Yo!

This book is full of color and spirit, well written, and despite the disjointed nature is a good, enjoyable read.

Here's the premise. Yo(landa) Garcia has written a book that portrays members of her family in an honest light. (Honesty is not always flattering, as many of us know) In a series of short stories, we get views of her sisters, her parents, her friends, her teachers, her students, her exes, etc... The stories make up something resembling a coherent whole and the first and last stories tie the whole thing together in a satisfactory way.

Shifting abruptly to so many different points of view can be disconcerting. The book has a two or three story "flash forward," and then moves back to childhood through adulthood. But with the start of each story you wonder 'how old is she now?' and everyone has a different take.

I found myself gettind drawn into each person's own stories and found the main character to be merely tangential until the final few stories.

The colorful language and eloquently described scenery of both the Dominican Republic and New England and Alvarez creates interesting characters both separately and then brings them together. It'd be nicer if she gave you a complete picture of Yolanda, but some part of her is always obscured.

But still, this book is great fun, well written and entrancing. Because of the interconnected short story aspect, it's very easy to put down and come back to later.

Secret Lives of Dentists

This is cute. It's weird, but it's cute.

David (Campbell Scott) and Dana (Hope Davis) have an unsteady marriage that is pushed to the brink when David discovers Dana in a... compromising position. She's merely being flirtatious with someone in a crowded room and didn't know that David was there, so he never lets on, preferring to stay in a shaky marriage than initiate an ending.

As the tension builds, David creates an imaginary friend (Denis Leary in his angriest) to help him cope and voice all of his anxiety. Things with his three children get bad as they pick up on the tension between the couple.

This movie is from David's perspective, so the view of Dana is harsh and unflattering. There's a lot of vomiting and not much else. But this movie isn't plot based, it's character based and the questions it poses are interesting.

Not a fast paced action packed thriller, but it poses good questions and is quietly enjoyable.

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood is brilliant. As usual.

Haiku Tunnel

In an effort to prove that I don't just rag on the mainstream...

I'm about to do the unthinkable. I'm about to rip on an independent film. I know, I know. You can flog me later.

First, for Mr. Kornbluth, the narrator, lead actor and writer of this piece, I have two notes.
1) Untuck the shirt.
2) Cut your hair.
Yes, yes, I know, you'll look a little more messy and casual with the shirt untucked. Perhaps you're afraid it will call attention to your paunch. But tucking it in is only making it worse. Terribly, terribly worse. Terrifyingly worse, perhaps.

Sp, Josh Kornbluth, played by Josh Korbluth, in a movie written by Josh Kornbluth and co-directed by Josh Kornbluth. I know our lifes are our best sources of material, but perhaps you could remove yourself a little? Just a smidgeon?

Now, where was I? Oh right, the plot. Yes. Josh lives in San Francisco and he's a temp attempting to be a novelist. He goes to work for for a tax lawyer, goes permanent on the first day even though he fails to mail out 17 very important letters. 17 very important letters. You will hear that phrase far too many times in the movie. He doesn't mail the letters. And doesn't. And doesn't. And thinks about it... and then he doesn't. Throughout this narratives there are some cute vignettes, and whenever the film backs off from current action to Josh doing a monologue in a garage somewhere, it's actually interesting.

But as I watched this movie, I had two reactions... Or, to be more precise, I yelled two different things in the screen, "Just mail the damn letters!" and "You didn't have a better story to tell?" Maybe it's because I saw Josh when he did Love and Taxes when he was in DC in March (that is, in fact, why I rented the movie), and the story there, while not Shakespeare, was much more compelling.

This movie had some great moments in it, but it's bogged down in boring moments.

Intolerable Cruelty

This movie attempts to be one of those old 1940's, witty banter, man and woman meant for each other, the fatalest of all femme fatales movies.

It's not.

It's extremely stylized, and so, inaccessible. And kinda boring, to be completely honest. To plagiarize from another critic, this movie stars George Clooney's teeth! George Clooney has nice teeth. OK, we get it, move on.

Catherine Zeta-Jones is a money grubbing wife. George Clooney is the husband's divorce attorney. Sparks fly. They exchange banter. They scheme. They are successful in some schemes, but their love starts to shine through.

Awww... so sweet... but it's not.

This movie is cute. But it's not fantastic. It's not cinema. It's just cute. Maybe a touch saccharine. I just don't want to write about it anymore.

28 Days Later

I rented this and I'm glad. This is one of those scary movies that has me either a) just not looking, I'm not looking, b) talking to the screen (WHY are you going into the abandoned building alone?!) or c) screaming (EW! EW! EW! AAAAH!)

So, right. It's scary.

This is a newer version of The Stand, but much, much better. Minus the Jesus and forces of good and evil and epic battles and all that philosophical crap that Steven King sometimes gets bogged down in. Replace all that crap with evil, killing "infected" (read, zombies) and some sex. Mmmm. Sex. Right, where was I?

Evil animal rights activists free lab monkeys that evil scientists infected with an evil rage virus that is extremely infectious and turns every host into a KILLING MACHINE. That walks funny and has funny eyes. **coughbraineatingzombies** Everyone's EVIL. Get it? EVIL!

So, Our Hero wakes up in a hospital 28 Days Later (get it?), after the infection has hit. There are some gorgeous shots of him just wandering through a deserted London, looking forlorn. Our evil deathmonger villains are still running around, and a couple of kind hearted, uninfected people save Our Hero from certain icky death. They meet up with a father and daughter and head out towards their Grand Salvation.

You have 5 people. You have evil deathmonger angry villains all around. You know you're going to lose at least two by the end of the movie. So the deaths don't come so much as a tragedy, but as expected. The shock that their Grand Salvation doesn't save them is not a shock. What happens next is, but that's the last half hour of the movie.

Renting this movie is good because of the Fast Forward Factor. Our Hero goes into a room, alone. There are long shots of him looking around the room. Creepy music plays. Hit fast forward, and the 5 minutes of him looking around before the evil deathmongering villains attack them is reduced to 30 seconds. I hate those 5 minutes. This movie has at least four instances of those. But then, it also has Our Hero running around without a shirt on in the rain. HOT.

There's also the alternate ending. I don't like seeing alternate endings, because usually means, "we couldn't decide between a happy and a sad ending, so here's both. You pick." and that's not a valid choice. You CHOSE one ending. Stick with it. These stupid what ifs piss me off. And I'm glad they went with the ending they did, because the what if ending was on the wrong note.

This movie was extremely predictable, occasionally annoying, but scary as hell and worth the watch. Put it on your Netflix!

Wicked

How the hell did they make this into a musical? This is one of the most serious books I've ever read and it's disturbing that way.

It's been a while since I've read the the Wizard of Oz series and longer since I've seen the movie.

This story follows Elphaba, the nameless Wicked Witch of the West. (Name is created from L. Frank Baum - LFB - Elphaba) From her birth, to her death. With big chunks taken out in between. So, the narrative follows her from birth to about 4, and then college, then five years later. The gaps are disconcerting but not terrible.

This is a book about philosophy, not about Oz. There's a great moment when the striped stockings are mentioned, and then the ruby slippers show up. It's 3/4 of the way through the book until Glinda becomes Glinda the Good Witch shows up, thought she's a major character long before that, and Elphaba and her sister are named the Wicked Witches of East and West.

The Wizard is Evil, Dorothy is seen by some as salvation, there's all kinds of religious philosophy and talk about man over beasts, machinery over man, self fulfilling prophecy and all kinds of frightening things.

This is a fascinating book, and when Dorothy shows up, it's both a relief (because Elphaba's life is spiralling out of control) and a burden (because she has to die. Obviously). You actually get emotionally involved in her life, which is a pretty good feat for a woman who is green.

My one problem with this book is the list of reader's questions at the end- suitable for a bookgroup sort of thing. I don't know why, but putting them there really irked me.

I still don't understand how they could make this into a musical. Or how it ended up as a best seller- most things that are serious as this rarely do.

Man Crazy

As usual, Joyce Carol Oates is as creepy and disturbing as hell. Ah. Creepy.

This book follows the story of Ingrid from a five year old to a 21 year old, as her life goes from bad to heartbreakingly worse. Her father came back from Nam broken and angry and is running from policy custody, but not before dropping off his 23 year old wife and 5 year old daughter in a hell hole of a barn to wait it out. Yes, 23 and 5. Ingrid's mother (Chloe) is a year older than I am, not ready to be a mother, really.

So, Ingrid grows up wanting and anxious and not certain of herself in the slightest and turns to sex as a form of approval. Being young and incredibly vulnerable, she gets picked up by the worst kind of male predator, and of course, things get worse from there.

I'm not doing Joyce Carol Oates justice here. She has a way of weaving narrative, remembering and retelling stories in the disjointed, frightening way of someone who's not stable. She makes you believe that the person is real and that they might just slash their wrists in front of you to see if they'll bleed.

But on the whole, the holes in this narrative (no pun intended) aren't filled the way they should be. Oates isn't a linear writer, and it's extremely obvious. She'll give you a moment and then a moment before and then a moment later and gradually the pieces of the puzzle come together in a startlingly beautiful and haunting image.

But in this book, there's a piece or two missing. The ending is satisfying, but there were a few jumps that confused me.

This is not a happy book. Oates is not a happy writer. But she hooks you in, and keeps you there.

Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale

OK, I'm a diehard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, and I didn't particuarly like this book. I think you have to be a diehard philosophy fan AND a diehard Buffy fan to like this book. But it didn't do it for me completely.

The first two essays compare Faith & Nieschze and Faith & Aristotle. And they use the exact same examples in the same order. Point by frickin' point. It gets a little old with that sort of thing.

While these essays try to philosophize about the well, philosophies that run through Buffy, they're unsuccessful, dry and unengaging. Remember the body switch episode? Faith uses the line 'you can't do that because it's wrong' over and over again and it evolves throughout the show. Well, someone analyzed that in a paper and they a) missed the point and b) made it sound boring. Poop on them.

They also follow the philosophical episodes which are not the strongest episodes in the entire canon of Buffy. Analyzing Buffy versus the Iniative, while interesting as an idea, is not interesting over the course of a 20 page paper. Or 5 20 page papers.

They did acknowledge Buffyverse's only perfunctory view of religion, which is odd, because it plays a major importance in the idea of the series. That was a good thing.

I think the beauty of Buffy is the subtleness of the philosophy. Yes, sex is bad. Angel = demon after sex. Cordelia gets implanted with demonspawn after a one nighter. Nobody talks about things like this, and instead analyze everything else to death.

Basically, this book tried really hard and missed the point. They're too busy trying to compare to everyone else that they miss what the philosophy of the Buffyverse actually is.

The Bromeliad Trilogy

This is another kick ass kid's book that is great even when you're an adult. In fact, I think I liked it better this go round.

See, I read each of the three book (Truckers, Diggers, and wings) when I was in middle school. They had the books at my school library, and it was one of many books I read to remind myself that I wasn't a lonely loser who had to read sci-fi to escape to a better place.

Well, a few things have changed since then. I'm still a lonely loser, but I've discovered Terry Pratchett since then, and was delighted to find that he wrote those books which I barely remember reading in the sixth grade. I set out to reread and was not disappointed.

Nomes are people about four inches high. They live faster and more difficult lives than humans. Masklin and Grimma (and their elderly charges) have to leave their hovel by a roadside cafe and end up in The Store, inhabited by other nomes. These nomes also have the Thing, a box that has been with them for a long period of time. The Store nomes believe that the benevolent spirit of Arnold Bros (est. 1905) watches over them and provides them with food, shelter, and Bargains Galore keeps them sfe from the devil, Prices Slashed. The Thing, actually a mini super computer, wakes up near the ambient electricity and informs them that the Store will be demolished in 21 days and that they have to take action to leave. All 2000 of the nomes inside, a number that Masklin didn't previously know.

It gets better from there. Inherent in all of this is a kind of humor that pokes fun at religious beliefs, the consumer ethic, and the way we live our lives in general. The description of Grandson Richard, 39, singing in the shower in Wings is truly priceless.

It gets very fanciful. The nomes are actually aliens shipwrecked on Earth from 15,000 years ago and there's a truck to be stolen, then a wrecker thingie, then a satellite. The nomes scavenge french fries and commandeer the lifts to go wherever they please. They take the signs of the Store very literally, and it's quite sharp humor. I find it funnier now than I did when I was 12, but I could easily see a 10 year old howling with glee over some of the passages. This is why Terry Pratchett is the bomb diggity. Oh yes, he is.

The plot of the trilogy is too convoluted to get into in this small critique. There are frogs and deep philosophical issues. It starts in the middle of things (in media res for the classic bluffs) and ends a little later in the middle of things. While it's a satisfying ending, I can't help wishing this was a quartet and not a trilogy. Pratchett hints of the nomes' future, but it's just that, a hint. He won't show you all of his cards, and it's that vague, anxious feeling you get after you fold. Did he only have a pair of threes or a full house?

This series is old enough that we'll probably never know. Alas. I'll regret it.

This is definitely worth a read. Good, solid fluff. And remember: Dogs and strollers MUST be carried at all times.