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King of California

What a horrible little slice of Americana! A teenager, abandoned by her mother and with a father on a funny farm, works full time at McDonald's instead of going to school. The daughter's routine is disrupted by her father's release. He has become obsessed by the idea that there is a Spanish explorer's long lost treasure buried somewhere near their suburban Californian home. The daughter's initial skepticism fades to enthusiasm for her father's crazy quest as he researches and spends his time roaming with a mental detector. Eventually they decide they'll find it under Costco. The daughter secures a job there, gets her hands on some keys, and in the middle of the night they drill their way into a disaster. This trashy glimpse of dream crazed America, in its shallow plot, unconvincing and depressing pretext left us with a feeling of having wasted our time more than wariness of the future. Not convincing but at least a little creative with a decent original soundtrack.

Um?
2 out of 5
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Plot: 2
Imagery: 1
Originality: 2
Soundtrack: 3 Buy the: soundtrack Download the: soundtrack
Overall: 2

Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut

"Read this, it's garbage!" the back cover may as well state of this fictional autobiography. "I am old and sick of this crap but you greedy readers keep pulling for more, so here it is. Here is my garbage. Have a good look. I have not disguised it but know you will read it anyway. Enjoy!" Vonnegut may as well write in his customary note of introduction. And thus begins one of the most redundant novels ever written. An aging and wealthy Armenian painter, Rabo, lives in a large lonely mansion in the Hamptons. The house used to belong to the Taft family, a family Rabo married into by luck. Now it is also occupied by an especially pushy widow/successful pop culture novelist who shoves her tacky ambitions into Rabo's home and life. In the first 30 pages or so Vonnegut - oops, Rabo - tells us the entire story. He also mentions there is a mysterious something in the potato barn. Rabo's friends and perhaps his readers are horribly curious about that mystery. Curious enough to listen to an old man ramble off his life story, repeating an event five times before it happens, describing the moment in detail, and repeating it again five times after the fact. Rabo is particularly fixated on his first sexual experience, an encounter with an older woman. It is made clear that this was his only moment of real love in life, probably due to the fact he's clung to it alone all these decades.

It's like Vonnegut was determined to test the loyalty of his readers: be patient and maybe, when I am finished, I'll swing open the door of my potato barn to reveal a morsel of undiscovered wisdom/wit. There is a lot about abstract art, war, soul and meat.

This book is written in first person and separated into tiny readable sections for even those readers with virtually no attention span. The characters are at once pretentious, sentimental, and absurd; as alive as a dead fly on the windowsill. This is not Vonnegut at his best. I kept waiting for snappy little explanations which never came and instead left sections unrelated and random. Maybe his earlier works (e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle, and The Sirens of Titan to name a few) set expectations too high. Worth reading for fools and other die hard Vonnegut fans.

Um?
2 out of 5
Buy this Book: Bluebeard: A Novel

Romance of the Western Chamber

A silent Chinese film with jerking eastern theatrical acting, ridiculous head gear and awesome clips of swords clashing. This 45-minute love story is probably one most people could happily skip. Here is the entire film in case your interest is piqued: A scholar randomly stops at a monastery to study. There is a girl living there with her family. The scholar falls in love. Bandits come for the girl. "Whoever saves my daughter can have her hand in marriage" says the mother. The scholar thinks hard. An idea! He sends a brave monk with a letter to a powerful general who comes and defeats the bandits. The scholar is happy and worn out. Crazy dream sequence. "Go pass your exams and my daughter is yours," says the mother. How do you think it ends?
This would probably make a great gift for an Asian-American friend who has lost touch with their Asianness.

Um?
2 out of 5
Buy this movie: Romance of the Western Chamber

Plot: 1
Imagery: 3
Originality: 1
Soundtrack: 2
Overall: 2

The Ice Storm - Rick Moody

This book focuses heavily on masturbation, secrecy, and suburban depravity. The characters are almost all - no, entirely - depressed, depressing, hedonistic people of privilege who, so oppressed by their own sacred boundaries of upper-class-dom, are driven to strange means of pleasure and excitement. The story is centered around the obvious symbolism of a brutal ice storm that freezes the holiday nonsense of New Canaan and maroons the residents in their respective places of deviancy. The adults are drunk and loose and because of that so are the children. Written in quick, confident pop prose, it is almost possible to ignore the hollow plot and glaring metaphors and just enjoy the ride. Perhaps I just don't find the emptiness of American suburbia very interesting, funny, or disturbing, but once again this seems like a good example of over-hyped popular literature (see reviews: Oracle Bones, The Inheritance of Loss).

BOOOOOOOO!
1.5 out of 5
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Last Tango in Paris

As the title suggests, Bertolucci's famous film is a story of two people engaged in a passionate, somewhat violent, and temporary relationship. Marlon Brando is a wayward American who has been living in Paris for several years. Following a sudden tragedy, he lunges into a secret affair with a malleable young French woman. They go about their 'normal' lives and meet at random in a mostly empty apartment to partake in coital activities, struggling (at the insistence of Brando's character) to maintain anonymity. The man reveals himself to be a deeply disturbed person who is completely disillusioned with conventional human interactions, while the woman (girl, really) continues to return despite other inclinations and a relationship with a kinder, though hyperactive and rather annoying, young filmmaker. The film is lavish, intense, and strangely captivating. The jazzy music swells into sudden torrents of strings and wild tango rhythms and then subsides just as abruptly, much like the emotions of the characters. Not recommended for children or conservatives.

Highly Entertaining
4 out of 5
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Plot: 4
Imagery: 4
Originality: 4
Soundtrack: 4 Last Tango in Paris
Overall: 4

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis - Jose Saramago

A quiet novel from the Nobel Prize winning Portuguese author. The protagonist, Dr. Ricardo Reis, returns to his native city of Lisbon after 16 years of self-imposed exile to Brazil. A poet friend has died. He spends a rather uneventful year in decline, talking to the ghost of his dead friend, mostly living in a hotel where he reads newspapers, wanders the streets, falls in love with a young guest and, of course, sleeps with a maid. With a mixture of magical realism, historical references (it's 1936, war in Europe is eminent and wealthy Spanish refugees slowly clog the city) and careful prose this story has potential to be a captivating and beautiful read. Unfortunately the plot is so stationary in its subtlety that the novel leaves instead an impression of painful tedium, which festers and grows to a near spite by the end when, as throughout, nothing happens. His death, portrayed as his taking his coat and following his dead friend to the graveyard, is a good demonstration of the book as a whole: an old man's detouring, distracted, procrastinated walk to the grave. For readers in reflective, time-abundant situations (patient old people) or academics where each minute detail can be reconstructed and massaged until it releases whatever point is to be found, this book may be good fodder for your arrogance. Otherwise, well worth skipping in a world so full of nourishing drive-thru wisdom.

Um?
2.5 out of 5
Buy this Book: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Brigands - Chapter VII

This subtle Georgian satire is seemingly about the violence of mankind and the unending cycle of history repeating itself. Having never before seen any of director Otar Iosseliani's films nor read anything about Brigands - Chapter VII we have to admit that for most of the plot we were baffled as to the point. The movie is framed in a small cinema, where the projectionist is drunk and puts the reels on in the wrong order so the story slips between multiple time periods. For the most part the same actors are used for similar roles in each era but also some new ones are mixed in each time, leaving little in the way of continuity for the untrained eye to find. The main actor, at least the one the camera seems to focus on the most, plays a modern bum, a Stalinist goon, and a medieval royal. There is also a massacre of middle-aged, naked, partying French arms dealers by a child.

Straight-faced absurdity, presented through a combination of theatrical acting and a setting where human life has entirely lost its value, permeates almost every minute of the film. The picture quality is bad (the film looks like it was initially recorder onto a VHS from TV and then transfered to DVD), leaving the strongest impression of all on the viewer: low budget PBS daytime fodder. Which is, quite possibly, the only accurate idea in this review. Blame it on the subtitles if you want, but the movie was really that confusing.

BOOOOOOOO!
1.5 out of 5
Buy this movie:Brigands - Chapter VII

Plot: 1
Imagery: 2
Originality: 1
Soundtrack: 1
Overall: 1.5

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

It is difficult to describe this book. Nearly every word and line contains something profound, beautiful, or otherwise memorable. Invisible Cities consists of a series of carefully constructed descriptions of cities, which are divided into various categories, including - but not limited to - Thin Cities, Continuous cities, and Cities and Desire. Each is related by the famous Venetian merchant/explorer Marco Polo for the entertainment of the great Kublai Khan. Through their conversation and Polo's accounts, the Khan expects to gain a greater understanding of his kingdom, but he soon discovers that his guest is not necessarily describing real cities, or different cities. Calvino has created a complex and layered examination of human society, perception, symbols, architecture, and the many manifestations of fear and desire which generate the cities of the world.

Totally Awesome Must Read!
5 out of 5
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Che: Part 1

A film about Che could easily be terrible. The image of the Latin American revolutionary is as ubiquitous as those of Jesus Christ, Chairman Mao, and Colonel Sanders, although the only thing it really represents these days is the power of commercialism to milk anything, no matter what its origin. Thankfully, perhaps because his likeness is so saturated and separated from its namesake, it is now possible to look back and see where that image came from. The first half of Steven Soderberg's historical film, which follows Che's involvement in the Cuban revolution (beginning with his fateful meeting of Castro) avoids the traps of glorification and glamorization. It is refreshingly subdued and un-Hollywood. The film's rhythm is as quick and syncopated as the snippets of Cuban drum beats that occasionally appear, never lingering long enough on the face of Che or personal facts for him to bloat into a vague symbol - in fact, the camera tends to keep a distance from him, careful to allow his surroundings and companions to play their parts. In a sense it is not so much about one man as the movement in which he played a vital role. The story of the revolution is interspersed with flash-forwards to Che's 1964 visit to New York as Cuban delegate to the United Nations; his speeches at that meeting, along with an interview, reveal his already gaining celebrity (if not notoriety) and provide framing insights into the questionable rationale of violent revolution.

FUN TO WATCH
4 out of 5
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Plot: 4
Imagery: 4
Originality: 4
Soundtrack: 4
Overall: 4

You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe

The semi-autobiographical story of a novelist dealing with the trials of writing and publishing is really a vast, thorough examination of America (circa the stock market crash of 1929) - an America of which New York City is most certainly the epicenter, for good or bad. It is full of detailed, real characters, from elevator operators to aristocrats, all of whom collectively form the great beast of America - and in the midst of it all is George Webber - observing, living, and trying to capture it all in words. The novel begins with Webber waiting for the publication of his first novel, which is based on his youth in a small Nebraska town - when it comes out he experiences an unexpected backlash from the people he had fictionalized. Facing such animosity and ostracism, that he 'can't go home again,' as the title suggests. But in reality, the novel goes far beyond that event. It takes the reader though the theme of being unable to return to something past, destroyed, or otherwise left behind is recurrent. The perspective shifts from close inspection of the protagonist to broader examinations of his surroundings, and the style changes throughout, depending on need, giving it an energizing (and intentional) inconsistency. Wolfe's language is dense, descriptive, and highly analytical - somewhere between Fitzgerald and James Baldwin - but distinctly his own. Having said that, the book is a bit overwritten, perhaps due partially to its immense ambitions, and at times the author's own analysis is too prevalent, but it is nonetheless an important piece of American literature.

IMPORTANT!
4 out of 5
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The Insider

The true story surrounding CBS's 60 Minutes interview with ex-tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russel Crow) who, despite signing a confidentiality agreement upon his termination, took the higher moral ground, risking everything to expose the extreme corruption, lies and underlying health hazards hidden by a powerful business based in greed and dishonesty.
60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) is the ideal reporter, operating under a strict code of ethics and doing anything to make certain his promise stays true in an otherwise flexible field. Can these two unlikely moral champions successfully take on the ugly world against them? Watch to find out! A well acted, frightening story of good versus evil that makes you question which side America is set up to foster.

Worth Watching
3.5 out of 5
Buy this Film: The Insider

Plot: 4
Imagery: 3
Originality: 3
Soundtrack:3 Buy the Soundtrack
Overall: 3.5

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

In his tale of the Spanish civil war, Hemingway stretches out a period of three days into nearly epic proportions. He does so not by tedious glamorization but through a sincere and brutal study of war and all its paradoxes. His characters breathe with intensity and a sense of purpose - for the short time shown they live in the present, and that alone gives validation to their existence. The story focuses on an American mercenary fighting with the Spanish rebels. A special mission takes him to a mountain camp, where the unstable leadership threatens to hinder his task. The language is typical Hemingway - terse and confident - and the dialogue is strange and almost poetic, even at its most vulgar moments ("I obscenity in the milk of thy...!" curse his characters). Through the constant moral struggles of the American and the group of makeshift soldiers, Hemingway gets to the harsh truth of war - that even if killing is necessary one must never believe in it. This is a beautiful, honest book.

IMPORTANT
4 out of 5
Buy this book: For Whom the Bell Tolls
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My Neighbor Totoro

With only decent animation and a mediocre storyline, this Miyazaki film fails to match his more imaginative pictures, or the subdued and realistic Grave of the Fireflies, which was created and released simultaneously. In fact, there is very little to necessitate - or at least justify - this film being animated. The story begins with a father and his two young daughters moving to an old house in the Japanese countryside - their mother is ill and confined to the hospital. The girls soon discover the presence of spirits in the house and surrounding forest, including the rotund, bearlike grumbler they call Totoro. But there is surprisingly little of the curious forest dwellers (which only the children seem able to see), as the film gives in inordinate amount of time to squealing children and the bland plot. From the drawings to the story, My Neighbor Totoro is not particularly inventive (it often seems to be imitating Alice in Wonderland), and seems a little more intended for children than other Studio Ghibli projects.

Um?
2.5 out of 5
Buy this film: My Neighbor Totoro

Plot: 2
Imagery: 3
Originality: 3
Soundtrack: 2
Overall: 2.5

The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai

Passed the piles of purple prose, over the mountains of metaphors and through the slough of adjectives you'll find this is a story of few words and little consequence. As a reader deciding to dedicate some free time to listening to a stranger's thoughts, it is expected that the author offer at least a small amount of respect in return. Most chapters of The Inheritance of Loss begin with reminder phrases, as if the reader is returning from a commercial break - and they may as will be with this stretched out and dulled tale. Ms. Desai chooses to tell and not show most of the story, again and again both insulting the intelligence of her readers and leaving no room for her towers of imagery to enter the confines of imagination or to grow even the least bit recognizable.
The plot follows the members of a family as their lives are affected by change, racism, classicism and related social agitation. A teenage orphan who lives with her wealthy, antisocial grandfather struggles with coming of age and a failed love affair; the cook's son fails to "make it" as an illegal alien in the land of opportunity; a beloved dog goes missing; some things are stolen and some are discovered. This book might be a good read for someone who wants to waste time without thinking but has no television. It was awarded the 2006 Man Booker, which raises questions as to both the legitimacy of that prize and the sanity of their selection committee.

BOOOOOOOO!
1.5 out of 5
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All About My Mother

This Spanish film by Pedro Almodovar is at once very strange and very ordinary. As typical with the popular director's (in the credits he is simply referred to as ALMODOVAR) works, All About My Mother is saturated with bright colors. It is something of a high production soap opera - full of obvious tragedy, melodrama, and thick emotions - but his subject matter, and treatment of it, is unusual. A Madrid mother returns to Barcelona after her eighteen-year-old son is killed and seeks out her old transvestite/prostitute friend, who leads her to a tainted nun with whom the mother shares a peculiar mutual friend. The characters are mostly unsubtle deviants: transvestites, transgenders, bisexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, and surgical creations; but they are, for the most part, unabashed, if not proud, with regard to their societal status. The film contains continual references to the play A Streetcar Named Desire, and, not surprisingly, its outlandish characters all seem a little too theatrical. It is, in the end, a bizarre but sincere homage to motherhood and femininity.

WORTH WATCHING
3 out of 5
Download: All About My Mother

Plot: 3
Imagery: 3
Originality: 3
Soundtrack: 3
Overall: 3

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thriling Tales - Various Authors

As the introduction explains, McSweeney's editor Dave Eggers permitted fellow writer Michael Chabon to guest edit an issue of the quarterly and fill it with adventure (or otherwise thrilling) stories, which Chabon feels are regrettably underrated these days. The result - here put into book form - is a very inconsistent mix of tales, none of which are very thrilling, from a number of well known authors (Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Sherman Alexie, and both Chabon and Eggers). Most of it seems extremely uninspired, if not unfinished, as if - in response to Chabon's solicitations - the writers churned out whatever slop first came to their minds and sent it off. But within the 'treasury' are a few worthwhile pieces - namely, Dave Egger's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" (which can also be found in his book How We Are Hungry); Rick Moody's long, apocalyptic vision of drug use and memory, "The Albertine Notes"; and Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance" (although it claims to be the beginning to a larger work, and thus seems incomplete). One would probably be better off seeking out these stories in other places, as the rest of the compilation is not worth reading.

BOOOOOOOO!
1.5 out of 5
Buy this book: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales