Zodiac...and Hope and Glory

First, I'm slogging my through Feast of Souls by CS Friedman. I like Friedman-she's an author that can move easily between fantasy and hard science fiction and do both very well. Her fantasy work is never twee or precious and usually has a point to it-as does all her work,whether it's the magicians of the Coldfire trilogy or the warring races of In Conquest Born. However, Feast of Souls starts slowly and is at the beginning, a little tiresome. The Magisters are strong magicians who feed off the energy of human beings and that feeding means that eventually the human will die. Kamala is a female Magister in a group known for NEVER having females in it....an evil Magister attacks her and she kills him...meanwhile the King's son is dying from a Magister who is feeding off of him-and he's determined to find out who it is. All of this adds up to a pretty good story which has ended up getting me very involved in the various plots-and there are a couple more I didn't even mention. I did feel like it was a slog at the beginning, but I'm really into it now. Unfortunately, this is the first of a three-part trilogy, so I won't hold my breath waiting for the second book. It's pretty well-written though, and once you get into it, it moves pretty quickly from plot to plot and it will interesting to see how Friedman will tie it all together. Will she do it the ways it looks (because some of it is obvious) or will there be twist of two along the way?

I went to see Zodiac over the weekend and it was very good. It's not so much the story of the Zodiac serial killer as it is the story of the cops and reporters who hunted him. They did so at great personal cost to themselves-was it worth it? The movie believes that the man they thought was the killer died in 1993-is that true? The evidence they had at the time was purely circumstantial-no witnesses and no evidence tied anyone to the murders. Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo are very good as the cop assigned to the case and the political cartoonist who becomes obsessed with it. Also very good are Robert Downey Jr (who can really act when he wants to) as the reporter working on the case and Anthony Edwards as Ruffalo's police partner-the calmer one who ends up not being able to deal with the case and asks to be assigned to something else. Working this case takes a toll on everyone and there's no definitive answers. If you need a happy movie with pat answers and a happy ending, this is NOT the movie to see. But if you like ambiguity along with a great story and some fine acting, I recommend it. I'd also like to say on a personal level, this movie was a little disturbing. It opens with the song Easy To Be Hard-the version by Three Dog Night (not the version from Hair)-a song I heard constantly as a child, both this version AND the one from Hair, as I played the cast album from it all the time-so it was a little weird to also see the huge poster for the musical in downtown San Francisco. The next weid moment was when they were discussing the quote from Zodiac that "man was the most dangerous animal" to hunt. Of course I thought of The Most Dangerous Game-I read the story (and it is a short story, not a book) when I was a child-6th grade. I read it again for my 7th grade English class-and we had to parts out loud. I never wanted to do this, I was too busy reading ahead. But THIS story-I chose the part I wanted to read-the part where the evil guy on the island is explaining to the castaway how he is going to give him 24 hours and then hunt him down. Little does he know that the castaway is also a great hunter and turns out to be smarter as well. I loved that story. The next part that hit home was hearing Boz Scaggs singing Lowdown-my friend D and I went to see him in concert in 1982 and it was great-but hearing it in this movie...And the final point? Graysmith tells Toschi that the Zodiac called Melvin Belli and a week before Christmas, spoke to the maid and told her it was his birthday-I sat there thinking "Exactly a week before Christmas? Please no..." because D's birthday is exactly a week before Christmas. But of course it was, completing the cycle of creepiness. I thought this was a great movie-for a long movie, I was never bored or caught myself thinking "I wish it would end" but these little things really hit home and made it that much more scary.
I also watched Hope and Glory, a movie I saw when it first came out in 1987 and I wondered if it would stand the test of time. I loved it when I first saw it, a story of a young boy and his family during the Blitz. His mother keeping the family together and trying to keep everyone alive while the bombs are going off and her husband is fighting in the War, his sister who goes out jitterbugging with American GIs every night and Billy himself, who goes to school every day with a teacher who hates all of her students and his friends (once he's passed the initiation of swearing to get into the group). This movie is quite evocative of the Blitz, with the bombs dropping every night and the family hiding in the bomb shelter and father bringing home a precious jar of jam, taken from some Germans. The best character is Billy's cranky Grandfather ("Do you know how my daughters got their names? Their mother. She named them Faith, Hope Grace and Charity, for all the virtues I lack"). In case I haven't made it clear, seeing this movie reaffirmed for me just how special it is. It's intelligent, funny and extremely well-made. The scenes shot in the rivery part of London are beautiful, as is the whole movie-and I have to mention the end, because it's my favorite part. Billy's Grandfather is taking him to school and is railing against school "All is does is beat the sense out of you!" He drops Billy off, Billy walks around the corner to school...and it's been blown up by a stray bomb.Thank you Adolph! he runs back to find his Grandfather and they laugh all the way back to his Grandfather's house, with the promise of stolen days yet to come. It was just as good, if not better than when I first saw it.