Julie & Julia (the Book)

When I don’t feel like cooking, but enjoy hearing about it, I generally turn on Food Network.  The Travel Channel, if No Reservations is on.  This summer, I decided to read Julie and Julia: The Year of Cooking Dangerously, even though I had seen the movie about ten times already and every time the Julie parts seem less than admirable.

After reading the memoir, well, I have to say it was a case of bad writing and casting.  Julie Powell in the book is just as histrionic as movie-Julie, but she’s also smart and funny and knows she’s being ridiculous half the time.  She gets her husband to help with cooking and doles out bad relationship advice to her friends, then waxes poetic on the gimlet as her alcoholic beverage of choice.  She’s certainly not the meek, goody-two-shoes Julie as played by Amy Adams.  They might have gotten closer if they had chucked in a few “fucks” in the script, but I dunno.  The thing about Amy Adams is that she is such a Disney Princess actress.  She can’t help it after Enchanted.

And then there’s the fact that the script pares her down to the most hysteric moments.  Hell, it’s not even that she gets stressed out over and over again– movie-Julie is crazy.  She talks about Julia Child like she’s her imaginary friend, the saint of Cooking Secretaries, come to adore her for going through this project.  The book-Julie is a lot more straight about it.  While she does feel a unity with Julia over having a shitty job in a government agency and cooking, the Julia Child imagined is more normal.  Like “Did she really write out these instructions for Bitch Rice?”  It’s long after the project is over that Julie realizes the impact Child left on her.  That sense of perspective is so much more real and genuine than the crying jags and pleas for forgiveness that movie-Julie gives.

Plus, Julie Powell is a hilarious nerd.  She has a crush on Jason Straithan, loves Buffy, and her friends have an annual True Romance viewing party.  I respect an ambitious  choice from a fellow geek.

Summer Reading 2011

I set myself a loose goal for this summer: to read at least fifteen books.  It’s nearing the end of June, and I’ve already finished twelve (It helps that I have a long bus ride to my job).  Since I’m trying to decide between In the Night Cafe and Look Homeward, Angel for my next read, I figured it was about time to do a quick recap.

First Time Reads:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

I bought this thinking “Oh yeah, I would love to read a Noah Baumbach movie.”  I wasn’t wrong, per se, they share a lot of the same tropes.  Since this was Chabon’s earliest novel, it has a different style from previous works of his that I’ve read.  It wasn’t quite as enthralling as The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, but not quite up to par with Wonder Boys.  However, it was a novel that took place during the summer, when I really wanted to embrace the season as fully as possible.

Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson

Joyce Johnson is a really cool lady, who I’m surprised I only found out about this year.  Her memoir discusses what leaving her parent’s house at age 17 meant during the fifties, but she was seeking independence and adventure.  She was a member of the key circle of the Beat Generation, having an on and off affair with Jack Kerouac for a few years.  Most notably, Johnson discusses how the women of the Beat Generation, as artists and as people, were not given the same respect by the men.  It’s a wonderful memoir of defining oneself as a woman before the women’s liberation movement began.

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

I really enjoyed Kelly Link’s short story collection Pretty Monsters when I read it last summer, so I was very excited to pick up one of her older collections.  Link has the ability to create strong, bizarre little narratives that are just a little bit spooky.  I didn’t really love this collection, but I did enjoy it.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Thanks to Midnight in Paris, I was set towards reading more things that took place there.  A not so secret part of this reading goal was to try to read more classics, and I hadn’t read any Hemingway novels yet.  I wasn’t terribly interested in it until they got to Spain, and I’m not so sure what this says about me…

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

When I was stuck in LaGuardia, the book I had brought for my trip was almost over.  I ran to the last Hudson News that was open and grabbed SSTL as soon as I saw it– I had meant to for awhile.  And it is really depressing.  It gets a lot of commentary that compares it to 1984, which is fair and I can appreciate that style and the point of the novel.  It’s just… not what I would have wanted to read while on vacation.

Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffeild

Now this is exactly what I would have wanted to read on vacation!  It’s a book about one of my most favorite things — mix tapes!– and how making them helped Sheffield to relate to this friends and family, most notably his wife.  The majority of the essays are about their marriage and how he felt after her death.  It’s a really excellent read about love and music and it’s one of the best books I’ve read this summer.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

To be honest, I don’t remember this one too well.  It’s all short vignettes centering around a Latino neighborhood in Chicago, but beyond that I’ve got nothing.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

This book felt like getting through a marathon.  Thanks to Minor Characters, I know that Kerouac was too much of a whimpering artiste to let an editor touch his manuscript when, lo and behold, it would have been so much better if it had been edited down a bit.  Nothing sticks out from On the Road, no phrasing amazes me.  The only thing I thought terribly interesting was how the number of coffee stains on the pages dwindle after the one hundred mark.  Not even desperate hipsters could get through this book.

Re-Reads

Paper Towns by John Green

I didn’t consciously decide to read through John Green’s novels, but that’s what happened (somehow).  Of the three that he wrote by himself, Paper Towns is my favorite and the one that I would objectively call the most put together.  It references Walt Whitman and breaks the Manic Pixie Dream Girl identity, but it’s also a beautiful work of a novel.  Green’s writing style is amazing throughout and he has these perfect little metaphors thrown in at just the right places.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Contrasted with his other two, solo novels, An Abundance of Katherines is a romantic comedy, about a child prodigy trying to grow up into a genius.  It also involves a road trip and a fabulous supporting character in Hassan.  And if you like footnotes, trust me that this book is for you.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

I read this before I had seen the Miyazaki movie, and I remember that this one had a more coherent, if complicated, plot.  Re-reading it proves that this is mostly true, but it shares more similarities with the film than I would have guessed.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Explaining why I like Looking for Alaska so much involves one of the books main themes- “I go to seek a Great Perhaps”- and the fact that I first read it when I was fourteen.  The novel is about Miles, who goes to boarding school in order to find an adventure that he hadn’t found for himself in Florida.  He becomes the sort of person who drinks, smokes, plays pranks, has sex and forms friends nearly effortlessly.  And in all the weirdness of being fourteen and approaching high school, the events of Looking for Alaska represented my own Great Perhaps.  If you strip my sentimentality away, it’s still a sweet novel about love and loss.

Revengers Tragedy

Directed by Alex Cox (2002) Starring: Christopher Eccleston, Eddie Izzard, Andrew Schofield, Derek Jacobi, Carla Henry

Alex Cox took a Jacobean play called “Revenger’s Tragedy” and it became a movie about a near-future, post-disaster United Kingdom ruled by the Duke.  Vindici (Eccleston) has sworn revenge after the Duke killed his wife  for spurning his advances.  He poses as a pimp in order to get close to Lussorioso (Izzard), the eldest son of the Duke who shares his father’s lecherous tendencies.

The Duke’s family is already in disarray, with the Duchess having an affair with one of their sons, another in jail for raping Lord Antonio’s wife, it seems like it should be quite simple for Lussorioso to take control.  But this is a world with incest and foosball is the most popular sporting event, and Vindici likes to play with his victims before enacting justice.

Joining him in the downfall of the Duke are his brother Carlo (Schofield) and his sister Castiza (Henry), both of whom give decent supporting performances.  Eccleston plays Vindici as an insane man consumed with revenge, to the point where he would be wholly unlikable if there wasn’t a strong supporting cast towards that goal as well.

The locations are all in and around Liverpool.  According to the IMDb page, Alex Cox insisted on having a local crew and the chapter on Revengers Tragedy in his book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker reasserts this point.  He makes good commentary about the British film industry during this production, which was more concerned with American projects and the workers who went with them.  The chapter as a whole gave me a better understanding of the movie, including Cox’s commentary on a world post-9/11.

The last act is very stupendous as all of the various plots and schemes come together.  I didn’t love all of the film’s designs, especially in terms of costumes and certain digital-effects.  It’s a very entertaining film, with the right mixture of intellectualism and soap opera, and the right amount of localism in its content.

ALA Conference Recap

Last Saturday I took a six hour drive to Washington, D.C. in order to attend Book Nerd’s Paradise.  Really, ALA can be summed up best by this video:

This video was made on Friday, and when the majority of my book club lined up for John Green and David Levithan’s signing on Sunday, John Green was considerably less energized.  To be fair, that line was like an hour and a half long and they had full conference schedules.

However, later that day at a pizza lunch David Levithan proved that he was not just a talented writer and editor, but that he can SING.  Motherfucker goddamn!  As well as being totally in the theme with Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

A rather blurred picture of me, with Giraffe and "Tales of the Madman Underground"

There were many awesome authors at ALA and many publishers and companies who all seemed to have a lot of free stuff that they wanted to give to members of a teen bookclub wandering around in matching t-shirts.  Seriously, story of my life.  I came home with eighteen books and I only bought five.  Also received posters, free CDs, book catalogs, notebooks, tote bags, comic previews, and a mango smoothie.

Authors I got signed books from: John Barnes, Holly Black, Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan, G.M Malliet, and Adam Rapp,

Since I am a library dork, I got stupidly excited over a book-return conveyor belt which checked in the books as you returned them.  I have seen the future, and it is both practical and expensive.  Lovely.  But this system combined about three steps of the book checking-in process into one (return, check in, and sort) and it also gave the patron a screen to check that everyone had been returned correctly as well as a receipt for documented proof.

Monday was a lot like Sunday, except subtract the free lunch and add on a whole lot of tired.  My friend Anna and I ended up slumped against a wall before noon, just waiting around for the great giveaway.  That is when, on the last day of the conference, publishers decide that it is cheaper to give books away rather than ship them back to wherever they came from.  My particular group waited forty minutes in line at the Simon & Schuster booth, but success!  I got the galley for Pete Hautman’s new young adult novel.

Monday night featured the Printz reception, which we arrived to late, thanks to the subway.  We missed Adam Rapp’s acceptance speech for Punkzilla, but saw all the other ones.  Libba Bray was entertaining as all hell, but gave a rather trippy speech as she accepted the Printz award for Going Bovine. I did get to see her challenge Rick Yancey to an existential throwdown, so all’s good.  The reception– cake, booze for the over-21-set– will remain in mind as a fierce argument about Zombified Unicorns and Unicornified Zombies.  Loosely based on a new short story collection Zombies vs. Unicorns.

Have I told y’all lately that Libba Bray is insane?  As in, sincerely crazy.  She gave a wonderfully trippy acceptance speech and I am enjoying Going Bovine. I just wish I had read it before the conference!

Tuesday was Library Advocacy Day!  The day I wish I had brought my camera more than anything. ;_;  But this was the dealio: We went to Capitol Hill and had a rally about how libraries need support.  We’re hurting from the economy, but demand for libraries is going up!  More people need the job-searching services, free internet, and books that they offer.

Books That Make Good Movies: King Dork

Personal Copy picture!

This is kind of a hesitant post actually. The thing is, I love King Dork. A lot. It is that kind of book, where you know that you are willing to devote however many days and weeks it takes to read it fully. And it has the kind of plot that would make for a good movie: High School Underdog constantly thinking about girls and bands while trying to puzzle out his father’s death (murder?)

What I’m desperately afraid of is that they would completely screw it up if they made it into a movie. Some of the best parts of King Dork come from Frank Portman’s utterly hilarious writing style, with little details stuck in that just can’t be filled in with a voice-over clumsily overlaid on the screen. Reading Mr. Portman’s new book (Andromeda Klein, due out later this month) made me remember how much King Dork, if done correctly, would make a truly unique movie about high school.

If you read it or have already read it, well then you will or already have the ability to understand where I’m coming from. I’m not sure how one would get a character like Tom Henderson and his bizarre sense of humor across the screen. I would love to see it accomplished though.

1001 Part 2: 1977-1989

195 Movies are listed in the years 1977-1989.

Of them, I have seen 30

Of those that I have seen and liked, there were 23.  These were:

Do the Right Thing; Crimes and Misdemeanors; When Harry Met Sally; Batman; Grave of the Fireflies; Akira; The Thin Blue Line; Moonstruck; The Princess Bride; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; The Breakfast Club; Ghostbusters; Amadeus; Star Wars: Return of the Jedi; A Christmas Story; Gandhi; Tootsie; Raiders of the Lost Ark; Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back; The Last Metro; Annie Hall; Star Wars; Stand By Me

Movies I Want to See: 45

My Left Food; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover; Alice (Neco Z Alenky); Dangerous Liaisons; A Fish Called Wanda; Cinema Paradiso; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Sinnui Yauman (A Chinese Ghost Story); The Untouchables; Broadcast News; Au Revois Les Enfants; Good Morning, Vietnam; wings of Desire; Salvador; Tampopo; A room with a View; Hannah and her Sisters; Vagabond; Prizzi’s Honor; Brazil; Back to the Future; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Ran; This is Spinal Tap; Once Upon a Time in America; The Last Battle; A Question of Silence; Blade Runner; Fast Times at Ridgmont High; Reds; Chariots of Fire; Das Boot; Raging Bull; Lou Lou; Ordinary People; Mad Max; Manhattan; Being There; All that Jazz; Stalker; Dawn of the Dead; The Deer Hunter; Suspira; Killer of Sheep; Man of Marble

Those that I feel I Should See: 53

Say Anything; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Glory; Une Affaire de Femmes; Rain Man; Big; The Naked Gun; Bull Durham; Fatal Attractioni; The Dead; Full Metal Jacket; Raising Arizona; Pekaing Opera Blues; Platoon; The Fly; Alines; She’s Gotta Have It; Blue Velvet; The color Purple; The Quiet Earth; Out of Africa; The Official Story; The Natural; The Killing Fields; Stranger than Paraidse; A Passage to India; Beverly Hills Cop; The Terminator; The Ballad of Narayman; Scarface; The Right Stuff; Terms of Endearment; The Big Chill; Fanny and Alexander; Fitzcarraldo; Yol; The Evil Dead; Poltergeist; The Thing; ET: Extra-Terrestrial; The Jerk; Apocalypse now; Life of Brian; Kramer vs. Kramer; Alien; The Marriage of Maria Braun; Halloween; Eraserhead; Saturday Night Fever; Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I would really like to see, in the process of this experiment, if there will come a section of the book that will have more movies that I want to see than movies that I feel like I ought to see.

That would be interesting…

These books make me happy because they give examples of movies that I wouldn’t have ordinarily seen otherwise, except that the writer makes a mention of them and you can tell– they love that movie.  They are able to sell it.  When the writer fails, it’s obvious: They’ve picked that movie because they know that they should.  They may respect that movie, but there’s no way that they love it.  They’re just writing about it for a job.

Still, there are so many great movies out there and they appeal to so many people: How can you just narrow it down to 1001.  I’m willing to bet that I haven’t even see 1001 movies in my lifetime, but even so, there are so many movies out there, how can you possibly pick?

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

So. I work at a library. At said library, we have this series of books: 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, 1001 Music Recordings to Hear Before You Die, and, of course, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

How could I resist?

Working from the back (2007 films) to the front, I decided to count up how many of these movies I’ve actually seen. This then turned into something my AP Stat teacher would be proud of.

As it turns out, it takes a long time to read descriptions for 1001 movies, so I’m doing this in batches. Four categories: Movies I’ve Seen, Seen and Liked, Movies I Want to See, and Movies I Feel Like I Should see. Of the last category, can commenters give advice on which are worth it and which I should skip over? Muchly Appreciated.

From the years 1990-2007 (191 Movies)

Movies I’ve Seen: 38
Those That I Liked: 22
The Host, The Lives of Others, Pan’s Labyrinth, Crash, Spirited Away, Moulin Rouge!, Memento, Gladiator, Fight Club, Princess Mononoke, The Usual Suspects, Braveheart, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Forrest Gump, Hoop Dreams, Jurassic Park, Philadelphia, Reservoir Dogs, The Silence of the Lambs, Edward Scissorhands, Europa Europa

Movies I Want to See: 35
Go, See, and Become; 3-Iron; Good Bey Lenin!; City of God; No Man’s Land; Amelie; Dancer in the Dark; Traffic; All About My Mother; Audition; Pi; Buffalo 66; Open Your Eyes; Funny Games; The English Patienty; Trainspotting; Gabbeh; Secrets & Lies; Shine; Dead Man; Muriel’s Wedding; Dear Diary; Heavenly Creatures; Crumb; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; The Wedding Banquet; The Piano; Short Cuts; Strictly Ballroom; My Own Private Idaho; The Beautiful Troublemaker; Delicatessen; Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer; King of New York: Reversal of Fortune

Movie I Feel Like I Should See: 50
Atonement; Into the Wild; No Country for Old Men; La Vie en Rose; The Queen; Once; The Departed; Sideways; Kill Bill; The Best of Youth; The Pianist; The Royal Tenenbaums; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Requiem for a Dream; The Sixth Sense; American Beauty; Being John Malkovish; The Thin Red Line; There’s Something About Mary; Rushmore; Saving Private Ryan; The Ice Storm; LA Confidential; Scream; Breaking the Waves; Fargo; Heat; Casino; The Shawshank Redemption; Natural Born Kilers; Four Weddings and a Funeral; Clerks; Three Colors: Red; Schindler’s List; Three Colors: Blue; Groundhog Day; The Crying Game; Man Bites Dog; Conte D’Hiver; Unforgiven; Glengarry Glen Rose; The Player; Tongues Untied; Thelma & Louise; Boyz ‘N The Hood; Total Recall; Archangel; Dances With Wolves; Jacob’s Ladder; Goodfellas

Okay. Damn: Long lists, huh? The movies I feel Like I should See… well, a lot of them I do want to see, but I feel more like I should than actually being intrigued by them. A lot of that category is taken up by pressure from other people or from other film books, “You have to see this movie to understand blah-di-blah.” Or it’s just as my English teacher would put it: Ignorance Control. I feel like I should watch these movies so that I’m not ignorant of our culture, I suppose.

Towards the book, or at least, the book editor: Why the hell is Clueless in this collection? It’s not that great of a movie.

Also, I love this description under the Pulp Fiction article:
“Taken on its own crass terms, Tarantino’s mock-tough narrative… resembles a wet dream for 14-year-old male closet queens (or, perhaps more accurately, the 14-year-old male closet queen in each of us).”

Thank you, Jonathan Rosenbaum

Books that Make Good Movies: The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

This has been my favorite book for a long time, and it would make the a perfect movie for an audience used to fantasy-action dramas.

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding is the story of Thaniel, a wych-hunter in Victorian London.  The first scene is a fabulous introduction of him and his partner/metor Cathaline as they track down the typical creatures they hunt, which are demons and creatures that haunt the edges of nightmare.  On one of these missions he meets the beautiful and possessed Alaizabel Cray, who holds the key to the end of the world.

I like this book for a lot of reasons- Chris Wooding is a god when it somes to spinning beautiful fantasy stories with intricate plots.  All of this books in the US are Young Adult, but he writes fantasy for adults too, they’re just published in England (to which I say, Chris Wooding’s publishers, COME ON ALREADY! I need more fantasy action!).

Alaizabel Cray has a lot of vivid characters too that shine out well in both the traditional and nonorthodox ways of fantasy fiction.  Thaniel is the go-to hero character with daddy issues, but it doesn’t frustrate me as much as if a lesser author had overdone it.  Everything works with his character, personality, and why he is a wych-hunter (his father was one before him).  Alaizabel is a Victorian heroine in the style of Mina Harker, where she has the ability to kick some ass herself and learn magic from the spirit possessing her. 

Then there are some minor characters that play huge roles in the story: Stich-face, the Jack the Ripper-esque character who wears a bag for a mask drawn into a terrible face and a woman’s curly wig while he haunts the London streets; Cathaine, who turns the idea of the Proper Victorian Woman on it’s head; Mammon Pyke, the dispicable head of the Lunatic Asylum located just outside of the city; Maycraft, the middle-aged detective.  They’re all drawn so well into the story of Alaizabel that I just can’t stand it.

The scene is beautifully crafted as London at it’s worse, with demons and wyches, wolves and lunatics running about the southside.  In some ways it reminds me of reading steam punk, but that’s because it’s Victorian with a twist. The twist in this case is fantasy instead of science fiction, so it suits me better anyway.

So why would this make a great movie?  It’s perfect for the fantasy-crowd, which exists anyway but was built up upon by the likes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.  There is a Smart Action Movie sense to how the plot is developped and how the suspense is built, with enough mystery in it to keep the reader or viewer entranced from start to finish.

Unfortunately, this book could be turned into a terrible movie easily if it’s put into the hands of people who don’t understand why the book is good or how the plot was suspenseful.  I have the feeling that if the wrong producer, director, or actors are in the movie it will tank and down will go all of my hopes for this as the next great fantasy film.

I’d recommend this book to just about anyone fans of Sleepy Hollow or Neil Gaiman.

Movies in 15 Minutes

The Best Way to Waste Time Online

My first post not about movies. Ish.  Technically, it’s about a book, but the book is about movies.  So it counts.  Right? 

Movies in 15 Minutes started when Cleolinda Jones decided to share her brilliant comedic talents with the world.  Just in a movie-related way.  It started on livejournal (don’t they always) and became a book! A book, only available in the UK. Or, luckily, UK Amazon.

Here’s a link with the basic rundown of her parodies online: http://community.livejournal.com/m15m

They are the funniest parodies for movies I’ve read or seen, considering modern parodies take form mostly in those crappy movies made by the Scary Movie plebes.  Feh.

The book, if you so choose to venture into purchasing, contains the Hollywood Blockbusters from 1993-2003, namely Jurassic Park, Braveheart, Independence Day, Titanic, The Matrix, Gladiator, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Sorcerer’s Philosopher’s Stone, Spider-Man, Attack of the Clones, and all three Lord of the Rings.

As the little subtitle tells us, this is a book of “Hollywood Blockbusters for People Who Can’t Be Bothered.” Joy!  I can almost never be bothered to watch blockbusters.  I’m just amazed that I’ve even seen most of the movies on this list.  But seriously, this is fantastic entertainment.  This is what I waste my time on when it’s one  AM online and I’m still not going to bed.  What’s nice about the book are the connected threads between the parodies, such as the Third-Age Limbo Championship and Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow.

There are gems in the book and online, so make sure to check out both of them.  Cleolinda writes sharply and with excess wit to spare, because she is awesome.  My personal favorites online are Phantom of the Opera, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Van Helsing although the awesome abounds in all of them. What’s nice is, you can really read the parodies without watching the movies if you can’t be bothered.  They get summed up nicely.  And then the internet takes the best of the parodies’ lines and turns them into icons, so there’s some visual component up there, if that’s your taste.