Monthly Archives: January 2013

Jan 27 2013
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Literature

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: January Book Club

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan, is this month’s selection for my book club. It follows the story of Clay Jannon, a recent art school graduate, who happens upon a job as the third-shift clerk for a peculiar bookstore run by a peculiar old man. He is as of yet unaware of the adventure awaiting him in the secret books and curious customers walking into his life. While wearing the appearance of a quirky modern novel focused on the confrontation of literature and technology, it read more like a classroom exercise in novel composition, and seemed less interested in the artistry involved in writing. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t fun moments, but it was extremely predictable at every turn, and I wish it hadn’t been.

Seeming more interested in pushing toward conclusion than exploring his creation, Sloan chooses a plot and then sketches a world around its edges, giving his creation no room to thrive. The reader is sees a set of predictable, well-worn characters with no substance, stirring an emotion closer to loathing than anything else as the story unfolds. We have the awkward main character who is a nerd because he used to read a fantasy novel, The Dragonsong Chronicles, and play Dungeons & Dragons, wait I mean Rockets and Warlocks (a terrible fake title; you shouldn’t mix fantasy and science) as a child. There’s the love interest, herself a nerd and computer whiz who works at Google, and has a surprising amount of clout with her employer for her young age. There’s the sidekick best friend from childhood (specific friendship centered upon love of aforementioned fantasy novel and RPG) who is just as nerdy, but also a Silicon Valley tycoon thanks to his computer software that renders breasts in 3D for video games. Then we have Mr. Penumbra, the eccentric old man that the young folk must save. All the other characters are ancillary, and most could probably be discarded without damaging the plot. Of the main four, none really even stood out and the entire book felt so generic. I think Sloan is unable to harness the voice of the generation he depicts, and it seems to me the work of an author pandering to a disengaged audience, much like a father attempts to impress his children. He spends more time mentioning iPhone games, e-readers, Google and than any quality character development, and the few characters who develop more than a sentence-long background are still just a hodgepodge of quirks, nothing more.

By mixing flimsy character elements with rapid narrative speed, we’re left with a lack of suspense and an overflow of action. Somehow days or weeks elapse over the course of a few pages, so the reader has no concept of time in this world. There are myriad plot points hit in unrelenting succession, but don’t think that signals adventure. Although not likely the intent, this book undercuts tension  at every turn. Any exciting incident is immediately resolved so the narrative can move forward; there’s no time to understand the effect these situations have on the characters. I was baffled why any character was emotionally invested in any other because no reasons were given for such investment and the amount of emotional depth in all the relationships, even the romantic one, equates to that of cordial acquaintances at a party. Even if the author consciously forsook character for plot, he apparently figured focusing on plot meant writing a lot of it.  More often than not, the tension is destroyed by the undermining of consequence. The narrator finds himself in bad situations, but always gets by, not by any personal means, but simply through the indifference of the other characters. No one seems to worry when centuries-old secrets are revealed, instead using those moments to supply back story. No stakes are clearly established so the story always feels vague, as even the characters themselves don’t seem to understand their motivations.

This novel didn’t explore greater conflict of literature versus technology any further than the difficulty of scanning books and harvesting their information. A detailed rumination on the subject would be welcomed, as this fight gets at the core of new versus old, but instead we have a book that would rather let us know friendship is important, because that’s news… I guess I just left disappointed with the book it could have been. The writing style, while not terrible, is nothing to write home about, and I think he should have styled his novel like he described in the epilogue. “I will write down everything that happened. I’ll copy some of it from the logbook, find more in old emails and text messages, and reconstitute the rest from memory.” In this format, Sloan’s story could have been told with a collection of all the different writing styles available in books and online, letting the reader piece the novel together and solve the puzzle himself. Sadly, we’re not left with anything as exciting, and close the final pages unsatisfied.

To those who liked the book, my apologies. To my book club cohorts, I hope this doesn’t sour your opinion of me or my reviews, and I’ll try to like things more in the future. I think I just let my inner cynic invade this entire review. While not an amazing work of literature, it’s a short, easy quest that fits in a weekend, and can be quite fun. Don’t worry though, you’ll take home a number of life lessons at the end; they’re all summarized in the epilogue.

Jan 22 2013
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Film

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty is the story of hunting and killing Osama bin Laden. The centerpiece of this story is Maya, an agent recruited by the CIA directly after high school, and her focus on the destruction of bin Laden, with the audience following her journey from the repercussions of 9/11 to bin Laden’s death. This film portrayed a captivating story, posed serious questions to the audience, and contained a stunning performance by Jessica Chastain as Maya. Even if I did perceive a few hollow moments, I highly recommend it to all.

The opening sequence, a collage of 911 calls from 9/11, is a bleak start to a harrowing movie. While frightening, I believe this device is deployed exquisitely as it manipulates the audience to accept jingoism in regard to torture during the following scenes. This torture does not last long, and we’re taken away toward other parts of the story rather early, but I think Kathryn Bigelow’s depiction of is especially complex, and I wouldn’t have been averse to a longer meditation on the subject.  Unlike the thriller genre which often contains tense and exciting interrogations, these interrogations were terror laced with psychopathy, and I was drawn to sympathize with the detainee, regardless of his crimes or knowledge. Chastain nails the internal struggle of the subject matter with her body language in the opening scenes, but she deftly manages to don cold indifference, a mask she must wear throughout the film.

As we move away from torture, the pace picks up so quickly that we’re more given snapshots of moments than a cohesive story. When Maya first meets her colleagues in Pakistan, the audience is thrown into an incomprehensible roundtable discussion filled with confusing military terms, names, and abbreviations. The exposition seemed non-existent, as if the director assumes every viewer enters with the cultural knowledge and understanding of 9/11. This hurts the film because the audience must start out deconstructing jargon and determining where in the post-9/11 narrative we are, instead of seeing character or relationship development. As we travel through the movie, a rotating door of characters assume the usual positions for Maya to act at. I can honestly say I do not recall a single character’s name besides Maya.

At seemingly regular intervals the film jumps forward, usually to a new act of terrorism. I think these scenes rapidly achieve predictability, as apparently everything in Bigelow’s world goes eerily silent moments before an explosion. Even if predictable, the handling of the violence was masterful, showing that Bigelow can display such acts without a sense of voyeurism or emotional exploitation, and I think the scene at the Afghanistan army base involving Maya’s single female friend was the only heavy-handed attempt at an otherwise successful portrayal of true violent events. Between the terrorist attacks and torture, I’d argue this film is less the hunt for Osama bin Laden and more a depiction of the complexity of torture and war in the Middle East.

Torture and war are ever-present topics in our culture and Bigelow excels in confronting the viewer with conflicting views on these topics. The movie’s first bout of torture produces helpful information for Maya, but at what cost. As the film progresses and the political views on torture transform over the years, we’re shown the difficulties placed on these agents as they try to gather intelligence without what they consider a most useful and necessary tool . Instead of allowing the audience to leave the theater with a completely vindicated opinion on the horrors of torture, Bigelow forces viewers to consider opposing perspectives they’d perhaps not previously considered. The most memorable of these moments is the strike of Seal Team 6. As we watch these men descend on the house, we’re aware of not only the terrorists behind the walls, but also the women and children. This stark difference between how these two different groups are treated in the raid illuminates the conflict inherent to this war, that of terrorists as people, not simply targets, and those scenes full of terrified children and dead bodies resonate long after the viewer has left the theater. Through Chastain’s final scene, the audience understands this conflict has taken its toll on all involved. Sitting alone in a military aircraft preparing to fly home from Pakistan, the final line is a question posed to Maya from the pilot. “Where do you want to go?” Sadly, this is unanswerable. This woman’s sole purpose the past twelve years has been realized and now the death of this terrorist might imply the death of her purpose. The unfathomable relief is tempered with that loss, and the final moments leaves the viewer with an uncertain future for both Maya and the Middle East.

More character piece than depiction of truth, this movie is a modern myth that succeeds in stirring my American patriotism and consideration of complex moral issues surrounding torture, and I think it you should seek it out. I don’t expect it will win the Oscar, but I think it deserves a place on the nomination list, unlike others. See this movie, you won’t regret it.

Jan 17 2013
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Literature

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

I could not put down this collection of short stories. A wonderful mixture of philosophy and fantasy, I would place this book in the hand of any friend. I hope not to weigh this review down with too much philosophical talk, even though that’s practically all this book is, because in the hands of many a person, the stories and language would surely captivate enough to not overwhelm the reader with philosophy.

I suppose I should provide a little background for this book choice. Recently, I finished Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a phenomenal book I’m still trying to review. Throughout 2012, as I worked through IJ, I researched the a bit on the history of modern literature, but not anything too in-depth. One short story consistently reappeared in lists of influences and innovations as I searched, The Garden of Forking Paths. After reading a few sentences about the story I was convinced I needed to read it and anything like it, so I finally ordered the book on Amazon and tore through its pages in two days. I will say I had to read every story twice, if only to grasp the philosophical weight contained in each piece, but that did not dampen my adoration or enjoyment. In these stories, Borges tackles two important ideas of the human experience, time and memory; ideas filling the minds of men and pages of books since the dawn of time. I found this collection a concise and useful portal into these philosophical worlds, and cannot wait to expand my reading list to include a much needed philosophy component.

There are two sections of this book: The Garden of Forking Paths (also the title of the last story in the first part), and Artifices; I think they’re separated in such a way because of original separate publication, but don’t quote me on that. While I usually skip the prefaces, introductions, or forwards, finding them often too full of vanity or misplaced reverence, I decided it was necessary to read them since I’m offering a review and not just reading for pleasure.  As expected, the introduction, written by translator Anthony Kerrigan, was stuffed with lofty thoughts on the genius nature of Borges and left a bad taste in my mouth. Kerrigan seems to have felt the need to justify Borges’s place in the pantheon of great philosophical literature, considering the readers too unintelligent to grasp the quality of Borges’s contributions otherwise. I found the author’s prologues much more self-effacing as he succinctly explains the intent of his stories while avoiding self-righteousness, and they primed my pump for the stories ahead.

Instead of attempting to write magnificent, enormous tomes, Borges explains his style as simply writing about these tomes, using the imaginary work as a driving force of the story. This allows him to both create numerous fascinating books without the difficulty of writing them, and to imagine works impossible in reality, but relevant to his philosophical intents. While I found a desire to read these fictional books he discusses, I also understood these masterpieces are unable to exist. The imaginary world provides limitless potential and mystery, so an ephemeral story existing only in thought possesses unfathomable beauty, while a realistic attempt at such a fantastical idea could result in nothing but failure. As Borges introduces these fictitious writings, he weaves them so deftly into the real literary world that it grows difficult to distinguish the two. It quickly becomes apparent that the only memorable line from the Introduction, “…he has read all of the books,” rings a resounding truth. Somehow, Borges has read every book, or at least the vast part of major literature from all ages past, and uses every tool gained from such knowledge to construct this book. At a certain point, the reader must give up any attempt to note all the references made; I stopped at the end of The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim, the second story. Of course the allusions never feel forced, and Borges uses them only to further the plot or philosophical questions posed, not for flashing his impressive bone fides. The most useful addition to this book would be an annotation so the reader can begin to understand the depth of thought and literary ancestry involved. Plus, I think it’d be a fun follow-up read.

The most striking stories of the collection include The Garden of Forking Paths, Funes the Memorious, Death and the Compass, and The Secret Miracle. While I think any of his pieces have strong resonance with the audience, I believe those I just listed would be most appealing to the unfamiliar reader. Of course I recommend them all, but don’t want to put off any fickle readers with the more opaque selections. The Garden of Forking Paths and Death and the Compass are both detective stories, though while I think the latter is strictly that, I believe the former to be a deep exploration of thought masquerading as mystery, but with a shocking end. In Compass, the reader is carried along a murder mystery exquisitely rendered. Borges captures in thirteen pages what Dan Brown clumsily seeks in all of The DaVinci Code, and since I’m ever the cynic, I cannot avoid the thought that Brown simply created a blatant and bloated version of a wonderful story, and I feel retroactively cheated for having read the rip-off in the first place. Funes the Memorious is by far the most thought-provoking, dealing with the concept of human thought and the perception of reality. In Funes, the narrator recalls a meeting with a unique young man, able to remember everything, even minute details from any instance in his past, much like an autistic savant. As the conversation is revealed, Borges slowly confronts the reader with an unsettling conceptualization of reality, and, in my opinion, the strongest articulation of a philosophical concept in the book. The final of my recommendations, The Secret Miracle, deals with an author, sentenced to death, forcing him to leave his magnum opus unfinished. Being one of the only two stories in the book dealing with God, I believe Borges embraces the higher power without heralding belief or blasphemy, a refreshing change of pace. I felt Borges goal lay in convincing the reader that regardless of the content of a personal masterpiece, its value is ultimately, and perhaps intangibly tied only to the self and higher power. The illustration used was both poignant and comic, and captured the mercurial essence of God in a way that has left me thoughtful. Paired with his considerations in Three Versions of Judas, Borges provides a complex portrait of God within this book, through which I believe Borges’s reverence and respect is apparent.

If I must offer one criticism though, and I must, it is the translation. The original stories were written in Spanish the years of 1936-1953, and in 1962 the English translation was published. With a fifty year gap between the translation and current day, a certain level of anachronistic language would be expected, but as I stepped into the stories, I noticed something that felt less skillful and more frivolous in nature. I balked at unnecessary words that left the text cloudy in places, and while a likely detriment to the original, it’s not unsettling enough to avoid the read. And let’s be serious, if you’ve read this far, you’re hopefully slightly interested in this book, regardless of my final ramblings.

If allowed, I’d wax rhapsodic about this book for days, but I do not want to spoil any plots or drive anyone away. I honestly could not sing the praises of these stories enough and urge anyone slightly interested in thought to pick this collection up.

Jan 12 2013
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Film

Gangster Squad

Last night I caught Gangster Squad with some friends and while it had moments of fun, overall I wouldn’t recommend paying full price for a ticket.

Gangster Squad is about a Los Angeles cop, played by Josh Brolin, recruited by the Chief of Police to form a SECRET task force, the Gangster Squad, to take down the powerful gangster Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn, before he takes over the city. The movie moves so quickly that Brolin recruits his crew: an old cowboy type, a nerd, a black guy, a Mexican guy and Ryan Gosling, and has the operation running within the first thirty minutes or so. They’re an odd combination, the squad, but it seems to work as they go about trying to take down different Cohen businesses in montage. The essential line using their colloquial title, the gangster squad, isn’t even an important or cinematically interesting moment, with one of them throwing out the name in a drunk toast, nothing more. Throughout the movie, the characters are constantly mentioning “the war” just so it’s obnoxiously clear to the audience that these men have “seen some things”, even if they all look fresher than a new deck of cards. This clunky plot device is only one piece of the terrible puzzle, but when all the pieces clunk, ineptitude is hard to tune out. I don’t want to blame the actors because the substance simply isn’t there for them to work with, but they all felt on auto-pilot. I suppose much is never expected from the first major movie of the year; it’ll be forgotten by March and once these actors deliver better quality work in other features, this won’t even be a blip on their resumes. With all the predictable and ordinary story developments leading to the film’s expected conclusion, I left feeling like I’d seen the most generic gangster film ever made.

The entire movie seemed to work consciously to throw as much violence on screen as possible. The opening scene shows a man torn apart by two cars and it doesn’t relent, with the completely arbitrary decisions from the filmmakers of which acts of violence warranted graphic detail. Faced with the gruesome violence ever-present in this film, my mind is drawn to a comment made on a recent episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour. Concisely, the point made was that violence seems to be moving out of the cultural zeitgeist and that we’ll see a tiring of violence in popular culture in the near future. I must agree and hope we’re headed in a more enlightened direction. I’m not trying to be a prude; I just think filmmakers use violence gratuitously and in ways that allow them to avoid serious story and character development. This entire movie felt like a quick sprint from one piece of action to another and the audience almost never had a chance to delve into any character too deeply. Poor Emma Stone was so ancillary to the plot my guess is they shot her scenes in one day. If anything, I wish we’d at least had more scenes with Brolin’s character’s wife, played by Mireille Enos, because I found her internal conflict with her husband’s work and safety, although well-worn territory, the most in-depth story available.. Trust me, that isn’t saying much.

I must say though, the most unsettling aspect of the whole affair was Sean Penn’s prosthetic face. More disconcerting than Joseph Gordon Levitt’s in Looper and Mickey Rourke’s in real life, Penn’s face seemed better suited among the cast of Dick Tracy or a nuclear waste facility. I don’t know how well I handled Sean Penn’s performance for that matter either. While a highly skilled dramatic actor, in a role like this he’s an intolerably comic character. Even as a vicious monster, he character is such a joke I can’t take his evil actions seriously on any real level and it immediately starts to slide into the world of Camp.

Best of luck on your next projects to all of those involved.

Jan 11 2013
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Film

Oscar Nominations: First Thoughts

The 2013 Oscar Nominations were announced yesterday. Below, you’ll find my opinions. Performances I’ve seen will be in bold. Judgments made on non-bold performances are entirely uninformed.

Best Picture

While there are a few light surprises on the Best Picture list, including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, and Amour, I think the general population already expected the rest of the list, with  Lincoln, Les Misérables, Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, and Argo. I am excited about the possibility of a picture like Beasts winning, although I know it’ll likely go to Zero Dark Thirty. Movies like Beasts are too niche to win Best Picture, but the nomination is well-deserved so people will seek out this movie more. I’m looking forward to Django Unchanined, although I’m prepared to get skeptical of Tarantino sooner or later. Les Misérables won’t take the award because Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman cannot save the film and it’s shoddy camerawork. Life of Pi is probably too philosophically cheesy, but I haven’t seen it or read the book. Argo won’t fare well, which is a disappointment but not a surprise. Silver Linings Playbook was likely nominated for the performances than the movie as a whole, so shouldn’t fare well either.

(There are additional thoughts on the specific movies I’ve seen moved to the end of the post, if you’re interested in more specifics)

Best Actor

Best Actor is intended for Daniel Day-Lewis, and while I think Hugh Jackman could poll well, along with Joaquin Phoenix, they’re not going to beat out Lincoln. While I haven’t seen Bradley Cooper or Denzel Washington in their nominated performances, I don’t expect the stars of All About Steve and Safehouse, respectively, to bring home the award.

Best Actress

According to every list everywhere, Jessica Chastain will win Best Actress and so I’m not going to argue until I see it. I haven’t hopped on the Jessica Chastain train yet because I haven’t caught any movie she’s been in, but I’ll change that soon. I am over the moon to see Quvenzhané Wallis on this list, the six-year-old lead from Beasts of the Southern Wild. I think part of her nomination is the Academy showing they’re willing to nominate a child for this award–thinking of Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit receiving a 2010 Supporting Actress nomination when she was clearly in a leading role–and I cannot wait to see Wallis’s future performances. I like Jennifer Lawrence, but only know her as Mystique and Katniss so no judgment yet. Naomi Watts will probably get confused for any other blonde actress–it took me over an hour to figure out she wasn’t Nicole Kidman in King Kong–and forgotten about. No idea on Emmanuelle Riva or the french movie Amour at all yet.

Best Support Actor

Likely going to goto Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, and really I’d expect Tommy Lee Jones and Christoph Waltz are the best competition for that spot. I think Tommy Lee Jones would be a great choice because his character has the most interesting storyline in Lincoln, but I don’t think the film explored his character deeply enough to justify the award. No thoughts on Alan Arkin or Robert De Niro.

Best Supporting Actress

Anne Hathaway will get the award for Best Supporting Actress, and it will be well deserved. Her performance saved the movie and everyone should see Les Misérables simply for her. Amy Adams is great, but her performance was too early and probably forgotten over Phoenix’s and Hoffman’s, not that I’ve seen The Master. Still need to see The Sessions, because I’m sure Helen Hunt is delightful and it has to be pretty good. Still no thoughts on Silver Linings Playbook, sorry Jacki Weaver. And Sally Field, your performance belonged in a Lifetime movie.

Best Animated Film

This category I have the least grasp on, even though I’ve seen two of the nominees, Brave and Wreck-It Ralph. To take a shot in the dark, I consider Frankenweenie the best prospect. The majority certainly likes an animated Tim Burton picture. If he wins, maybe he’ll consider going back to his early film roots, and wouldn’t that be a welcome change. ParaNorman and The Pirates! Band of Misfits look more like the category filler types of nominees, but I’ll admit that’s an entirely uninformed judgment. I think of Brave as the Lincoln of animated features, and if it wins I’ll be reassured these awards are irrelevant. It had so much potential but left the audience feeling constantly cheated. Avoiding romance was the obvious modus operandi of the filmmakers, and they focused more on that than creating a quality story.

Best Original Screenplay

The last interesting award in popular opinion, it always goes to the great movie that’s a bit too quirky to take the Best Picture. With a list including Amour, Django Unchained, Flight, and Zero Dark Thirty, none of these are as oddball enough for the award as Moonrise Kingdom, which is my expected winner.

Additional Best Movie Thoughts

Beasts of the Southern Wild was a beautiful piece of work that told the story of a young child’s confrontation with natural disaster, life, independence, and mortality. The performances, along with highly skilled editing, direction, and cinematography, are stunning and I hope everyone takes the time to watch it. My family and I sat down a bit apprehensive because we thought it would be a Hurricane Katrina-esque story taking advantage of devastation, but we were entirely wrong.The story of this powerful child swept us away and found ourselves genuinely moved multiple times. Please check it out.

To anyone who has actually seen Les Misérables, it’s apparent this movie would receive a nomination, but it will not win the Oscar. Hugh Jackman was expectedly wonderful, and Anne Hathaway was so exquisite I would’ve paid good money for a movie just about her character. But besides these two, the rest of the film is left wanting. I think the camera work thrust the actors faces onto screen way too often and missed a lot of wide shot opportunities. Russell Crowe was a fish out of water and the casting directors should have chosen any good actor who has played that character on Broadway and could handle the music instead of him. Amanda Seyfried, while not a terrible singer, had music too high for her voice, which forced a shrill sound more often than not. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen did great jobs playing themselves, but there was nothing innovative about that. It ended up lasting forever, and I think the filmmakers should have decided to abandon the style of movie musical treatment that Rent received, and instead made the full musical à la the film The Sound of Music, and it should have included an intermission. Finally, was Samantha Barks, playing Eponine, wearing seven corsets? Seriously, she had the waist of a toddler.

Lincoln, besides Daniel Day Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones, was terrible. If this movie receives the award for Best Picture I will know for sure that the Oscars are no longer a relevant award show. Daniel Day Lewis embodied Lincoln so well and I think it will snag him the Best Actor award, especially because of the clunky script handed to him. It seemed every time Lincoln opened his mouth he shared an obvious trope or over-wrought personal parable meant to teach a lesson in every line of dialogue. The opening scene started on an emotionally moving note, but the movie pushed away from that feeling quickly. It became a parade of every white American actor available plastered with nonsensical amounts of facial hair. There was insubstantial character development thanks to the vast number of actors involved and it left little explanation for most decisions made by the congressmen swayed to vote for the amendment or not during the final scenes of the movie. Oh, I was suspicious all Sally Field’s scenes were clips from various Lifetime movies. In all honesty, I think it should’ve been renamed Amendment 13 and focused on Tommy Lee Jones and his wife.

Jan 11 2013
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Film

Adam’s Apples

Adam’s Apples begins when a Neo-Nazi who, after being sentenced to community service at a church, arrives to meet the eccentric and overly optimistic vicar running the place. Ivan, the vicar, is happy to welcome Adam into their odd family, which includes a former child tennis star turned drunk, a Saudi Arabian immigrant, Ivan’s handicapped son, and a pregnant woman. Hilarity ensues.

Dark, dark hilarity, to be honest. I don’t want to delve too far into the specific moments of comedy in this film because I’d feel guilty depriving folks of actually enjoying the unexpected turns of it all. With certain films I expect a type of gruesome dark comedy–like Burn After Reading–but the opening attitude of this film gave no warning signs of the abrupt darkling comic moments ahead, and you find yourself outright chortling during a graphic shooting or at a picture of Hitler.

In the movie the religious component cannot be avoided, as it’s apparent from the opening scene that Adam’s character is crying out for redemption. (Thanks to a minister father who adores movies, I’ve grown up with a lot of film analysis from an intelligent religious perspective) As we settle in for a funny romp about a neo-nazi out of his depth with a kooky vicar, we are surprised with raw comic writing confronting major issues like abortion, death, and suicide. This brilliant trick played on the audience comes to light as the story unravels the vicar’s disheartening past and it’s revealed Ivan may be living a modern life of Job, one unexpectedly unfortunate step at a time.

A most refreshing aspect of the movie was definitely the happy ending, or at least form of such. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say the movie followed general comedy conventions and provided satisfying conclusions for the majority of the characters. The writers had obviously written themselves toward that point, however round-aboutly it took, but there are just so many dark comedies unwilling to relent with the darkness or cynicism and it’s much more fun to watch a deeply troubling story resolve happily for those involved, just as it did for Job.

Available on Netflix in the foreign film area, I must warn it’s from Denmark, so in Danish with English subtitles. When you get started be prepared for a quick pace because the jokes come quickly and unexpectedly. I hope you’re willing to give it a try and if you do I’d love to hear your comments about it!

Jan 09 2013
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Film, Literature, Magazines, Other, Personal, Television

Welcome to the Critical Dan

With the beginning of 2013, I have decided I need to write more. There are often times when I want an outlet for my strong opinions on a movie, book, television show, or magazine, but don’t have a place to share those in detail. And I have funny, weird stories I want to record and share, like a written scrapbook, which I guess is just a journal. Being keenly aware of my lack of discipline, I had to choose the public option or I would never write a word. Thus, the blog.

The Critical Dan blog will be a mixture of criticism and memoir, where one post might review a recent documentary on Coca-Cola with a later post regaling folks of the time I made Coca-Cola cake without the baking powder, resulting in a substance more akin to brown jello than anything.

Plans are to write two posts a week with one critique and one personal story, for the entire year. The list of potential topics is constantly growing, but I plan on writing one post a month reviewing my book club’s current pick, cannot wait to receive and review my first McSweeney’s Quarterly of the year, plan to visit a handful of those Oscar hopefuls (even if they came out in 2012), and am staring at old issues of the New Yorker I need to pick through. If the one person reading this has any recommendations, send ’em along!

I’m skeptical I’ll make it to February, especially since I’m already behind the new year bandwagon, but I figure better late than never. I’m excited at the potential this has for both my writing and analytical skills and hope I finish more than eight posts before I forget/get lazy/get anxious about not writing/get neurotic about my anxiety and this whole business unravels.

With low expectations, it’s quite difficult to fail!