Movie: Cairo Time
Like/Don't Like: Like
I watched this on my way home from Tunisia and it reflected my own experience in an arab country that I was bound to like it. I don't know how I would feel if it didn't seem so familiar but we all judge movies by what we know.
Patricia Clarkson plays a magazine editor who is in Egypt to meet her husband, a UN official who is stuck fixing a problem in the Gaza Strip. He sends his Egyptian friend to pick her up from the airport and show her around the city until he gets there. I was a little nervous that this would turn into an adulterous tale, which I hate, but it just skims the surface. It's really about how these two people connect in and through the city. It's a very quiet movie, and at times a bit slow but worth watching.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Get Low
Movie: Get Low
Like/Don't Like: Like
I watched this on the flight from Rome to New York, which, for the record, is a very long flight, so I don't know if it was a lack of sleep of my giddiness on returning home, but this one really got to me.
It's based on the true story of a recluse who staged his own funeral so he could be there to hear the stories people told of him. Which is a genius idea, by the way. Wouldn't we all love to do that?
I love Robert Duvall in this. Really, I love him in anything, but he played this guy with so much humanity. I loved it. Bill Murray was a little wrong for the part. He seemed from another time period all together. But I have a hard time not adoring Bill Murray so we'll just drop it. There were some really beautiful moments to this story and I was really touched by how it unfolded. So much so that I started to cry and my seat mates, Maureen and Al, were a little concerned. But Al ended up watching it a few hours later and loved it too.
Like/Don't Like: Like
I watched this on the flight from Rome to New York, which, for the record, is a very long flight, so I don't know if it was a lack of sleep of my giddiness on returning home, but this one really got to me.
It's based on the true story of a recluse who staged his own funeral so he could be there to hear the stories people told of him. Which is a genius idea, by the way. Wouldn't we all love to do that?
I love Robert Duvall in this. Really, I love him in anything, but he played this guy with so much humanity. I loved it. Bill Murray was a little wrong for the part. He seemed from another time period all together. But I have a hard time not adoring Bill Murray so we'll just drop it. There were some really beautiful moments to this story and I was really touched by how it unfolded. So much so that I started to cry and my seat mates, Maureen and Al, were a little concerned. But Al ended up watching it a few hours later and loved it too.
Tangled
Movie: Tangled
Like/Don't Like: Cute. And clever in some parts.
I went with the Blessed Nephews to see this so I was distracted by their cuteness through a lot of it. But this was a pretty good flick. I didn't know it was Mandy Moore doing the voice of Rapunzel until the credits, which was a blessing because I normally find her to be really annoying. But if that was her doing the singing, she has lovely voice. The story was clever and a few of the songs were pretty funny. It had some of the old school Disney charm, which I appreciate.
Like/Don't Like: Cute. And clever in some parts.
I went with the Blessed Nephews to see this so I was distracted by their cuteness through a lot of it. But this was a pretty good flick. I didn't know it was Mandy Moore doing the voice of Rapunzel until the credits, which was a blessing because I normally find her to be really annoying. But if that was her doing the singing, she has lovely voice. The story was clever and a few of the songs were pretty funny. It had some of the old school Disney charm, which I appreciate.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
Like/Don't Like: Knights of Columbus, I LOVED IT!!!!!
Here are a few complaints I've heard about this movie: It's too long. It's too truncated. It just feels like a build up for the final one. It's slow in the middle.
And to all of this I say: BALONEY. And not just any baloney but old baloney that has been sitting in the fridge for months and has turned green. Truth be told, I haven't actually eaten baloney in years but it was a staple of my childhood so I know baloney and all that whining about this movie is baloney. Because have you seen it? It's rad.
(Side note: the only criticism I will allow is on that bit with Harry and Hermoine making out when Ron is trying to kill the horcrux. On that they are all right to whine. And also, give me a break.)
The whole thing just felt right. All the technical aspects clicked, from the music to the locations to the direction and angles of the camera. They all just worked. And the kids have improved leaps and bounds with their acting. It was true to the book without being a copy of it and it captured the dark tone perfectly. And that animated part in the middle was genius. As was the casting of Rhys Ifans at Xenophilius Lovegood. I felt like it paced itself really well. There is a whole lot of story to get in and a lot of that is spent wandering the forest but it did a good job at keeping the action moving. And in defense of cutting it in half - let's get real, it had to be done. They cut it in the perfect place and give you a little resolution to tied you over until July.
July! I'm so relieved that I loved it this much. Except that now I have to start on my paper chain until the next one.
Like/Don't Like: Knights of Columbus, I LOVED IT!!!!!
Here are a few complaints I've heard about this movie: It's too long. It's too truncated. It just feels like a build up for the final one. It's slow in the middle.
And to all of this I say: BALONEY. And not just any baloney but old baloney that has been sitting in the fridge for months and has turned green. Truth be told, I haven't actually eaten baloney in years but it was a staple of my childhood so I know baloney and all that whining about this movie is baloney. Because have you seen it? It's rad.
(Side note: the only criticism I will allow is on that bit with Harry and Hermoine making out when Ron is trying to kill the horcrux. On that they are all right to whine. And also, give me a break.)
The whole thing just felt right. All the technical aspects clicked, from the music to the locations to the direction and angles of the camera. They all just worked. And the kids have improved leaps and bounds with their acting. It was true to the book without being a copy of it and it captured the dark tone perfectly. And that animated part in the middle was genius. As was the casting of Rhys Ifans at Xenophilius Lovegood. I felt like it paced itself really well. There is a whole lot of story to get in and a lot of that is spent wandering the forest but it did a good job at keeping the action moving. And in defense of cutting it in half - let's get real, it had to be done. They cut it in the perfect place and give you a little resolution to tied you over until July.
July! I'm so relieved that I loved it this much. Except that now I have to start on my paper chain until the next one.
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Help
Book: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Like/Don't Like: Liked (ish)
This is one of those books that I probably wouldn't have gotten around to reading. I do this with books that are everywhere. And this book is everywhere. I see it and think, I'll get around to it eventually - when it's in paperback, but then never do because I get annoyed with seeing its cover in every display and that puts a bad connotation in my head and suddenly I have convinced myself that it's a horrible book and I'd be so dumb to waste my time on it. I wasn't too that point with this book but it was inevitable.
But I did a preemptive strike and saved myself the trouble of hating it without reading it and just read Bronwyn's copy. And I liked it, mostly.
It's set in Jackson, Miss. in the 1960s so obviously it's about racism and civil rights and all those things. When I read about that time period I start feeling really punchy. I have a hard time with people being dumb. And I can't think of anything dumber than saying a person of a different color has to use a different drinking fountain because they have germs. It makes me cringe. It follows the stories of 3 women - two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and one white woman, Miss Skeeter. Skeeter grew up in Jackson and was raised by a black maid, whom she loved. When she returns from college and finds that her maid is no longer working at her house she starts to question the racial system she was brought up in. This gets her talking to Aibileen and Minny - who are her friends' maids - and they start to write a tell-all book about what it's like for a black woman to work for a white family.
I felt it did a good job at conveying the very real fear black people lived in. There were ample examples told in the book of beatins, lynchings, firings, and abuse. And the story kept me going for quite a while. Not having grown up in an age of rampant racial discrimination the whole thing is so foreign to me. I felt like it was well told and thoughtful.
But I did have a few issues: 1.) It could have been cut down. I was really into at the beginning. But the format - which switched between the points of view of 3 characters - is a pet peeve of mine unless done exceptionally well. This was not. It got a little long about 2/3 of the way through and I found myself wishing it would just end. 2.) The author seemed to be on a mission to make sure we knew it was set in the sixties. It was like there was a check list she was working off of, trying to get as mean signs of the decade in. Tab - check. Space race - check. Pucci mini dresses, Kennedy assasination, hippies, freedome-riders, Rosa Parks - all of them checked off the list. I know that they are meant to give an sense of the time but it just seemed labored and distracting. Especially when I was already getting tired of the book.
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Like/Don't Like: Liked (ish)
This is one of those books that I probably wouldn't have gotten around to reading. I do this with books that are everywhere. And this book is everywhere. I see it and think, I'll get around to it eventually - when it's in paperback, but then never do because I get annoyed with seeing its cover in every display and that puts a bad connotation in my head and suddenly I have convinced myself that it's a horrible book and I'd be so dumb to waste my time on it. I wasn't too that point with this book but it was inevitable.
But I did a preemptive strike and saved myself the trouble of hating it without reading it and just read Bronwyn's copy. And I liked it, mostly.
It's set in Jackson, Miss. in the 1960s so obviously it's about racism and civil rights and all those things. When I read about that time period I start feeling really punchy. I have a hard time with people being dumb. And I can't think of anything dumber than saying a person of a different color has to use a different drinking fountain because they have germs. It makes me cringe. It follows the stories of 3 women - two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and one white woman, Miss Skeeter. Skeeter grew up in Jackson and was raised by a black maid, whom she loved. When she returns from college and finds that her maid is no longer working at her house she starts to question the racial system she was brought up in. This gets her talking to Aibileen and Minny - who are her friends' maids - and they start to write a tell-all book about what it's like for a black woman to work for a white family.
I felt it did a good job at conveying the very real fear black people lived in. There were ample examples told in the book of beatins, lynchings, firings, and abuse. And the story kept me going for quite a while. Not having grown up in an age of rampant racial discrimination the whole thing is so foreign to me. I felt like it was well told and thoughtful.
But I did have a few issues: 1.) It could have been cut down. I was really into at the beginning. But the format - which switched between the points of view of 3 characters - is a pet peeve of mine unless done exceptionally well. This was not. It got a little long about 2/3 of the way through and I found myself wishing it would just end. 2.) The author seemed to be on a mission to make sure we knew it was set in the sixties. It was like there was a check list she was working off of, trying to get as mean signs of the decade in. Tab - check. Space race - check. Pucci mini dresses, Kennedy assasination, hippies, freedome-riders, Rosa Parks - all of them checked off the list. I know that they are meant to give an sense of the time but it just seemed labored and distracting. Especially when I was already getting tired of the book.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Great Expectations
Book: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
Like/Don't Like: I think Dickens and I would be BFF
I have said it before and I will say it until I die: teenagers shouldn't read Dickens. What a horrible way to treat both the kids and the author. Great Expectations was the first Dickens book I ever read and it completely turned me off to him for years and years. I was a freshman in high school and all I can remember of it is Miss Havisham in her wedding dress and the cake full of critters. And also that I was bored out of my mind. Because I was 14 and dumb. 14 year olds don't get Dickens. How can they? He's so subtle and dry and his stories weave in and out of dozens of characters' lives. What 14 year old has that sort of attention span? I wish that I had been introduced to him in college. All it would have taken for me to be completely smitten was a few more years under my belt. But instead I spent almost 20 years thinking he was the biggest bore.
Well, I love him now. I think we would be the best of friends if we were ever in the same neighborhood, or century. He's just so funny. So because I love him I thought I'd go back to the book that started it all and see if my impression of it had evolved beyond, "Ugh, lame." It has. I thought it was clever and, proving that my memory for books is non-existent, everything was a surprise. I remembered that Miss Havisham went up in flames, but other than that I kept gasping and saying, "Really?!" I love that he ties everything up in a nice bow at the end. Everyone gets what they deserve. Good people learn lessons and end up happier and wiser than before. I never worry that his stories will end poorly, which is a relief sometimes in reading.
Plus, there are always a one or two characters that are just so endearing. Wemmick was the one this time. He lives in a teeny castle, complete with a moat and tends to his old father, whom he calls The Aged Parent, sometimes shortened just to Aged or Aged P. My Dad can consider himself warned that I will be calling him this in the near future.
Author: Charles Dickens
Like/Don't Like: I think Dickens and I would be BFF
I have said it before and I will say it until I die: teenagers shouldn't read Dickens. What a horrible way to treat both the kids and the author. Great Expectations was the first Dickens book I ever read and it completely turned me off to him for years and years. I was a freshman in high school and all I can remember of it is Miss Havisham in her wedding dress and the cake full of critters. And also that I was bored out of my mind. Because I was 14 and dumb. 14 year olds don't get Dickens. How can they? He's so subtle and dry and his stories weave in and out of dozens of characters' lives. What 14 year old has that sort of attention span? I wish that I had been introduced to him in college. All it would have taken for me to be completely smitten was a few more years under my belt. But instead I spent almost 20 years thinking he was the biggest bore.
Well, I love him now. I think we would be the best of friends if we were ever in the same neighborhood, or century. He's just so funny. So because I love him I thought I'd go back to the book that started it all and see if my impression of it had evolved beyond, "Ugh, lame." It has. I thought it was clever and, proving that my memory for books is non-existent, everything was a surprise. I remembered that Miss Havisham went up in flames, but other than that I kept gasping and saying, "Really?!" I love that he ties everything up in a nice bow at the end. Everyone gets what they deserve. Good people learn lessons and end up happier and wiser than before. I never worry that his stories will end poorly, which is a relief sometimes in reading.
Plus, there are always a one or two characters that are just so endearing. Wemmick was the one this time. He lives in a teeny castle, complete with a moat and tends to his old father, whom he calls The Aged Parent, sometimes shortened just to Aged or Aged P. My Dad can consider himself warned that I will be calling him this in the near future.
Friday, September 24, 2010
What is the What
Book: What is the What
Author: Dave Eggers
Like/Don't Like: It's tough to like a book like this, but I have to say I did.
Unless you've been living under a rock you have probably heard of all the horrible things that have gone on in Sudan for the last 30 years of civil war. It's miserable over there and whenever I read about it the whole thing seems too gruesome to be true. And yet reading this book not only makes it all too real, it also puts a name and a face to it. It is not a picnic, reading this book.
While technically a novel (it is explained in the beginning why they had to call it one) the book is the real life story of Valentino Achak Deng, a southern Sudanese refuge who is now living in the states. Around the age of 9 his village was attacked by the Arab run government from the north and he had to flee without knowing the fate of his home or family. He ended up walking to Ethiopia and eventually Kenya, from one refugee camp to another over 9 years until he was relocated to the US. He tells of such attrocities that it seems impossible for one human to suffer so much and live, let alone the millions who have such similar stories.
At the beginning of his story he mentions how in the early part of his walk with thousands of other young boys two of them were taken off by lions - just snatched up in the night as they walked single file through the desert. At that point I didn't think I would be able to read any more because I was sure that worse things were to come. And they do. Far worse. I won't go into it. But you wouldn't be able to imagine it if you tried.
So it's a rough read, topic-wise. But the style is effortless. There is so much suffering and yet there is a good amount of humor. And it flows beautifully from present day to flashbacks. Even the present day accounts are hard to read - they start off with Achak being beaten and robbed in his own home (seriously, the kid can't catch a break) - but the pacing of it is manageable. I'm glad I didn't stop reading.
Author: Dave Eggers
Like/Don't Like: It's tough to like a book like this, but I have to say I did.
Unless you've been living under a rock you have probably heard of all the horrible things that have gone on in Sudan for the last 30 years of civil war. It's miserable over there and whenever I read about it the whole thing seems too gruesome to be true. And yet reading this book not only makes it all too real, it also puts a name and a face to it. It is not a picnic, reading this book.
While technically a novel (it is explained in the beginning why they had to call it one) the book is the real life story of Valentino Achak Deng, a southern Sudanese refuge who is now living in the states. Around the age of 9 his village was attacked by the Arab run government from the north and he had to flee without knowing the fate of his home or family. He ended up walking to Ethiopia and eventually Kenya, from one refugee camp to another over 9 years until he was relocated to the US. He tells of such attrocities that it seems impossible for one human to suffer so much and live, let alone the millions who have such similar stories.
At the beginning of his story he mentions how in the early part of his walk with thousands of other young boys two of them were taken off by lions - just snatched up in the night as they walked single file through the desert. At that point I didn't think I would be able to read any more because I was sure that worse things were to come. And they do. Far worse. I won't go into it. But you wouldn't be able to imagine it if you tried.
So it's a rough read, topic-wise. But the style is effortless. There is so much suffering and yet there is a good amount of humor. And it flows beautifully from present day to flashbacks. Even the present day accounts are hard to read - they start off with Achak being beaten and robbed in his own home (seriously, the kid can't catch a break) - but the pacing of it is manageable. I'm glad I didn't stop reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)