, Straight to Hell, are no Repo Man. The ostensible story of an inept gang of robbers, who, after a robbery gone bad, wind up in a small town run by a very bizarre and incestuous clan.

I found it unwatchable.
Seriously, if it got better after Courtney Love (pre-plastic surgery, so it was hard to reognize her) stopped screaming at everyone (and didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon) and the movie improved at all (ditto), well, I didn't stick around long enough to find out. If anyone has had a different experience (while not drinking or on drugs), I'd love to hear about it. Meanwhile, I'm reading the second Ash book and will soon start The Terror by Dan Simmons. i've never gotten into Simmons like other people I know, but I hear this is good, with a bit of an homage to Poe. The first poem I remember memorizing (and which I had to recite in English class) was The Raven. I memorized the first three stanzas and probably had my teacher and classmates thinking I was a little strange as I was nine at the time, so any book that has an homage to Poe in it is alright with me. And I had to start the second Ash book-I couldn't wait-but I have to take the train to NYC this weekend, so I'll be able to do lots of reading onit. And I usually don't make music recommendations (I'll leave that to my friend M who is up on popular music as I am totally NOT) but Amy Winehouse's Rehab is an awesome song-I love her. To give credit where it's due, M sent me her song I'm No Good-but I love Rehab-and the whole CD will be out in the US on March 13th. Right it's only available for an horrendous price at Amazon.com-but you can sample (and buy) the video of Rehab on itunes.

Christopher Moore

I have to say that I love Christopher Moore's books with a passion. My friend Y bought me a copy of Bloodsucking Fiends (a masterpiece of vampiric comedy) and I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever read (maybe surpassed by David Sedaris's me Talk Pretty One Day). But Bloodsucking Fiends was just the beginning. Then came Practical Demonkeeping...Island of the Sequined Love Nun...The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove...

And then I read Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. I don't want to say that this book changed my life, but in a way, it did. It confirmed for me that religion is about loving and caring for other people and that friendship is a gift to be treasured. Biff is an idiot, but he loves his friend Josh (also known as Yeshua, also known as the Son of God) with all his heart and would do anything for him. When Biff first meets Josh, he's reanimating lizards in Nazareth-and they soon become fast friends. Josh has known almost from birth that he was special and it has set him apart from other children, but Biff makes it clear right away that Josh is NOT alone, as Josh believes himself to be. His father may be the Almighty, but Biff is with him on Earth, following him wherever he chooses to go-and they get into some bizarre predicaments. This story really is heartwarming, in the most hilarious way imaginable. It's gross-the humor can revolve around any bodily function you can think of and often revolves around sex. It is also laugh-out-loud funny and is one of the best books I've ever had the pleasure to read. As Biff says in the beginning, you think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't. I finished this book on my lunch hour at work, lent to a friend and did not see it again for a year. By the time I got it back, the cover was almost torn off and it was definitely worse for the wear but it's still my only copy-I can't quite bring myself to replace it.
Which brings me to his latest book You Suck, the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends. In this book, Flood and Jody try to live their lives as vampires, while the vampire who made Jody pursues them, while Flood's grocery store buddies pick up a blue hooker in Vegas and give her all their money, while the cops chase after them to make sure they've left town like they said they would, while their minion (Abby Normal) tries to help them. This book is also hilarious (Abby's diary is the best part) but Jody and Flood's story is quite touching-she enjoys being a vampire. As a woman who has been pushed around a lot in her life, she likes being a predator and having the power, while Flood doesn't. He hates having to drink blood to survive, he can't deal with the lack of daylight and is just not a very good vampire, while Abby glories in her role as minion. If you like Christopher Moore, you'll love this book.

And speaking of books I love, I watched the movie of Possession with my friend D last weekend. I admit that I bought the DVD (it was cheap!) and I did want to see the movie of one of my favorite books. I couldn't believe I was sitting there watching a chick flick with her (I think I'd have rather watched Hellboy or The Terminator again but I couldn't do that to a guest that hates science fiction), but that's okay. And so was the movie. Aaron Eckhart was fine as Roland (although I don't see why they had to make him American) and Gwyneth Paltrow was fine as Maud, but I give props to Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle as Ash and LaMotte-those two had the real heat, while Aaron and Gwyneth...it was kind of hard to tell what was going on with them. While the book made it perfectly clear that they fell in love and Roland becomes a poet instead of a scholar, in the movie, they just kind of looked at each other longingly-and then the movie ended. It was kind of frustrating-but I would recommend it to anyone who likes a romantic movie. Don't watch it hoping that the poetry from the book will be in it (it isn't) or thinking that various sub-plots will be in it(they've all been cut). If you take it on it's own terms, it's okay-and some parts are quite good. Just don't think it will be like the book, because it isn't.