http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 6 Mar 2004 23:47:41 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/06/234741.php JDXQuestion: Why are people comparing these two movies? Answer: Because they both contain horse races.The way almost every single reviewer of Hidalgo mentions Seabiscuit makes me wonder if they've seen either film. Seabiscuit is a long, dull movie about a jockey, a trainer, and a horse owner who want to win horse races. The horse itself is only incidental. Hidalgo is the story of a cowboy and his horse. In this movie it's the race that's incidental. As Viggo Mortensen, who plays the cowboy Frank T. Hopkins, said so well in an interview here I liked [Seabiscuit] and I think comparing movies is always a weird thing but since the name of the movie is the name of the horse (like this movie), I think in this story I do think you get to know the animal as an individual performer, as a character in a way that you didn't in Seabiscuit. They're different kinds of movies but the horse has a lot more personality. In Seabiscuit you're told that the horse has personality. You're told he's small and an underdog. It's other people talking about it. In this you can see Hidalgo's behavior, this horse.I didn't like Seabiscuit much and thought Tobey Maguire's acting was very weak. Hidalgo, while not brilliant, was an enjoyable old-fashioned adventure that has a message that I think reviewers miss when they criticize how PC it is regarding the massacre of American Indians by government troops. The movie is not trying to make a political statement about American history but a personal one about Hopkins. He was half-Indian but had been denying it all his life until the message that he delivered helped spark the massacre and gave him a case of the guilts. It's a story about a man finally accepting who he is and doing something positive with his life because of it. That's just as inspiring as Seabiscuit's "little horse that could" tale. Video13472@blogcritics.org Sat, 6 Mar 2004 23:47:41 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/13/165938.php JDXThe Tournament, by John Clarke, isn't so much a novel as an erudite and hilarious recounting of a fictional tennis tournament in Paris played by the most notable thinkers, artists, scientists, etc., of the twentieth century. Each chapter describes the matches of the day, and there's not much in the way of a plot or protagonist but the pages will fly by so quickly that you won't even notice.The players come from countries all over the world. Hemingway is on the American team. He's referred to as "Ernie" and says of his flight to France: "The plane was high in the air. I slept and then I ate and drank and then I slept again. The sun came up. I drank again and then I slept. Then the plane banked and came in and landed and stopped and I could hear the great big engines being turned off. That's the way it is."Most of the jokes, puns, quips, and poems are of this type and require only a basic knowledge of the person in question, though many of the 500 players are less famous than Hemingway and the jokes, therefore, more obscure, particularly in the women's draw.The Tournament is extremely enjoyable. It is for anyone who considers themselves educated but has a sense of humor about it. Books11688@blogcritics.org Tue, 13 Jan 2004 16:59:38 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/21/003318.php JDXCold Mountain is unoriginal from beginning to end. It's the story of Ada (Nicole Kidman), a shy minister's daughter, who falls in love with Inman (a blank Jude Law), a reticent carpenter who soon goes off to war. Ada writes letters to Inman and as the tragedies mount in her life, she begs him to come home to her, which he promptly attempts, deserting the Confederate army. Eventually he does return, but it's a bittersweet reunion.Ada and Inman's storylines are separate like Sleepless in Seattle except set in the south during the Civil War. At first Ada has to manage her farm on her own and does a poor job of it so tough-talking Ruby (a scene-stealing Renee Zellwegger) is enlisted to aid her. Ada goes from a wilting flower to a strong woman. Her transformation is interesting though hardly unique. It's the exact same one that Scarlett O'Hara went through. Inman, by contrast, gets shot a number of times, is captured as a deserter, and meets up with all kinds of odd people, though in the end doesn't grow one bit. Despite the fact that he claims that war has changed him, has made him hard inside, there's absolutely no evidence of this. Frankly, his entire bloody, picaresque journey could be almost completely excised without losing much except time. There is only one scene with Natalie Portman playing a widow with a baby that is worth keeping because it's actually thought-provoking. Otherwise, no time is spent on what Ada or Inman actually think about the war or slavery or states' right. The war, therefore, is completely decontextualized and is reduced to a clichéd supporting player. The cinematography is quite good and director Anthony Minghella knows how to create wonderful shots of repetitive elements like lily pads in a swamp or soldiers on a battlefield. But by contrast, he doesn't seem to know when to quit in the sex and violence department. The opening battle is overly and unnecessarily gory. Ever since Saving Private Ryan, every war movie seems to have a battle scene like this. It's a shame because the battle adds nothing to the storyline; its only saving grace is the beautiful music playing all the while. Similarly, the sex scene between Inman and Ada is not only gratuitous but out of character; it's the brief and fully-clothed kiss that they share in the beginning that is honestly moving.I wanted to cry throughout the whole movie because it was so depressing in general and not because I cared one bit about the characters - the manipulative tear-jerker ending left my eyes dry. Cold Mountain is similar to Minghella's The English Patient, which I didn't like either, so I imagine that like The English Patient, audiences will embrace Cold Mountain despite its flaws. Video11139@blogcritics.org Sun, 21 Dec 2003 00:33:18 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/10/26/182146.php JDXHere at Blogcritics, we write reviews of books, but I'm sure plenty of us also want to be the ones that the reviews are written about. I've started so many stories that I haven't finished that I've lost count. And that's the secret to writing (and eventually publishing) a novel: finish what you've started. While that doesn't guarantee that what you've written will be good, there are so many books that are published these days that aren't very good that you've got as decent a chance as anybody else. And here's where NaNoWriMo can help, if you're like me, who can't seem to finish what you've started, and the idea of a deadline is a motivator.NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, takes place every November. The challenge is to write 50,000 words from November 1 - 30. And for support, there are forums on the website where you sign up, talk about yourself, give links to your novel in progress, etc. Now, to elaborate on my gripe that novels that aren't very good are being published. I saw the movie The Recruit in January. It was enjoyable if not brilliant with a somewhat poor ending. Yesterday I read the book Loose Lips by Claire Berlinski which was almost identical; one could have been the blueprint for the other. The two are the stories of people who go through the CIA's clandestine service training program and then end up spying on their significant others. The biggest difference was that The Recruit was about Colin Farrell's character and Loose Lips was about a woman named Selena. But frankly, her gender had little to no impact on the story. Selena didn't have any special or interesting or unusual perspectives or insights by being one of the few women in a largely male group.And the ending of Loose Lips was poor as well. The Recruit's ending was sort of over the top, while Loose Lips's was ambiguous. Now, ambiguous works for literary works such as Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan. It's an extremely well-written novel about a family that gathers in their lake cabin one last time after the death of the grandfather. This is a truly dysfunctional group. The siblings fight with each other and their mother, their personal lives are a mess, and their children are budding therapy-cases. In the end, they go back home and nothing is resolved. We don't find out if any of them improve their lives or their situations, but that's fine for a book of this type. It's not fine for a beach book like Loose Lips. Had Berlinski delivered a satisfying ending, maybe I wouldn't be criticizing it this much, but I felt cheated in the end.So maybe this can be used as a motivator: believe that you can write something better. Sci/Tech9523@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Oct 2003 18:21:46 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/29/211419.php JDXI never watched The Practice before now. What enticed me was the addition of James Spader. Since Sex, Lies, and Videotape up to his recent Secretary, it's hard not to think of Spader as a good actor who chooses very strange roles. I figured if he was being cast, then this had to be an unusual show with interesting writing and storylines. Boy, was I wrong.To begin with, Spader's character, Alan Shore, is creepy in a one-note sexual predator sort of way. He made a nice contrast with the rest of the washed out, dull cast, but I know I'm going to get bored of his ego and his smart comments very quickly. Then he was given a ridiculous case to work with: defending a homeless man for having kissed a young woman. He propositions the young woman and tries to bribe her to drop the case. But the potential for an interesting and unexpected outcome is ruined when the man thanks Shore for treating him with dignity and allowing him and his young daughter to swim in his pool. We are left with a shot of Shore sitting by that pool contemplating his life. Corny.As for the other remaining old cast members, Steve Harris, Michael Badalucco, and Camryn Manheim, I couldn't help thinking that they made The Practice one of the fattest show on television. I thought that not because I'm sizist, but because their characters were so indistinct that I needed some way to criticize them. They never acted, only reacted. As for Manheim, the show seems to believe that having her (unprofessionally) wear ten or fifteen earrings in one ear means that she's some kind of rebel.The writing was so poor and predictable that my mother (who I was watching with) kept finishing the characters' sentences.Saddling them with pointless, ripped from the headlines cases and predictable endings doesn't help their cases much either. Stunt casting Chris O'Donnell as a Scott Peterson/Ed Norton-in-Primal Fear-character in a continuing storyline didn't grab my attention. The woman who shoots a drug dealer and gets a Not Guilty verdict through jury nullification couldn't be more trite. I will, however, watch next week's episode, with bigger and better stunt casting. Sharon Stone will play a lawyer who claims that God speaks to her, was fired from her firm, and is now suing for wrongful termination. Could be interesting, but I tend to doubt it. First, they've killed all the lawyers. Now it's time to kill the writers. Video8771@blogcritics.org Mon, 29 Sep 2003 21:14:19 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/27/182620.php JDXI'm not a teenager but lately I've been reading a lot of YA books. I noticed that there are two types of books: ones that have typical storylines but decent writing, and ones that try to do something different but the writing is boring. Stone Cold by Pete Hautman would be an example of the former. It's a fairly short book (even by YA standards) about a boy who gets involved in the world of high-stakes poker gambling. The story is simple but the writing is clear, to the point, and involving, so I enjoyed it. Confess-O-Rama by Ron Koertge is an example of the latter. The kids in this book have actual conversations about art and issues and aren't just about whether a cute boy is going to call. On the downside, it was deadly dull. It's a rare book that manages to combine good writing with an imaginative story. And those two elements are what make Girls, Girls, Girls by Jonah Black stand out from the rest.Girls, Girls, Girls is the first book of four (so far) and I am dying to read the rest of them. It's the story of Jonah Black (I have no idea if the author's name is a pen name or if he purposely used his own name for main character's). He spent his sophomore and junior year in a school near his divorced father's house in Pennsylvania and has now returned to his mother's house in Florida for what he thinks is going to be his senior year. But because Jonah left the other school under less-than-ideal circumstances precipitated by some event which isn't spelled out, he's put back into junior year. He has to deal with being left behind, his young sister who's a genius, who was put ahead, his girl friend, Posie, who he wants to date, but she already has a boyfriend, and other typical and not-so-typical problems.What makes this book so intriguing is the way that Jonah's fantasies and thoughts about a girl from his old school are seamlessly interwoven with his present day thoughts and action. We are tantalized by clues to what exactly happened between Jonah and this girl and why he had to leave the school. Also, the writing is breezy and fast paced but never bland; it crackles with personality. Here's an example from the second page:Okay, so exactly as I was writing that, this girl bumped my elbow with her hip and she looked at me and said, "Sorry." Then the girl did a double-take and said, "Jonah?" which took me by complete surprise. I mean, I had absolutely no idea who she was. And then she said, "It's me, Luna? Luna Hayes?" And I was like Are you sure? because the last time I saw Luna was the end of ninth grade and back then she didn't have hips. From her head to her toes she was just one long skinny thing like a piece of spaghetti. I just sat there in homeroom, staring at her.The series is actually called The Black Book: Diary of a Teenage Stud, but Jonah is anything but a stud. He's a confused, angry, and unhappy young man but legitimately so. In an era where every kid and his parents read Harry Potter, I recommend this book for young adults and the young at heart. Books7894@blogcritics.org Wed, 27 Aug 2003 18:26:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/09/161201.php JDXProducer Jerry Bruckheimer has proven his genius by making a terrifically entertaining movie that overcame a double whammy: 1) the curse of the pirate genre, 2) being based not on a book, but on a Disneyland ride.Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is the story of a group of pirates on the ship the Black Pearl who are trying to break a curse that was put upon them when they stole an Aztec treasure chest filled with gold medallians.Along the way they kidnap the daughter of a British colonial governor, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly), and are pursued by her hopeful suitor, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and pirate Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), whose motives shift with the tides. The movie’s success lies with its humor, notably Johnny Depp’s portrayal of the whimsical pirate captain who gushes about how much he loves weddings after Elizabeth announces her engagement, and grouses about the lack of rum more than the lack of food when he gets marooned on a desert island.It also has a dash of swashbuckling action heightened again by humor and coolly creepy CG transformations of people into walking, fighting, dress-wearing skeletons. Pirates is a bit lacking in the emotions department (there are a number of scenes between Elizabeth and Will which are vaguely reminiscent of the painful love scenes between Padme and Anakin in Attack of the Clones, especially since at times Knightly bears an uncanny resemblance to Natalie Portman), but who cares? This is a live action cartoon that is nothing but fun. One little hint: watch all the way to the end of the credits and you’ll be rewarded with a capper of a funny extra little scene. Video6842@blogcritics.org Wed, 9 Jul 2003 16:12:01 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/25/133022.php JDXDid the movies butcher your favorite book? They certainly did mine. The Outsiders is probably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The acting was atrocious, the writing was poor, and the pacing was slow. These are legitimate criticisms. And while the Harry Potter movies aren’t considered the best adaptations ever, my friend’s complaint was that they left too much of the book out. This, I think, is an unfair criticism. When a book is over three hundred pages, it’s inevitable that something will be left out of a two hour movie. Even a three hour epic (like Lord of the Rings). Here are two other novels that were turned into movies with varying success:Ring by Koji Suzuki was adapted twice in Japan. Once as a faithful but poorly done TV movie, the second time as Ringu. The American movie The Ring is more of a remake of Ringu than an adaptation of the book, Ring. The Ring is a terrifying horror movie that only contains the bare bones plot of the novel: a journalist who investigates a video that causes people to die seven days after they watch it finds out that it was made by a girl who was murdered under mysterious circumstances and now wants to exact her revenge. But despite Suzuki’s being touted as the “Stephen King of Japan,” Ring isn’t a novel of horror. The video itself is creepily described (though it has nothing to do with rings) and there are a few moments that make you want to look over your shoulder, but it is essentially a detective thriller. The journalist Asakawa and his friend Ryuji travel around Japan trying to figure out who made the tape and how to break its curse. There are no monsters and nobody dies along the way. It’s just an interesting story, with unusual Japanese occult beliefs at its core. But it falls flat on characterizations and writing. The journalist Asakawa is pretty blank. The only things we know about him is that he’s in a traditionally loveless Japanese marriage and has a tendancy to obsess over things at his job. His friend, Ryuji, is even less sympathetic as he’s a self-professed rapist with misanthropic tendancies. It makes no sense that these two would be friends in the first place. Also, the writing is dull and cliched, especially in the beginning before the story picks up. But because I don’t read Japanese, I don’t know whether this is the fault of the author or of the translators, Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley. Apparently Ring is the first book in a trilogy, the other books called Spiral and Loop. And for all Ring’s shortcomings, if they’re ever translated into English, I’d love to read them. * Chocolat by Joanne Harris was so faithfully adapted that reading the book after watching the movie is almost like reading the script. It’s the story of Vianne Rocher who travels from place to place spreading goodness through her chocolates, and Reynaud, the man who believes that she’s a corrupting influence on the devout Catholicism of the French town. The characters are the same, the incidents are the same (by contrast with the Harry Potter situation, because much of the book is inner dialogue, the movie actually has more detail and more story to it), and the underlying philosophy is essentially the same. The biggest difference is the tone. The book is far more anti-religion. Reynaud is an intolerant priest filled with hate who wants to run Vianne out of town and refuse “Christian charity” to the gypsies whose houseboats are temporarily moored nearby. The movie, by contrast, focuses on traditions that are kept for tradition’s sake even to the point that they’re hurting people. Reynaud is still a moralizer, but he’s the mayor of the town and not a representative of an organized religion. He is further humanized by his struggles with his personal demons. Even Vianne doubts the necessity of her always moving from town to town because it puts such a strain on her daughter. The movie is light and fluffy told through chocolates and contrasting colors, spritely musical themes, and original characters. There’s even a happy ending, with not one, but two romances. The movie is set in the 1950s, while the book is set in the present, which makes the religiousness of the town seem slightly unbelievable and anachronistic. The book is told through Vianne and Reynaud’s POVs, with different fonts to denote which is which. And there is a romance, but not the one you’d expect and it’s not nearly as satisfying. While the writing is good, I’d recommend the movie over the book but I would not say that it earned any of its Academy Award nominations. Books6497@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:30:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/14/090939.php JDXA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers was heartbreaking, I suppose. It’s terrible that mere et pere Eggers died within a short time of each other leaving young Dave to raise his even younger brother Topher. But you know what?—and I don’t think saying this can be considered a spoiler—it has a happy ending. AHWOSG is almost inspirational, with its orphan-makes-good conclusion. Eggers goes on to become a rich and famous author/dot-commer. So the hearbreak doesn’t last. It’s only awful in a Mighty Mighty Bosstones “The Impression That I Get” middle class sort of way:“I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested I’d like to think that if I was, I would pass Look at the tested and think there but for the grace go I I might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find out I’ve never had to knock on wood But I know someone who has Which makes me wonder if I could It makes me wonder if I’ve never had to knock on wood And I’m glad I haven’t yet Because I’m sure it isn’t good That’s the impression that I get.”So it’s not heartbreaking, and frankly there isn’t much genius, staggering or otherwise. Unless you’re talking about Eggers’s amazing marketing prowess. So while I was not very impressed with AHWOSG, I was with Eggers’s new work of fiction You Shall Know Our Velocity. Will, Hand, and Jack were inseperable childhood friends. One day Jack died in a freak car accident. Will inherits over twenty thousand dollars and he can’t bear to keep it. He and Hand take a weeklong trip around the world trying to give away the money to poor people, but they discover that their altriustic impulses are easier discussed than implemented.Some books are plot driven, others, character driven. YSKOV can almost be said to be emotionally driven. It’s about loss and pain and sorrow and relationships, though it’s not without a sense of humor. Will and Hand go to Senegal. When asked why Senegal, they answer, “Because it was windy in Greenland.” Eggers has a flair for pomo literary ingenuity (and I mean that in the best possible way). Because it’s not trying to live up to “staggering genius,” it isn’t constantly straining to be hip and clever; instead it’s naturally honest, moving, and original. Practically all young American writers these days have their characters travel to Eastern Europe (e.g., in The Corrections [all right], Prague [boring], The Russian Debutante’s Handbook [very good], etc.) and YSKOV is no exception. But while those other books felt like they were all recycling the same hipster experience, hipser posterboy Eggers’s characters aren’t poseurs, they’re genuine. And that’s what makes it work. That's what makes it almost genius. Books5284@blogcritics.org Wed, 14 May 2003 09:09:39 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/02/120839.php JDXThere was a Borders in the World Trade Center. I went there only a few weeks before Sept. 11 looking for a French language newspaper. When I went back to work a week after the disaster, the Borders sign was still hanging there and I couldn't help wondering if any of the books were salvageable. Eventually they demolished the whole thing. Borders was gone, leaving the Strand as the only local bookstore. They may have a lot of books but it's arranged way too haphazardly to be good for anything except browsing.And now, finally, over a year and a half later, Borders has decided to reinhabit the neighborhood. A sign hanging in the window of 100 Broadway proclaims: Coming Spring 2003.Welcome back. Books4299@blogcritics.org Wed, 2 Apr 2003 12:08:39 EST