Divergent book review

I've learned a couple of lessons about popularity and books over the  years.

The first is that popular doesn't always equal good.   Pretty much everyone realizes this the first time they re-visit a book they just loved when all of their friends were reading it, and it turns out to be... um...  not quite as good as remembered.  And some books are popular, as far as I can tell, because they're so horrendously bad.  It's like watching a train wreck.

The second lesson is that popular doesn't always equal bad.  When Harry Potter was first coming out, I stuck my nose in the air, because I couldn't figure out why kids were reading that instead of decent fantasy, like Tolkien or Lewis.  Hint: Because it's good.  Really good.  Now, seven years after the last one came out, it still has a solid audience.  The Hunger Games books are also really good -- yes, the Games  parts are as violent and soul-destroying as advertised (so is Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books and the one I always flash on first with THG), but that's the point.  What HG really is, is an indictment of soul-numbing culture, and a celebration (which isn't really the right word in context) of the power to reshape it.  It's a narrative about narrative, and it's uncomfortable to read in the very best way.

I had to finally read Divergent so I could do a program on it.  I was hoping that it would be more like the latter than the former -- that as soon as I started reading it, I'd say, "Oh, so that's why everyone's nuts about this book!"   Not so much.

Divergent has been compared to The Hunger Games, and the movie is certainly being marketed to the HG audience (so were the books, with their round-symbol covers).  Here's what they have in common: Geographically specific American dystopia.  Female lead.  Really, that's it.  It's really much more closely related to Harry Potter, with dystopian future Chicago standing in for Hogwarts and factions standing in for the Houses (Dauntless and Abnegation=Gryffindor, Erudite=Ravenclaw, Amity=Hufflepuff).  It seems to be a sort of long argument with the Sorting Hat, using the common fandom argument about whether or not sorting the  Houses by personality is a good idea.  Spoiler: the  author doesn't think so, and in fact ratchets the argument up a lot by making the factions into the worst possible version of the Houses.  The "Divergent," who don't fit into any class, seem to be the "they'll do what's needed to win" fandom version of Slytherin.  I'm not sure on Candor.

This isn't to say it's a bad book.  It's not.  There's nothing wrong with playing with ideas you pick  up from other sources and re-combining them.  That's how new things get created.  The serial numbers aren't as expertly removed as I'd like, but I can't say I'd do any better at it.   People who've heard my fannish rants would probably recognize them right away in an original story, too.

My issue with Divergent is that it never really "woke  up" for me.  Presumably, it does for other people.  But I don't find its argument very interesting or compelling -- I was never interested in the Sorting Hat argument in HP, either -- and I couldn't keep the characters straight right away, which tends to irritate me.  As a lead character, Tris had some potential, and the conflict between her Abnegation tendencies and her Dauntless tendencies (self-sacrificial courage vs. reckless courage) was interesting, but the points she wrestled with that were the only ones that really sparked.  More to the point, I can't figure out why she was attracted to Dauntless in the first place.  It didn't really fit with anything other than, "Because I said so," which doesn't tend to work.  Her love interest, Tobias -- whose real identity was hidden for half the book with all the subtlety an elephant on my patio -- is a thundering bore.

One of the reasons it's hard to keep track of the characters is that they all have roughly the same speech patterns.  I had to check up the page several times to see who was supposed to be talking.  I like dialogue best when you can leave it untagged for a page or so without confusing the reader.

The main plot, with the Erudite faction trying to get the Dauntless to kill the Abnegation because they wanted control of the government (Tris, being a Divergent, is able to resist their mind control)... it's just sort of... there.  Unlike the  bizarre satire of real government in HP, or the warped government of The Hunger Games, we don't get a sense of how the government operates in the first place, so a  hostile takeover doesn't feel very vital, except insofar as we know, from external input, that it's most likely a bad idea.   We know this mostly because we're told that the people trying to take over are the bad guys, as opposed being the noble rebels.   It's not enough to really  make me care about the main action.  During the final battle, I took a break to check Facebook and do a little Wiki-walking on TV Tropes.  Then I played with the cat, checked comments on a story, then went back and read a few more pages, got distracted again, then finally finished.

Maybe it's me.  It could be.

The point is, I've certainly read worse books.  (Though some of them are well-reviewed and have prizes, so again, maybe it's me.)  There's nothing specifically wrong with Divergent, and I'll  read the sequels (I caught up on the spoilers, so I'll have the requisite knowledge for the program).  It's just the third lesson about popularity and books:

Sometimes, it means "meh."

Once Upon A Time review, with predictions

When Once  Upon A Time premiered, I watched the first three episodes.  I missed the fourth, and promptly forgot the thing existed.  (Am I the only one who misses water cooler shows that everyone watches and talks about?  I tend to forget things exist on a regular basis if no one else is talking about them with me.)

At any rate, I forgot about OUaT, but I got bored over the holidays and went looking for something to watch on  Netflix streaming.  They suggested OUaT, and I reached back into the mists of my memory and said, "Oh, yeah.  I remember thinking that might be pretty good."

For those who don't know, the basic premise is that most fairy tales exist in the same continuum -- a realm called The Enchanted Forest -- and Snow White's stepmother, the Evil Queen, decides to get her happy ending by exiling everyone, sans memories, to our world, where there's no magic.  This curse is designed by Rumpelstiltskin, who has his own reasons for wanting to come.  She creates the town of Storybrooke in Maine (really, and obviously, Vancouver... is it THAT expensive to film in Maine, people?), where she is mayor, and the other fairy tale characters are  trapped in a joyless, endless loop, where time never passes.

Before this happened, Snow White and Prince Charming had a baby daughter named Emma, and they saved her from the curse by sending her ahead of it in an enchanted cabinet made by Gepetto.  She is destined to save them all on her 28th birthday.  The show opens on that birthday, with a little boy, adopted by the evil queen (and the only person in Storybrooke who ages), showing up on her doorstep, identifying himself as the child she gave  up for adoption.  As things work in a fairy tale universe, she goes back with him and eventually breaks the curse (the kiss of true love -- of a mother for her child -- does the trick). The show keep going after this, and gets much more interesting, in my opinion.

Whew.  That's just the premise.  It's a little dense.

But really, despite the complicated mechanisms of the plot, the story is pretty simple: It's about repairing shattered families.  In this version, Snow White once did love her stepmother, but a terrible event broke that relationship up.  Rumpelstiltskin is cursed with evil immortality because he tried to save his son (who -- spoiler -- is the father of Emma's child), and then lost the same son because of a magical separation.  Snow and Charming never got to raise their infant daughter, who grew up feeling abandoned, no  matter how altruistic the reasoning.  Everything in the show that matters comes back to that refrain, and it's handled really well.

The performances are first rate, and have to be to sell the material.  (Jennifer Morrison should get an award for being able to deliver the following line  like it's a serious, melodramatic soap opera event: "You left me!  You left me and let me go to prison... because Pinnochio told you to?"  Seriously, how many takes did she need not to crack the hell up every time she tried to say it?)  The standout is Robert Carlyle's Rumpelstiltskin, but no one slacks off.

Things I really like:
Emma's son, Henry, may go through phases where he's angry at his adoptive mother -- not for nothing is she called the Evil Queen -- but he doesn't stop loving her or considering her his mom, even when he gets his birth parents back.

When Henry finds out that Emma lied to him about who his father was, he is ROYALLY PISSED OFF.  She doesn't get off the hook for it, and shouldn't.  The father is also less than pleased that this minor detail of his life had been withheld from him.  (This is followed by the spectacle of Emma and Rumpelstiltskin bonding over being shut out.  It's kind of nice.)  I was seriously expecting the show to blow this off and treat the lie as unimportant, or worse, perfectly in bounds of reasonable behavior. Instead, Emma gets seriously called out by everyone.  They forgive her, but no one treats it as anything but a really bad call.

Evil Peter Pan.  Who is part of the extended family, FWIW.   Robbie Kay is fantastically creepy in the part.  Colin O'Donoghue as Hook is also very good, though I have issues with the way the character is used.

The Evil Queen (Regina, by name) is given a sympathetic back story, but it doesn't negate the evil things she does.  In the fabulous mid-season closer, she finally understands exactly what she's done, and instead of trying to explain it away, she takes responsibility and makes the sacrifice she needs to make to save everyone.  It's a nice character arc.  (You can see the season ending cliffhanger here, for a few more weeks, anyway.)

Rumpelstiltskin is just a great villain -- his evil deeds aren't whitewashed, either, but you can also completely buy his decent actions as of a piece with everything that's been shown.  He's wonderfully written as well as wonderfully acted.  I love the use of the spinning wheel as a literal thread of continuity in his life, from his childhood all the way to the present.  It's also a nice nod to the Fates, which he, in essence, operates as.

Things I don't care much about:
Belle.  She's okay, but I think they went a step to far in making Rumpelstiltskin the beast and having the whole love story.  I guess it makes sense enough in context, and the actors sell it, but I could certainly live without it.

Love triangle with Emma, Baelfire (Rumpelstiltskin's son and Henry's father), and Hook.  That's almost in "I really don't like it" territory, but if I wasted energy actively disliking every unnecessary love triangle I run across,  I'd be very tired.  As it is,  I just want them to hurry up and get it over with. (Not one way or another.  I'm strongly in the Baelfire camp.)   All the people are appealing, and Colin O'Donoghue is really REALLY easy on the eyes, but... really?  In a show this focused on repairing a broken family, I'm supposed to be consumed with conflict about this silly thing?

Side characters like Ruby (Red Riding Hood) or Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel.  They're fine, but their focus episodes don't seem to bring much to the table.

The Disney versions used.  Eh, whatever.  I could deal with any version, and the Disney version allows commentary without extra explanation.

Mulan is in love with Aurora.  They should have done it the other way.

Things I really don't like:
Frankenstein... you just don't fit.  Bad fit altogether.

There were several times I felt like I must have missed a major episode, because characters were now acting on important motivations that seemed like they'd gotten new information... but when I go back and watch the episodes, there's not so much explanation given.

Umm... that's pretty much it.

Anyway, the mid-season break ends on March 9.

My theories:

Bae will have gotten in trouble with magic.
Regina's story arc will come to an end (she doesn't have much else left to do)
Snow and Charming will have another child, and enough time will have passed for the child to participate in the plots.
Henry will have a plot to himself that doesn't involve being saved from someone.
There will be more Robin Hood?
The producers have said that one of the characters will die.  Plotwise, my money is on Regina (like I said, not much further to take her arc), but I think O'Donoghue lives in Ireland and has a family there, and might well not want to be roped in as a permanent part of the show, so Hook is also a major possibility.
We know they're bringing in Oz's wicked witch as the new Big Bad.  She's somehow summoned by Rumpelstiltskin's sacrifice? Don't know.

Man of Steel review

I like superhero movies.  Maybe it's a flaw; I don't know. But I like them.  I like their fairly clear-cut battles, and I like their inevitable -- required -- exploration of what it means to be a hero.  Sure, the heroes are outsized, but that's because the issues are put under a huge magnifying glass.  Also, because it's more fun that way.  I like a movie with lots of action, lots of heart, and the bad guys getting pounded in the end, after a challenging struggle.  It's old fashioned, and, to paraphrase my favorite line in The Avengers, sometimes you need a little old-fashioned.  Or low-brow, if you you'd rather.  I'm fine with being low-brow.

I'm not big on the comics they come from, honestly -- too many years, and too much grasping at plot straws to keep the story going.  I think the films tend to distill it more and make it more powerful.

I was late to the party with Man of Steel.  I'm not even sure how it did at the box office -- I know I didn't hear a soul talking about it, but it seems like people don't talk about movies as much as they used to.  I've seen the Nolan Dark Knight movies, and thought they were an interestingly somber take on the subject, but I don't love them.  They were smart, but a little cold.  I was curious as to what they'd do with the narmiest of all superheroes, Superman.  Answer?  Smart, but more than a little cold, and not just because a lot of it was set in the Arctic.  It was like trying to have a conversation with a well-designed computer that doesn't exactly grok what it's talking about.

So, breaking it down:

Setting
Unlike most Superman movies I've seen, there isn't much focus on setting.  We open on Krypton (now mined to oblivion), then there's the middle of ocean, then flashbacks to Smallville, then the Arctic, then a little bit of Metropolis, then a dirt road somewhere, then a spaceship, then... and so on.  All of the places had a certain generic flavor to them... including the spaceship, for heaven's sake.  There's a neat metal-based technology for visual broadcast, but that's just a special effect.  It's hard to feel bad when the Kent house is smashed up, because, well... we haven't been there, not really.

Theme
The savior as outcast, same as the Dark Knight theme.  It works, to some extent, but seems an odd choice of conflict, given the decision for the focus of the plot (the quest for the genetic legacy of all Krypton, encoded in Kal-El's cells).  With Superman, there's an automatic foundling plot in any version, and this one does in fact call upon him to choose between Krypton and Earth... only he hasn't really bonded with either, at least not on screen, so the only way to get the inner conflict is to sit there and add up the elements, create the inner conflict for yourself (because of course, that's what it would feel like), then try to match it to what's going on.  (In other words, of course we know that it would have to be a huge decision between your extinct homeworld and your adoptive world -- how could it not be? -- but the movie takes no time to actually establish it before the choice is on Kal-El.)

Plot
It's the General Zod plot (Kryptonian war criminal seeks out escapee Kal-El).  It's added to some genetic engineering, species superiority, and an attempt at forced terraforming, or Kryptoforming, as the case happens to be.  It was a decent plot, and it provided Superman with a reasonable foe (Lex  Luthor is almost always laughable).  It just seemed more like the plot of a second movie -- not because it was the second of the Reeves movies, but for the reason it was the second of the Reeves movies: It's a dense plot that suffers when it's trying to co-exist with an origin story.

There's one dropped plot point that's under my skin, even though I guess it shouldn't be.  And it's not so much a plot point as... well.  Just before the death of Jonathan Kent, the family is on the road and arguing about Clark's future.  Clark demeans the farming the family has been doing... right before a tragedy.  That's set up to be significant.  During the battle with Zod, Zod taunts Clark with his farm upbringing, which seems set up to somehow reference that.  But if there's some pay off to it, I completely missed it.  Nothing Clark does in that battle really showcases what he might have learned on the farm.  (This is partly because WE DON'T SEE HIM LIVING ON THE FARM.  You put the gun over the damned mantel, people.  FIRE IT. Ahem.)

Character
I think Nolan's strength is doing intellectually interesting things with the characters, even if they never quite emotionally connect.  Clark trying not to hit a bully, Jonathan Kent's kind of fanatic attempt to keep Clark's abilities secret, that sort of thing.  Dropping the whole "triangle" with Clark-Lois-Superman was refreshing; it's usually pretty frustrating when she has no clue.  And whoa!  They showed her being a reporter and tracking him down.  Lois was my hands-down favorite improvement here.  She's smart, level-headed, and quick to adjust to upsetting circumstances.  Three cheers for updating a character who always had a tendency to be a little annoying.

Also, a very strong point was Clark's grief at having to kill his enemy.  That's a very real character moment.

Style
Where do you go with style on these?  I think I can safely say that stylistically, I am just not a fan of this filmmaker, but a lot of people are.  There's not much to be said on the subject of differing tastes and expectations.  I don't like weird lighting and grimy colors.

The one thing I will say about the movie in terms of style that I think genuinely didn't work -- as opposed to me just not being crazy about it -- was the non-linear storytelling.  Non-lin can be made to work, but it didn't here. The Smallville part of the Superman story is important in establishing the character, and here, it's dropped in with such random dribs and drabs, often interrupting the action, that the character never gets established.  Sure, you can say that everyone knows the Superman mythos and it doesn't need to be re-hashed.  Except that we don't know that they plan on keeping the character intact.  We have to see it.  Every time you're making a fresh version,  the audience assumes that the rules might well change.

Shrug.

It was okay.  I'm not in a rush to go see the sequel (as opposed to my anticipation of The Winter Soldier), but I'll probably remember that it's been out, once it's been out, and check it out on Netflix or Amazon Instant.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters review

Sigh.

I don't often sit down to watch movies that I know are going to annoy me.  I really don't.  But I was bored.  So I did.

I was annoyed.

The Percy Jackson series of books by Rick Riordan is a clever, interesting, and often fairly nuanced story that features the gods of Olympus in the modern world (hey, they're immortal, so why wouldn't they be around?).  They behave in quite mythologically recognizable ways, right down to the rather common habit of sleeping around with mortal women and creating half-blood heroes.  Percy Jackson is one of these heroes, the son of Poseidon.  We meet him at twelve, and stay with him through his sixteenth birthday, which takes place in The Last Olympian, one of the best story wrap-ups I've seen in these lengthy series.  So many series drop the ball and get weird or go off on un-set-up tangents (I'm looking at you, Dark Tower and Harry Potter).  But Riordan hits the target dead on, bringing in all the things he's brought up, working it into an interesting and emotionally satisfying climax that not only fulfills the plot, but nails down the theme.

But that's neither here nor there, since I'm not reviewing the books.  I am reviewing the movies that someone put the name of the books on.

I'm not talking about some minor tinkering that would only annoy hardcore fen.  The first movie, The Lightning Thief, had an entirely different plot from the book... and started Percy as a high school senior.  Now, I admit, I only went up through undergrad levels of developmental psych, but I'm pretty sure that a senior in high school is not going to behave in the same manner as a twelve year old, even if the plot calls for it.  In the process of this contrived new plot with same name (but totally different) characters, they also managed to forget to build in the things needed for the rest of the movies.  I remember thinking, "Well, at least they can't do any more damage."

Remind me not to tempt fate.

They managed to not only screw up the book canon, but to somehow or other mangle the internal movie canon further by trying to retcon things they needed into it.

Oh, and they also managed to soft-pedal things so much so that the book -- which was aimed at a younger audience (presumably, they made the characters teenagers to attract the older kids) -- was edgier than the movie they made from it.

I can't blame the actors.  I won't say the "young actors," because, though they are all playing teenagers, they are clearly twenty-something adults.  They do what they can with some utterly wretched dialogue.  (Definition of screenwriting FAIL: The dialogue would have been better if it had just been copy-pasted from the book.)  And hey,  nothing wrong with moving Anthony Head into the role of a hero's mentor, or Stanley Tucci as the god of wine (who manages to crack the one actually funny joke in the movie).  Nathan Fillion manages to get across at least some of the concern that Hermes is supposed to show for his son Luke, even though the movie inexplicably skips the fact that HE SENT PERCY IN THE FIRST PLACE.

So I blame absolutely nothing on the actors.  The wretchedness of this adaptation is squarely on the heads of the behind-the-scenes people.  The casting director.  The producers.  And whoever may have cobbled together that "script."

Whenever people want to defend unfaithful adaptations, they love to say, "It's not about getting the exact text on screen, it's about capturing the spirit of the book!"  Fine.  I'll give you that.  Obviously, adaptations can't have everything.  Though, oddly, I find that the spirit is often caught better if the end product somewhat resembles the beginning product.

Sea of Monsters doesn't even make an attempt to capture the "spirit."  In fact, like Lightning Thief, it manages to entirely miss the point.  A major theme in SoM was the characters learning about their fatal flaws.  Annabeth faces her hubris, Percy, his impulsiveness, Clarisse, her pride.  Luke has already failed once against his wrath. A major theme in the movie is learning that they're good enough, they're smart enough, and doggonit, people like them.  No, really, I'm serious.  They INVERTED THE THEME.  There was a major undercurrent in the book as well about what  heroes mean.  Chiron tells Percy that, as children of earth and heaven, heroes join the hopes of man to the realm of the immortals.  The movie?  Again, not so much.  The producers seem deeply uncomfortable with the philosophical underpinning of the stories.  The prophecy that drives much of the series is given, but then for some reason, a series based on Greek mythology decides that the important thing is to ignore the prophecy.  This is a thing that happened in this movie.  Because it's so totally in tune with the classical worldview espoused by the books. [/sarcasm mode]

And shall we talk dumbed down?  Again, recall that the movie is aiming for an older age group.  The book has a whole sequence -- which occurs before any explanation is given -- where Annabeth uses Odysseus's tactics against Polyphemus, telling him that "nobody" is back to torment him again.  Percy is able to sneak out under a sheep.  The references to the Odyssey are fast and furious.  At one point, in the lair of Circe, Percy is turned into a guinea pig.  The movie has Clarisse, daughter of Ares, mention that a boulder might by the one Polyphemus used to block off the entrance, and then it's dropped.  Really, it is.  I'm not making this up.  They're going through the flipping sea of monsters, dealing with Charybdis, fighting Polyphemus, and they managed to do it without a single wink and nod to the master.  The movie people assume the audience is much dumber than Rick Riordan assumes.

As a librarian, I can tell you... Riordan is closer to the mark.  Kids who read these books turn around and snap up mythology like crazy, and then get even more of what's going on.

And then, there are just the inexplicable things.  Why is there an amusement park on Polyphemus's island, name-checking Circe?  It has nothing to do with the Circe episode in the book, which is skipped entirely, or with the Circe mythology.  It's just there.  Doing a big fat nothing.  It doesn't even make for especially interesting visuals.  There's the decision to have Posiedon, Hades, and Zeus all have escaped Kronos's cannibalistic spree, and Poseidon killed him with the blade he gave Percy, none of which makes sense in the story, or in mythology.  And, by the way, Scylla and Charybdis, in this movie, are not anywhere near each other.  Do they really think viewers don't even know that much mythology?  Plus, better visual!  And what's with needing a satyr to sniff out the Golden Fleece?  Where on earth does that come from, and how in the world does it make sense?  This is where reading the book would have been helpful to the screenwriters, since it has a much more sensible explanation of why Grover is on that island.

I do not understand the choices made by the people who bought this property.  All of the books are pretty good movie length, the material lends itself to quotable quotes and funny scenes, there's plenty of action, and plenty of chances for good heartwarming moments and Dumbledore-explains-it-all moments.  They could have picked actors like the Potter franchise did and let them grow up with the characters.

Instead... this.

:grinds teeth:

Boredom and an insomnia lead to bad movie-watching decisions.  That's the only theme I got out of this evening's viewing.

Catching Fire Review

I am a big fan of the Hunger Games trilogy, and I know the books quite well. The first book didn't catch me quite as much as the second -- it was after I read Catching Fire that I just couldn't put the things down. Spoilers, as always.

That said, the trilogy should have been a pentalogy. The first book was beautifully self-contained and had exactly the right length for the right material. The latter two (though in many ways superior) are each two books crammed into single volumes, in order to arbitrarily make a trilogy. Catching Fire is the story of Katniss learning about her world through the Victory Tour and the invasion of District Twelve by Thread, then it is the story of the second Quarter Quell. Mockingjay is the story of the build-up to the Revolution and the awful truth of Katniss's situation, and then it is the story of the war. There are even sensible break-points in both books -- the announcement of the Quarter Quell should have finished book 2, the end of CF was good for book 3, book 4 should have ended with -- well, to avoid spoilers, the return of Peeta, and then the remainder should have been book 5. Tell the truth and shame the devil: The pacing was off because of the decision to make it a trilogy.

The movies have wisely chosen to split Mockingjay. They should have done the same with Catching Fire.

I'm not saying I didn't fully enjoy it. As a reader, I could fill in the blanks of what was going on. The performances are much better the second time around (and they didn't start out shabby). There are some quite beautiful touches, and I would see it again in a heartbeat. It's just that the flaw of the novel is really amplified here.

So, review by elements:

Theme:
The theme of Catching Fire -- the cost of rebellion -- is decently addressed. Snow's threat to District Twelve, the riot in Eleven, the implied riots elsewhere... this is serious stuff. Snow's understanding of how Katniss functions, and the series-arc theme about the power of the media are caught very well. No complaints thematically. Nice work.

Plot:
As I mentioned in the intro, Catching Fire has two separate plots. The movie covers both of them. The first is Katniss's realization, in the course of the victory tour, that she has become a symbol of defiance, that she and Peeta are both trapped in the roles they created for themselves. This is in contrast with her relationship with Gale at home, which always served as a comfort for her. This part of the plot is kept, but its mirror plot, of her growing relationship with Peeta, gets something of a short shrift, probably because they figured he was the star of the second plot. The second plot is the Quarter Quell, in which the tributes are drawn from among existing victors, thereby sending both Katniss and Peeta back into the arena, where each one plans to die for the other. Problem? No time was really taken to establish why. More later.

Setting:
There are a lot of interesting points to the setting. You can certainly see where the extra money went (though it didn't go for night filters or decent night lighting -- the lighting in the scene at midnight is atrocious, people). Oahu made for a fine arena. The Capitol is great. The districts continued and expanded the take from the first movie. This isn't a complaint so much as just an apparently radically different reading of the setting between me and the set designers, but I don't understand the urban look of both D12 and D11. These are small town and rural areas, as I understand it. It wasn't a big platform in Eleven, but part of the Justice Building called "the Verandah." It's meant to evoke the old south, for obvious reasons. District Twelve is a small town, with a square that even Katniss describes in the books as "pleasant." Both were interpreted in the first film (and continued here) with a sort of industrial junkiness to them. Did the set designers maybe think that an audience couldn't put the pieces together that the place could be pleasant looking and still dirt poor and oppressed? Shrug. Minor quibble.

Character:
I'll get to the flaws in the "Style" section, but I have to take a minute to praise the performances here. Every actor hits dead on with the characters, whenever they're given a chance. (The only misstep was with Mrs. Everdeen being freaked out at injured Gale. She's a weak person, but she's supposed to find her strength when someone is hurt. This is not the fault of the actress, and it gave Willow Shields a chance to shine as Prim. But it was baffling, conceptually.) Woody Harrelson again knocks it out of the park as Haymitch. Granted, they should have dyed his hair because of the social situation in Twelve (blondes belong to the merchant class, rather than Haymitch's Seam background), but I'll forgive just about any random detail for the way he completely inhabits this character. If this weren't a big budget blockbuster, I'd think he was a shoo-in for an award. Alas, it is a big budget blockbuster (science fiction, no less), so he'll have to settle for the fat paycheck he amply earns with it. Only two actors (Gale and Prim) look like my mental versions, anyway. It's not an actor's job to look the role, but to play it. Jennifer Lawrence gets the confusion and fear in Katniss very nicely, while never compromising her strength as the protagonist. She doesn't show one second's doubt that she is the heroine of the piece. Josh Hutcherson seems more comfortable in Peeta's shoes this time. And Elizabeth Banks as Effie? Gold star for the team. She really manages to convey the duality of the character (an extremely nice woman who is the harbinger of extremely horrible things).

And then, there is the cast of thousands. Once we get to the Quarter Quell, we're introduced to the characters who will be vital for the rest of the series. Finnick, Johanna, and Beetee will continue on, and I like the performances just fine. Jena Malone manages to get Johanna across with very little screen time. Jeffrey Wright impressed me particularly in Beetee's interview scene, where he managed to respond to Stanley Tucci's Caesar with almost no dialogue and face acting that implies everything. Sam Claflin's initial introduction -- the famed "Sugar cube?" scene -- was a little flubbed in the direction, but Claflin brings it in the arena. (For those complaining that he just looks "too young" to be the most beautiful man in Panem... guys, the actor is five years older than the character, and the character is a great favorite of people who fawned over him at the age of fourteen, and did worse to him because of it later on. If he looked one second older, he'd have aged out of the part.)

There's not much to complain about in terms of the characters, except that we didn't get enough of any of them to really give a damn if we hadn't already read the book. Which brings us to...

Style:
Two words: SLOW DOWN.

Seriously, I know that a huge number of the people seeing the movie have read the book and can fill in, but even with that knowledge going for me, the whipsawing from one thing to another was too much. There wasn't time to care about anything!

I know I'm generally a canon purist -- to the point where film students who think it's their right... nay, responsibility... to "interpret" a book until it's unrecognizable think I need to be shouted down -- but come on. Even I admit that there are things you can do in narrative that you just can't do on film. One of those things is glossing over events.

In narrative, you can give the emotional reactions to people and situations as the character experiences them. You can take a second to flash back, or give outside information. In a movie, you are utterly dependent on scenes. These narrative breaks can also give a sense of time passing, of feelings growing. So the two halves of the book, already rushed in narrative, become breathless and herky-jerky on film. With no dramatic depiction, you have no idea why (or even that) Katniss cares enough about Peeta that the first thing she does when she comes to her senses is to go to Haymitch and say that Peeta has to be saved. One moment of her seeing that he's decent and kind in Eleven does not do the trick, especially since the last film short-shrifted the iconic Boy With the Bread scene. All you have is Haymitch saying, "Yup, he's a good guy and totally better than us." That doesn't work. It wasn't sacrificed in favor of Gale, either, since Gale gets about the same amount of time, ultimately. No one gets a lot of time because, even clocking in at two and a half hours, there is not time to get to know anyone.

There is also no time for world building. In film, you can take some shortcuts, because you don't have to pause to describe. But since D13 was glossed over in the first one, a brief mention of it by Snow isn't enough to build up the surprise at the end that they're heading for D13... by then, so much has happened that there's no way that made any kind of emotional impression. You needed that scene with the runaways from Eight, to establish that there is such a place, and that it might well still be there, and then you need Haymitch denying that it could be there. You need something. You have to have some hint that Snow hates Haymitch, and who Haymitch really is, for the end to come off believable, and, just as important, to give some historical depth to the created world.

And then, the cast of thousands. These people are critical to the remainder of the story, but the shorthand here doesn't make the grade. The actors do well with what they're given, but they're not given much. There's no breathing space. Jena Malone comes off best because Johanna is a character that doesn't waste any time with niceties, so she comes off as reasonably Johanna-like. She even gets a brief extra line (proving that world-building can be quick and efficient) about how there would even be rioting in the streets of the Capitol -- a fine look at some of what's coming. But even the main characters, the ones with all the screen time, are getting pushed from scene to scene. The scene of Katniss and Peeta's kiss on the beach, a hugely important scene in terms of the characters, is well played in it's half-length form, but because we haven't seen what's going on with Katniss, because we haven't seen the way they've grown genuinely close, it just rushes through like everything else. She needs him? Since when in the film's narrative? (Yes, those of us who've read the book can probably quote her inner monologue -- "I realize that if Peeta died, only one person would be damaged beyond repair -- me" -- but there's not even time to mentally fill it in.)

So, yes, stylistically speaking, this movie should have ended with the announcement of the Quarter Quell, with the Victory Tour and the drama of the building rebellion as the main theme, with the next movie picking up immediately and heading into the Quell itself. Then there would have been time to do it properly.

However, they chose what they chose. I don't mean to sound like they didn't do a fabulous job with the road they did decide to take. It's just that I wish they hadn't decided to take the ten lane, eighty-mile-an-hour freeway that breezes past most of the world.

Anyway, there's a fan film out there that does a good job with Haymitch's Quell. Let's just say this is it, and call it good.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I'm curious about Agents of SHIELD. I've been watching it. I like it all right. I want to like it more, but something just isn't clicking for me.

It's not that I don't like the MCU, and Joss Whedon's sense for dialogue is always great. The plots are solid. Whedon hasn't gone for the annoying and obvious choices (OMG, SHIELD is really bad guys! Even when he let his characters leave with that idea on their minds, he makes clear to the audience that it's not the case) Some nice, complicated questions. Good performances all around. Not so tied up in its arc that it's inaccessible to the non-fanatic.

So why am I not obsessed with this show? It's got almost everything that I like.

Some of it may fix itself as the writers become more accustomed to the characters. It happens.

I think for me, the problem is that they seem to be interested in the two characters -- Ward and Skye -- who hold ZERO interest for me. Everyone else, I sort of like. I adore Fitz-Simmons. Coulson's awesome. May is awesome (hey, she's freaking MULAN). But you have all of these pretty interesting folk, and attention ends up going to... Riley Finn and Kennedy, from Buffy. Except that I actually sort of liked Riley, in a secondary role and before they started messing with him so there was an excuse to take him off the show. Not that they're the same characters, though Ward obviously has some spiritual ancestry with the Initiative. Just... two characters that the producers are trying really hard to sell, and the sale is not going through. No matter how much fake implied drama there is, they're just huge energy-sucks every time they're on screen, and they tend to make the episodes lose momentum. It's not the actors, it's the characters.

Guys, you can do better. Ward's salvageable, if given someone else to interact with. Ditch Skye. You don't have to go full-on Riley with her and make her do things that are obnoxious and repugnant for an excuse. Just have her flunk out of training. Change her mind. Give a heroic sacrifice moment. Whatever. Introduce someone new. You're supposed to be on the lookout for people with superpowers. How about someone with such a lame superpower that it never makes a difference, except in minor creature comforts, but puts her on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar anyway? You could get some comedic traction with it. Or maybe bring back Akela. Or find someone interesting on an away mission. Or send in the daughter of one of those people Nick Fury answers to. (Or maybe one of them themselves is young enough to appeal to the planned demographic.)

Anyway, that's where I am with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. It's workable. I like it whenever it's not paying attention to the energy-sucks. Please let them suck less.

Placemaking

I've been interested in placemaking for a while now -- pretty much since I read The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg back in the '90s. Something about the idea of a place where everyone belonged equally (hence my gratuitous Cheers music link) appealed to me as a shy girl who has trouble meeting anyone -- the thought that there was someplace where it's natural to just run into people... that seemed wonderful. The more I read, the more I liked it. Public spaces really are the backbone of a community, and I don't think it's possible to deny that. Modern architecture and design have often ignored people for the sake of intellectualism. (Case in point, the Johnson building of the BPL. Surrounded by forbidding plinths, windows barred up like prison cells... very bad connection to the McKim building, and a terrible, street-stopping face on Boylston... until you get to McKim, with its wide porch and wrap-around bench.)

You can see the way people straighten their shoulders and perk up in a good space, and the way bad spaces seem to weigh people down.

You can see where it becomes very difficult to know your neighbors when neighborhoods are mowed down in favor of some city planner's notion.

You can see the way fast-running roads cut people off... look at Albuquerque, with six lane freeways running at around 45 mph (official 40 mph) passing for city streets, nothing in walking distance, no little grocery stores, just supermarkets. There aren't even a lot of cheap bodegas in some neighborhoods. Going out means planning it -- driving, parking, figuring out what to do with your vehicle should you join other friends somewhere else. And if you're planning to have a drink or two, arranging for a driver. There are parks with nothing particular to do in them. Usually, there's a play area, but it's carefully noted as for children only, and there's nothing for adults -- no fountains, no food carts, no little knick-knack booths (I got some cute things for my hair at Boston Common, down by Park Street station, and some jewelry, too.) No one is ever there giving a random soapbox sermon to comment on, or a fun street performance. Walking down the street, except in very select neighborhoods, you're not likely to spot something and think, on the spur of the moment, "That sounds fun. I'll do that." There don't need to be "no loitering" signs -- it's implicit.

Only, we need places to loiter. It's important to have places to loiter, to meet with people, to enjoy a spontaneous moment. Somehow, this was forgotten in the midst of a lot of very bad top-down urban planning in the 60s and 70s.

So, I became interested in placemaking.

Today, I linked from the Project for Public Spaces website to a white paper from MIT, which says, "As the cases in this paper demonstrate, today’s placemaking addresses challenges such as rising obesity rates, shrinking cities, and climate change, to name a few."

It took me a while to figure out why this was bothering me so much. I've even thought some of these things. (My personal opinion is that supermarkets are more responsible for our bad diet than McDonalds -- when you go to a place that isn't worth going into if you're shopping for less than a week at a time, you're going to get things that are stuffed with preservatives, so it doesn't go bad on you.) But it finally dawned on me.

This new placemaking is a warmed-over version of the top-down urban planning that got us into trouble in the first place. It's not meant to ease something that people already want and are missing (someplace where everybody knows their name). It's designed to MAKE PEOPLE THINK AND BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY. It's starting with the premise of changing the people in a community.

I don't necessarily think any of the goals is a bad thing. Some, I think are very good things. But they are not things you can impose. It's one thing to add a bike path because you have a lot of people in the city who want to bike a lot. It's another to add a bike path in order to make more people want to bike a lot. It's a great goal, but it's not the business of... well, anyone... to decide, "This is the way the people here should think, so we'll keep at them until they think that way." Look, I like advertising. I really do -- it's kind of the psy-ops department of the commercial and government world -- but be honest when you're advertising something. Make commercials. Make PSAs. (The Australian government managed to make one that went viral... it's not a lost cause, and I'll never be a "dumb ways to die" statistic!) Don't say, "I'm making a better world, and the first thing I need to overhaul are those stupid people I live with."

For one thing, it most likely won't work. A few people may pick it up. Others will move out, leaving it for new people who like it to come in... but if you have an entirely new population, you haven't actually fixed the place. You've kind of killed it. For another, come on... it's a little bit morally questionable to try and force everyone onto the same hobby horse, isn't it? It doesn't even matter what the hobby horse is. I don't care if you start with the premise of "Everyone should bike more" or "Everyone should go out hunting more." Look at the people you've got RIGHT NOW, and look at them as they are in reality. Start there. If the community shifts on its own, the places will shift with it. But don't use placemaking to force a shift.

Give them better spaces, by all means. And you may well find that when a city is more navigable, more people will get on bikes, and want bike paths. OR NOT. In which case, hey, it's a free country, go someplace with a community you like.

Well, if all the placemaking hasn't gentrified it out of your price range.

That's the other thing. In the brag about how much good the Bryant Park turnaround has done, they mention that rents have skyrocketed in that neighborhood, even faster than the rest of New York.

Lovely. Glad to hear the wealthy folk have a nice place to hang out. Too bad about people who can no longer afford to live there, and have to move out to the next place that will be gentrified.

We need to find a way to fix places where everyone lives. People who aren't well-to-do also live in places and use places. They shouldn't be dispossessed in the effort to make their homes better. (This is what's bothering me about some of what I'm hearing out of Buffalo. It sounds like it's really improving for the white collar yuppie crowd... and the blue collar ex-steel workers are getting the shaft again.)

I don't have a good theory about this. The more you improve a place, the more people want to live in it, and the more the market will bear. But it's very unfortunate. We need a mixed group.