Artemis Fowl
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
American Psycho
American Psycho (unrated version): This movie was described to me as a film that you laugh at, then feel bad for laughing. The story is carried entirely by Christian Bale, a 1980s executive with homicidal tendencies. His over-the-top pretension and metrosexuality are funny, as are his absurdly detailed lectures about popular music, which are only spouted just before he brutally murders someone.
Did I laugh? In parts, though not as much as my fellow audience members. Bale pulled off the psycho yuppie role well. Unfortunately, every one else in the cast was pretty uninteresting, just so much scenery. Which may have been how it was meant, but I still felt a nagging disappointment in the underuse of people like Willem Dafoe as the detective. To top it all off, the ending leaves you with a “what in God’s name just happened here?” feeling, which I personally find unsatisfying. I don’t mind being confused throughout the story, but if things don’t get tied up at the end I leave with a lingering doubt, wondering if I just wasted two hours of my life.
Jekyll and Hyde
I first encountered the musical Jekyll and Hyde a few years ago when it came to Ball State. I’d never heard of it (aside from the original Robert Louis Stevenson book, of course) but I’ve always been drawn to demented tragedies so I went. I really really liked it. I liked its dark, twisted music and themes. I pulled out my soundtrack the other day and have been listening to it, and though the story is still quite compelling, I’m reminded of its definite flaws.
First, some of the lyrics are just ridiculously bad. Not all of them, mind you, but there are a several phrases that sacrifice flow for the sake of rhyme and end up sounding really awkward. And maybe it’s just the singers taking too much liberty with the tempo, but sometimes it sounds like there are just too many words for the number of notes allotted them. Plus, I would have liked the composer to have spent just a couple more months writing two or three more songs so “Facade” doesn’t have to be reprised four times. No, I’m not exaggerating.
But you know what makes it all worth it? Not the big numbers like “Good’n’Evil” or sensuous ballads like “In His Eyes” or even the one song people have actually heard, “This is the Moment.” No, it’s the second-to-last song in the entire show that gets me every time: “Confrontation.” Here, Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde finally talk to each other in a kind of duet…all sung by one man, of course. Through lighting tricks, music cues, and of course excellent acting, it almost seems like two men arguing instead of one wrestling with his inner demons. It’s a truly brilliant piece and makes me wish the rest of the show could have lived up to it.
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick
Confessions of a Crap Artist
It’s an initially confusing book, and takes a little while to get into its groove. It swaps point of view nearly every chapter, alternating between first-person Jack, first-person Fay, third-person Charley, or third-person Nat Anteil (their neighbor). (The fact that the back of the book incorrectly refers to Charley and Fay as Charlie and Judy didn’t help matters either.) Once you pick up on this it’s fairly easy to distinguish narrators and becomes an interesting study in different people’s opinions on the same events, and the effect these differences have on the outcome. You can see the tragedy coming a mile away but still can’t believe it when it actually happens, which is a feeling I hadn’t encountered in a book for a long time. The ending was somewhat abrupt but generally satisfying.
Suggestion Rant
Often when reading commentary, I’ll see this line: “everybody should read this, whether you agree with them or not,” or something similar (see this movie, hear what they have to say, etc.). Have you ever said that about something with which you disagree? Like, “Man, I really disagree with everything this guy had to say but you should listen to him – it’s good stuff.” What? The only time I’ve seen anything similar is more along the lines of, “Get a load of this crap,” or “This is what the opposition is saying; study it and prepare a rebuttal.” The only time I’ve ever seen anyone suggest an article/book/movie/etc. as “food for thought” is when they agree with the author and think everybody else should too. Or at least “see it from their point of view,” “understand where they’re coming from,” and all that nonsense. If I come across something that I believe to be patently incorrect, I might point it out with a thorough critique of why it’s wrong, but I’m not going to tell everybody they should check it out. Why should I spread ideas that I don’t agree with?
Equilibrium
Equilibrium: With the huge success of The Matrix, it is not surprising that this film did not do well commercially. It contains some similar elements, including widespread mind control (though in this film it is acknowledged and voluntary), really awesome fighting (though with camera tricks and choreography instead of cop-out CG), and lots of black clothing. Critics also weren’t too fond of it. The entire idea of the film was a bit much: because emotions cause war and suffering and hate, let’s do away with them using a drug called Prozium. Okay, that’s fine, but the fact that they had a government-run group of uber-fighters to destroy paintings and pets and music and anything else that might cause feelings threatened my suspension of disbelief a bit. If they’re taking a drug to prevent emotions, why get rid of all the colorful stuff? People won’t care either way.
But if you can swallow that, you’ll enjoy this film. The dialogue can be melodramatic at times but attains its goal of multiple memorable lines and exchanges. Though it’s incredibly violent (with a body count of 236, more people die in this film than any other non-War movie to date), the fighting is flat out awesome. The soundtrack is excellent. And while many critics accused it of making grandiose, hackneyed Orwellian warnings about too much government control, I saw it from a different angle. The name of the drug, Prozium, was a clever blend of Prozac and Valium, both popular medicines for reducing negative emotions. We forget that it is human nature to be unhappy from time to time. Society expects us to be constantly happy and confident but that’s just not how we’re built. Emotions are part of what separate us from animals. Without emotion we have no drive to better ourselves. The society in Equilibrium had reached exactly that; it had become a collection of stagnant, circular lives that exist only to eat, breed, and die. Nothing changing, nothing tipping the balance either way. Perfect equilibrium.
Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan
So it turns out that The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, an “unauthorized documentary” about the director’s life on the Sci Fi channel, was a complete fraud. There is no buried secret, there was no drowned child in Night’s past, and his movies are not in any way autobiographical except that they take place in his hometown of Philadelphia. I saw this last night. It was awful. Its attempts at appearing factual made Michael Moore look like National Geographic. Why would you film a conversation with your boss about the documentary you’re making? Why would a house that’s been more or less empty for the last 20 years still have a rather large amount of belongings in it, including things like paper towels which would have been chewed up by bugs and rodents by now? How could an 11-year-old child handle a camera during the 1970s (a time before camcorders), and why would his mother be wearing suspiciously modern clothing? The ending was even worse: the filmmakers wandered around on the street and asked random strangers whether they believed in the supernatural. I wanted to stab forks in my eyes.
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!: Had I not been a captive audience on a transcontinental flight I would have never seen this film. It was pretty generic as romantic comedies go, with Rosalie bearing even more resemblence to a supermodel than most extraordinary-things-happening-to-ordinary-women stories. It took away from what scant realism there was, and I felt like I was watching a Marysue (which, in the fanfic world, is when the author writes a poorly-disguised version of herself into the story, usually as a way of writing out a personal fantasy). Maybe I’ve just been travelling in the wrong social circles, but I’ve never met any men who acted even remotely like the romantic, emotional, and persistent Pete. Which is interesting, considering he was probably one of the more believable and likeable characters, mostly because he bore such a strong resemblence to Topher Grace’s character on That 70s Show. And speaking of him, what kind of a name is Topher anyway? It’s stupid…and even stupider if it’s supposed to be short for Christopher. Topher is the kind of name I’d give my dog. Funny actor, though.
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
Drowning Ruth
Originally posted on Bookcrossing.
Cold Steel Rain by Kenneth Abel
Cold Steel Rain
The plot is complicated, so I won’t try to explain it. Suffice it to say that the main character, Danny Chaisson, is running from both his past and present, trying to find out why people want him dead. The novel is rather obviously anti-gun, but the story never comes off as preachy. The Black dialect, from an admittedly white perspective, was spot on without making the characters sound stupid, which tends to be a problem when writing in any dialect. Everyone had believable (if sometimes despicable) motives, and at the end you were left with a feeling of satisfaction and some small measure of hope for the future…without denying the grim reality of the present.
Originally posted on Bookcrossing.