Here's how I came to Harry Potter:
Once upon a time, I finished library school, and wanted to go into youth services. Young Adults, if I could. I was fabulously lucky, and right out of school, got a job as a YA librarian. It was June of 2000. One month later, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out.
Now, I'd heard of Harry, of course. I seem to recall my children's librarianship professor saying something along the line of, "If you haven't met Harry Potter, go meet him now. For this field especially, but in general, this is a great series."
I grew up on Tolkien and Lewis, and I turned my nose up at this upstart. Why was I going to waste my time on what was obviously some faddish imitation? Why couldn't kids be reading real fantasy? It was probably to fantasy what RL Stine was to horror. (And that comparison, I made with knowledge. I read several of those wretched things for a paper.)
But with GoF constantly off the shelves, I kept having kids come up wanting something that was like Harry Potter. Anything. Only it seemed to be something very specific they were looking for, and I couldn't tell without reading the books. So I waited until a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came in without a hold on it, picked it up... and swallowed it whole that day. I went to a bookstore to pick up the next three, and then proceeded to wait over three year summer on tenterhooks like everybody else.
Because they were that good. Because I loved the characters and the setting that much, and couldn't wait to find out how the story was going to come out. Because Jo Rowling is a worthy heir of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. (And if you're worried about the whole, "Icky-goo, grown-up people reading fairy stories" thing, let me direct you to Tolkien's On Fairy Stories and Lewis's On Three Ways of Writing for Children, thanks.)
Was there hype, and was it annoying? Yes. But the subject of the hype was well worth the fervor.
So what did I do with JKR's other writing? Well, I steered well clear of The Casual Vacancy, for the most part, and that one didn't seem to have legs, anyway. And then there was her detective series, Cormoran Strike (The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm... so far), written openly under her pen name, Robert Galbraith. So what did I do?
I turned my nose up and said, "Oh, she's just trying to get out of Harry's shadow. Totally transparent, and probably self-consciously tough sounding and..."
I'm an idiot.
I was playing around with our e-audiobooks ([advertisement]pro-tip, if you're not a regular library user: Lots of e-materials available from most public libraries, and Summer Reading is a great time to try something new[/advertisement]) and The Cuckoo's Calling came up at the top of the list of currently available titles. I downloaded it on a whim. The very opening didn't interest me much, then I met Cormoran Strike himself: An old-fashioned detective, in a seedy London office, just broken up with his infuriating fiancée, broke beyond belief, and dealing with bad pain on the stump of his amputated leg because he was forced to walk across London from her flat, his prosthetic limb chafing all the way.
Now, I like mysteries in theory. I like the puzzle aspect, I like the concept of solving crimes. I often enjoy them on television. But I've had a lukewarm relationship with them in print since I let go of Nancy Drew. (That series is kid-specific. Good kid-specific, but not one that has layers underneath what a kid sees.) In the well-written ones, it's often more the horror aspects I like than the mystery aspects, and in the badly written ones... well, the less said, the better. I'm in awe of the ability of cozy publishers to come up with cutesy, punny names, and anyone who shelves books likes Sue Grafton in theory, since her series is ALWAYS in order, but mostly, I haven't been able to attach myself to the style or the characters, and have rarely felt the need to pick up another book in a mystery series.
Before I was halfway done listening to Cuckoo, I'd placed a hold on The Silkworm. The Silkworm turned out to be even better. I'm now waiting eagerly for Career of Evil.
The mysteries themselves are good yarns -- proving that a popular supermodel didn't, in fact, throw herself from her balcony, finding the perpetrator a particularly grisly murder of an author who'd offended half of London's publishing industry -- and, with the exception of the common mystery tic of not having the POV character state something he knows, I like them a lot. BBC America better pick up the miniseries, man. :p
But plenty of mysteries are interesting. It's always the rest that makes me give up on a mystery novel.
Rowling's gift is for creating characters not necessarily that you identify with, but who seem like people who exist, who you might know, and love or hate on their own terms. Robin Endacott, Strike's young assistant, opens the novel terribly excited to discover that her new temp job is with a private detective, because she's always wanted to be a detective, but never let it slip, because she thought people would laugh at her for wanting such a silly career. (Her fiancé, with whom she unfortunately doesn't break up, is one of the people who sees the entire idea as inherently ridiculous, basically like she's playing at being Nancy Drew, and her boss is most likely some kind of faker.) Anyone who's ever said something like, "I want to be an actress" or "I want to be a singer" knows the kind of looks she's feared. It's a very real character trait, expressing both her insecurity and, to some extent, her naivete, especially when contrasted with Strike, who as an experience war veteran and investigator, takes his job quite seriously, but never had a romantic view of it.
And then there's Strike, who's just beautifully realized. Is he a saint? Oh, no. NO. His treatment of a few women in the novels is enough to make you want to smack him. (I'm hoping, like Robin's insecurity, that this is part of a character arc, and something he realizes toward the end of The Silkworm suggests that it might be.) But there's something about him that wakes up on the page. Part of it is the specificity of characterization -- his amputation is a good example. Rowling doesn't often dwell on it or treat it like it confers sanctity in and of itself. He lost his leg saving a man who he now works with, and his feelings about that event are mixed -- half the time, he doesn't even like the man, and is totally nonplussed by the child who was subsequently named after him. The leg is sometimes at the top of his thoughts, and sometimes not. (In fact, when he gets drunk and weeps to Robin, the leg is barely mentioned... but the child he claims he didn't want, and the ex-fiancée who either aborted it or lied about its existence in the first place -- and about whether or not it was his -- are stunningly present. It's not often that we see a man mourning for children he never had, and Strike's relationship with children is complex, but... it's a really neat angle, and I'm looking forward to where it goes.) Sometimes, it's very painful. Other times, it's just an annoyance that he puts up with. It's a very naturalistic picture.
There's also the issue of his extended family -- he's the son of a rock star he's only met twice and a "supergroupie" who died under mysterious circumstances while he was at Oxford. He has half-siblings on both sides, and an extremely complicated relationship with the world of the well-to-do flit-abouts that he often works in.
This is the kind of thing that Rowling does exceptionally well. She's also a very good observer of the physical world, and knows how to make her descriptions of it tell as much (or more) about the POV character than the setting he's describing. Beyond the two main points of view, there's also Rowling, who seems to have an eyebrow raised a bit archly as she peers out at the world around her... a trait that carries over from HP. I'm not surprised that it didn't take long for the pen name to be unmasked.
And she seems to be having fun, which is more important than people give it credit for. When a writer is enjoying her story, no matter what its gruesome twists and turns, the books always crackle with that energy.
Cormoran Strike is definitely worth the read.
Remind me of that if I get on my high horse again.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Avengers: Age of Ultron review
First things first: I said back in my Captain America: The Winter Soldier review that I could really feel the absence of Joss Whedon on the writing staff, and now, in Age of Ultron, you can really tell that he's back. He brings a light touch to the dialogue that's missing in so much of the genre, and bless him, it saves this movie from a godawful plot.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Also, don't take that as me not enjoying it. The plot was silly and ridiculous and too involved in itself, but it's an Avengers movie. Let's face it, I'm there to watch the heroes kick some bad guy ass, and everything that works beyond that is gravy. There's plenty of gravy; it's just not in the plot.
So, breaking it down.
Plot
Tony Stark builds an AI (Ultron) to help the Avengers, and it decides to kill them, and everyone else, instead. In the course of this, Jarvis the previous AI gets an indestructible vibranium body (and ceases to be solely Tony's AI), Thor has visions, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (unnamed by code name on screen) are evil and turn good, Hawkeye plans home improvement projects between Avenging assignments, everyone tries Thor's hammer, Hulk and Black Widow canoodle, Black Widow doubts herself, Hulk smashes a town, they take down an arms dealer, Cap learns to swear (because somehow he got through WWII without ever dealing with swearing soldiers), Tony goes through an existential crisis, Nick Fury dusts off a helicarrier, and, oh, yeah, Ultron decides to scoop up a piece of Eastern Europe and drop it to cause an extinction level event. And there's also a body being created, a scientist being mind-controlled, a party, and Iron Patriot/War Machine doesn't impress the Avengers with his stories. (Cheer up, guy... I wanted to hear the rest of that tank story, at least!)
Yup, this is a pretty crowded plot, and if you aren't an action movie person, don't bother trying to follow it. It's not going to suddenly come together and create a beautiful whole. Just take it as it comes. Something has to link up one set piece to another. It sort of works on its own logic, but it's a good illustration of why I can't get into comic books. By comics standards, this is pretty distilled. After all, they have to keep churning the things out month after month ad infinitum, so they have to make them dense.
For me, the plot is just... well, what they use to stick everyone on screen, and I'm okay with that. It didn't stick as well as the last one, but whatevs. It got the heroes suited up and on screen, and that's all that's really needed of it.
For the record, I firmly believe that if you don't have a taste for the ridiculous from time to time, you shouldn't go to movies about people in silly costumes fighting robots, and if you do go to them, you shouldn't bitch about it it being ridiculous. Of course it's ridiculous. So are most things I like, from Odysseus hiding under a giant sheep and cracking jokes at a Cyclops to Princess Leia's metal bikini. We all make our myths somewhere, and there's a good reason that we have flocked to these stories since the beginning of storytelling. (This guy covers it pretty well.)
Character
Given how much was going on, there was a surprising amount of character work here, largely through the medium of the nightmares Wanda (the Scarlet Witch) gives to everyone to isolate them from each other. What people fear is often a good window into them. Tony Stark imagines being responsible for the deaths of his friends -- given that he started out as nearly sociopathic in his refusal to connect to people that says a lot without anyone pounding at it. We find out the depths of what was done to Natasha when she was trained as a spy (it's fairly horrifying -- and I have to say, I had a random idea for a Black Widow script, which her vision would lead into wonderfully). Cap has a throwaway line about being "the world's leading expert in waiting too long," which is the essence of his vision -- but also something he acknowledges easily about himself, which is why it doesn't incapacitate him. And of course, Bruce Banner is utterly terrified of the Hulk, leading to his feeling of utter betrayal when Nat says she adores him, but needs "the other guy"... forcing him to turn into the monster. Thor is terrified that things are falling apart on Asgard. Aside from the nightmares, we meet Hawkeye's very normal family, and see his desire to protect them. We hear about Wanda and Pietro's horrible history (town bombed by people using Stark tech), but also see them immediately change when the realize that Ultron isn't really there to help.
This is actually some very nice work, character-wise. Unlike the plotting, I felt like all the character lines were solid, and connected from beginning to end, and like I came out of the theater knowing each team member a little better, and having a better idea of them as a team.
Style
This is definitely a Joss Whedon joint. Whenever the bizarrely overplotted stuff starts to get too heavy, he lightens the load with a little bit of humor. Unlike The Winter Soldier, which often seemed heavily convinced of its own Deep Importance, Age of Ultron seems to understand that it's a popcorn flick... and that there's nothing wrong with that. (You could always tell when Whedon came back to Buffy after a bit, too, for the same reason. He seems to understand that the material he's working with is ridiculous, but by acknowledging its very ridiculousness, gets beyond it and does really neat stuff.)
The fight choreography is gorgeous. There's a shot that even beats the on the street circle in the first movie, where the Avengers are fighting together around a drill to keep the city from dropping. Cap goes spinning over a couple of robots while Wanda blasts them with magic and Pietro runs around and Hawkeye shoots... it's a money shot.
It would be silly to pretend it's not an FX movie (this is not an insult), and the FX are great. No complaints. I love the Ultron CGI. Nothing else is wildly new, but it was all smooth and didn't make me stop to say, "Oh. I guess that was an effect." Which is what special effects should do.
Setting
Eh, okay. We get jerked around a lot, from Avengers headquarters to two fictional countries (Wakanda, where vibranium is mined, and Sokovia, where they fight the big battle). And Hawkye's farm. And everyone's memories. And the helicarrier. There's not as strong a sense of place when Marvel leaves New York. I have a strong desire to have the next installment take place in Western New York (specifying it from the vague and non-descriptive "upstate" that they use to describe where they are at the end), and get them to film in Letchworth. Tell me it wouldn't be awesome to have heroic antics amid scenes like this.)
But nothing to write home about this time, except maybe the psychological effect of visiting the Barton farm, which seems to set everyone thinking about the future.
Theme
There are two themes running through it. The first is, of course, the science fiction standard: DON'T MESS WITH THAT THING. No, seriously, DON'T MESS WITH IT. It's somewhat subverted when Tony actually manages to create a new hero as well as a new villain, but it's definitely a question they're all asking themselves -- not just should Ultron have been created, but should they have been? ("I miss the time when the weirdest thing science created was me," Cap quips.)
The other theme is about keeping the team together, when everyone is being pulled in different directions. They don't ultimately succeed, either. But through the course of the film, we see them working through it. There were some terrific scenes of Thor and Cap using their signature weapons together, of Bruce and Tony working together (yay for more engineering geek scenes!), Hawkeye's kids loving their "Aunt Nat," and possibly my favorite moment, Black Widow using Cap's shield. Something about that really worked well for me. I think it's that she was doubting herself through much of the movie, but really claimed that heroic mantle that's often eluded her. The fact that isn't commented on is what makes it work. If you have to draw attention to a visual symbol, it fails. She just rides her bike with the shield on the front, and you know -- she's in. No running away, and no more, "Am I really a hero?" stuff.
Other
Little things:
While I enjoyed the idea of Cap/Nat as a ship, I think Whedon did something way more interesting here, both with Cap and Hawkeye, who fandom had so much wanted to pair her with romantically: They were her friends. Hawkeye actually emerges as her family, her best friend, her big brother. Cap is her friend and equal partner. And no one in the whole scenario (except a pair of actors who should have known better, but they did it off screen) acts like there's anything unusual about it.
I was really nervous after Winter Soldier that they were going to have Cap go cynical, which was almost pre-emptively boring me. But they didn't. He's dealing with the world, and maybe has more questions than he would have in the '40s, but he's still the guy who was chosen for the program because he's a decent, solid human being who is trying, against all odds, to do good.
I really liked that the script essentially brought back SHIELD as good guys -- they fixed the problem and got the helicarrier back up (though not under official auspices). It fits better with the actual events of Winter Soldier -- in which at least half the agents were good guys -- than the "Tear it all down" mantra that was going on there. No, getting infiltrated by bad guys doesn't make you corrupt, any more than getting duped by a con man makes you an accessory.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Also, don't take that as me not enjoying it. The plot was silly and ridiculous and too involved in itself, but it's an Avengers movie. Let's face it, I'm there to watch the heroes kick some bad guy ass, and everything that works beyond that is gravy. There's plenty of gravy; it's just not in the plot.
So, breaking it down.
Plot
Tony Stark builds an AI (Ultron) to help the Avengers, and it decides to kill them, and everyone else, instead. In the course of this, Jarvis the previous AI gets an indestructible vibranium body (and ceases to be solely Tony's AI), Thor has visions, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (unnamed by code name on screen) are evil and turn good, Hawkeye plans home improvement projects between Avenging assignments, everyone tries Thor's hammer, Hulk and Black Widow canoodle, Black Widow doubts herself, Hulk smashes a town, they take down an arms dealer, Cap learns to swear (because somehow he got through WWII without ever dealing with swearing soldiers), Tony goes through an existential crisis, Nick Fury dusts off a helicarrier, and, oh, yeah, Ultron decides to scoop up a piece of Eastern Europe and drop it to cause an extinction level event. And there's also a body being created, a scientist being mind-controlled, a party, and Iron Patriot/War Machine doesn't impress the Avengers with his stories. (Cheer up, guy... I wanted to hear the rest of that tank story, at least!)
Yup, this is a pretty crowded plot, and if you aren't an action movie person, don't bother trying to follow it. It's not going to suddenly come together and create a beautiful whole. Just take it as it comes. Something has to link up one set piece to another. It sort of works on its own logic, but it's a good illustration of why I can't get into comic books. By comics standards, this is pretty distilled. After all, they have to keep churning the things out month after month ad infinitum, so they have to make them dense.
For me, the plot is just... well, what they use to stick everyone on screen, and I'm okay with that. It didn't stick as well as the last one, but whatevs. It got the heroes suited up and on screen, and that's all that's really needed of it.
For the record, I firmly believe that if you don't have a taste for the ridiculous from time to time, you shouldn't go to movies about people in silly costumes fighting robots, and if you do go to them, you shouldn't bitch about it it being ridiculous. Of course it's ridiculous. So are most things I like, from Odysseus hiding under a giant sheep and cracking jokes at a Cyclops to Princess Leia's metal bikini. We all make our myths somewhere, and there's a good reason that we have flocked to these stories since the beginning of storytelling. (This guy covers it pretty well.)
Character
Given how much was going on, there was a surprising amount of character work here, largely through the medium of the nightmares Wanda (the Scarlet Witch) gives to everyone to isolate them from each other. What people fear is often a good window into them. Tony Stark imagines being responsible for the deaths of his friends -- given that he started out as nearly sociopathic in his refusal to connect to people that says a lot without anyone pounding at it. We find out the depths of what was done to Natasha when she was trained as a spy (it's fairly horrifying -- and I have to say, I had a random idea for a Black Widow script, which her vision would lead into wonderfully). Cap has a throwaway line about being "the world's leading expert in waiting too long," which is the essence of his vision -- but also something he acknowledges easily about himself, which is why it doesn't incapacitate him. And of course, Bruce Banner is utterly terrified of the Hulk, leading to his feeling of utter betrayal when Nat says she adores him, but needs "the other guy"... forcing him to turn into the monster. Thor is terrified that things are falling apart on Asgard. Aside from the nightmares, we meet Hawkeye's very normal family, and see his desire to protect them. We hear about Wanda and Pietro's horrible history (town bombed by people using Stark tech), but also see them immediately change when the realize that Ultron isn't really there to help.
This is actually some very nice work, character-wise. Unlike the plotting, I felt like all the character lines were solid, and connected from beginning to end, and like I came out of the theater knowing each team member a little better, and having a better idea of them as a team.
Style
This is definitely a Joss Whedon joint. Whenever the bizarrely overplotted stuff starts to get too heavy, he lightens the load with a little bit of humor. Unlike The Winter Soldier, which often seemed heavily convinced of its own Deep Importance, Age of Ultron seems to understand that it's a popcorn flick... and that there's nothing wrong with that. (You could always tell when Whedon came back to Buffy after a bit, too, for the same reason. He seems to understand that the material he's working with is ridiculous, but by acknowledging its very ridiculousness, gets beyond it and does really neat stuff.)
The fight choreography is gorgeous. There's a shot that even beats the on the street circle in the first movie, where the Avengers are fighting together around a drill to keep the city from dropping. Cap goes spinning over a couple of robots while Wanda blasts them with magic and Pietro runs around and Hawkeye shoots... it's a money shot.
It would be silly to pretend it's not an FX movie (this is not an insult), and the FX are great. No complaints. I love the Ultron CGI. Nothing else is wildly new, but it was all smooth and didn't make me stop to say, "Oh. I guess that was an effect." Which is what special effects should do.
Setting
Eh, okay. We get jerked around a lot, from Avengers headquarters to two fictional countries (Wakanda, where vibranium is mined, and Sokovia, where they fight the big battle). And Hawkye's farm. And everyone's memories. And the helicarrier. There's not as strong a sense of place when Marvel leaves New York. I have a strong desire to have the next installment take place in Western New York (specifying it from the vague and non-descriptive "upstate" that they use to describe where they are at the end), and get them to film in Letchworth. Tell me it wouldn't be awesome to have heroic antics amid scenes like this.)
But nothing to write home about this time, except maybe the psychological effect of visiting the Barton farm, which seems to set everyone thinking about the future.
Theme
There are two themes running through it. The first is, of course, the science fiction standard: DON'T MESS WITH THAT THING. No, seriously, DON'T MESS WITH IT. It's somewhat subverted when Tony actually manages to create a new hero as well as a new villain, but it's definitely a question they're all asking themselves -- not just should Ultron have been created, but should they have been? ("I miss the time when the weirdest thing science created was me," Cap quips.)
The other theme is about keeping the team together, when everyone is being pulled in different directions. They don't ultimately succeed, either. But through the course of the film, we see them working through it. There were some terrific scenes of Thor and Cap using their signature weapons together, of Bruce and Tony working together (yay for more engineering geek scenes!), Hawkeye's kids loving their "Aunt Nat," and possibly my favorite moment, Black Widow using Cap's shield. Something about that really worked well for me. I think it's that she was doubting herself through much of the movie, but really claimed that heroic mantle that's often eluded her. The fact that isn't commented on is what makes it work. If you have to draw attention to a visual symbol, it fails. She just rides her bike with the shield on the front, and you know -- she's in. No running away, and no more, "Am I really a hero?" stuff.
Other
Little things:
While I enjoyed the idea of Cap/Nat as a ship, I think Whedon did something way more interesting here, both with Cap and Hawkeye, who fandom had so much wanted to pair her with romantically: They were her friends. Hawkeye actually emerges as her family, her best friend, her big brother. Cap is her friend and equal partner. And no one in the whole scenario (except a pair of actors who should have known better, but they did it off screen) acts like there's anything unusual about it.
I was really nervous after Winter Soldier that they were going to have Cap go cynical, which was almost pre-emptively boring me. But they didn't. He's dealing with the world, and maybe has more questions than he would have in the '40s, but he's still the guy who was chosen for the program because he's a decent, solid human being who is trying, against all odds, to do good.
I really liked that the script essentially brought back SHIELD as good guys -- they fixed the problem and got the helicarrier back up (though not under official auspices). It fits better with the actual events of Winter Soldier -- in which at least half the agents were good guys -- than the "Tear it all down" mantra that was going on there. No, getting infiltrated by bad guys doesn't make you corrupt, any more than getting duped by a con man makes you an accessory.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Scared of the dark?
Yesterday and today at work, two things got me thinking.
First, today, I had a conversation with someone who is frustrated with the tendency to try and make superheroes "darker." I share this frustration. It annoys me. I know the theory; the thought is that darkness plus angst equal depth. They don't. In fact, I think the opposite is true. More on this later.
The other incident was yesterday, when I came across an edition of Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books, with an introduction by Stephen King. He describes it as the book that rendered all of the other "boys' books" he'd been reading "obsolete," because it told the truth about what would happen if real boys were stranded on a paradisical island: They'd turn to monsters.
Wait, what? I just said the darkness equation annoys me! But Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books? I've never found a conflict there.
It is absolutely, one hundred percent fact that Golding was dead on about what would happen if you crashed a load of kids on an island together. Flies is a book that rang with truth for me, from the second I read it in English class. The human capacity for evil, sadism, and pure asshattery to fellow humans is well-documented and indisputable. (Well, I guess you can dispute it -- you can dispute anything; free speech -- but I'm not likely to trust your judgment afterward.) The boys' books Golding was responding to flatly lie about this, and what makes Flies so shocking is that he simply destroys that lie by telling the truth. Put a group of humans of any age in an environment with no controls, and you're going to get Castle Rock. (Not the one from King... well, that one, too, I guess.) There will always and forever be a Jack Merridew, who gleefully embraces this dark side of human nature. No society is exempt from it. Golding himself wrote, in an afterword, "[T]he shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable."
And here's the thing: Lord of the Flies isn't the story of Jack Merridew at all. It is the story of Ralph, Simon, and Piggy (self, heart, and mind). Why?
Because Jack is boring.
Yes, Jack's actions drive the story, but Jack himself is more or less predictable. He does what we know someone is going to do. He's not conflicted about it (maybe he has a twinge when Roger kills Piggy, but that seems more about the threat to his power), and he forms the most basic society humans know -- rule of the fist. It's undeniably true that this would happen. As Dumbledore puts it in Harry Potter, he's faced with a choice between what's easy and what's right -- which is so often the case -- and he chooses what's easy. Evil, generally speaking, is easy. You can tart it up with plans and machinery and strategies, but the basic choice of, "I will stand up for what's right" vs. "I'll get mine and screw the consequences" is, um... well, easy. And therefore, not interesting.
The interesting characters are the dwindling group of boys who know this is wrong, the ones who hold their feeble lights in the darkness. Simon is most explicit about this, naturally. He's soul and heart, and he never wavers. He also doesn't look away, which is possibly the most important thing about his character. He looks the Gorgon in the eye, understands who the Lord of the Flies is, and tries to get through to the others. Naturally, they kill him.
Piggy is more common. He tries to doggedly stick to his logic, even as the most basic of his axioms fall apart around him. He even tries to evade blame for Simon's death after the feast, by blaming it on the dance and calling it an accident. But he's never tempted to Jack's camp. He just becomes more and more confused by what's happening, as symbolized by his disintegrating glasses.
It's in Ralph that Golding achieves his most impressive character. By the end, he's almost mute, running away from the gang, but after Simon's death, he has inherited the mantle of clear sight. He says it out loud to Piggy: "That was murder." He understands the full depth of depravity that they've fallen into.
And he keeps fighting.
Because that is also true, and far more interesting. Darkness just exists. Light is an action. You can pull drapes to block light, or go underground. But a single lit match is the point of focus in a dark room. Golding's society depends on the ethical nature of the individual... and Ralph is able to pass the test. While there is always a Jack, there's also always Ralph -- often standing to the side, mute and horrified, but sometimes taking action.
That's the interesting part of a story. Right there, that's the good stuff.
Which brings me back to the superhero stories.
Yes, they're silly. Yes, the evil is overblown. And no, it's not bad for them to have foibles.
But the interesting thing about them is the way they fight for what's good, when all of their power would make them very, very powerful bad guys. The first Captain America movie addressed this directly -- that the serum enhanced everything about the person who took it. Steve Rogers is a good man who wants to do what's right. Red Skull... isn't. And Red Skull? Kind of boring. But Steve is interesting, as he tries to hold a light up in the dark, against those incredibly powerful forces in the world.
That's why I think the Darkness Equation is bunk, and why it annoys me to no end. Yes, there are temptations, and yes, they may be more powerful as the person gets more powerful. (I generally believe that the greatest strength is often interchangeable with the greatest weakness.) But it's in fighting the dark that people achieve real nobility, in holding up that torch no matter how swallowed by shadows it seems to be, and no matter how difficult it becomes. That's why the heroes are the heroes -- because that's what can hold a story together.
There's a wonderful scene at the end of the movie The Neverending Story, when Fantasia has been destroyed, and the Childlike Empress appears to Bastian, holding a single grain of glowing sand. "Why is it so dark?" Bastian asks. She tells him, "In the beginning, it is always dark." Then she puts the light into his hands.
Then it devolves into a kind of silly fantasy sequence, but I got the point.
The beginning of a hero story should be dark. Downright dystopian. Then the hero holds out his hand, and grasps the light. That's what heroes are for.
First, today, I had a conversation with someone who is frustrated with the tendency to try and make superheroes "darker." I share this frustration. It annoys me. I know the theory; the thought is that darkness plus angst equal depth. They don't. In fact, I think the opposite is true. More on this later.
The other incident was yesterday, when I came across an edition of Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books, with an introduction by Stephen King. He describes it as the book that rendered all of the other "boys' books" he'd been reading "obsolete," because it told the truth about what would happen if real boys were stranded on a paradisical island: They'd turn to monsters.
Wait, what? I just said the darkness equation annoys me! But Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books? I've never found a conflict there.
It is absolutely, one hundred percent fact that Golding was dead on about what would happen if you crashed a load of kids on an island together. Flies is a book that rang with truth for me, from the second I read it in English class. The human capacity for evil, sadism, and pure asshattery to fellow humans is well-documented and indisputable. (Well, I guess you can dispute it -- you can dispute anything; free speech -- but I'm not likely to trust your judgment afterward.) The boys' books Golding was responding to flatly lie about this, and what makes Flies so shocking is that he simply destroys that lie by telling the truth. Put a group of humans of any age in an environment with no controls, and you're going to get Castle Rock. (Not the one from King... well, that one, too, I guess.) There will always and forever be a Jack Merridew, who gleefully embraces this dark side of human nature. No society is exempt from it. Golding himself wrote, in an afterword, "[T]he shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable."
And here's the thing: Lord of the Flies isn't the story of Jack Merridew at all. It is the story of Ralph, Simon, and Piggy (self, heart, and mind). Why?
Because Jack is boring.
Yes, Jack's actions drive the story, but Jack himself is more or less predictable. He does what we know someone is going to do. He's not conflicted about it (maybe he has a twinge when Roger kills Piggy, but that seems more about the threat to his power), and he forms the most basic society humans know -- rule of the fist. It's undeniably true that this would happen. As Dumbledore puts it in Harry Potter, he's faced with a choice between what's easy and what's right -- which is so often the case -- and he chooses what's easy. Evil, generally speaking, is easy. You can tart it up with plans and machinery and strategies, but the basic choice of, "I will stand up for what's right" vs. "I'll get mine and screw the consequences" is, um... well, easy. And therefore, not interesting.
The interesting characters are the dwindling group of boys who know this is wrong, the ones who hold their feeble lights in the darkness. Simon is most explicit about this, naturally. He's soul and heart, and he never wavers. He also doesn't look away, which is possibly the most important thing about his character. He looks the Gorgon in the eye, understands who the Lord of the Flies is, and tries to get through to the others. Naturally, they kill him.
Piggy is more common. He tries to doggedly stick to his logic, even as the most basic of his axioms fall apart around him. He even tries to evade blame for Simon's death after the feast, by blaming it on the dance and calling it an accident. But he's never tempted to Jack's camp. He just becomes more and more confused by what's happening, as symbolized by his disintegrating glasses.
It's in Ralph that Golding achieves his most impressive character. By the end, he's almost mute, running away from the gang, but after Simon's death, he has inherited the mantle of clear sight. He says it out loud to Piggy: "That was murder." He understands the full depth of depravity that they've fallen into.
And he keeps fighting.
Because that is also true, and far more interesting. Darkness just exists. Light is an action. You can pull drapes to block light, or go underground. But a single lit match is the point of focus in a dark room. Golding's society depends on the ethical nature of the individual... and Ralph is able to pass the test. While there is always a Jack, there's also always Ralph -- often standing to the side, mute and horrified, but sometimes taking action.
That's the interesting part of a story. Right there, that's the good stuff.
Which brings me back to the superhero stories.
Yes, they're silly. Yes, the evil is overblown. And no, it's not bad for them to have foibles.
But the interesting thing about them is the way they fight for what's good, when all of their power would make them very, very powerful bad guys. The first Captain America movie addressed this directly -- that the serum enhanced everything about the person who took it. Steve Rogers is a good man who wants to do what's right. Red Skull... isn't. And Red Skull? Kind of boring. But Steve is interesting, as he tries to hold a light up in the dark, against those incredibly powerful forces in the world.
That's why I think the Darkness Equation is bunk, and why it annoys me to no end. Yes, there are temptations, and yes, they may be more powerful as the person gets more powerful. (I generally believe that the greatest strength is often interchangeable with the greatest weakness.) But it's in fighting the dark that people achieve real nobility, in holding up that torch no matter how swallowed by shadows it seems to be, and no matter how difficult it becomes. That's why the heroes are the heroes -- because that's what can hold a story together.
There's a wonderful scene at the end of the movie The Neverending Story, when Fantasia has been destroyed, and the Childlike Empress appears to Bastian, holding a single grain of glowing sand. "Why is it so dark?" Bastian asks. She tells him, "In the beginning, it is always dark." Then she puts the light into his hands.
Then it devolves into a kind of silly fantasy sequence, but I got the point.
The beginning of a hero story should be dark. Downright dystopian. Then the hero holds out his hand, and grasps the light. That's what heroes are for.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Mockingjay, Pt. 1 Review
I said back in my Catching Fire review that they should have done the trilogy as a pentalogy (that goes for the books as well), and Mockingjay, Pt. 1, confirms my opinion on it. It splits the narrative very neatly, at exactly the point where the second story in the novel begins. The rhythm is exactly right.
Not everything is exactly right. Or wrong. I'm left with some concerns about the set-up for Mockingjay, pt. 2, but on the whole, this is a strong entry in the series. Of course it doesn't stand alone -- it ends on a cliffhanger -- but if you go to something where "Part One" is in the title, you don't really have much ground to stand on if you complain about that. ;p
Before I start going through the elements, I'll mention the change of having Effie in District Thirteen. For all their talk about how they had to have Elizabeth Banks, they didn't end up using her all that much. They used her reasonably well (taking the place of both the prep team and, oddly, Fulvia Cardew), but really, she could as easily have been in her cell in the Capitol, ramping up the worry with the others.
As always, SPOILERS. If you don't want spoilers for the books or movie, this would be a good stopping point.
Theme
Of all the books, Mockingjay is the one most clearly centered on the power of the media, one of Collins' best themes. The movie is able to amplify it by actually showing the direct effects of Katniss's propos, going to the district and seeing the way they're used by the rebels, both as a recruitment tool and as a signal. (I'm on the fence with them actually singing "The Hanging Tree" in District Five while storming the power plant, because, well... kind of bad tactics. Wouldn't it have made more sense for a small group to infiltrate and plant the explosives than to have a huge crowd singing and chanting as they storm the place? But I see what the script was going for.) The scene where the District Seven lumberjacks use the mockingjay call to signal their attack on the Peacekeepers is excellent, and the attack on the dam in Five, using "The Hanging Tree," was thematically and cinematically terrific (despite my questioning of the tactics). Making them run directly after we see the propos gives a sense of how powerful Katniss's voice has become. This is a real strength of the movies, being able to move outside of Katniss's head and see all of this. We also get to see the rescue of the captured victors, at least in part.
There's some play with how absurd the actual concept is -- Katniss dressed up in a costume, and the director Cressida seeing every event in terms of how to film it. Most hilarious is the failed first propo, where Katniss is supposed to act, and the whole scene plays like actors making fun of directors giving them bizarre orders, with Jennifer Lawrence getting increasingly frustrated alone in front of a bluescreen while she's told to imagine that she's storming the Capitol with her brothers and sisters at her side, while she waves an invisible flag and says a melodramatic line. Of course, the propo turns out hilariously bad, and Haymitch takes over, to get her to be herself for the cameras, leading to the main thrust of this part of the story: The conflicting narratives being driven by the rebellion and the Capitol, using their respective proxies of Katniss and Peeta. And while we spot the absurdity and laugh at Katniss's bad performance, the script (like the book) immediately contrasts it with the reality of the war they're fighting.
It also doesn't diminish what Katniss is doing -- she's providing a face and a voice to the feelings of the country. When she goes into the hospital and the wounded see that she's alive and strong, it makes a difference... well, until Snow bombs them, anyway.
Plot
Takes the story from just before the beginning of the book to the rescue of the victors and the discovery of what was really done to Peeta in captivity, which was pretty much where it had to go. We see Katniss choose to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, after setting certain conditions, including the rescue of the rebel victors and the right for the family cat to stay put. She begins to rally the districts, which are now in full-scale war on the Capitol, and deals with the fact that Peeta, captured by the Capitol, is showing up on television and calling for a ceasefire, claiming that the rebels are using her. She finally breaks down, unable to deal with what's happening to him because of her, and this prompts District Thirteen to launch a rescue... after which she learns what really happened to him. Then, "To be continued."
While I like Donald Sutherland a lot as Snow, I think most of his added scenes were kind of a waste here. Screen time is precious, and some things seem to have been skipped to keep those in. I don't think it was a good trade-off. More on that in other sections.
This act of the series is mostly moving pieces into place for the final confrontation, so there's a lot of workaday plotting going on. Nothing wrong with that, but of course it's not as exciting as some of the other sections.
Character/Acting
Katniss, appropriately, gets the lion's share of character work here. It's her story, and she should. I have no gripe there. Jennifer Lawrence continues to do very well as Katniss's mental state whipsaws around under incredible amounts of pressure. She really sells the "If we burn, you burn with us!" propo. I wanted to go rebel against something. :D
The rest of the cast continues to act well, but isn't given much to do. I mentioned Elizabeth Banks's Effie, here doing the part of the prep team. Good? Yes. Sure. In a couple of scenes. Woody Harrelson's Haymitch (for some reason played throughout in what appears to be a wool cap with hair extensions stitched to it) is in several scenes, but doesn't have much to say in them after he redirects the propos. (Skipped entirely is his job as Katniss's handler, and her refusal to listen to him.) Liam Hemsworth's Gale gets a little more screen time, but his difference of opinion with Katniss seems to be limited to Peeta's actions, and how they should be received. For some reason, Sam Claflin's scenes as Finnick come off flat. It's not his acting. It's the pace or the direction, I think. It's too bad. I like him in the role, and it should have been good.
Julianne Moore's Coin is a bit of a misplay. It's not a bad performance, but the choices she and the director made seem odd in the context of the character she's playing. They're certainly deliberate choices, for both the actress and the writer, not bad acting. I'm just not sure how they're going to play out in the remainder of the story. For instance, she doesn't have to be convinced that Peeta is telling the truth about the coming bombing, and she voluntarily acknowledges that he saved the district, rather than having to grudgingly admit it under prodding.
I'm not sure why the movies have such a hard time with the Katniss/Peeta dynamic. The first movie glossed over their central shared memory (the Boy With the Bread scene), the second one rushed through everything, and this one misses the chance to finally tell that memory properly (replacing it with a scene where Katniss illogically has a long-distance conversation with Snow... aargh). They did add a dream scene where Katniss imagines him coming in to comfort her, which was nice, but only a replay of a scene in CF. It would have been really simple to start the first movie with that scene, but they chose not to. It would have been really simple to put it in here, since it's in the novel, but they chose not to. It's a really strange scene to skip, and does a disservice to the characterization. I was also sorry they skipped her direct address to Peeta, where she went to the bakery and pointed out to him that his family was dead, and his calls for a ceasefire had no one left to listen to him.
Setting
This is the big ball-drop in this movie.
Oh, sure, the physicality of District Thirteen is well-played, but District Thirteen itself is missing most of what made it ominous. By the time Peeta asks Katniss whether or not she trusts the people she's working with, in the book she has very good reason to consider the question.
The biggest problem for me (which seems tied to the odd choices with Coin) is that Thirteen is not shown as anything other than a bunker. Sure, light references are made to strict rules, and Haymitch complains about it being dry, but one of the primary establishing moments is turned on its head. In the book, when Katniss's prep team is introduced, they're in a prison cell, and have been kept there, in chains, because one of them stole bread. (There's that bread again... jeez, they skipped District Eleven's gift of bread to Katniss, too. It's like someone's trying to avoid a certain theme and certain allegorical connections.) In the movie, Effie, who has taken the place of the prep team, is explicitly not in a cell, told she's free to come and go as she pleases from her room, and is asked, not told, to be Katniss's escort. Katniss is not forced to go in and free her, and there's no conflict with Gale, wanting to know how she could care about someone who prettied her up for slaughter, which shows the first serious schism between Gale's worldview and Katniss's. She barely understands the question. She doesn't need to here, because it's not asked. The whole questionable side of Coin's leadership (of Gale as well as D13) is more or less skipped.
We don't see the tattooed-on daily schedules, or hear about the strictly rationed food, or even get a sense that Katniss has left one dictatorship for another. Granted, in the books, it takes her some time to understand this -- she's seventeen and wants to believe -- but the reader certainly sees it immediately. In the movie, there's no real sense of it at all.
This is a fairly major breaking point in the remainder of the story, which ends with meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- a situation Katniss is forced to resolve in a very nasty way at the climax. If District Thirteen's real nature hasn't been revealed, then will that choice even work? Oh, book readers will get it, but the movie-only people? I'm just not all that sure.
(They did, to some extent, show some callousness -- people gathered and cheering for a propo when there are hundreds of people dead, and then doing it again while Peeta screamed and screamed in the hospital, bound in his restraints -- but I don't think it showed it to the extent really necessary to understand just how bad it is.)
Style/Technical
There's an unrelenting grayness about District Thirteen that's very well put together. The horrible jumpsuits -- Effie's opening scene shows her holding on to the bright Capitol dress she presumably was wearing when they took her, and the contrast is lovely -- and the bleak rooms, and the claustrophobia is really caught well. The contrast with the outdoor scenes, when Katniss is truly herself, makes an interesting study in itself. Thirteen could be shot in black and white without much notable difference, but the scenes on the surface, both at the lake and while Katniss and Gale are hunting, are breathtaking.
I do wish the first person to design the sets hadn't made the districts all look so urban and uniform, but it's silly to keep complaining about that. The set design on the return to District Twelve was suitably distressing (especially when Katniss accidentally steps on a skull). I think it had a very different feel from the book, where everything was quite literally ashes and silence, but I'm not sure how that would have come out on film.
In all, a decent entry in the series, with a weakness that I'm concerned about in regard to the remainder of the story.
Not everything is exactly right. Or wrong. I'm left with some concerns about the set-up for Mockingjay, pt. 2, but on the whole, this is a strong entry in the series. Of course it doesn't stand alone -- it ends on a cliffhanger -- but if you go to something where "Part One" is in the title, you don't really have much ground to stand on if you complain about that. ;p
Before I start going through the elements, I'll mention the change of having Effie in District Thirteen. For all their talk about how they had to have Elizabeth Banks, they didn't end up using her all that much. They used her reasonably well (taking the place of both the prep team and, oddly, Fulvia Cardew), but really, she could as easily have been in her cell in the Capitol, ramping up the worry with the others.
As always, SPOILERS. If you don't want spoilers for the books or movie, this would be a good stopping point.
Theme
Of all the books, Mockingjay is the one most clearly centered on the power of the media, one of Collins' best themes. The movie is able to amplify it by actually showing the direct effects of Katniss's propos, going to the district and seeing the way they're used by the rebels, both as a recruitment tool and as a signal. (I'm on the fence with them actually singing "The Hanging Tree" in District Five while storming the power plant, because, well... kind of bad tactics. Wouldn't it have made more sense for a small group to infiltrate and plant the explosives than to have a huge crowd singing and chanting as they storm the place? But I see what the script was going for.) The scene where the District Seven lumberjacks use the mockingjay call to signal their attack on the Peacekeepers is excellent, and the attack on the dam in Five, using "The Hanging Tree," was thematically and cinematically terrific (despite my questioning of the tactics). Making them run directly after we see the propos gives a sense of how powerful Katniss's voice has become. This is a real strength of the movies, being able to move outside of Katniss's head and see all of this. We also get to see the rescue of the captured victors, at least in part.
There's some play with how absurd the actual concept is -- Katniss dressed up in a costume, and the director Cressida seeing every event in terms of how to film it. Most hilarious is the failed first propo, where Katniss is supposed to act, and the whole scene plays like actors making fun of directors giving them bizarre orders, with Jennifer Lawrence getting increasingly frustrated alone in front of a bluescreen while she's told to imagine that she's storming the Capitol with her brothers and sisters at her side, while she waves an invisible flag and says a melodramatic line. Of course, the propo turns out hilariously bad, and Haymitch takes over, to get her to be herself for the cameras, leading to the main thrust of this part of the story: The conflicting narratives being driven by the rebellion and the Capitol, using their respective proxies of Katniss and Peeta. And while we spot the absurdity and laugh at Katniss's bad performance, the script (like the book) immediately contrasts it with the reality of the war they're fighting.
It also doesn't diminish what Katniss is doing -- she's providing a face and a voice to the feelings of the country. When she goes into the hospital and the wounded see that she's alive and strong, it makes a difference... well, until Snow bombs them, anyway.
Plot
Takes the story from just before the beginning of the book to the rescue of the victors and the discovery of what was really done to Peeta in captivity, which was pretty much where it had to go. We see Katniss choose to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, after setting certain conditions, including the rescue of the rebel victors and the right for the family cat to stay put. She begins to rally the districts, which are now in full-scale war on the Capitol, and deals with the fact that Peeta, captured by the Capitol, is showing up on television and calling for a ceasefire, claiming that the rebels are using her. She finally breaks down, unable to deal with what's happening to him because of her, and this prompts District Thirteen to launch a rescue... after which she learns what really happened to him. Then, "To be continued."
While I like Donald Sutherland a lot as Snow, I think most of his added scenes were kind of a waste here. Screen time is precious, and some things seem to have been skipped to keep those in. I don't think it was a good trade-off. More on that in other sections.
This act of the series is mostly moving pieces into place for the final confrontation, so there's a lot of workaday plotting going on. Nothing wrong with that, but of course it's not as exciting as some of the other sections.
Character/Acting
Katniss, appropriately, gets the lion's share of character work here. It's her story, and she should. I have no gripe there. Jennifer Lawrence continues to do very well as Katniss's mental state whipsaws around under incredible amounts of pressure. She really sells the "If we burn, you burn with us!" propo. I wanted to go rebel against something. :D
The rest of the cast continues to act well, but isn't given much to do. I mentioned Elizabeth Banks's Effie, here doing the part of the prep team. Good? Yes. Sure. In a couple of scenes. Woody Harrelson's Haymitch (for some reason played throughout in what appears to be a wool cap with hair extensions stitched to it) is in several scenes, but doesn't have much to say in them after he redirects the propos. (Skipped entirely is his job as Katniss's handler, and her refusal to listen to him.) Liam Hemsworth's Gale gets a little more screen time, but his difference of opinion with Katniss seems to be limited to Peeta's actions, and how they should be received. For some reason, Sam Claflin's scenes as Finnick come off flat. It's not his acting. It's the pace or the direction, I think. It's too bad. I like him in the role, and it should have been good.
Julianne Moore's Coin is a bit of a misplay. It's not a bad performance, but the choices she and the director made seem odd in the context of the character she's playing. They're certainly deliberate choices, for both the actress and the writer, not bad acting. I'm just not sure how they're going to play out in the remainder of the story. For instance, she doesn't have to be convinced that Peeta is telling the truth about the coming bombing, and she voluntarily acknowledges that he saved the district, rather than having to grudgingly admit it under prodding.
I'm not sure why the movies have such a hard time with the Katniss/Peeta dynamic. The first movie glossed over their central shared memory (the Boy With the Bread scene), the second one rushed through everything, and this one misses the chance to finally tell that memory properly (replacing it with a scene where Katniss illogically has a long-distance conversation with Snow... aargh). They did add a dream scene where Katniss imagines him coming in to comfort her, which was nice, but only a replay of a scene in CF. It would have been really simple to start the first movie with that scene, but they chose not to. It would have been really simple to put it in here, since it's in the novel, but they chose not to. It's a really strange scene to skip, and does a disservice to the characterization. I was also sorry they skipped her direct address to Peeta, where she went to the bakery and pointed out to him that his family was dead, and his calls for a ceasefire had no one left to listen to him.
Setting
This is the big ball-drop in this movie.
Oh, sure, the physicality of District Thirteen is well-played, but District Thirteen itself is missing most of what made it ominous. By the time Peeta asks Katniss whether or not she trusts the people she's working with, in the book she has very good reason to consider the question.
The biggest problem for me (which seems tied to the odd choices with Coin) is that Thirteen is not shown as anything other than a bunker. Sure, light references are made to strict rules, and Haymitch complains about it being dry, but one of the primary establishing moments is turned on its head. In the book, when Katniss's prep team is introduced, they're in a prison cell, and have been kept there, in chains, because one of them stole bread. (There's that bread again... jeez, they skipped District Eleven's gift of bread to Katniss, too. It's like someone's trying to avoid a certain theme and certain allegorical connections.) In the movie, Effie, who has taken the place of the prep team, is explicitly not in a cell, told she's free to come and go as she pleases from her room, and is asked, not told, to be Katniss's escort. Katniss is not forced to go in and free her, and there's no conflict with Gale, wanting to know how she could care about someone who prettied her up for slaughter, which shows the first serious schism between Gale's worldview and Katniss's. She barely understands the question. She doesn't need to here, because it's not asked. The whole questionable side of Coin's leadership (of Gale as well as D13) is more or less skipped.
We don't see the tattooed-on daily schedules, or hear about the strictly rationed food, or even get a sense that Katniss has left one dictatorship for another. Granted, in the books, it takes her some time to understand this -- she's seventeen and wants to believe -- but the reader certainly sees it immediately. In the movie, there's no real sense of it at all.
This is a fairly major breaking point in the remainder of the story, which ends with meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- a situation Katniss is forced to resolve in a very nasty way at the climax. If District Thirteen's real nature hasn't been revealed, then will that choice even work? Oh, book readers will get it, but the movie-only people? I'm just not all that sure.
(They did, to some extent, show some callousness -- people gathered and cheering for a propo when there are hundreds of people dead, and then doing it again while Peeta screamed and screamed in the hospital, bound in his restraints -- but I don't think it showed it to the extent really necessary to understand just how bad it is.)
Style/Technical
There's an unrelenting grayness about District Thirteen that's very well put together. The horrible jumpsuits -- Effie's opening scene shows her holding on to the bright Capitol dress she presumably was wearing when they took her, and the contrast is lovely -- and the bleak rooms, and the claustrophobia is really caught well. The contrast with the outdoor scenes, when Katniss is truly herself, makes an interesting study in itself. Thirteen could be shot in black and white without much notable difference, but the scenes on the surface, both at the lake and while Katniss and Gale are hunting, are breathtaking.
I do wish the first person to design the sets hadn't made the districts all look so urban and uniform, but it's silly to keep complaining about that. The set design on the return to District Twelve was suitably distressing (especially when Katniss accidentally steps on a skull). I think it had a very different feel from the book, where everything was quite literally ashes and silence, but I'm not sure how that would have come out on film.
In all, a decent entry in the series, with a weakness that I'm concerned about in regard to the remainder of the story.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
In praise of memorization
Memorization isn't hot with the cool kids.
It never has been -- it's been the bogeyman of education reform movements pretty much since education reform movements existed. Now, it gets the added boost of, "Oh, if you don't know that stuff, you can always look it up on the internet! So who needs it? You should be free and only learn facts that matter to your constructed education and appeal to your interests!"
(Dear readers from other countries: Welcome to why we don't know where you live, what your capital city is, what language you speak, or what your major exports are. And let's not even start on the foreign language issue.)
The problem with this is that, while you do learn based on what you're interested in, you also develop interests based on what you've learned, and quite a lot of that stems from random facts that may be rolling around in your memory -- facts that get there because you, well... memorize them. By not learning facts (even if you're not immediately fascinated), you're severely limiting your horizons.
Is it ever going to matter to me that the capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella? Well, it might show up on a Sporcle quiz, but probably not. (If it does, though, I am prepared, man. ;p) But that fact starts to get a lot of other things glommed onto it. Andorra has two princes (though it's a constitutional republic). Do I have a great deal of interest? Not at the moment, but because that's in my head, it's in what Tolkien called "the Soup pot" -- I have it at my disposal. I am curious about the arrangement, how it works within a power struggle, how it's historically operated. Maybe not wildly curious, but a little curious. And maybe someday it will combine with some other oddball fact kicking around in my skull (the crown prince of Japan is the first crown prince not to go to the traditional royal family school in Tokyo?), and those two things will make something new in my head. Who knows? The point is, they will never have a random collision if I don't know them.
Another point, of course, is that it's embarrassing not have the slightest idea where your new neighbor comes from after he tells you, and have to run off to Wikipedia to do a quick check. And it's flatly dangerous to not have a basic understanding of biology or chemistry. Math... oh, math. The ancestral home of memorization, so traumatizing to the reformers. But really, if you don't know the formula for area of a circle, and you need to, say, find a tablecloth... you're not going to be able to work it on your calculator, because you don't know what numbers you're pulling in. And grammar... sigh. Just, sigh. Who really needs to know how to make communication clear and readable, anyway, right?
(Note: Knowing grammar does not mean never letting your hair down. You don't have to speak like a textbook, or write like one, to know how the parts of speech work, or where to put an apostrophe.)
Then, there's the question of fun.
There's a lot of hyperventilating about how learning should be fun, and not be about memorization... but have you ever heard a kid rattle off his favorite memorized facts about dinosaurs? Or a fantasy footballer go on about his team's stats? Heck, I think geography is useful, but to be honest, I did learn to name 197 countries in fourteen minutes for a Sporcle quiz, and I'm now in the process of learning their capitals because it's fun to know this stuff. Not everything that goes into your head has to become the subject of a soul-searching personal essay about spiritual and creative growth. Sometimes, it's just cool to know that when Krakatau blew, they heard it in Perth (much cooler when you know where Krakatau and Perth are). This is as true for little kids as it is for adults. I do geography in preschool storytime, and that particular fact is amazing to them -- it's like something blowing up here and being heard in Chicago. And, by the way, it's okay to introduce geography the same way you introduce math. You learn that 2+2=4 before you get to non-Euclidean geometry. It's okay to also learn that there are horses in Mongolia before you start debating the historical legacy of Genghis Khan.
Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a real downside to the ability to memorize facts. I've never understood the rush to denigrate it.
It never has been -- it's been the bogeyman of education reform movements pretty much since education reform movements existed. Now, it gets the added boost of, "Oh, if you don't know that stuff, you can always look it up on the internet! So who needs it? You should be free and only learn facts that matter to your constructed education and appeal to your interests!"
(Dear readers from other countries: Welcome to why we don't know where you live, what your capital city is, what language you speak, or what your major exports are. And let's not even start on the foreign language issue.)
The problem with this is that, while you do learn based on what you're interested in, you also develop interests based on what you've learned, and quite a lot of that stems from random facts that may be rolling around in your memory -- facts that get there because you, well... memorize them. By not learning facts (even if you're not immediately fascinated), you're severely limiting your horizons.
Is it ever going to matter to me that the capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella? Well, it might show up on a Sporcle quiz, but probably not. (If it does, though, I am prepared, man. ;p) But that fact starts to get a lot of other things glommed onto it. Andorra has two princes (though it's a constitutional republic). Do I have a great deal of interest? Not at the moment, but because that's in my head, it's in what Tolkien called "the Soup pot" -- I have it at my disposal. I am curious about the arrangement, how it works within a power struggle, how it's historically operated. Maybe not wildly curious, but a little curious. And maybe someday it will combine with some other oddball fact kicking around in my skull (the crown prince of Japan is the first crown prince not to go to the traditional royal family school in Tokyo?), and those two things will make something new in my head. Who knows? The point is, they will never have a random collision if I don't know them.
Another point, of course, is that it's embarrassing not have the slightest idea where your new neighbor comes from after he tells you, and have to run off to Wikipedia to do a quick check. And it's flatly dangerous to not have a basic understanding of biology or chemistry. Math... oh, math. The ancestral home of memorization, so traumatizing to the reformers. But really, if you don't know the formula for area of a circle, and you need to, say, find a tablecloth... you're not going to be able to work it on your calculator, because you don't know what numbers you're pulling in. And grammar... sigh. Just, sigh. Who really needs to know how to make communication clear and readable, anyway, right?
(Note: Knowing grammar does not mean never letting your hair down. You don't have to speak like a textbook, or write like one, to know how the parts of speech work, or where to put an apostrophe.)
Then, there's the question of fun.
There's a lot of hyperventilating about how learning should be fun, and not be about memorization... but have you ever heard a kid rattle off his favorite memorized facts about dinosaurs? Or a fantasy footballer go on about his team's stats? Heck, I think geography is useful, but to be honest, I did learn to name 197 countries in fourteen minutes for a Sporcle quiz, and I'm now in the process of learning their capitals because it's fun to know this stuff. Not everything that goes into your head has to become the subject of a soul-searching personal essay about spiritual and creative growth. Sometimes, it's just cool to know that when Krakatau blew, they heard it in Perth (much cooler when you know where Krakatau and Perth are). This is as true for little kids as it is for adults. I do geography in preschool storytime, and that particular fact is amazing to them -- it's like something blowing up here and being heard in Chicago. And, by the way, it's okay to introduce geography the same way you introduce math. You learn that 2+2=4 before you get to non-Euclidean geometry. It's okay to also learn that there are horses in Mongolia before you start debating the historical legacy of Genghis Khan.
Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a real downside to the ability to memorize facts. I've never understood the rush to denigrate it.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Mark Reads/Mark Watches
"This is something you... pay for?"
Okay, the person who said that probably had good reason for it. I mean, it sounds pretty weird. I've paid about ninety-eight cents a pop to download videos of a guy watching television. And I don't mind a bit. It entertains me, and the price isn't outlandish. Why wouldn't I pay for something that's most likely a good part of a guy's livelihood at this point? It seems fair to me, even if it's a little silly. A lot of things I enjoy are a little silly.
The guy in question is Mark Oshiro, and the site is "Mark Watches." Its companion site, Mark Reads, doesn't have paid downloads that I know of.
The basic premise is that there are certain things that Mark is unspoiled on. He watches or reads, and he reacts to it. It's a kind of strange, meta entertainment, but it is entertaining. He's recently started to work his way through Star Trek, from the beginning up to the current run of films. I've been keeping up, and honestly, I'd forgotten so much of the original series that much of it is like watching for the first time.
Why is it entertaining?
For one thing, Mark is a delightful viewing companion. He's always excited to sit down to a new episode, and he always wants to like it. This is ironic, since the whole thing started with "Mark Reads Twilight," which he hated unequivocally. But he moved on to things like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games ("I LOVE IT. Katniss, LOOK AT YOU. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. They are wonderful and I love you forever for them."), and Lord of the Rings ("THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE. HOW HAVE I SURVIVED A SINGLE MOMENT WITHOUT KNOWING TREEBIRD WAS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER THAT EXISTED? HOW HAVE I LIVED A FRUITFUL, SATISFYING EXISTENCE WITHOUT ENTS OR ENTWIVES OR ENTMAIDENS IN MY BRAIN? I HAVE NOT. MY LIFE UP UNTIL THIS MOMENT HAS BEEN POINTLESS. I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT SWIM IN NIHILISTIC FUTILITY UNTIL TREEBEARD."). He also went through complete runs on Buffy, Angel, and Sherlock, among other things.) Personally, I enjoy this sort of thing for properties I know pretty well, because suddenly, you get a whole new perspective. This thing that was totally central for me... is it something Mark even notices? Or vice versa... has he caught on something that I never noticed at all? His motto is "I am not prepared." I rarely am, either.
Another point is the community. Other people meet in the comments, talk about what they've seen. One commenter for Star Trek posts "This Week In History," to discuss whatever was happening around the time the episode airs. Using proper spoiler code (so Mark remains unspoiled), they talk about how the current storylines will play out, and whether or not it's good. It's a fun, bright community.
Anyway, I'm now off to watch Mark meet Spock's parents. (I wonder if he'll notice that Sarek is the same actor from "Balance of Terror," for whose introduction he sputtered, delighted, "It's a Spock!")
Okay, the person who said that probably had good reason for it. I mean, it sounds pretty weird. I've paid about ninety-eight cents a pop to download videos of a guy watching television. And I don't mind a bit. It entertains me, and the price isn't outlandish. Why wouldn't I pay for something that's most likely a good part of a guy's livelihood at this point? It seems fair to me, even if it's a little silly. A lot of things I enjoy are a little silly.
The guy in question is Mark Oshiro, and the site is "Mark Watches." Its companion site, Mark Reads, doesn't have paid downloads that I know of.
The basic premise is that there are certain things that Mark is unspoiled on. He watches or reads, and he reacts to it. It's a kind of strange, meta entertainment, but it is entertaining. He's recently started to work his way through Star Trek, from the beginning up to the current run of films. I've been keeping up, and honestly, I'd forgotten so much of the original series that much of it is like watching for the first time.
Why is it entertaining?
For one thing, Mark is a delightful viewing companion. He's always excited to sit down to a new episode, and he always wants to like it. This is ironic, since the whole thing started with "Mark Reads Twilight," which he hated unequivocally. But he moved on to things like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games ("I LOVE IT. Katniss, LOOK AT YOU. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. They are wonderful and I love you forever for them."), and Lord of the Rings ("THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE. HOW HAVE I SURVIVED A SINGLE MOMENT WITHOUT KNOWING TREEBIRD WAS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER THAT EXISTED? HOW HAVE I LIVED A FRUITFUL, SATISFYING EXISTENCE WITHOUT ENTS OR ENTWIVES OR ENTMAIDENS IN MY BRAIN? I HAVE NOT. MY LIFE UP UNTIL THIS MOMENT HAS BEEN POINTLESS. I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT SWIM IN NIHILISTIC FUTILITY UNTIL TREEBEARD."). He also went through complete runs on Buffy, Angel, and Sherlock, among other things.) Personally, I enjoy this sort of thing for properties I know pretty well, because suddenly, you get a whole new perspective. This thing that was totally central for me... is it something Mark even notices? Or vice versa... has he caught on something that I never noticed at all? His motto is "I am not prepared." I rarely am, either.
Another point is the community. Other people meet in the comments, talk about what they've seen. One commenter for Star Trek posts "This Week In History," to discuss whatever was happening around the time the episode airs. Using proper spoiler code (so Mark remains unspoiled), they talk about how the current storylines will play out, and whether or not it's good. It's a fun, bright community.
Anyway, I'm now off to watch Mark meet Spock's parents. (I wonder if he'll notice that Sarek is the same actor from "Balance of Terror," for whose introduction he sputtered, delighted, "It's a Spock!")
Friday, September 12, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier review
I'm just not being diligent in my reviews, am I?
Well, I haven't really been watching that much, to tell the truth. I liked the set design on the Divergent movie, but continued to be meh on the story. Didn't like the follow up to the great cliffhanger on Once Upon A Time. I've been reading some forgettable stuff, though I enjoyed a re-read of My Name Is Asher Lev.
But I totally missed Captain America this summer. I was planning to see it. Really. I liked the first one (it's actually my favorite of the origin movies), I liked The Avengers, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I like superhero movies. The more leaked out about it, though, the less interested I was, and the more I just shrugged off going.
Still, it's streaming on Amazon now. I figured I'd put up the five bucks and give it a go.
Verdict: Neither as bad as I feared, nor as good as I hoped.
Setting:
Not a major point here. In and around D.C., with the Smithsonian having a good sentimental role. We re-visit Cap's training camp, and even have a brief Brooklyn flashback. Honestly, it could take place on Mars without changing anything but the back story.
Even the question of the temporal setting, which by all rights should have been a major issue, is inexplicably ignored.
Theme:
Freedom is expensive, and you have to be willing to pay the price -- the real price, not the false price. Also, it's bad to want to be free of freedom. Simple stuff, but there's nothing wrong with a simple theme. Many of life's most important themes are the simplest. The problem is this is all wound up in a big conspiracy theory and "Trust no one" motif that... it just irks me. If it had been the first time I'd seen such a thing, maybe it would be interesting, but now, it seems like the first trick grabbed out of the hat by lazy storymakers who can't think of anything else. Maybe it was fresh once. It's not anymore. The first movie was much fresher.
Plot:
Captain America is trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. Nick Fury and SHIELD are his major touchstones, but CAN THEY BE TRUSTED??????? (See above for answer, though Nick ultimately comes around.) Peggy is still alive, though old, and thinks they need to start over. Lots of people bring up the idea of creative destruction. Black Widow is Cap's wingman, and she's awesome. (I want a Black Widow movie. ScarJo can handle the lead, people.) After an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Natasha learn that HYDRA (the Nazi corollary of SHIELD) infiltrated SHIELD at the beginning and have been running history since WWII. Because reasons. (Okay, their stated reason is that they want to free people from freedom, because free people make bad choices and aren't easy to control.) The good SHIELD people now must fight the bad SHIELD people, so that they can put up military secrets on the internet. Yes, it's as anvilicious as it sounds, and no, they do not go for subtlety in their commentary on current events. Ultimately, they become a rogue group up against the...
Oh, I'm sorry. Caught me napping. Conspiracy theories do that to me, when they're not causing actual muscle strain from all the eye rolling.
Character:
Easily, the strongest part of this movie is the character work.
When this movie was first being advertised, and I saw they were dealing with the Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier arc, I figured this would be the heart of things. It's a strong heart, and when the movie does go into this plotline, it's absolutely at its best. For me, the best scene was Bucky starting to remember who he was -- sitting there, frightened and confused, tied down by the people controlling him, just saying, "I know that man." Steve understanding that he might have to fight his friend, but wanting, more than anything, to save him. This is how you do drama, and both actors nailed it. Pleasingly, Black Widow got a mirrored storyline, where she is also dealing with her past with the bad guys, and the frightening thought that she's traded one bad guy league for another. (Honey, no, you know perfectly well that you've saved the world several times. That there are evil moles in the organization doesn't mean that what you've done for it is evil.) There's also some ship-teasing with Cap, and it works surprisingly well. I don't generally ship, but I could go for Cap/Nat. (The comics version where she had a thing with Bucky is completely binned.)
Style:
The filmmakers were going for a 70s spy movie feel, and I guess they got it, but I don't know why they'd want it. Whatever.
Boy howdy, can you tell that The Avengers' Joss Whedon wasn't part of the team. Golden jokes go uncracked. Steve's personality is all over the place. And when Natasha, after having kissed him for a cover, suggests that he hasn't been kissed since 1945, he doesn't blow it off and then say, "Actually, it was 1943." Which I literally spent the whole movie waiting for, right up until the credits rolled.
Basically, stylistically, I think they blew what was interesting in the set-up in favor of something generic and kind of dull.
So, I'll see what happens in Age of Ultron, but between this and Dark World and Agents of SHIELD, I'm not convinced that I like where the 'verse is going.
Well, I haven't really been watching that much, to tell the truth. I liked the set design on the Divergent movie, but continued to be meh on the story. Didn't like the follow up to the great cliffhanger on Once Upon A Time. I've been reading some forgettable stuff, though I enjoyed a re-read of My Name Is Asher Lev.
But I totally missed Captain America this summer. I was planning to see it. Really. I liked the first one (it's actually my favorite of the origin movies), I liked The Avengers, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I like superhero movies. The more leaked out about it, though, the less interested I was, and the more I just shrugged off going.
Still, it's streaming on Amazon now. I figured I'd put up the five bucks and give it a go.
Verdict: Neither as bad as I feared, nor as good as I hoped.
Setting:
Not a major point here. In and around D.C., with the Smithsonian having a good sentimental role. We re-visit Cap's training camp, and even have a brief Brooklyn flashback. Honestly, it could take place on Mars without changing anything but the back story.
Even the question of the temporal setting, which by all rights should have been a major issue, is inexplicably ignored.
Theme:
Freedom is expensive, and you have to be willing to pay the price -- the real price, not the false price. Also, it's bad to want to be free of freedom. Simple stuff, but there's nothing wrong with a simple theme. Many of life's most important themes are the simplest. The problem is this is all wound up in a big conspiracy theory and "Trust no one" motif that... it just irks me. If it had been the first time I'd seen such a thing, maybe it would be interesting, but now, it seems like the first trick grabbed out of the hat by lazy storymakers who can't think of anything else. Maybe it was fresh once. It's not anymore. The first movie was much fresher.
Plot:
Captain America is trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. Nick Fury and SHIELD are his major touchstones, but CAN THEY BE TRUSTED??????? (See above for answer, though Nick ultimately comes around.) Peggy is still alive, though old, and thinks they need to start over. Lots of people bring up the idea of creative destruction. Black Widow is Cap's wingman, and she's awesome. (I want a Black Widow movie. ScarJo can handle the lead, people.) After an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Natasha learn that HYDRA (the Nazi corollary of SHIELD) infiltrated SHIELD at the beginning and have been running history since WWII. Because reasons. (Okay, their stated reason is that they want to free people from freedom, because free people make bad choices and aren't easy to control.) The good SHIELD people now must fight the bad SHIELD people, so that they can put up military secrets on the internet. Yes, it's as anvilicious as it sounds, and no, they do not go for subtlety in their commentary on current events. Ultimately, they become a rogue group up against the...
Oh, I'm sorry. Caught me napping. Conspiracy theories do that to me, when they're not causing actual muscle strain from all the eye rolling.
Character:
Easily, the strongest part of this movie is the character work.
When this movie was first being advertised, and I saw they were dealing with the Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier arc, I figured this would be the heart of things. It's a strong heart, and when the movie does go into this plotline, it's absolutely at its best. For me, the best scene was Bucky starting to remember who he was -- sitting there, frightened and confused, tied down by the people controlling him, just saying, "I know that man." Steve understanding that he might have to fight his friend, but wanting, more than anything, to save him. This is how you do drama, and both actors nailed it. Pleasingly, Black Widow got a mirrored storyline, where she is also dealing with her past with the bad guys, and the frightening thought that she's traded one bad guy league for another. (Honey, no, you know perfectly well that you've saved the world several times. That there are evil moles in the organization doesn't mean that what you've done for it is evil.) There's also some ship-teasing with Cap, and it works surprisingly well. I don't generally ship, but I could go for Cap/Nat. (The comics version where she had a thing with Bucky is completely binned.)
Style:
The filmmakers were going for a 70s spy movie feel, and I guess they got it, but I don't know why they'd want it. Whatever.
Boy howdy, can you tell that The Avengers' Joss Whedon wasn't part of the team. Golden jokes go uncracked. Steve's personality is all over the place. And when Natasha, after having kissed him for a cover, suggests that he hasn't been kissed since 1945, he doesn't blow it off and then say, "Actually, it was 1943." Which I literally spent the whole movie waiting for, right up until the credits rolled.
Basically, stylistically, I think they blew what was interesting in the set-up in favor of something generic and kind of dull.
So, I'll see what happens in Age of Ultron, but between this and Dark World and Agents of SHIELD, I'm not convinced that I like where the 'verse is going.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)