Novel Eye

Episode 8 - Young Adult Lit and Conservative Comedy Episode 8 - Young Adult Lit and Conservative Comedy Loann and Art, in true young boy and girl detective spirit, track down the arguments for and against grown-ups reading Young Adult literature. And, where are all the conservative comedians? Is the comedy industry a liberal stronghold? We also discuss our cultural consumption over the past few weeks. ( Now available on iTunes ) 009 - Tom Cruise & Dragons Underperform and 70's Political Paranoia Today How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Edge of Tomorrow are getting great reviews, (and Loann and Art have each seen one of them.) However, they are not meeting box office projections, so what does that mean for the studios and the stars.   And, 70's movies like The Conversation made audiences feel creeped out about the surveillance state, but where are those stories being told today?

I wasn't going to do it. Oh, how I wasn't going to do it. And I didn't. Not really. I only watched part, and even then I was working on other things. Not focusing . But those are really mea culpas . I watched part of Twilight last night. It was not quite as bad as I expected. I suppose, if your expectation is 0, then a 1 is an improvement. Kristin Stewart was not quite as annoying as I expected. Robert Pattinson slightly more romantic. Which is to damn with faint praise. It's not a very well put together movie. How is it that this woman directed Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown ? Only two things actually interested me enough to pay attention. One, the fact that when Bella and Edward are in the woods and she says Vampire all mysterious and sexy like, the camera cuts away to the tops of the trees and then breaks and comes back to them lying on their backs. That used to be cinema convention for a sex scene, but, as we all know, Bella and Edward don't have...

Watched Before Night Falls, always wanted to see it, partially because it garnered so much praise, and partially because I had heard about Johnny Depp's daring performance in it, and I wanted to see that. But it is Javier Bardem's movie--every second, from the young student with high hopes for Castro's revolution who is quickly disillusioned by the brutal crack downs (just as in Persepolis) for both his writing and his homosexuality. Are all revolutions doomed to betray themselves? It is a harrowing and beautiful film with Bardem reading Arenas own words in the original language. I cannot now remember how much of the film was in Spanish and how much in English, it flowed so beautifully together. It made me want to read the writer--what more can a film do for a writer?

I recently watched Persepolis, The Reader, and Hotel Rwanda, each in their own way about living through war and the things we do to survive. How much would you do, what would you do, most importantly, what would you do to survive. Persepolis is the story of a girl/young woman, growing up in the aftermath of the fall of the Shah. At the beginning her liberal parents are full of hope for the new regime, but it is soon clear that the western freedoms enjoyed under the Shah are gone. They fear for their daughter's outspoken protest, and yet, it is at their knee that she has learned to speak up. Our heroine is packed off to Vienna where she gets into the kind of troubles that a young woman alone in a strange city might be prone to--fights with landlords, as she puts them, banal love affairs. Hers is an easy war, even when she returns, until one of her friends is killed running from a mixed ( illegal ) party. The war is a background to them until it collides with them and they live as i...

The western as genre is generally a film style that you either love or loathe, and I really only gained an appreciation for westerns in film class. One must submerge/submit oneself to the archetypes presented. My husband has little patience for them--they are stories to be watched at that is all. We ended up watching two relatively close to each other. The first, the remake of 3:10 to Yuma was fairly straightforward--most interesting for the fine acting of the two leads who, of course, are not American. And the Western is American, although the best of them borrow from other myths as archetypes are archetypes for a reason. The second was The Assassination of Jesse James... I can't say that I liked it. In most good westerns the landscape--the west--is a character, as real and as important as any human as cities are in the stories I mentioned below. I say West, but of course, Jesse James was from my childhood home--KC, MO area. Like a student film, we watched long shots of wavi...

Unless you've been living under a rock, or Tivo / DVR all of your viewing, you are probably aware that there is a Superhero movie coming out next week called Watchmen and you may even be aware that all the fan boys (and even some fan girls) worship this Graphic Novel (originally issues) as nearly the sui generis of graphic novels, written by the truly eccentric and prickly (literally and figuratively) Alan Moore of V for Vendetta, From Hell, and others. I remember talking to a co-worker about V for Vendetta and saying that while my husband and I liked the movie and didn't mind the changes, the graphic novel was darker, and the friend gaping at me as if I had spoken in Aramaic--how could it be darker. The fear is, of course, that Watchmen will not be dark enough, and my own personal fear that if it is dark enough, it will not be what most of the audience is expecting. As in this early review (it's out in Britain): http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090227/en_nm/us_film_watchme...

Is a terrible film (bad use of slo -mo, dreadful signalling music, etc.) that somehow manages to be quite a fun ride. I swear I am getting old, though, because some of the "hand-held" shots were too fast for me. I'll go with this quote from Roger Ebert: "It's goofy fun with a lot of stuff that blows up real good." AND I will say that someone, somewhere (probably a room full of people) put some serious thought into how things transformed, which is pretty impressive for a movie called, oh, I don't know, Transformers. Oh, and it was very, very funny. John Turturro in particular was very, very funny. And one doesn't get to say that very often.

Ocean's 13 was quite fun. I really loved Ocean's 11 but it is a boy's club and having women in Ocean's 12 was a mistake. Even though it WASTED Eddie Izzard it pulled together (and Ellen Barkin was having fun). AND it's so damn meta. Is it just me or was the whole walking through a Toys are Us at the beginning a little too Mr. & Mrs. Smith? Plus the small talk--settle down, have some kids. Heh , heh .

Gah , I could have sworn that I wrote about "A History of Violence" but I can't find it! A subtle film, for all of the bloody and brutal violence and even those are relatively (for Cronenberg certainly) few. And an ambiguous one. Part (I vaguely remember hearing) of a triptych of films about whether the mark of violence is always on you. In this one quite literally.

We went to see Wall-E. Wall-E, the eponymous robot, has his little collections too. Amidst skyscrapers of trash. I loved it, and I teared up. I think the tag line for Dumbo was "You'll believe an elephant can fly," and last year's tag line for Ratatouille was "You'll believe a rat can cook." Well, you'll believe that a robot can love, even if it's to a tune from "Hello, Dolly." I have to admit that " It Only Takes a Moment, " has always been one of my guilty pleasures (including the pleasure of watching a gawky Michael Crawford). { Ok , I have to stick in one of the lovely and talented John Barrowman since it's over there-- sqee a little} Anyway, I really loved this film. The ability to make "faceless" machines tear your heart--well, Pixar has always done that. Plotwise I'd have to say I'm still leaning towards Ratatouille and The Incredibles since the plot is a little obvious, but the wordless be...

Since Wanted came out this week, it seemed like the time to write my belated article on Nightwatch , Daywatch , Twilightwatch . I was trying to find the post I thought I'd written on seeing Nightwatch , but couldn't find it. Maybe I didn't write it down... At any rate, we watched Daywatch recently and it was directed by Timur Bekmambetov who directed the new Angelina Jolie/James McAvoy vehicle--Wanted. Nightwatch and Daywatch are the two highest grossing films EVER in Russia. That's why Timur got to helm an Angie project--but more on that later. After watching Daywatch I felt the need to go and read the entire trilogy (although there is a 4 th coming out in English translation in one week) in a mad marathon of about 4 days. I enjoyed the books very much--great humor, fascinating story line. I also enjoyed the movies very much--great visuals, quirky humor, fascinating story line. They are not, however, great adaptations of the books. That is, they are not ...

I fell in love with Peter O'Toole when I was 10 and he was 49. He was Flavius Silva in Masada and he had already had some rough decades in the bottle behind him. But with my already developed Biseinen sensors, I knew that he was or had once been exquisitely beautiful. Already something of an obsessive, I saw every film I could find that I was allowed to see, good, bad or mediocre. From the near perfect Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, to the fluff of How to Steal a Million to the perfectly dreadful Goodbye Mr. Chips (the musical!). Much was off limits to me and I would wait years to see the cult classics like The Ruling Class or What's New Pussycat. It's hard to describe how stunning he is in Lawrence and the pictures I can find do not do the action justice. Tan, tall and blonde --not my usual MO, but he looks like sculpture in that film. Noel Coward allegedly said, "If he were any prettier in that film, he'd be Florence of Arabia." In glorious technicolor his...

Which is an easy thing to do now that the regular TV season is over: The Matador--Pierce Brosnan both fulfills and surpasses Bond El Orfanato --a little heavy handed at times, and a little obvious, but at the core, it is the two all too human accidents that will shake you, far beyond the supernatural. The Golden Compass--I think I've written about Pullman before. It was very pretty--may need to refresh myself on the books. Day Watch--the sequel to the very interesting and visually stunning Night Watch, deserves a larger post Fido--Billy Connolly gives an Oscar worth performance with grunts and baring of teeth. Keep your own Zombie as a pet. Great fun, plus Carrie Ann Moss, mmm ... Sweeney Todd--a pretty film of a mediocre musical. Helena lacked the chops, but Johnny Depp really does look like Hyde when he sings.

Watched most of this this afternoon. Have to say I really enjoyed it, and Will Farrell, and you have to know that I HATE all Will Farrell movies. Like discovering that Jim Carrey can act, it was pleasant to find that Farrell could as well. While Carrey always had a commitment to a variety of characters, I always felt that Farrell was just playing the same shtick over and over (well, except for The Oblongs--the weirdest of all my favorite weird cartoons--I love, love, loved him in The Oblongs ). Always delightful to see Emma Thompson playing neurotic. It is also a very clever film about fiction and life. I would have to say it will probably be enjoyed more by people who read the kind of novels that Thompson's character writes--tragedies, not comedies.

Watching the tail end of this--you could never make this film today. I do love this film. I discovered it quite recently as my parents didn't watch Mel Brooks films. I only watch Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. My husband loves The Producers (not the new thing--which we found unwatchable--putting us deep in a minority). He likes History of the World I too which just seems overdone to me. And the later stuff...well, the less said, the better. Edit: My husband walked in and although I was looking at the TV guide with no picture, and even though all you heard was footsteps he knew right where we were in the film--and every line.

In the last two weekends, we've watched the following movies in reverse order: 300 Aeon Flux Hollywoodland The Queen The History Boys 300 - lush visually, fairly simplistic but we'd both read the graphic novel, so no surprises. We kept counting the ways the lead kept slipping into brogue and comparing him to Sean Connery. We also spent some time speculating on the computer effects. Aeon Flux - better than we'd been led to believe, not extraordinary, but then, while we enjoyed the original , strange shorts, we weren't 'in love' with them, so not wedded to them. I thought it a decent, basic sci- fi story and I was happy that the Kwisatz Haderach of this was female. [ Sidenote : apparently when a friend of mine saw The Matrix in the theater, someone stood up at the end stood up and yelled, "He is the Kwisatz Haderach ." That was exactly why my husband didn't like The Matrix. I said, "There are a lot of Messiah's in sci- fi ; get over i...

So I'm working on the laptop last Friday night (not this past Friday, the one before) and I see that "Wicker Man" starring Nicholas Cage is coming on and I had a faint curiosity about it. My husband decides to go to bed and I start watching. Oh, dear God. If I hadn't been actively doing something else, I'd wish that I could have that hour and a half back. It was such a bad film, poorly plotted, ludicrously acted. Smoking guns developed and then let drop--it wasn't even suspenseful or creepy. Just laughable. The only reason I watched was because I vaguely remember liking the original with Edward Woodward from the 70's. Now the only reason that this rates a post--since I don't usually burden you with bad films--is that the screenplay was written by Neil LaBute . He of "in the Company of Men" and "The Shape of Things." He also directed. Oddly enough, I have never seen another Neil LaBute film--I've only seen his plays. ...

I've been thinking about this one for awhile in the discussions I've been having about where my life went wrong and the college I could have gone to--the paths not taken. I had the chance to go to a college in southern CA about 35 miles from LA. I went instead to Amherst College, Amherst, MA. If I had had the chance to visit Amherst I wouldn't have come, but I was dazzled at a distance by its history and its status. I had worked hard in high school to get into the best college and Amherst was considered the best. If one believes in alternate universes, then somewhere there is a Novel who went to Scripps (unless she died in the earthquake or the riots or of the smog that rolled in every afternoon). Now the most instantaneous and obvious difference in my life if I had gone to a different college would have been the fact that I would not have met my husband. The romantic answer is that I was fated to go to Amherst TO meet him and that it's wonderful, but I actually think ...

Well, we waited a week. It's not really comparable with The Prestige because the through lines (that is the point of the movie) is so completely different. It's an ok film. Quite pretty and the acting (even Jessica Biel --which was actually pleasant, because I thought it was going to be Jessica Alba) excellent. I love Rufus Sewall , and Norton and Giammatti keep rising with each film I see. It occurred to me that Sewall has now played two depraved sons of rulers who thought themselves better than their governments. He played Charles II in a made for TV. Of course, everyone seems to have played Charles II from Sam Neil to John Malkovich . It was a basic love story and the twist was pretty obvious. I've been lurking at IMDB quite a bit this week and I agree with the assessment that although the "magic/science" of The Prestige is impossible, it is nevertheless explained and "plausible" within the film. Only some of the tricks are explained he...

We're having computer problems which may require the complete reinstall of the OS. Blech. I'm writing this on my laptop with stolen wi-fi, which makes it all very, very slow, so I may have to break my streak of continuous posting. Hopefully not, but know that it is due to circumstances beyond my control. Went to see Pan's Labyrinth tonight and am not going to give it enough space here. Lovely, lovely, tragic movie, although, not as good (to me) as Devil's Backbone . But stunning visuals, great edititing, excellent storytelling. Del Toro is definitely in my pantheon now.