1984 by George Orwell

Posted by melydia on April 18, 2005 No comment

1984 by George Orwell: I’ve wanted to read this for a long time, but was never forced to in school and just didn’t get around to it until now. It’s an important book. Not only does it detail the dangers of totalitarianism, but also raises some really good questions about the nature of the past. Basically, if something happened in the past, and then all documentation was changed so that it appears to have not happened, and then everybody says it never happened, how can you be so sure you really remember it at all?

A brilliant book, if a bit slow in places. It’s driven much more by description of the dystopian land of Oceania than by character or plot. If you’re interested in the inner workings of the socio-political landscape, you’ll enjoy it. If you just want a fun little sci-fi romp, this probably isn’t for you.

All the same, I think it’s a book people should read. The world of 1984 may seem overdramatic, but it is one plausible outcome of the gradual sacrifice of privacy and property in favor of governmental protection or the nebulous “common good.” It’s something worth thinking about. Indeed, that is perhaps this book’s strongest point: it left me with an unusually large number of things to think about. That, my friends, is truly high praise for a novel.

[Note: Star Trek: The Next Generation totally ripped off this book in the episode “Chain of Command” with the five/four lights thing. But Picard was a whole lot more badass under pressure than Winston, so they get points for that.]

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Posted by melydia on April 17, 2005 No comment

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: When I first saw the preview, I (and judging from the murmurs around me, most others in the theater) thought it was a joke movie, like somebody was going to bust in and sell us some car insurance or remind us to turn off our cell phones. The idea is that several famous literary characters (Allan Quatermain, The Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, and Captain Nemo) are recruited into a league to stop a world war (from starting earlier than it would anyway, I suppose, since this takes place in the late 1800s). See, even the premise sounds absurd, so you can understand my skepticism. But no, it was a real film, and it garnered some horrendous reviews.

Not without reason, of course. The plot holes are extensive. The historical and literary inaccuracies are legion. The characters are beautifully attired but watered-down, without enough screentime to become fully fleshed. The plot is nothing special either – just a bunch of brilliant special effects shots (I especially enjoyed the building on fire that wasn’t on fire) strung together with little bits of dialogue trying very hard to have depth.

Good thing I don’t need my adventure films to have much depth. In the end, this was a fun bit of fluff. I laughed out loud in a couple occasions and discovered a sudden desire to go back and read all the source material to see exactly which canon traits were indeed ignored (for the life of me, I can’t remember if Dracula was vulnerable to sunlight or if that part of the vampire legend came later). While I will probably never watch it again, it was a nice diversion on a Saturday night.

The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams

Posted by melydia on April 16, 2005 No comment

The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams: Scott Adams is a cartoonist. He is not a stand-up comedian nor is he Dave Barry, though this book makes it quite clear that he really wants to be. Still, there is a reason he tells jokes in three-panel comic strips instead of 30-minute monologues. Here he addresses various aspects of life and makes tongue-in-cheek predictions, interspersed with Dilbert cartoons. It was obviously written in sections rather than as a whole, and the entire time all I could think about was how much more fitting these musings would be in somebody’s blog than a hardbound tome published by Harper Business, especially since so many of the predictions have gone out of date since its publication (such as his erroneous predictions for the futures of the cable modem and ISDN). There were some vaguely amusing parts but nothing was anywhere near laugh-out-loud funny, and I had to yawn a bit at the tired “women really rule the world” section – that idea was beaten to death decades ago and hasn’t gotten any funnier in the meantime. Frankly, the most humorous parts were the cartoons, and if I wanted to read those I could have just picked up a collection.

The final chapter, “A New View of the Future,” was inappropriate in this context. For this section Adams “turned the humor mode off” and discussed his personal philosophies. They were interesting but did not fit whatsoever with the rest of the book. His ideas on perception and cause and effect would also have been much more compelling had he bothered to actually research any of the theories and experiments he mentioned. I understand that the goal of this section was nothing more than to make the reader think about the universe a little differently, but it would have been much more effective had he spent an hour at the library finding a couple of references to cite. Saying things like “I’ll simplify the explanation, probably getting the details wrong in the process, but you’ll get the general idea” does not instill in me a desire to take him very seriously. That said, I am giving thought to trying out those affirmations.

Despite the incongruity of the chapter, I still enjoyed it about as much as I did the rest of the book, but for different reasons (the first part was vaguely amusing, the second vaguely intriguing). Ultimately this felt like a Dilbert collection trying to be a Dave Barry book. I think I’ll stick with the comic strips from now on.

Originally posted on BookCrossing.

Sin City

Posted by melydia on April 10, 2005 No comment

Sin City: I’ll start with the good points, er, point: the film style. The use of black and white with just a smattering of color, the glowing white blood in certain shots, the stark shadows and bright lights – it was all gorgeous, just like watching a comic book come to life. A feast for the eyes, if you can handle something this gruesome.

Then there was the rest of the film. The dialogue was full of overblown metaphors, typical of the most outrageous satire of film noir. To make matters worse, most of the acting was on par with a readthrough at your average high school drama club. The fact that over half of the speaking was done in internal monologues didn’t help either.

Then finally there was the story. I was so bored I almost walked out an hour into it. See, the problem was that I just didn’t care. None of the characters were more than cardboard cutouts, walking stereotypes. You had your sexy, scantily-clad, gun-toting hookers; your ugly, monotone, gun-toting superheroes; your almost amusing but similarly ugly bad guys; your corrupt cops, politicians, and clergy; and a whole lot of blood. That’s about it – no originality anywhere to be seen.

There you have it: a bunch of stock characters spewing stilted dialogue while blowing each other’s brains out and surviving unlikely physical assaults. Oh yeah, and just to annoy you a little bit more, they jump around in time about halfway through. I didn’t think a movie this violent could possibly be so arm-chewingly boring. Don’t waste your money or your time.

Lamb by Christopher Moore

Posted by melydia on April 2, 2005 No comment

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore: The title says it all. Levi who is called Biff is raised from the dead 2000 years later to share his account of the life of Jesus (who here is called Joshua), most notably the thirty years missing from the other Gospels. During this time Josh and Biff traveled to the East for 17 years, where they shared many adventures, and when they returned he began his ministry.

This book is pretty funny. Biff is a bit of an ass but a total joy to read. He claims to have invented all kinds of things, from sarcasm to pencils, and his witty but straightforward storytelling is a delight. But however irreverent this book may be, it remains true to the person of Jesus – his kindness, his generosity, his honesty. It also does not dance around his divinity: he was the Son of God and the Messiah, but not quite in the way the Jews expected. Biff’s devotion to him is understandable both as a faithful disciple and a lifelong friend.

For most of this book I thought I would be beginning my review with a hearty recommendation against it for any serious Christian. While I still don’t know if a Biblical literalist would enjoy this story, I think any Christian (or anyone else) with a fair sense of humor would get a big kick out of it. Moore’s epilogue, in which he describes his sources and sheds light on what could have been and what was sheer fiction, sums it up very well: “This story was not meant to challenge anyone’s faith; if one’s faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.”

Originally posted on BookCrossing.

esuvee

Posted by melydia on March 29, 2005 No comment

You’ve probably seen those weird esuvee commercials on TV – the ones where these dudes are in a rodeo, riding these strange beasts that look like a cross between a truck and bison. After months of boggling over the point of them, convinced they couldn’t possibly be just some kind of freakish PSA about proper driving techniques, I finally visited the website. There my horrors were realized: it really is just a freakish PSA. Apparently people who drive SUVs are too stupid to handle them properly and cause accidents. If that’s the case, then what are the odds they’ll be smart enough to get the symbolism of the weird muppet buffalo things? So scary, and honestly not that effective – it took me months to work up the curiosity to check out the website, and I pay a lot more attention to advertisements than most. Then once I got here I realized what it was about and didn’t bother to actually read any of the safety information (and wouldn’t have even if I owned an SUV). So in the end we have ads that were obviously pretty expensive to make – the effects are good and there’s no telling how long it took people to create the esuvee beast itself (there’s also a physical one that tours the nation) – but don’t do any good. I wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed if it weren’t my tax dollars that were being dumped into such a worthless project.

Chicago

Posted by melydia on March 22, 2005 No comment

Chicago: First, a quick synopsis: Roxie Hart kills her lover when she learns he was using her for sex and indeed was not her ticket to a singing career. Earlier that same night, the famous singer Velma Kelly killed her sister and husband for sleeping with each other. They both end up in the same prison, and from there on out the story becomes a tangle of lies and greed as each woman vies for the spotlight any way she can get it.

Though I have never seen the stage production, I can guess what it’s like: lots of flashy costumes, crazy dance numbers, and relatively sparse sets. That’s how musicals generally are, and that’s fine. Songs can be dialogue, interior monologue, or exposition in a musical without feeling like the story has been interrupted. So what if a bunch of chorus girls wearing absurdly large headgear pop up in the middle of a courtroom? In a musical, that’s perfectly fine. A movie, however, is different. The sets are detailed, realistic – too realistic to make said chorus girls look anything other than out of place. Things have to start out a little surreal and larger-than-life, as in Moulin Rouge or Singin’ in the Rain, for the audience to not be startled by people suddenly bursting into song.

Chicago takes a different approach. Instead of incorporating the songs directly into the story, they are performed as sort of dream sequences, mostly in Roxie’s mind. Whenever a song begins, the action cuts back and forth between the real world and an imaginary vaudeville. This of course could not happen in the theater, as the costume changes would be impossible, but it is an interesting attempt to bring the stage to the screen without actually blending the two worlds together.

I can’t decide how I feel about this approach. On the one hand, it provides opportunities for some interesting symbolism – the husband as the sad clown, the lawyer as the puppeteer – but on the other hand, the constant switching back and forth is distracting. I did stop and think about the film from an artistic angle for quite a while afterwards, however, so in the end I suppose that comes out in its favor. But I’m sure the stage show is better.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by melydia on March 17, 2005 No comment

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein: My first taste of Heinlein was Stranger in a Strange Land a few years back. It was, in a word, bad. So I gave up on Heinlein all together, figuring if his most famous and critically acclaimed book was no good, what chance did the others have? This conviction was met with protests from Heinlein fans, saying I need to read some “good” Heinlein before making the call. So I did, though it took me an unusually long time to finish. I just couldn’t get into it. The characters were two-dimensional and shared too many qualities with those in SiaSL: the brilliant innocent (here, a self-aware computer named Mike), the levelheaded and elderly teacher/father-figure (Prof the anarchist philosopher), and the beautiful, “smart” woman whose most highly praised attribute is her ability to keep her mouth shut when the men are talking about important things (Wyoh, a revolutionary with a thing for older men – another SiaSL staple). Another recycled idea (though I don’t know which book came first) was the group/line marriages, where the women are said to be in charge but actually spend most of their time at home worrying about their men. These characters weren’t that great the first time around; the second time was just tedious.

The idea behind the story is fine: the moon is more or less a penal colony under totalitarian rule. With the help of Mike the computer, Mannie (a computer tech who talks – and narrates the story – in an obnoxious dialect that sounds like someone faking a Russian accent very poorly), Prof, and Wyoh engineer a revolution. There is some interesting discussion of political ideals and governmental structure, but without sympathetic characters to bring it to life the story is about as gripping as your average high school civics class. I simply could not bring myself to care one way or the other. Now I wonder, how many more of his books do I need to read before I can officially say I don’t like Heinlein?

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Posted by melydia on March 13, 2005 No comment

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber: What a monumental waste of time. I probably shouldn’t begin my review that way, but that was my first thought upon reading the last page just now. This is the story of a lout named William Rackham, his mad wife Agnes, and his troubled mistress Sugar. I especially enjoyed Agnes as the pitiably ignorant and tormented product of her high-society upbringing. I admit my disappointment with this book started when I realized it was about a man who falls in love with a prostitute, but I tried to ignore the cliched premise and get into the story. There was no problem there – the characters are solid, believable, and (mostly) sympathetic. The description of 19th century England is so detailed you can see it in your mind. I did notice that all the major female characters in this story suffered from some physical ailment; I wonder if that was meant to be symbolic. The author wades tentatively into controversial waters – poverty, prostitution, religion – but never shares any sort of opinions either way, appearing to suggest that misery is something that is unavoidable and charity is nothing more than a drop in the ocean, unnoticed and not even worth the effort.

The book, at 833 pages (and it’s the larger size paperback; this thing is massive!), is in severe need of editing. Entirely too much space is given to the frustratingly angstful relationship between the doctor’s daughter Emmeline and William’s brother Henry. It did nothing to further the plot whatsoever, just an aside that never wove itself into the fabric of the main story. They should have had their own book and stayed out of this one. There were other characters who likewise did nothing for the story (such as the prostitute Caroline), but they were minor enough that I can ignore them. The beginning should have been edited as well, as it starts out with a clever method of introducing characters and setting up scenes – the reader is being guided personally through the events by a sort of invisible spirit, invited to follow people around – but this is lost about a third of the way through the book in favor of more traditional narration. It should have been kept throughout or dropped entirely. Finally, I found the obsession with bowel movements annoying. I understand the author’s desire to show that real people lived in these conditions, but I don’t really need to read about it every time Sugar pees. The use of such a term doesn’t help either. Perhaps such words were in the vernacular at the time, but after such flowery 19th century language it is very jarring to run across such modern-sounding slang as “balls” and “cunt” and “fart” in the (third person omniscient) narration.

Even so, I could have overlooked these problems in the interest of the story of the Rackham family, which is honestly engaging and appears to be building to a climax, the anticipation of which makes the book difficult to put down for the last couple hundred pages. However, this lengthy tome still manages to end in the middle of the action. Several of the main characters are left unaccounted for, their fates unknown to the reader. 833 pages and the story just stops, leaving the reader with the sinking feeling that they just wasted all those hours spent getting to know these characters. The story isn’t even tragic enough to feel a satisfying sense of pity – you turn the last page and sit there, dumbstruck, wondering where the next chapter disappeared to and why the hell you bothered reading to that point in the first place.

On the bright side, I did learn quite a bit about the time period and do hope to pick up more historical fiction in the future. Just not by Michel Faber.

Originally posted on BookCrossing

Saturn 3

Posted by melydia on February 25, 2005 No comment

Saturn 3: Big names, complicated story, surprisingly forgotten movie. The beginning is especially strange. Captain James is in a locker room, hurriedly getting ready for his big launch, and runs into Harvey Keitel, who was waiting for him and similarly attired. James jokes about Harvey’s recent classification of “mentally unstable,” saying that being assigned to Saturn 3 would make anybody unstable (keep in mind neither of them have actually gone there yet). Harvey responds to this by tossing James out the airlock. Mentally unstable, indeed. But here’s the weird part: Harvey takes James’s place on the Saturn 3 assignment as captain of the one-man ship. He boards the vessel wearing his opaque helment and no one is the wiser.

He lands on Titan (Saturn’s third moon, hence the name), where Kirk Douglas and Farah Fawcett live on a scientific outpost working on what looks like hydroponic research to help replenish the Earth’s food supply. They are also lovers with a strange backstory that is never explained adequately. Kirk’s been banned from Earth but Farah’s never been there. Not sure how that all ties together but anyway the two of them are lovers and seem fairly happy with their lot, isolated as it is. Then Harvey arrives and brings with him a robot named Hector, which is supposed to help Kirk and Farah speed up their output. However, Harvey trains Hector by interfacing him directly with his brain through a plug in the back of his neck which very obviously was the inspiration for The Matrix. Since Harvey’s unstable, so is the robot, to the point of lusting rather single-mindedly after Farah.

From there it turns more or less into your standard monster movie. The acting is decent (except for Harvey – his monotone sounded like was reading) and the effects are reasonable for the time period, but a lot of the story must be taken on faith and not questioned, because it certainly isn’t going to be explained. Like the entire future history of Earth between now and whenever this movie is supposed to take place. And the backstory of basically all the characters. And the fact that you can kill a man by cutting off his hand. And that a robot in a Harvey hat is supposed to be scary, not funny.

All in all it was an enjoyable romp, ripe for a hearty MST3K treatment, but it might have made a really good book. Movies have a lot of trouble with science fiction because everything must be explained in dialogue. Books do not have this limitation and this story would have benefited greatly from more background and scientific details. That, and in a book you can have a naked man without actually having to see Kirk Douglas’s 64-year-old ass. That would have been an improvement.

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