Setting the Bar

After Borat , I guess that I should have expected another movie by and starring Sacha Baron Cohen that was similar and in the same vein. And Bruno was it.

Bruno was made and released on DVD in 2009. It was directed by Larry Charles and is a mockumentary - a fictional documentary about a flamboyantly gay Austrian model named Bruno. Bruno, at the start of the movie is a fashion reporter and is fired after disrupting acatwalk during Milan’s fashion week. Seemingly overnight, he goes from being somewhat popular to being shunned by the fashion community. He no longer can get into the hippest clubs and his boyfriend leaves him for a different person. Brüno unsuccessfully attempts an acting career as an extra on NBC’s Medium. He then produces a celebrity interview pilot, showing him dancing erotically, criticizing Jamie-Lynn Spears‘ fetus with reality TV star Brittny Gastineau, unsuccessfully stalking and attempting to “interview” actor Harrison Ford, and closing with a close-up penis being swung around.

After realizing that the biggest names in Hollywood are straight (citing Tom Cruise, Kevin Spacey and John Travolta), Brüno consults two Christian gay converters to help him become heterosexual. He attempts “straight” activities, such as joining the National Guard, going hunting in Alabama, learning taekwondo, and attending a swingers party at which he is whipped by a dominatrix (Michelle McLaren). Each of these attempts end miserably due to Bruno’s failure to keep his gay traits hidden, but he vows that he will become straight.

Eight months later, a now-heterosexual Brüno, under the alias “Straight Dave”, hosts a cage-fight match, Straight Dave’s Man Slammin’ Maxout in Arkansas. Lutz appears at the event and calls Brüno a faggot. The two fight, only to rekindle their love, making out and stripping in front of the aghast spectators who throw objects into the cage, among them plastic cups and a metal folding chair. The clip gets International press, so the now-famous Brüno attempts to marry Lutz and gets O.J. back in exchange for a MacBook Pro. Brüno records a charity song, “Dove of Peace”, featuring Bono, Elton John, Chris Martin, Snoop Dogg, Sting and Slash.

This movie simply didn’t top Borat.  It just didn’t. It was unsurprising and in the same veins and I was completely prepared for everything that happened. Nothing surprised me. People’s reactions didn’t surprise me. The fact that deception and deceit were used didn’t surprise me and the fact that people were shocked to learn that it was Baron Cohen and not Bruno didn’t surprise me. I did get some laughs in some places, but it was the same thing all over again. It wasn’t fresh, it wasn’t new. It wasn’t creative. It had all been done before and that disappointed me, because Baron-Cohen is obviously a very talented comic and actor.  Perhaps the novelty of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy has worn off, but although “Brüno” is funny, it fails to carry the weight of its groundbreaking predecessor. Universal’s Blu-ray edition is packed with extra material, however, so fans should indulge.

I guess that any movie starring J-Lo should not have inspired high expectations for me.  But I had hoped that Jane Fonda would balance out the J-Lo-ishness of any movie that I saw.  But it wasn’t so unfortunately.

This movie is a 2005 romantic comedy that was directed by Robert Luketic . Charlie Cantilini, played by Jennifer Lopez, is living in Venice Beach, California and working at a temp agency and as a dogwalker. She seems to really enjoy her life. She meets surgeon Kevin Fields, played by Michael Vartan ,  and they end up dating. Things seem perfect until they meet Kevin’s mother, Viola (Fonda). Viola is a newscaster who has interviewed all of the most famous celebrities and politicians, but has found out that she’s being canned and replaced by a younger newscaster. This starts off a meltdown. She loathes Charlie from the start and this feeling is magnified one hundred fold when Kevin proposes to Charlie in front of his mother, while they are visiting her. Having lost her career, Viola is terrified at losing her only son, so she sets out to ruin their relationship and their wedding. Charlie eventually catches onto to Viola’s plans and begins her own campaign against Viola. It all culminates on the wedding day and the antics that ensue.

While it was really nice to see Jane Fonda acting again, this movie was just plain rotten. J-Lo, while she may be a talented designer, dancer and (maybe) singer, cannot act. She should just give up.  She was awful in this movie. Her lines were delivered in a contrived and smarmy manner and everything about her seemed almost forced. Michael Vartan occasionally put in appearances but really wasn’t more than filler. His character was so boring. Hard to see what anyone could see in a character like him.  There was nothing new, exciting or fresh about this novel. It was the same predictable nonsense that you can expect from romantic comedies starring J-LO.

I wouldn’t even bother to rent this one.

This novel is about Felix Funicello, a fifth grader at a small Catholic school in Connecticut.  And yes, Felix is related to the other, more famous, Funicello - Annette - and it’s 1965, right when she’s at the height of her popularity.  This is Felix’s story about his time in the months leading up to Christmas in St. Aloyisius Gonzaga School. Felix’s mother has been invited to participate in the Pillsbury bake-off, a program hosted by none other then Ronald Reagan. At school, Felix and his class have a permanent substitute - a lay teacher named Madame Frechette, a Quebecois who isn’t a nun, is pretty controversial among the nuns and who is teaching the children conversational French. She’s also casting the school Christmas play. Her contribution to the play is organizing the kids into vivants.

This is a really just charming, well written look into a child’s life in the months leading up to Christmas - the anticipation, the pranks, the jokes.  And Wally Lamb is as good a writer as he always is. This is an entertaining read and brings back memories of fifth grade ANYWHERE and not just in parochial school (I didn’t go to parochial school, but it still struck a cord with me when I read it — it evoked my memories of fifth grade). I would recommend this novel for anyone’s pre-Christmas reading list - it’s mindless, heartfelt and wonderful.

All I can say is wow. The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud is set in New York City at the turn of the millenium and focuses on the lives of three “gliterati” - young twenty and barely thirty somethings who are fairly well off and living and playing in New York City in the months leading up and just after September 11, 2001.  The stories of three friends - Marina Thwaite, Danielle Minkoff and Julius Clarke - are intertwined with each others and with Murray Thwaite’s story (he’s Marina’s father) and with Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, Marina’s cousin.

Julius, Marina and Danielle met at Brown in the early nineties and all three moved to the big city upon graduation to pursue their dreams. Each expected to do something “important” and change the world but none has really done that by the time they are entering their 30’s. Danielle is the most steadily employed - she is creating documentaries. Marina is writing a book, supposedly (though by the time we meet her, she’s moved back home and isn’t working at all) and Julius writes scathing reviews for the Village Voice, mostly. Bootie, Marina’s cousin and Ludovic Seeley, a magazine tycoon that Danielle met in Australia, move to the city in the spring and wreak havoc in what was a holding pattern for the trio. Bootie is a college dropout that hates and resents everyone but still desperately wants to be self-reliant. The only way that he can see to do that is to leave Watertown, NY and travel to NYC to live with his cousin and uncle. He begins to work as his uncle Murray’s secretary and finds out that Murray doesn’t quite live up to Bootie’s longheld admiration for him.

I loved this book because it deftly rips apart what I think of as hypocrisy and demonstrates that appearances can truly be deceiving. Murray Thwaite is the example of this. He is supposed to be this high and mighty moralistic liberal that has been the champion of all causes from civil rights to abortion rights to religious rights.  He’s the typical liberal in that he believes in the voice of the underdog and of the people, but when actually confronted by the people - his wife Annabel (who is a lawyer that advocates for underprivileged children in the juvenile and abuse/neglect system), one of her clients, and his nephew - can’t quite seem to stomach them or man up enough to step up to the plate to help them out. He conducts extramarital affairs like there is no tomorrow (not even stopping to consider sleeping with his daughter’s friend, Danielle). The entitlement that he shows is disgustingly perverse.

I loved Ms. Messud’s writing style - the sentences are long but seemingly effortless. So effortless that it made the four hundred plus pages fly by. She is an extremely gifted and confident writer and it comes across that way. This is a novel that should be required reading in AP English and college survey classes around the country.

So, when I was sick with the flu over Thanksgiving and didn’t have anything better to do with my time besides sit in bed and gaze blankly at the television, I opted instead to watch Showtime’s The Tudors on Netflix’s Instant Queue.  And I guess the fact that I was able to watch it through a fever makes it glorious, gorgeous and mindless.  In fact, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it because it was gorgeous and I didn’t have to really think all that much. I wouldn’t say it’s the best ever series but it was pretty damn entertaining.

I found the characters fascinating and the stories fascinating even though I knew what was going to happen (please, are you really shocked to learn that Anne Boleyn gets beheaded or that Henry VIII was really a slut?!) and in spite of the sometimes graphic sex (more so than on normal TV, but I guess because it’s on cable, it’s all right). How boring could it be when you’re following around fascinating people like Katherine of Aragon, Henry (who created a religion so that he could marry Anne Boleyn) and a strong, intelligent woman like Anne Boleyn?  You can’t get much better - it’s an historical soap opera that never gets boring.

And the acting was phenomenal. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in this series and actually won The Monte Carlo Festival de Television  for his portrayal of Henry VIII) is fantastic in his role as the King of England. I felt like he WAS Henry VIII; it was eerily like he was channeling the long dead King of England.  His intensity is almost palpable. And Natalie Dormer , who plays Anne Boleyn, was amazing too, though markedly underrated.   Veterans like Sam Neill and Peter O’Toole rounded out and supported an amazing cast.

The costumes were beautifully colored and very lush.  They were gorgeous.  It was amazing to never see anyone, except the religious folk and the clerics, never wore the same things twice.  It also appears that the costume designers went to great lengths to make sure that the pieces were true to the period and it showed. The writing was also very rich and absolutely divine.

This totally addictive series is a must watch for any historical drama buff.  Be prepared to crave more and not be satisfied until you are done.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson is the second in the Millenium trilogy (the First was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). In this novel, we again are dealing with Michal Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salandar. Michal had made his fortune and fame with Lisbeth’s help by bringing down a top financial firm in the last novel.  He’s made his name exposing corruption so when Dag Svensson, a young freelance reporter, approaches him with an idea for a book and an issue for the magazine in which he exposes the sex trade industry, Blomkvist’s interest is immediately piqued. This novel takes place about one year after the events in the first novel and Blomkvist has had no contact with Lisbeth Salander since their last project together, even though Lisbeth maintains contact with him by checking his hard drive on occasion.

She is drawn to the investigation that Blomkvist and his new reporter are conducting because she herself is a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her court appointed guardian as well as the social services system in Sweden.  She’s actually a kick ass feminist who is obsessed with ridding Sweden at least from misogynists, of whom there are many in this novel.  She actually begins to plot the destruction of the people that are listed in Blomkvists’ files but before she actually does anything, three people die and she’s accused of the murders. To avoid capture by the Swedish police, who have jumped to a conclusion about Salander, Salander disappears. The media have a field day with her while Blomkvist tries to clear her name.

I really enjoyed the critique of misogynistic women and the women that they exploited. These men are portrayed as violent, perverted, corrupt, and protected by high-ranking officials in Swedish society – so Larsson is posing questions about the abuse of power. He shows how easy it is for those in high places to cover up their misdeeds.  It was a fast paced and quick read and the translation from Swedish to English was actually quite good.

This was a good book - not just your run of the mill mystery.

When I was in college, I was very interested in all things Chinese. I didn’t take a language course because at the time, meeting for a class that is that intensive (it met five mornings a week for two hours and you had extensive labs) seemed more of a time commitment than I could handle (kicking myself now, I instead took Spanish for two years). As a history major, I took a Chinese history course - the survey course- as part of my BA requirement and fell in love with Ancient Chinese history. However, the Maoist regime and Cultural Revolution were also fascinating and that is where the Vagrants  by Yiyun Li really comes into play.

The Vagrants is Li’s first novel (she published a collection of Short Stories previously). The setting is Communist China in 1979 - three years after Chairman Mao’s death and ten years before the Tiananmen Square Massacre .  Li introduces us to and follows a group of people that seemingly don’t have anything in common with one another. She follows them over a period of three months in their industrial town of Muddy River, which isn’t really a city but is big enough to make some money for the province and to be noted by the government. In Beijing, a Democratic Wall has been set up - the precursor for the aforementioned revolution in 1989 - and news of the wall has reached Muddy River. Provincial leaders in Muddy River are very nervous that the news of the Wall will cause a lot of unrest and protests. The story begins with the day on which a young woman, Gu Shan, is to be executed after spending ten years in prison for being a counterrevolutionary and not being reformed/re-educated. Her new capital crime is denouncing the Communist regime in her prison journals. A number of the major characters gather to see her executed - Nini (a severely deformed girl), Kai (a seemingly model citizen who married into a good family, had a son and reads the morning news), Bashi (a young man whose father was a commemorated war hero), and Tong (a young boy that has moved to the city recently).

Kai learns that Gu Shan’s execution was pushed through hurriedly so that her kidneys could be harvested and transplanted into the body of a mid level Communist party member. Because of this, she organizes a peaceful revolution that includes Gu Shan’s parents and many town members. I didn’t want to give too much away, so I felt that I had to be pretty barebones in describing the basic premise of the novel.

I loved this novel. Even though the writing is sparse in some places and very simple, you get a rich image of what it was like to live in Muddy River in 1979, during this time.  Li paints a stark picture of the hunger, poverty and competitiveness as well as the stresses of constantly having to look over your shoulder and mind what words you say (or risk being arrested as a political prisoner and maybe executed!). It’s very disturbing when the best advice that a parent can give her 8 year old son is “Follow what you’ve been taught, say what you’ve been taught and sing what you’ve been taught and you will be ok.” The mistrust is enough to cause someone to die of a heart attack because of the stressors on their lives.

This chilling novel is a powerful novel and a requiem to the people that lost their lives in trying to make their country a better place.

Book 74/100

I’ve read a lot of Terry Brooks. I was fascinated and even, some would say, obssessed with the Shannara books (although they seemed to be an updated version of the Lord of the Rings books).  I read them for the first time when I was a 12 year old geek in sixth grade, with nothing better to do on a Friday night and I’ve recently re-discovered them as an adult. So I decided I would try the Landover books, in part because I was fascinated by the premise and in part because I’m a Brooks fan.

In this book, the first of the series, we meet 40-something year old Ben Holiday. Ben’s real life is a shell of his former life. While he is a successful, much respected and wealthy attorney, he is hopelessly in despair. He’s alone more often than not and his wife, Annie, died in a tragic car accident two years before the events in this book while she was 12 weeks pregnant with their first child. Ben hasn’t ever really gotten over the loss and has withdrawn into himself and his work. He doesn’t seem to feel that he has much to live for - as his wife has died and he doesn’t get a whole lot of satisfaction from his job, even though he’s disgustingly successful. While thumbing through a holiday catalog that arrives at his home addressed to his wife, Ben sees an advertisement for a magic kingdom for sale for a mere million dollars. Ben has the money and decides to make the purchase because he’s got nothing to lose except money (of which he apparently has a lot) and the catalog itself comes from a reputable company. Ben is whisked away to Landover by the broker, a wizard himself. Ben finds that the kingdom was once beautiful, but is now in steep decline, having been without a true king for 20 years.  The Blight is slowly killing the kingdom and the castle, Sterling Silver, that he is to live in. Ben learns that in the 20 years since the previous king died, scores of people just like him have attempted to ascend to the throne, but have failed and have actually, mysteriously disappeared upon their renunciation of the throne.

Ben sets off, with the help of Questor (the court magician), Abernathy (the court scribe), Bunion and Parnsip (a pair of kobolds), Willow (a sylph) and a pair of gnomes to try to convince the various groups of subjects to pledge their allegiance to him. This wasn’t the best book generally that I’ve read and it wasn’t particularly good fantasy either.  My two year old probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it either, even though it seems more appropriate for a group of people other than adults.  I just couldn’t get into it, even though I liked the writing style very much. There just isn’t a whole lot of creativity going on either. For someone that had such rich names for places and descriptions in the Shannara books, names like the Wastelands and Ben Holiday just didn’t quite raise to the challenge.

The plot was utterly devoid of any turns that I couldn’t see coming at me miles in advance. It was almost like driving through the flat lands in the midwest and being able to see everything coming at you for miles and trailing behind you for miles. There were no surprises or plot twists that left you breathless or savoring the moment or wanting to read more.  It was just plain boring.

If you’re going to have a lawyer as your main character, don’t make them some boring big firm litigation type.  Make them a public defender with some spunk for crying out loud.  Ben Holiday was BORING too and didn’t really learn anything during the 300 plus pages of this novel. He was flat, just like the rest of this book. I had no connection with him at all and he could failed or succeeded, but I honestly didn’t care which. I just wanted it to end.

I was embarassed that Terry Brooks wrote this and that it was actually published because it was absolute garbage. Sorry Mr. Brooks - I liked some of your other stuff, but this wasn’t your most shining of moments.

Book Number 73/100

I find books about the Middle East, and Iran in particular, fascinating.  This book was very illuminating. Pasha, the main character, is a 17 year old young adult in Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s tyrannical regime.  He and his best friend, Ahmed, fall in love with their neighbors - Ahmed with Faheema and Pasah with Zari. Pasha is in his senior year of high school and is well along the path towards attending school in the United States, where he will study engineering. Pasha has a crush on his next door neighbor Zari, but from the beginning, things seem stacked against them. She is engaged to a progressive University student that Pasha admires greatly. Doctor is also involved in revolutionary activities and leaves town for some time in order to engage in his activities. While Doctor is away, Ahmed, Faheema and Pasha meet at Zari’s home to keep her company. When Doctor returns home, tragedies mount and mount and mount. They seem to beget each other.

This was a first book by Seraji, who came to the United States from Iran when he was 19 to study film.  It was a very good first novel and I felt like I learned a lot from it.  At times it was very lyrical. At the same time, however, there were parts where the writing was very jerky.  The young people that he wrote about were very well developed and faced so much in their very short lives.  The relationships are wonderful and very well developed. The dialogue is just as rich as the descriptions and they balance each other out very well. This is a very realistic and beautifully done first novel in general.

I have never read a book that was about a person or people I know.  I have read books about places that I’ve gone to and am going to many times in the past. This book intimately combined a place where I lived for 18 months and people that I lived in the community with and worked with, knew all about and occasionally socialized with.  In some ways, it was really bizarre because I think that I had more intense feelings than I would have normally had.

This book is a true crime book in which Casey Sherman (a veteran journalist who has published a few other books on similar topics) about the deaths of Franconia Police Corporal Bruce Mckay and the person that shot him - Liko Kenney.  The homicides happened in May of 2007 in the North Country of New Hampshire, a very rural area that isn’t always hospitable to outsiders.  He looks at the incident from many different perspectives. In them, Floyd isn’t as much a clear cut hero as originally thought. Liko isn’t as much a bad, rebellious kid and Corporal Mckay isn’t as clear cut a noble cop. Floyd had a history of violence and mental health issues and on May 11, 2007, he was on at least 20 different medications. McKay was still a good, decent cop who didn’t know when to compromise and let himself get caught up in a pissing match, for lack of a better phrase, with a young man that was very much a product of his unique family and their perspectives on things. The Kenneys were hippies, who moved to Franconia because of their anti-establishment and pot smoking/growing tendencies. Sherman also describes the history that existed between Liko and Corporal McKay - a stop that quickly escalated into three officers being there and Liko assaulting McKay by grabbing his testicles.

I really thought that Sherman did an excellent job in portraying the story of McKay/Kenney feuds and altercations.  It would have been so easy to be swayed one way or the other after conducting the interviews that he did, but he managed to tell the story in a neutral light. There were a couple of things that did bug me, mostly related to proofreading issues and things that I knew about the area that an insider may have better understood. For instance - place names. It’s Grafton COUNTY Superior Court, not Grafton Superior Court.  Also, Mr. Sherman was inaccurate in his use of legal terminology in describing what happened with Mr. Floyd’s outstanding sentences. Mr. Floyd wasn’t on parole at any point during his interactions. He was on a term of good behavior - which is completely different than parole and everything that parole entails. Also, if Mr. Sherman had bothered to check the Littleton District Court files for Mr. Kenney, he would have seen that Mr. Kenney’s public defender wasn’t Robin Warren (I know Robin, I worked with her, she’s not a lawyer and I think would be rather offended at being called that) but another lawyer. Also, at some points, the years were off — these things would have been fixed had a lawyer consulted on it or Sherman had done some more research or had a proofreader.

All in all though, I enjoyed the book and it renewed my obsession with this case.