Entertainments
There's been reading and movie going lately. Here's what's up with that.
Our Lady of the Islands by Shannon Page and Jay Lake (that would be calendula_witch and jaylake) took me a long time to read. This is an observation, not a criticism, and partly the result of how busy and distracted I've been since the beginning of the year. Under ordinary circumstances, even given that the book is of a substantial length, I would have read it in the space of, oh, a couple of weeks, I think. That's because the narrative voice is smart and accessible.
Set in the archipelago city of Alizar, a place mentioned in Jay's previous works, it follows Sian Katte, a business woman of a certain age, and what happens when she is first beaten senseless in the street and then awakens to find herself with the power to heal anyone she touches, both physically and spiritually. Given that Alizar has political problems of major proportion as well as an heir who is languishing of a sickness that no one is able to cure, her gift comes at a key time. But for Sian, getting to that heir proves a major challenge. Reading this book was an interesting experience for me, knowing the authors, knowing their history, knowing their individual writings styles pretty well. Hearing Jay's voice so clearly in that first chapter was disconcerting to me as a personal matter; there he was, on the page, with his perspective and distinctive eye for detail--and then there was Shannon, with her emphasis on character and other kinds of details. Mostly what I enjoyed was reading a book about women who already knew their places in the world, had experiences that had shaped who they were, and were able to call all those skills into play when events took turns they weren't prepared for. So refreshing after years of reading male coming-of-age stories in the genre. I also liked this vision of a different kind of fantasy world--it's not your typical medieval high fantasy setting, but rather a tropical paradise with a strong nautical culture and a mysterious religious cult upending the status quo. There's a lot to like here: a delicious new world, smart, capable protagonists, and an adventure that transforms not just the people at its center, but the world as a whole.
I started reading Little Men by Louisa May Alcott within a week of finishing Our Lady. Given that Little Women is a comfort book for me, I've always wanted to read the sequel. I don't know if it was because of the juxtaposition against Our Lady or because I'm beyond a point in my life when this sort of thing would be appealing, but 60 pages in, I found it too sticky sweet and the characters far too perfect to be able to spend much time with them. It's a shame because the stories are post-Civil War era and I wanted detail and flavor of the era as a reference for something I'm working on, but I put it down within days of picking it up.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a lovely little movie. Like its prequel, it is sweet (in a good way), funny, and beautifully acted by a cast of veteran actors so wonderful to watch that I didn't care just how predictable the plot really was. It's by the numbers the whole way--an engaged couple whose engagement puts the relationship on the rocks, the young hotelier paranoid about business prospects. The only thing that was surprising to me is how, for a film that offers you more-or-less what you expect, producing a comforting kind of enjoyment, it was able to maintain that same perspective as the first film--that age doesn't change the experience of human relationships. We are such a culture of youth; it's refeshing--there's that word again--to see older people still struggling as younger people do, with the quest for love or the hard work of being honest with one another--because they do, and it's important that we as a culture recognize that.
Mr. Turner is Mike Leigh's interpretation of the second half of the artist JMW Turner's life. Timothy Spall plays Turner, and his performance is a masterwork of character and nuance. The cinematography is breathtaking, so many shots looking like they came right off of Turner's canvasses. I remember noticing, in particular, how the life all around Turner went on with its own little dramas: an unhappy couple on the deck of a ship, the expressions of a crowd listening to a singer at a party, the manner of the painters at the Academy gallery, women on the streets around Turner's homes. That's the hand of the director and it made it all so much richer. I enjoyed the film very much and recommend it.
Our Lady of the Islands by Shannon Page and Jay Lake (that would be calendula_witch and jaylake) took me a long time to read. This is an observation, not a criticism, and partly the result of how busy and distracted I've been since the beginning of the year. Under ordinary circumstances, even given that the book is of a substantial length, I would have read it in the space of, oh, a couple of weeks, I think. That's because the narrative voice is smart and accessible.
Set in the archipelago city of Alizar, a place mentioned in Jay's previous works, it follows Sian Katte, a business woman of a certain age, and what happens when she is first beaten senseless in the street and then awakens to find herself with the power to heal anyone she touches, both physically and spiritually. Given that Alizar has political problems of major proportion as well as an heir who is languishing of a sickness that no one is able to cure, her gift comes at a key time. But for Sian, getting to that heir proves a major challenge. Reading this book was an interesting experience for me, knowing the authors, knowing their history, knowing their individual writings styles pretty well. Hearing Jay's voice so clearly in that first chapter was disconcerting to me as a personal matter; there he was, on the page, with his perspective and distinctive eye for detail--and then there was Shannon, with her emphasis on character and other kinds of details. Mostly what I enjoyed was reading a book about women who already knew their places in the world, had experiences that had shaped who they were, and were able to call all those skills into play when events took turns they weren't prepared for. So refreshing after years of reading male coming-of-age stories in the genre. I also liked this vision of a different kind of fantasy world--it's not your typical medieval high fantasy setting, but rather a tropical paradise with a strong nautical culture and a mysterious religious cult upending the status quo. There's a lot to like here: a delicious new world, smart, capable protagonists, and an adventure that transforms not just the people at its center, but the world as a whole.
I started reading Little Men by Louisa May Alcott within a week of finishing Our Lady. Given that Little Women is a comfort book for me, I've always wanted to read the sequel. I don't know if it was because of the juxtaposition against Our Lady or because I'm beyond a point in my life when this sort of thing would be appealing, but 60 pages in, I found it too sticky sweet and the characters far too perfect to be able to spend much time with them. It's a shame because the stories are post-Civil War era and I wanted detail and flavor of the era as a reference for something I'm working on, but I put it down within days of picking it up.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a lovely little movie. Like its prequel, it is sweet (in a good way), funny, and beautifully acted by a cast of veteran actors so wonderful to watch that I didn't care just how predictable the plot really was. It's by the numbers the whole way--an engaged couple whose engagement puts the relationship on the rocks, the young hotelier paranoid about business prospects. The only thing that was surprising to me is how, for a film that offers you more-or-less what you expect, producing a comforting kind of enjoyment, it was able to maintain that same perspective as the first film--that age doesn't change the experience of human relationships. We are such a culture of youth; it's refeshing--there's that word again--to see older people still struggling as younger people do, with the quest for love or the hard work of being honest with one another--because they do, and it's important that we as a culture recognize that.
Mr. Turner is Mike Leigh's interpretation of the second half of the artist JMW Turner's life. Timothy Spall plays Turner, and his performance is a masterwork of character and nuance. The cinematography is breathtaking, so many shots looking like they came right off of Turner's canvasses. I remember noticing, in particular, how the life all around Turner went on with its own little dramas: an unhappy couple on the deck of a ship, the expressions of a crowd listening to a singer at a party, the manner of the painters at the Academy gallery, women on the streets around Turner's homes. That's the hand of the director and it made it all so much richer. I enjoyed the film very much and recommend it.