My Human Gets Me Blues

A well-produced high quality documentary about one of the biggest political scandals in recent years. The film makes no apologies for Spitzer but suggests that there was a conspiracy against him with some very strong evidence. Since Spitzer himself is featured in much of the film, I wondered if it would be a fluff piece for Spitzer’s return to politics but Gibney gives it a much fairer treatment than that. The film is not afraid to delve into legal issues but is a bit shy to suggest what the Spitzer scandal suggests about American politics in general. This film made me realize that clearly Nolan’s Harvey Dent is based on Spitzer - highly recommended.

Rating: 8.25/10

Whereas HBO’s Too Big To Fail and documentaries such as Inside Job are cover the Financial Crisis of 2008 at the big picture macro-level, Margin Call is about one firm dealing with the beginning of the crisis and the ethical dilemmas that Wall-Street executives face behind the scenes (loosely based on Lehman brothers). This film features an ensemble cast - and the acting, especially of Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey is simply fantastic. This is a dramatic-dialogue driven movie, and actors with chops such as these should make film-lovers foam at the mouth. The film has a realistic and methodical pace, and viewers who are not interested in the ethics of business and the financial crisis may not appreciate this film. Realistically, this is a film about a banking (not the most exciting subject) but there are a few speeches and conversations in this film that are absolutely brilliant. The film has sort of a small-budget feel since its most carried by acting and dialogue, and it feels as it it easily could have been adapted from a play. But, really, despite the brilliant acting and depth of the characters, I had a hard time caring about them. It’s hard to sympathize with a character who is weeping over getting fired when he is receiving a 7-8 figure severance package. This is at its heart a character-driven piece about Wall Street and even the more sympathetic characters are still cruel bastards when taken out of context. This is a really well executed and technically brilliant film but it leaves on the level of real inspiration and storytelling.

Rating: 7.5/10

Great film. This proves that the best horror films are based on reality. Its a grim and unflinching portrait of two women who arrange an illegal abortion in a seedy hotel room in 80’s communist Soviet Union. The director does a great job in being disinterested - which gives it a tone of political neutrality. I could see an American coming away from this film being either more resolutely pro-life or pro-choice. The film can work both angles. The film has a leisurely pace to its benefit that contributes to the realism of the story, but impatient viewers whose diet consists only of Hollywood-style editing may not be able to finish. If the film has any weakness it lies in a kind of unwillingness to really allow us to know its characters on any deep level - but this kind of superficiality and vagueness at best contributes to the overall anonymity of the situation.

Rating: 8.5

With a less than spectacular first 15 minutes, I thought I was in for one of those straight-to-video horror films, that kind of video-store debris that that traps unsuspecting teenagers and viewers too casual to read film reviews, or be naturally suspicious of straight to video releases. The opening scenes feature some seriously boring white people boarding a boat, while a distraught mother in her late twenties is acting obscurely bizarre. (Originally I had this chalked up to bad film making - however all things are revealed in time.)

If you can ignore the sub-par acting, and confusing pacing, the concept to Triangle is clever and original - and more than a little disturbing, in the kind of way that Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 cult classic Cube is (even their names are both geometrical) - its the premise that gives this story its merit. However, if you are like I am, and all too familiar with the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the payoff will be revealed too early.

As the movie drives to its fatalistic conclusion (which you already should have figured out) the welcome surprises have worn themselves out, a few details in the plot are incoherent, and what we are left with is a mediocre film. Aside from a few really excitingly macabre moments, we are left to endure the deer-in-headlights expression of the forgettable lead Melissa George (apparently she has a long and illustrious television career).

Still, with respect to its genre peers the film is not-so-terrible. This is still better than 95% of horror film crap that’s out there, and surely those that have lower standards than my smug-elitist-self will find it entertaining and maybe even a personal favorite. Others might still find it to be a sleeper-hit, something better to be expected considering its humble beginnings with a modest budget from an up-and-coming director. In short, its original conception may be just good enough to carry its mediocre execution.

Rating: 5.25/10

I had heard a bit about Iain Banks 1984 debut The Wasp Factory, but I did not quite know what I was getting into. The book is often like a grotesque accident you can’t look away from. The book is violent, including the murders of children, disgusting as the narrator delights in talking about his own bodily secretions, and if you are an animal lover you may not even be able to get through the book at all - as the level of cruelty to our furry friends is off the charts. However, none of it is gratuitous and it all contributes to the overall picture.

Frank is a seventeen year-old boy you can do nothing but pity. He lives with his crackpot father on a small island in Scotland. His only friend is a dwarf whom] uses him to sit on his shoulders so he can see above the crowd when punk bands play. Frank is also a eunuch - a childhood accident has caused him to develop as less than an ordinary boy and he finds women less than appealing - he in fact hates them. In spite of all this, Frank lives in his own world - he sets off explosives on the beach, a pathetic gesture in trying to reclaim his lost masculinity. He tortures pour defenseless animals. Oh, and he also cruelly murdered three other children before the age of ten.

As the story begins, Frank’s brother has escaped from a mental institution and through the first few chapters Frank begins to reveal the story of his life. Frank has been so isolated from society, its as if he’s created his own private language and his own rituals. He even likens his conflicting emotions and desires to rival political factions in a fictional society - the boy’s self-identity is a microcosm unto itself. However, this book is more than a record of mental illness and impossible to put down. This is a harrowing tale of of a life unsung, a challenge to find meaning in a cruel world, and a philosophical treatise of nature vs. nurture. By the time the book reaches its conclusion, it still becomes something else entirely.

Raised and ruined by wayward parents from a hippie generation he cannot understand, Frank is cynical, pessimistic, and though clearly mentally ill and distorted, often tragically self aware. What is so disturbing about this book, is not that Frank’s and his brother’s mental illnesses are based on delusions and self-deceptions, but rather that they are based on truths that most people hide from themselves.

I must emphasize, this book is clearly not for everyone. It is a painful bildungsroman that will raise questions some people would rather not ask - questions about the existence of God or goodness in a world full of cruelty - questions about abused children. It is a treatise on the fragility of the human spirit - one revealed in all its nakedness. Some will not see why this book is important, will not be able to empathize with the protagonist, and call this book trash.

Beautifully written - and only for those who don’t shy away from the difficult and tragic parts of life.

Rating: 9.25/10

Just when Mad Men was starting to get tedious and repetitive, the writers  wiped the slate clean. With a fresh start, the crew from Sterling and Draper became instead the crew for Sterling Draper Cooper Price - a new company. Don also finds himself estranged from his former wife - a bachelor once again.

Don is having a tough year in this season and it makes for great drama - more of a boozehound than ever before, he  at times can’t even get his keys in his apartment door. However over the course of the year things will change and his character will grow more than he has through any other season.

This season even develops the character of Don’s oldest, his daughter Sally Draper who begins to rebel against the now not-so-sympathetic Betty Draper. The season bears witness to Joan making a less than stellar decision, Peggy runs with a more bohemian crowd, all while a major crisis begins to threaten the new company.

This is, indeed the best season of Mad Men to date. The writing improves a great deal as each episode finds the ability to not only makes a cultural statement about our past, but maintain poignant drama as well. They took chances with a new dynamic this season, and it paid off - as the show’s writers actually understand that viewers don’t want repetition and change is more than welcome.

Still, at times with Mad Men, there is a lack of a season-wide story-arc and so many smaller storylines that it all appears a bit piecemeal. Sometimes the show is willing to only show you a glimpse of its non-central characters, rather than really explore their hopes and desires - mirroring superficial nature of the ad industry. At times Mad Men suffers from a bit of an identity crisis - it wants to be about Machiavellian business and the decadence of white collar America - yet still have some more profound underlying meaning left to take away as well. So, we end up suffering from a balancing act - Don Draper is both cunning and cuthroat while often hiding bohemian and idealistic instincts.

Still, at times though this balancing act pays off. Don’s often hidden desire to act impulsively and try new things leads directly to the inspirations that make him so effective creatively. The tension with Don Draper at times synthesizes into something more than the sum of it parts, and in those rare moments ad-men can transcend their cultural stereotypes of propagandists and become something at which many of them failed in their youth - they can become artists. At these moments the show finds a unity that is unmatched by anything else on television.

Rating: 8.75/10

Earlier in his career, before he embarked on what would become his opus and epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin wrote a vampire novel. Having only read A Song of Ice and Fire and his award-winning short story Sandkings, I was looking forward to finding out what Martin was capable of in an entirely different genre. Personally, horror fiction and vampire tales aren’t my cup of tea, but I had been told that this book was too good to miss.

Let me start by saying, the southern-gothic setting of Fevre Dream is fantastic. Spanning the length of time before the American Civil War and afterwards, Martin’s book is replete with boggy rivers, Louisiana Creole culture, southern business tycoons sipping mint juleps,  while knife-wielding roustabouts and mulatto prostitutes inhabit steamboats and slave auctions. Martin’s book drips with Americana style, and is not to be missed by any reader of American historical fiction.

As exciting as the vampire characters in the book are, Martin’s human protagonist, Abner Marsh, an obese, waddling, walrus-like man with a heavy wart-faced jowl, is one of the most colorful characters I’ve encountered in a long time. If you’ve read Martin’s other work, you know the depth of his characters is complex and lifelike. The characters resemble people you’ve met and Martin has the uncanny ability to see through their eyes and find them a voice. The round-faced Marsh is a perfect example - he walks with his cane, never misses an opportunity for a meal, and even struggles with trying to understand poetry - a part of culture that is inevitably lost on him.

At the heart of the story however lie two characters- an idealist and a pragmatist, two business partners as different as can be, sharing an American dream - and finding friendship by bringing something beautiful into the world. The steamboat, from which the book gets its name, is an American triumph, despite it ominous epithet. Abner Marsh and Joshua York form a pact at the beginning of the novel, one that will be tested to its limits. Let us not forget though, this is a vampire story (not just about steamboats) and Martin re-imagines the myth of the vampire, making them perhaps more human than ever before. Some vampires hope to be assimilated into human society while others espouse an almost Nietzschean amorality - referring to humans as a “herd” not much different than cattle are to humans. Even more unsettling, is the eerie parallel between vampires’ treatment of humans and the American enslavement of dark-skinned peoples. Martin is suggesting, (as expressly voiced through the character of Julian) that to call non-human characters “evil” would amount to nothing short of hypocrisy.

Still, the book is far from perfect. Though the nuts and bolt inner workings of the steamboats and steamboat chases were charming early in the book they become a bit tedious as the plot drives forward. Martin’s use of blood and violence can be a bit overdone at times, to nauseating extremes. Still, the resolution is anything but shallow and more than satisfying. It was refreshing to know that Martin can actually resolve a plot since we’ve seen no resolution to A Song of Ice and Fire.

Rating: 8.25/10

Though perhaps the book from which it is derived it the worst in the series up to its release, the film is clearly the best in the series at its time of release respectively. Here, we have one of those rare cases where the film is actually superior to the book.

The main reason: the fat is trimmed off in all the right places. All of the sections in the book that we could have lived without are missing, and there actually seems to be a plot without all the necessary diversions.

David Yates does something with this film the previous directors in the series could not do - tell the story in a way that makes it work as a film and not just a translation of the book. His use of the montage is fantastic - the camera work is creates all the right feelings of ominousness, panic, exhilaration, and excitement. In addition, the use of special effects, the art design, and the attention paid to detail makes this the most aesthetically pleasing in the series yet, leaps and bounds above its predecessor, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In addition, the addition of all-star caliber actress Helena Bonham Carter as the deranged Bellatrix Lestrange is delightfully diabolical - breathing more life into a character than what the creator contributed.

Still however, this is a Harry Potter film. Viewers who have read the book will get more out of it than those who haven’t, as many parts of the story that make it interesting are hinted with a wink and a nod rather than explained. Though Daniel Radcliffe’s portrayal of Potter has improved under the direction of Yates, I still found him unconvincing and too deliberate. Though, for the first time, with confidence in Yates, I look forward to whats to come with the series.

Rating: 6.5/10

After years of refusal and literary snobbery, I finally embarked on reading the Harry Potter series. I had never seen such excitement generated over a series of novels. Being at Oxford during the release of the final book, there had been a festival in the streets of live owls and people dressed in multicolored homemade robes. I had witnessed so much of Harry Potter fanfare, but had yet to experience the source of all that enthusiasm.

Reading young adult fiction can at times be tedious. You feel as if the author tells you more than you need to know. The passages lack subtlety and there is none of the pessimism and cynicism about the world that we as adults so voraciously devour. However, reading this series has been a moderately pleasant reading experience as sometimes a bit of good-hearted humor and the traditional black-and-white categories of good or evil can be a bit refreshing - (it can be comforting to know who the bad guy is).

This book, being the longest in the series, is where the series takes a darker turn. Harry Potter feels the existential angst about being “the-special-chosen-one” as a role that he didn’t choose.  Due to his tragic differences from his, he often pushes himself away from the ones that love him the most and instead befriends the eccentric Luna Lovegood, a new character who the other children often shun and ostracize.

Here, we see the beginning of what is called the Second War, ushering in a turn from the self-contained plots of the first four books into the larger story which will be the last three novels. Thus the book feels kind of transitional - as if much of it is not for the purpose of this book so much as the books to come. Therefore, the book lacks a cohesiveness that some of the early books had - there is not quite a over-arching mystery that forms as the central story arc - instead it feels as it the book never really takes shape. Instead, it feels sorely in need of an editor, as much could have been disposed of in the paper shredder. Consequently, the writing is not as smooth as Rowling’s earlier works, and the novel feels a bit “all over the place.”

However, there still is fun to be had. The patronizing Dolores Umbridge is one of the most despicable characters in the series yet - and we finally learn a bit more about Snape - one of the more interesting, ambiguous, and complex characters in the series. Still, it is one of the weakest of Harry Potter books that I have encountered thus far.

Rating: 4.25/10

Its not often that I read history of this era. However, after reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, I was hungry for more royal treachery, scandalous affairs, murderous plots, and upstart usurpers. Since A Song of Fire and Ice, was based on England’s War of the Roses, the natural progression was to pick up where that left off - with the Tudor dynasty. Also, I couldn’t resist the cleavage on the cover.

Spoken plainly, this book is a mess. Even at over 600 pages, it is packed with much too much information. Meyer is not willing to omit negligible details, nor is he willing to give them a fair treatment. Without footnotes (which greatly would have been appreciated, though this is not an academic or reference work and rather a popular history), the book is bursting with unidentified names and events that would have been better left in the editor’s wastebasket. He even goes so far as to dedicate entire chapters to tangential figures that were not part of the Tudor dynasty, but rather members of their court than pay attention to the larger than life figures to whom the book gets its name.

In addition, this book is suspiciously pro-Catholic and anti-protestant. Somehow, every evil that appeared in England throughout these two centuries was a product of the vicious anti-Semite Martin Luther and his followers who infected Great Britain with their lack of character. It is true that Catholics were persecuted in Great Britain during this time, but the story is told in a dubiously one-sided manner. Meanwhile, Meyer expressly wishes to dispel the illusions about the greatness of Elizabeth I, while glazing over the crimes of the infamous Bloody Mary (the only Catholic ruler in the family) whom he believes has been unfairly treated by Historians.

Still, the subject matter speaks for itself - and this was a fascinating time and a fascinating family. Also, I did enjoy Meyer’s diversions that came in the form of short thematic histories in between the main chapters (one about torture, one about food, and one about the school systems) that gave us much of a taste of what ordinary life was like of the English peasant during the Tudor dynasty. With these consolations, I can stop from kicking myself for completely wasting my time and my money.

Rating: 2.75/10