Recommended Reads/TVs/Movies: Utterly Miscellaneous Edition
In Books:
The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold: This was an excellent book, although reading it, at first, felt like a real slog. Bujold is a highly accomplished storyteller, of course, but her prose is so dense that the first quarter of the book felt like an overstuffed lasagna. Just when I thought I'd finished with one layer, bam! There was another, and it had more meaty detail than the last! And once I got used to this, then it was fine. I enjoy lasagna-books, even if they're a little slow to get into. At times, though, it was so dense with personal politics, royal intrigue, and character development that I forgot that I was reading a fantasy novel. Mentions of magic would eventually make their way back into the story, and about halfway through the book, when we came to the titular curse, I finally got into my stride with the characters and the setting and it was a fantastic read. I loved the scope of the conflict, and I was highly impressed that minor details, mentioned only a few times in passing, turned out to have a large influence on the plot as a whole, and that no character was forgotten. Greatly enjoyable overall!
On DVD:
Happy: This popped up on Netflix, a documentary that neither Yebisu nor I had ever heard of. It turned out to be a solid piece of short filmmaking, although there were still a few sequences that were overly long. The ideas and questions the film asks ("what is the nature of happiness?"/"why are some people happy and others are not?") are simple, and the answers they produce are incredibly interesting. My only problem with the story was somewhat problematic depiction of African tribes, a sequence that made me worry that the writer and producer had never taken any sort of anthropology courses in their lives and were romanticizing the events they saw in an irresponsible fashion. But the rest of the movie was so interesting, and the people profiled are highly compelling. The individual stories of happiness reveal some amazing people who've overcome tremendous odds or are giving of themselves in a wholly beautiful way. (The European banker who quit his job and moved to India to minister to the sick and dying in one of Mother Theresa's charity homes brought tears to my eyes. This is compassion at its absolute best and most essential.)
On TV:
Doctor Who, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" & "A Town Called Mercy": I really enjoyed these two episodes, particularly because I got the feeling that Matt Smith was having so much fun making them. The dinosaurs were nicely done and did not feel cheesy at all. I quite liked the idea of Nefertiti as a companion and I would pay money to see a few of these episodes just by themselves. Both of these episodes presented thorny ideological issues, though, and it was there that I feel the writing became rather heavy-handed. TCM was worse on this front, and I was annoyed that I guessed the villain's crime after just his opening dialogue. (In a side note, as part of the iTunes download, we got an extra featurette about the "making of" the cyborg. I assumed this was a behind the scenes thing, but instead it was a discarded scene from the story itself, in the form of a "commercial" for the new cyborg soldiers, extolling the technological advances necessary to make them and their virtues as weapons. The commercial was disturbing and unpleasant; it left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole episode, which was otherwise OK.) I suppose that I'd prefer Doctor Who to get away from the war crimes stories for a while, but I may be in the minority about this.
Anyway, next week is hopefully completely different!
In other, random notes, I have seen two horror movie trailers recently that involve people moving into a house, finding a box of old movie reels/VHS tapes and watching them to REVEAL HORRORS that happened to the previous residents of said house. Besides "twisting" (read: sneaking around it in an effort to appear clever) the found footage convention that is making its way onto so many people's bad lists right now, I can't think of any narrative reason for any character to watch these movies. If I found any movies/photos/personal memorabilia from previous residents of a place we were living, I don't know what I'd do, but it sure as hell wouldn't involve nosing through any of it. I mean, who says, "Oh, hey, let's watch these old, unlabeled movies! For kicks!" What if it was gross amateur porn? You'd sure regret that choice in a hurry.
The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold: This was an excellent book, although reading it, at first, felt like a real slog. Bujold is a highly accomplished storyteller, of course, but her prose is so dense that the first quarter of the book felt like an overstuffed lasagna. Just when I thought I'd finished with one layer, bam! There was another, and it had more meaty detail than the last! And once I got used to this, then it was fine. I enjoy lasagna-books, even if they're a little slow to get into. At times, though, it was so dense with personal politics, royal intrigue, and character development that I forgot that I was reading a fantasy novel. Mentions of magic would eventually make their way back into the story, and about halfway through the book, when we came to the titular curse, I finally got into my stride with the characters and the setting and it was a fantastic read. I loved the scope of the conflict, and I was highly impressed that minor details, mentioned only a few times in passing, turned out to have a large influence on the plot as a whole, and that no character was forgotten. Greatly enjoyable overall!
On DVD:
Happy: This popped up on Netflix, a documentary that neither Yebisu nor I had ever heard of. It turned out to be a solid piece of short filmmaking, although there were still a few sequences that were overly long. The ideas and questions the film asks ("what is the nature of happiness?"/"why are some people happy and others are not?") are simple, and the answers they produce are incredibly interesting. My only problem with the story was somewhat problematic depiction of African tribes, a sequence that made me worry that the writer and producer had never taken any sort of anthropology courses in their lives and were romanticizing the events they saw in an irresponsible fashion. But the rest of the movie was so interesting, and the people profiled are highly compelling. The individual stories of happiness reveal some amazing people who've overcome tremendous odds or are giving of themselves in a wholly beautiful way. (The European banker who quit his job and moved to India to minister to the sick and dying in one of Mother Theresa's charity homes brought tears to my eyes. This is compassion at its absolute best and most essential.)
On TV:
Doctor Who, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" & "A Town Called Mercy": I really enjoyed these two episodes, particularly because I got the feeling that Matt Smith was having so much fun making them. The dinosaurs were nicely done and did not feel cheesy at all. I quite liked the idea of Nefertiti as a companion and I would pay money to see a few of these episodes just by themselves. Both of these episodes presented thorny ideological issues, though, and it was there that I feel the writing became rather heavy-handed. TCM was worse on this front, and I was annoyed that I guessed the villain's crime after just his opening dialogue. (In a side note, as part of the iTunes download, we got an extra featurette about the "making of" the cyborg. I assumed this was a behind the scenes thing, but instead it was a discarded scene from the story itself, in the form of a "commercial" for the new cyborg soldiers, extolling the technological advances necessary to make them and their virtues as weapons. The commercial was disturbing and unpleasant; it left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole episode, which was otherwise OK.) I suppose that I'd prefer Doctor Who to get away from the war crimes stories for a while, but I may be in the minority about this.
Anyway, next week is hopefully completely different!
In other, random notes, I have seen two horror movie trailers recently that involve people moving into a house, finding a box of old movie reels/VHS tapes and watching them to REVEAL HORRORS that happened to the previous residents of said house. Besides "twisting" (read: sneaking around it in an effort to appear clever) the found footage convention that is making its way onto so many people's bad lists right now, I can't think of any narrative reason for any character to watch these movies. If I found any movies/photos/personal memorabilia from previous residents of a place we were living, I don't know what I'd do, but it sure as hell wouldn't involve nosing through any of it. I mean, who says, "Oh, hey, let's watch these old, unlabeled movies! For kicks!" What if it was gross amateur porn? You'd sure regret that choice in a hurry.