Dante and Holmes

Right now I'm reading the Dante Club by Mathew Pearl and I like it enough to have bought his first book about Edgar Allen Poe-a book that has my name all over it. Poe is considered the father of the modern mystery novel (Murders in the Rue Morgue) but is better known for his poems and short stories-The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher. I was ten years old when I discovered Poe and I know that he changed my reading habits forever. I hadn't read any science-fiction or horror before Poe (and to me, his short stories are almost all horror-the Tell-Tale Heart or The Cask of Amontillado are pure horror and I didn't know there were stories like that out there until Poe. They gave me the creeps and scared me-and I liked it. I memorized the first two stanzas of The Raven for an English class in sixth grade-I'm sure my teacher thought it strange when everyone else picked poems about flowers and sports but it was Poe for me.
But right now it's all about Dante. Yes, I like Dante and read the Commedia in college and I like how this book ties in Dante, the Commedia, the levels of Hell. Anyone who has read Dante remembers the Circles of Hell and the various tortures he inflicts on politicians and enemies of his age, along with almost everybody else in history and the tortures fit in nicely with the murders committed in this book. My only quarrel is with the character of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is a man who is esteemed in history. A doctor who was the first to recommend that doctors wash their hands before delivering babies (Semelweiss said the same thing but many years later). A man so smart that Arthur Conan Doyle gave his most famous character and indeed one of the smartest characters in fiction his name. So why is he (in the words of a colleague) such a jackass? he wants to faint at the sight of a dead body. He can't deal with the murders-granted that he and his friends clearly have some tie to murders being done in the style of Dante's tortures right when they are translating into English the Commedia but still. He is behaving like an idiot and this is a man who is considered one of the greatest doctors in American history. Was he really such a jackass in real life? I have no idea-I haven't read any biographies of him and Wikipedia (not that I trust it but it can be a decent starting point) says practically nothing on his personal life. Maybe it changes-I haven't finished the book and there's a little light in the tunnel. Holmes has just done a masterful job of reasoning as to why the bad guy is a soldier and is reasoning is brilliant-worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself so I feel a little better about the character. We'll see what happens and what he says about Poe in the precursor to this book. It would be hard to say anything about Poe that ISN'T true-he was a drunk, he married his 13 year-old cousin, he got kicked out of West Point-and he could write. He really was a jackass and yet, everyone loved him. You can't ask for a better character than that.

A Field of Darkness

I can't say enough good things about this book. It's a debut by Cornelia Read, who grew up much like her protagonist, Madeline Dare, in old money (so old that it was gone) and the Connecticut/Hamptons/Manhattan crowd who have money and breeding-it's a crap shot on the brains, though. Madeline is married in 1988 and living in hell, otherwise known as Syracuse, NY. She hates it, wants to get out and is waiting for her husband (who comes and goes due to his job on the railroad) to make enough money on his invention so they can get out of Dodge. But her father-in-law finds a set of dog tags with the name Lapthorne on them-found not far from where two girls were murdered 12 years ago. And Madeline has a cousin Lapthorne-so what's going on? Her natural curiosity, not to mention a sense of justice, drags her into the bosom of her very proper family-although she would be safer amongst enemies. Yes, the story is great but Madeline herself is the reason to read this book. Funny, acerbic and caring with enough bravery and fear to make her real-she's fabulous. The author said in an interview that Madeline is her as she would like to be-funnier, braver, more daring-and I dare anyone to read this book and not want to hang out with Madeline. She can come and hang out with my friend D and I-we'd have a great time.

Sucker

I am a sucker for sports movies. I can't take romantic comedy (unless it's done well which it hasn't been in this country since around 1945 but that's another story) but give me a movie where the underdog trains and trains and finally gets his or her shot at the big time and I'll cry almost every time. They don't even have to win-I think I can easily win an argument that says Rocky is a better movie than Rocky II. The point of Rocky was that he got his chance and even though he lost, he lost honorably and never quit. The fact that Rocky came out in the 70's just about guaranteed that he would NOT win the match-but that was easily rectified once the 80's rolled around.

Which brings me to the documentary I watched last weekend. I saw the movie Miracle, the story of the US Olympic hockey team in 1980. You know...the game where they beat the Russians in a Cold War match-up in tiny Lake Placid New York. The story of a group of college-age kids who beat the best team in the world seemed made for a movie 20 years later (although a made-for-tv movie followed not long after the game) but I wondered at the time what the impetus for this movie was. It was 20 years later. And yes, that game has been named the best sports moment of the 20th century but it was still 20 years ago.
And then I watched Do You Believe In Miracles-the Story of the US Olympic Hockey Team. I only ran across it because i was looking through Liev Schreiber's listing at the IMDB and saw that he had done the narration for this movie-and that i had never heard of it, even though it was made in 2001. Once I put it in realized why-it was made for HBO-which I don't have. It was easy to see where everything in Miracle came from-the rivalry between Boston and Minnesota-it's in there. The Brooksisms ("you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone")-they're in there too. And it's all real. There are interviews with Jack O'Callahan-voted first to drop the gloves and Jim Craig who kept them in the game and always put them in a position to win. Herb Brooks is there-the man who wasn't afraid to be hated. In fact, he wanted them to hate him, so they would forget that they hated each other. There's even Vladislav Tretiak, who in 1980 was the best-looking guy I had ever seen in my life. He was gorgeous, even if he was an evil commie bastard, who now runs goalie training camps in Canada. Everyone who loves hockey and was at age where they could remember a hockey game when this game was played, remembers this game and where and when they heard that that the US had won and this documentary does a great job of bringing you back to the place and time-and yes, I cried at the end.
Sucker.

Atonement and A Happy Story

I really didn't want to see Atonement. I knew the plot, I knew the twist and it seemed both very sad and something that would make me angry-atoning in literature for something you've done in real life isn't the same. You can say you're sorry in print all you want to and you can try to give people the happy ending that they didn't get in real life because of you (like in Atonement) but to me, that's dishonest. Atonement, real atonement, can't really be done that way. Aside from that, I liked it more than I thought I would. Keira Knightly, an actress I've never thought very much of, was really very good (loved the cut-glass accent) and James McAvoy was also very good-as usual. Saorise Ronan was good-I knew that because i wanted to smack her. Atonement was lovely to look at and and very well done-the Dunkirk scenes were amazing, although for verisimiltude, I'd have to go with Saving Private Ryan-but that's a different movie.

So, because Atonement was sad, in botha real life and a literary way, I'm going to tell a real love story from WWII. My father's cousin Nellie, was stationed in England during the war (she's a few years older than he, he was too young for WWII-but he got drafted for Korea. But that's another story). so, Nellie was in England and met and fell in love with an RAF flyer. Good family and he loved her-but he wouldn't marry her during the war because he said it wouldn't be fair to either of them. It was 1942, ater all and he could die flying a mission, which he did often or she could die in a bombing raid-he didn't want to do that to either one of them.
But he asked to wait (A bit unfair, really. They might as well have gotten married)
But he asked her to wait and he promised that he would make it through the war alive and would come and get her.
And he did. And they lived happily ever after in Wimbledon. Nelly died a few years ago-but they had been married for more than 50 years-and her husband comes to the family reunions (which seems to be mainly the older generation-no one in my age group ever seems to get invited). And here's the best part (to me, anyway). My Mom told me this story 20 years ago or so-and ended with "You should have seen him! I would have waited too!" I was trying to get her to tell me what he looked like, but she couldn't really say. But she's repeated this story a few times (honestly, I never get tired of hearing it) and everytime it ends with "You should have seen him!
I love that.

The Twinkie Book

I finally read the Twinkie book (Twinkie, Deconstructed). I put it off and then was going to read it again and then got distracted by Takeshi Kovacs...so I finally got around to it.
There were parts of it I liked very much. Going into detail on the ingredients seemed was very interesting-but to me, the author could have used this as a real springboard into looking at the food-industrial complex. Unfortunately, he did not. Instead, there seemed to be a "I'm a New York intellectual and here I am, thousands of feet below the surface of the earth! Look how curious I am!" It was a little odd, when he kept calling iron and baking soda "rocks", as in "We're eating rocks! Can you believe it? Well, I'd never eat rocks because I'd never eat a Twinkie but all you other people out there who DO eat Twinkies are eating rocks!". All I could think was, could you AT LEAST call them minerals?" You know, the stuff that our bodies need to survive? At least he does say how much we need salt and iron (rocks!) but the rest of it very much has a "I can't believe we can do this" and "I can't believe you people eat this" attitude. That attitude was off-putting, even when the information was very interesting. And speaking of the information...okay, so he couldn't get into any vitamin factory and other places as well. I fully understand trade secrets and industrial spying. But aside from that, he seemed to show no real curiousity beyond the Twinkie ingredients and the history behind them. i know, that sounds like he IS curious, and to an extent, he is. But to not look at the high-fructose corn syrup plant and not be curious about the other places it goes...and high-fructose corn syrup is the tramp of the food industry-it's been with everything. I wish that instead of the "wow, look how highly-processed this food is" he would have taken a closer look at the why we do it rather than the how.
But maybe that's a different book. This one was interesting if you don't expect too much.

I Have A Theory or Episode 2 of Lost's 4th Season

So, last week on Lost, we had a motley assortment of characters-sent there by Mr. Abbadon (whose name refers Hell, pretty much). I think they were sent there by Dharma and here's why:

1) We have a physicist-someone who could locate a magnetic anomaly-like the one that is on the island and protects it from being seen and which disappeared for a few minutes when that button wasn't pushed when the numbers wound down. A physicist who could explain a magnetic anomaly.

2) An archaeologist-who could not only find things that are buried (like Dharma observation points) but who really wanted to a a polar bear buried in the Tunisian desert-a bear that had a Dharma tag attached to it.

3) And last-we have someone who can talk to the dead. Who else could they use to find out the truth of what happened to the Dharma people?

And finally-if Ben killed all the Dharma people, they would really, really want to get him. If these people are they to find the truth, then they are also there to find him.

Okay, that's my theory-I like it but it could be totally wrong and I'm prepared for that. It is Lost, after all.

Shoot'em Up Sucked but Four Months Did Not.

Jesus, this was a terrible movie. I usually like action movies-if they have a brain, it's even better. So when I saw the Clive Owen, Monica Belluci and Paul Giamatti were in this movie, I thought I'd like it. Unfortunately, I found I hated it. Clive Owen accidently meets up with a woman (she runs by him at a bus stop-being chased by a gang) who is about to give birth-and be killed. Clive delivers the baby, the gang kills her, Clive shoots them and takes the baby. Where does he take the baby? To a brothel and the "mysterious" and lactating (convenient!)DQ. The rest of the movie is a series of gunfights-how will Smith escape from 40 guys sent after him? Why does Paul Giamatti want the baby? What part does the politician play? These questions are not very important to plot because sees a movie like this because of the plot. They go to see how Clive Owen gets himself out of a difficult situation by shooting everyone. He looked good, Monica looked good and Paul was sort of evil-it was hard to take him seriously, no matter how good an actor. If you want to see a movie that has trendous action sequences, brains and ideas and also Clive Owen, I recommend Children of Men, which so much better than this movie, it's ridiculous.

I also saw Four Month, Three weeks, Two Days. Words fail me on how devastating this movie is. Set in Ceaucescu's Romania in the 80's, where having an abortion means jail for both the doctor and the woman. Unfortunately, Gabita is a pregnant student who has a hard time taking care of herself-it's clear she relies on her friend and roommate, Otilia. Otilia is a daughter of a bookkeeper and a soldier, which automatically makes her "simple" according to her boyfriend's parents friends-but withouth her, Gabita would not know what to do or how to do anything. Otilia's intelligence helps her to arrange everything for Gabita but it also puts her into a series of situations, each worse than the last. The doctor who does the abortion is no friend to them0he wants sex from each of them instead of money-and when he said he had a wife and child, I couldn't help think that I was sure he would never want his child to run into someone like him. But they go through with it in order to get the procedure and so he does it and leaves some antibiotics just in case. And now otilia has to go to her boyfriend's parents house. It's his Mother's birthday and she HAS to go because otherwise it would embarrass him. The dinner party scene is one of the best scenes I think I've ever seen on film. The parents and their upper class friends talking about their jobs as doctors and professors, their mild snobbery when they discover Otila's background and Otilia's misery over what has happened to her and her friend this day, along with her worry over leaving Gabita behind to come to this party.
What awaits her back at the hotel (where they had to have the procedure) is a horror. Yes, Gabita is fine and everything went like it was supposed to...and Otilia not only has to clean up the aftermath (meaning the four month old fetus) but she must dispose of it as well, knowing that if anyone sees her, it will mean a very long time in jail. This movie took me from horror to horror and yet I couldn't look away. The final scene (to me ) was the most compelling. Otilia and Gabita sit in a quiet part of the hotel's restaurant. They have some water and a plate of unappetizing food and just look at each other and then look away. They can't talk about it, Gabita can't say thank you and that she's sorry, Otilia can't yell at her or even really look at her. It's every thing that they don't say that's important here and it was quietly devastating.

Sports, the Super Bowl and Me.

I come from a sports-crazy family. I was taken to every sporting event you can name from the time I was a child. Hockey, football, basketball, you name it. Whne you're watching these games and you're six years old, it's more of a chore than fun because you really don't know what's going on. As I grew older, I had to learn about the game out of sheer self-preservation. And as i always went to the games with my Dad...well, every guy likes to explain sports to someone who doesn't know the rules and my Dad is no exception. I have to say though, that football, especially pro football, has never been something I cared about. Where I come from, the Lions haven't won in years, I can't say I care about the Redskins... I told my friend M that I didn't have a horse in this race (meaning the Super Bowl) so I really didn't care. Things will change as the hockey playoffs near and the basketball playoffs come close and baseball season starts... but pro football? But I'm still glad the Giants won. Yay New York! It's actually more of an extreme dislike for the Pats, Bill Belichek and Tom Brady (screw it, UM!), so I'm glad they didn't win. I''ll be curious to see if Tom Brady shows up in NYC tomorrow to lick his wounds with Gisele-in Greenwich Village. I wouldn't show my face in New York for awhile, if I were him. He'd get beat up if the Pats had won, this way he'll just get mocked-but it won't be pretty.

Now, on to something I do care about in sports-teams report in about a week for spring training AND the Olympics are this summer-how cool is that? I love the Olympics and Olympic swimming is one of my favorite sports-now that's soomething I can get excited about.

Surf's Up!

So after two movies about different ways of fighting death and dying, I had to get something fun and that was Surf's Up-the animated documentary story of a young Cody Maverick (love thename) a penguin who wants to win the world surfing championship. He has a good shot it until he meets his rival (the evil Tank). What happens to Cody is not as important as how much fun this movie is having. It reminded e of the line from Step Into Liquid when asked who the best surfer was-the girl surfer said "Whover is having the most fun". That's the lesson this movie teaches and the movie itself is A LOT of fun. Shia LaBeouf is great, Jeff Bridges (in a version of his Dude character from The Big Lebowski) is hilarious and even Jon Heder, who I usually find annoying, is very funny.This movie has a lesson to teach us as well (oh God) but it's all about fun-and one that Jean-Do would appreciate. Are we having fun? That's the point.

Two Ways to Die

I went to see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last week and it surprised me. Did I think it was going to be good? Yes. Did I think I would actually tear up at the end? No. I've always found Julian Schnabel slightly annoying. I thought those big painting with broken plates I had study in Art History class were pretentious and showy while not demonstrating anything new about painting. Oh, I'm sorry-they were Post-Modern, that movement responsible for many pretentious creations, from paintings to buildings to tea kettles. It was the word of choice to describe something the viewer perhaps didn't understand or was too lazy to find another description. Post-Modern involved taking something old and placing it in a new context-the Chippendale headboard on a skyscraper in New York-or in Schnabel's case, taking old plates, smashing them and building a painting around them. And was Schnabel-larger than life, always wearing pajama bottoms and painting a building down in SoHo in New York bright pink. He annoyed me and I was prepared not to like this movie despite every good review it had gotten-I only went because he got a nod for Best Director from the Academy so I was curious.
Fine-he proved me wrong. Diving Bell is a beautiful movie. Straightfoward, funny, unsentimental about facing death but with a heart. Jean-Do had locked-in syndrome-had a stroke and now can only comminicate by blinking his right eye. However, his brain works perfectly well. He tells his story to the woman who writes it down faithfully-but we hear all his thoughts and his feelings about being locked into the diving bell of his body, a prisoner. His friends and children come to visit but don't know quite what to say. His father is trapped as well-90 years old cant handle the stairs in his apartment building, he is as trapped in his apartment as Jean-Do is in his body.
Don't go to see this movie if you expect something to happen-it's not about that. It's about something awful happening and finding a way to live with it, to make it mean something and to learn from it. I hate movies that are about "the human spirit"-most are silly and mawkish. This movie is the opposite of that, in the best way.
And then there's The Wind That Shakes the Barley. This movie is also not sentimental at all about the Irish fight for freedom from Great Britain. Two brothers take up opposite sides in the fight. One (Cillian Murphy) fights the Brits in a guerilla war, while his brother takes up the British side and joins their army.
There can be no happy ending in a situation like this when two family members are on opposite sides of a war. Murphy knows his cause is just but he also knows he's probably on the losing side. "Do you know how many soldiers they have here in Ireland?"he asks before joining up. "How many do we have? How many guns?" But he joins the cause anyway, while his brother, who once fought on the same side, now finds himself on the on the other side.
There's also a fascinating side to this-the class war. The English are invariably wealthy and Catholic, the Irish are poor, downtrodden and Protestant. To watch the rich English behaving as if the irish are their slaves and theirs to do with what they will (which usually involves some sort of torture) is both creepy and enlightening. And to an American who has always found the British class system and the Church's role in it, interesting from a sociological point of view, it was great albeit horrible.
Yes, it comes down to a moment of truth-who do you betray? Your country or your brother? Who or what will you die for? Will you know what you're fighting for and dying for?
I don't want to comment on any one person's performance-they were all good and there was not one moment that rang false in the whole thing-but it was very sad and fairly violent, as befits a story about a civil war.