Whatta Fiasco

Sweet and quirky and more than a little disturbing at times, this film looks at the working relationship between two women, a Belgian trying to reclaim the Japan she knew in her youth, and her Japanese supervisor. The characters are all flattened out to near comic book level, but the flatness is used for comedic effect and to foreground our main players. (I suspect this film would easily adapt to a graphic novel format.)

I’m not a huge fan of the Batman thing, nor do I have any stirrings of fandom toward Heath ledger, but I was in the mood for a summer action flick. And that’s what I got. And as usual for me with the batman movies, I either like Bruce Wayne, or the Batman, but not both. This time I found Bruce Wayne a little inteersting (if a bit simple), but Batman in his costume was a big snooze. Ledger’s Joker more than makes up for it though. I was also a little surprised by how much of the camera work felt like it was in a tighter frame, as if that might make it more of comic book panel look. Where are the sweeping vistas showing the emotional loneliness of the superhero in the big bad city? And then when Batman is set up with a classic double bind choice, the movie jumps right to the action rather than giving either the characters or the audience time to absorb what’s happening. And then, at the very end, the sound mix results in the music nearly drowning out the final lines, as if the editor didn’t really want us to hear them. Weird.

[imdb]

I really wanted to like this book, and the opening was promising and the characters were engaging. But. I feel as though I missed something critical in the process of reading. My beef is that the sfnal component of this book could have been excised with very little work, leaving an interesting novel that wasn’t science fiction at all. Yet I enjoyed reading it. He keeps coming close enough to the book I want him to write, and doing it well enough, that I keep coming back for more. It’s tantalizing, but not every book is (or should be) written for every reader.

[powells]

It’s not bad, but I wanted more. And I was disappointed that the film didn’t follow through on its artsy-fartsy framing device. Yes, arms trafficking is bad. Yes, governments sometimes sanction bad things. Yes, trying to deny any sense of basic human decency can be a soul-sucking proposition that can ruin your life. We know this already. What I don’t get enough of is how this experience changed the protagonist. Because, aside from a few emotional blips along the way, I don’t really see any changes at all.

Chow Yun Fat as a self-described “sissy boy” womanizer. (Except the subtitles claim he’s either cissy or cizzy.) Not wretched enough to keep me from watching the whole thing, but not quite campy enough for me to recommend it on that basis.

Sweet little robots. Lots and lots of Space: 2001 references. Engaging and cute (and dig the Apple boot tone), but nothing ground breaking. At one point is was beginning to feel more like a pastiche than a plot.

[imdb]

Freaky and disturbing Peter Greenaway film. Writing books on skin, even temporarily. seldom seems to end well. Lots of visual candy. Just gorgeous.

This wasn’t the first Barbara Kingsolver novel I had intended to read, but it was quite good. It’s about identity and place and how we choose to live our lives. Nothing flashy, just fine story telling.

[powells]

Hooray for cool Carl Zimmer sience books. This one is fun. I still think Parasite Rex is even cooler, but this one is much less likely to give you nightmares.

[powells]

Given that one of my all time favorite fairy tales is the Twelve Dancing Princesses, this one was a fun surprise. And now I understand why this book gets so much interest. (No, not because of the fairy tale connection.) Short, well-written, and very “literary” with a message. A little too message-y, but not as much so as Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit, and I liked this one considerably better.

[powells]