Peter Watts, John Updike and District 9

I don't actually have much to say about Peter Watts. He's a great writer, his plots are very interesting and I hate almost every character in his books. These are people who need nanobots in their bloodstream in order to keep them from torturing people and behaving decently-and none of them behave well. The only good thing I can say about Maelstrom (the sequel to Starfish) is that through reading it, I finally understood why the damaged people were sent to live miles beneath the sea-because they were so caught in in their own pain, that they didn't notice or care about anybody else's pain. But did they actually have to implant false memories to create Leni's not-real abusive childhood? They couldn't find someone who actually had been abused who fit the ticket? Maybe in the third one we find out-but I'm not reading it unless someone lends it to me.

As for John Updike, blah blah blah. Yes, he's a great writer and all-but if I want to feel suburban angst and pain, I'll go visit my parents. I grew up in that world and I have no desire to relive it, which I do every time I read him (excluding visits from the Devil, unfortunately).

District 9 is a great movie. It's has aliens, alien hybrids, people behaving REALLY badly and sacrifice to help for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.

I spent some time during and after the movie thinking about whether this movie could have been made anyplace other than South Africa-and I don't it could have been made in the US or Europe. Not that they would behave any better than the South Africans, but they don't have the recent history that SA does with treating people of color badly. If the Europeans put anyone, including aliens, into anything that looked like a concentration camp, there would be such an outcry-it wouldn't work. I take it back though, maybe it could be made in the US-we'd just have the aliens in a concentration camp not on US soil. Anyway, it was great-the lead was especially good, I was very impressed from how he went from dork to casual killer to bio-torture victim to escapee to someone who, in the end, did the right thing to help a creature when two days earlier he was killing their babies. Good job, Sharlto Copley.

The Best Show on TV?

No, it's not So You Think You Can Dance or any other reality show.
It's Burn Notice-the show I like to think of as the anti-24. Why? Because it's SMART. Yes, it's violent and action packed with attractive people starring in it. But it's intelligent. Michael Weston used to be a spy, until he got a Burn Notice and was kicked out of the organization (presumably the CIA, although it's never named). He washed up in Miami, taking on jobs that use his skill set, while trying to find out what happened and trying to get his job back. He has a couple of friends to help out-ex-Navy Seal Sam and ex-girlfriend Fiona, and old IRA terrorist, who is as good with a gun, bomb and artillery as anyone you can find. And Mom, who never quite knows what her son is doing, but is as supportive and sarcastic as she can be.
but why the anti-24, you ask? Well, let''s use the recent episode called The Hunter as an example. Michael gets kidnapped by an old enemy, Fi and Sam have to track him down and they have very little time to do it-and they have a colleague of the bad guy tied up in Mom's garage. What would Jack Bauer do? Shoot his kneecaps? Burn him in some tender places? Hurt him so much he HAS to blurt out where Mike is? All this and more-but Sam and Fi leave the guy tied up in the garage and Mom goes in to talk to him. A friendly face, with some food works wonders and soon the guy spills all he knows. You'd never see Jack Bauer doing that. Or last week's episode Friends like These-where the team tries to track down a missing ledger for a friend. Again, they have the bad guy (well, girl, although they don't know it at the time) tied up and are ready to do whatever it takes to find the ledger.
Except this is the voiceover "torture doesn't do any good-it only makes people want to tell you what you want to hear. A friendly face and some food works wonders". Or how about the episode called fearless leader, where the three pose as wannabe criminals to get to the big boss-so they can turn him into the cops? The guy they befriend to help them in turns out to not want them to become criminals-and Michael Weston, the used-to-be-spy, in turn tells him their whole plan and they work together to get the bad guy. How smart is that? What kind of turnabout is that?
Watch this show-it's smart!
And the best line of it this year so far? It goes to Mike's Mom Maddy (played by the great Sharon Gless) "Oh look-it's Fiona! She NEVER shows up when there's trouble". Priceless delivery on what is to me, yes, the best show on TV right now.