Cinema notes

I've been too busy with work to post a lot and I've fallen a bit behind in mentioning books and movies and things. I hadn't realized how far behind it was until I sat down and compiled a list of what it was I've watched and read that I haven't posted about.

Turns out I've watched fully five films and finished four books. I'll sum up a few of each after the jump and only dedicate full posts to a couple of each.

Break on through!

Carter Done Been Got

I watched both the Get Carter movies over a couple days. This one and then this one. The first one was a better film, the second one actually had a moral core. Stallone probably wasn't the right guy for the role.

Spoilers ahead!

It is... forbidden.

I watched Forbidden Planet a couple nights ago. Turns out I'd seen a big chunk of it before on TV or something without realizing it. It was an odd B-class sci-fi flick. On that list I linked to about the best Shakespeare films it's on the list as version of The Tempest. I'm not familiar enough with that play to know if it's at all a faithful adaptation, but it was still a fun movie even if the ending was rather obvious.

Don't be a one-trick pony

This is my final response to my brother's post about Intellectual Property laws and his subsequent comments in the thread here. If you're not interested, just move on and don't bother to make the jump below.

The cultural contributions of the U.S.S.R

We've mentioned in passing in the comments on another post the cultural contributions of the U.S.S.R. and I wanted to bring one to the fore:

Trololo!

Was it really green?

The problem with black and white movies is that you can't tell what colour things are supposed to be. For example, though I have learned that Harpo Marx was known for wearing a red wig, I watched Marx Bros. movies too many times before I found that out. I can't conceive of the wig as being anything other than blond, though I know it is not.

I watched Green for Danger the other night which was a British film; a murder mystery set in a hospital during the Second World War. Now, because I couldn't see the colours of anything with distinction, I assumed that the "green" from the title referred to the colour of the scrubs since the important murders took place in the operating room. Had I been able to see the colours of the other objects I might have been able to piece together the mystery more effectively.

The movie as a whole was pretty well done. I enjoyed the character of the detective immensely. I like detectives to be competent and I have a weakness for witty dialogue. (See Marlowe, Philip.) There was a twist at the end which was necessary for a bit of misdirection to work, but I still didn't like it. On the whole, as I said however, it was a good film. Short too, only 90 minutes or so. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys mysteries.

English is easy

Or so this article argues. I've often thought some similar things. I find the gendered nouns of other languages confusing and they have too many verb tenses. Plus, no other language is as euphonious as English used properly. Others have a surface beauty, but only English can be made to serve a detailed purpose and take you aback with its beauty as well. I suppose you could say that English is the only language with beauty and brains.

Mists of memory

I'm not even all the way through it, but I have to note here that I'm reading Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe and it is fantastic! The plot seems a bit like Memento in which the protagonist has no real short-term memory to speak of. In this case, the main character Latro can remember the events of the day, but after about 12 or 14 hours (judging by the clues in the book) things start to fade away.

All the jokes can't be good

And in Four Weddings and a Funeral most of them weren't. I don't really enjoy comedies where the humour is supposed to derive from uncomfortable social situations. That is, I don't like to watch other people being embarrassed.

More than this, the whole stupid movie was a propaganda vehicle for the idea that marriage is completely irrelevant to romantic love. And, of course, the most stable and dedicated couple was the homosexual one. Everyone else was pretty much torn and conflicted about their relationships. A horrid film. Skip it.

Known Unknown

No, I haven't been reading Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs. I watched a movie the other night called Unknown. (Not to be confused with Unknown. Frankly, this one sounds like a better plot, but with twist endings...) I don't keep up with movie releases much, but it seemed to me that this one didn't make much of an impact when it was in theaters. There was one big reason I didn't like this film and find it odd that it would rate a 7 over at IMDB. But it's a spoiler, so meet me after the jump if you can't successfully ward off your curiosity.

This book is broken.

Jane McGonigal (yeah, I'd never heard of her either) wrote a book called Reality is Broken. Her thesis is, as best I understand it, that reality would be a lot better if it were more like games. Or maybe it's that if everyone played more games (by which she mostly means computer games) our world would be a better place and we could whip it into utopia in no time.

Leaving aside the ridiculous overstatements and assumptions she makes regarding the benefits of computer games, to me the most damning critique of her book is that she takes no account of griefers. That is to say, there is nothing in her book that talks about the tendency of a not insignificant portion of gamers to spend their time playing what one could call a meta-game. That game is simple and can be played in almost any multi-player game. It simply involves doing everything you can to ruin the game for everyone else. In all her talk about how wonderful games are will do everything eventually, from stopping tooth decay to saving our immortal souls (I exaggerate for effect), she has no thought for the breakers, the saboteurs, the people who only want to watch the world burn. Don't waste your time.

What are the best Shakespeare movies?

An interesting post from First Things takes note of a new Shakespeare adaptation that's coming and posts the Rotten Tomatoes list of the best 30 Shakespeare movies. I haven't seen them all, but it seems a reasonable list. Of their list of 30, I've seen the top 5 as well as 8, 11, 18, 29 and 30. I wouldn't put West Side Story on the list at all (hated it), and I'd re-order the other four (Branagh's Hamlet is my fav), but overall I'm impressed.

Of course, now that I have Netflix, I'll put the rest on the list and watch them eventually.

EDIT: I forgot to note that I won't watch 16, since I avoid movies made by people who rape children.

Don't cry for me, Salamanca.

The book I was reading during my commute was called Salamanca, 1812. I enjoy military history, but my knowledge of the Napoleonic wars is culpably small and insignificant. Salamanca was the most significant battle and allied victory during the Peninsular campaigns.

The book is kind of a two-track book; it is a straightforward account of the battle as well as a look behind the curtain of military history. Each chapter describes a portion of the battle and then is followed by a delving into the sources and their accuracy (or lack thereof) and the choices and weighing that an historian has to do in order to write a coherent narrative that is probably not too far off from the truth.

The narrative of the battle was well done and easy to read. It was clear and I learned a good deal about it even just reading one book once. The other portion I could have done without, for the most part. I think it would have been better to spend less time debating the evidence and what debating was done should have been integrated into the text. On the other hand, that may be so because I have a bit more background (though nothing like a professional historian) in military history than the average person.

The short summary is that it's a good book about the topic and for anyone at all interested it would be well worth the read.

Just keep telling yourself that

I read a fascinating book called I Told Me So by a guy with a funny name. Gregg Ten Elshof is who he claims to be, though how one would pronounce that name I do not know. The book is about the nature of self-deception, the perils and even what Mr Ten Elshof considers the benefits of the way we fool ourselves.

I found it to be an excellent book that helped me notice the ways in which I deceive myself about my flaws and sins as well as about more mundane matters. I'll probably talk about it more later; I mentioned it to the education guy at church and now I'm teaching a class using the book starting next quarter. We'll see how that goes. At any rate, I recommend the book highly.

Ah, poetry

The article itself has a serious point and is worth a read, but what I wanted to make sure you didn't miss was this part:

I stuck to the poets of previous centuries for the most part, although I was vaguely aware that poets were not an extinct species, that dark corners of the planet still held strange specimens who wrote without meter or rhyme about The Orgasm and the joys of life as a Maoist rebel in Punjab, but I gave them a wide berth for fear that I might catch something and lose my ability to write with capital letters. 

Ah, the sweet smell of win.

The first thing we do...

Shakespeare knew what o'clock it was. I read a book of a lawyer's reminiscences and it was just as arrogant, self-serving and smug as one would expect it to be. It was called Off the Record: Sidebars from a Lawyer's Life. Apparently the author was some sort of big wheel in the California trial lawyer circles and has all the fault that one would expect with such a profession in such a place in addition to the usual lawyerly amorality. Some of the stories are entertaining, but the book as a whole isn't worth mining through to find them.

He who would pun, would pick a pocket

As one who delights in puns, I dispute that strenuously, but I read a book on the differences and similarities of humour in different countries that was titled The Mirth of Nations. It was scholarly and pretty well put together, but I was hoping for more examples and less analysis of the reasons behind such humour. I wouldn't suggest it unless you're a student of psychology or sociology with an interest in humour specifically.

Get a grip

I read the next Parker novel The Handle and it was a bit of a disappointment. The first novels were pretty good in large part, I think, because they weren't too fanciful. They had some fairly ridiculous moments where Parker single-handedly fights the mob, but nothing too over the top. This novel however involves Parker making deals and alliances with the mob and the FBI and involves an amphibious raid on an off-shore gambling outpost and efforts to secure a Nazi war criminal. It just all seemed a bit much. We'll see how the next one goes; I've got The Rare Coin Score on hold at the library.