@The Movies with PopPop: Detroit

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Detroit is a 2017 movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow (of Hurt Locker fame) that reconstructs elements of the 1967 12th Street Riot – or Rebellion if you prefer.  It centers on the events at the Algiers Motel, where after suspicion of shooting at police, a dozen or so people who were staying at the motel were detained by the police, tortured, and several killed.  The movie, while not a documentary, attempts to adhere as closely as possible to the factual record – which of course is incomplete and leaves a lot of room for the filmmakers.

It is not an easy movie to watch.  The central, quite long, section focuses on the brutal treatment and torture of the motel residents by the police, and goes on painfully.  There is a little background regarding those at the motel, and brief coverage of the eventual trial of the police officers most directly involved, and some interviews and subtitles at the end about what happened to some of the individuals. The movie is short on context with Detroit’s prior civil rights struggles, history of police brutality, and the pre-riot lives of Detroit’s black population are given short shrift.  Despite this, both the combination of newsreel footage of the multiple day riot and its fairly seamless integration with the movie allows it to make its points powerfully and dramatically.

While the movie was made to honor the 50th anniversary of its events, the resonance with the current situation in US cities is depressingly powerful.  It’s worth seeing, though gird yourself!

The movie also brings up a disturbing question of whether a white director – even one with the best intentions and sympathies – can make a movie that captures the internal context and history of an American minority population without leaving out so much context as to undercut its meaning and power to any who lack deep familiarity with it.  The following article, while to me overstated, tackles this problem:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/detroit-is-the-most-irresponsible-and-dangerous-movie-this-year_us_5988570be4b0f2c7d93f5744.

Detroit is a movie worth seeing, and one of those that say art can and perhaps should be disturbing.

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Reading Well: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I’ve been looking forward to Neil Gaiman‘s Norse Mythology (2017) since it was announced. As long as your expectations are correct, it doesn’t disappoint.

Here’s what I mean: this is a very faithful retelling of the well-known tales of Norse legend–the origination of Thor’s hammer, the battle of Ragnarok, the treachery of Loki, etc. And those stories are told with all of the vividness, nuance, and wit that readers of Gaiman have come to expect. And it’s well-informed: Thor is bit of a doofus, which is consistent with the source material, but not the character as envisioned in the Marvel universe; Loki is complicated and both guilty of high treason and responsible for key successes in the narrative of the Gods, etc.

That faithfulness can also leave a reader wanting more: in the introduction, Gaiman refers to all of the gaps in our knowledge of the Norse mythic landscape: there are gods and, especially, goddesses that are referenced but whose stories are lost and numerous events that are only referenced obliquely in the material that has survived. Gaiman’s creation and interpretation of those stories would be a highly compelling read.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Get a contract to rewrite a known set of myths? Sure! I think more than that, the process of submerging myself in a known sea of writings and then reinterpreting them is highly attractive, although I doubt my ability to remain as consistent with the source as Gaiman does here.

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Reading Well: Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Max Porter‘s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015) lives somewhere between a prose poem and a novella, and, in fact, at times feels like the script for a fascinating stage production. It is a short, stunningly creative, and highly evocative lyric narrative exploration of his partner’s death and the impact of that loss on him and their two sons.

There is sadness here, but there is also growth, and humor, and joy and, ultimately, a family finding its way to a moment where grief is no longer the dominant force in their lives. Grief is portrayed in the book as a crow, who also exists as a bit of a dream/trickster figure, leading the family on their journey while also keeping them from moving too quickly through it.

There is some buried treasure here for poets as well: the protagonist is working on an academic exploration of Ted Hughes’ work, and the crow figure itself is one that is highlighted there.

It’s a very quick read, and if the ideas of grief and poetry are attractive, it is highly, highly recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I’m not a poet. I’ve written some poetry and even some that I’m proud of, but as lyrically descriptive as I aspire to be, the pure poetry here eludes me. What I mean by pure poetry are the ruptures and irruptions in the text that break open its meaning. Porter has chops, and there are moments where those shine through in ways I could never attain.

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Reading Well: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

We are all about to be submerged by a tidal wave of Nnedi Okorafor. Who Fears Death (read before I started Reading Wells, and highly recommended) is in production by HBO, her Binti series is a critical favorite, etc. The third novel to be reviewed here is Lagoon (2014), which  is most similar to The Book of Phoenix in that it is, in my view, likely to be seen as a less-central part of her output.

Lagoon is an odd book, one that becomes much better than anticipated, but quite intentionally doesn’t really end, and not necessarily because there are more installments coming (although that is possible, for sure). At core, I think the novel is really focused on two areas: the first is the essential question of the plot, which is what would you do if the aliens appeared? and the second is a loving ode to the city of Lagos.

The former is complicated by three central characters with supernatural powers, but the basic range of responses, from flight to fight, from riot to rally together, are presented in inventive, creative ways. The latter is more subtext than text, but is clearly present, both in some key secondary human characters (government officials, soldiers, a particularly vocal pastor) and some nice non-human touches (the spirit of the city itself, a monster that possesses the Lagos-Benin expressway to feed on the bones of travelers).

The aliens are a catalyst in many ways, loosing upon the world both the range of human behavior described above and a wave of monsters from the deep ocean with long held resentments towards humanity.

The action of the book is limited first to Lagos, and then to Nigeria (with a short vignette in Ghana), but there is also a gradual widening of the lens, as millions of people start to observe what is happening via social media. The end of the book–even interspersed with the author’s note and acknowledgements–touches on a trio of African-American students in North America and their reactions to what they have seen.

In the first third of the book, I was concerned about it feeling a bit thin, a bit prone to caricature. By halfway, though, I was hooked, and I found it to be as creative and thought-provoking as the rest of Okorafor’s work.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Okorafor’s writing sparkles with creativity and confidence, a combination that is hard to beat, and Lagoon is no exception.

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Reading Well: The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Kameron Hurley‘s The Stars are Legion (2017) is a good old-fashioned space opera featuring an exclusively female cast of characters. There is a groundhog-day element at work, as the protagonist has repeatedly failed in an attempt to seize control of (some significant part of) a galaxy and ends up being “recycled,” which leaves her at the center of a massive planet, having to navigate outward through successive layers of worlds/civilizations to try once again. These two narratives are each handled well, and are consistently compelling and engaging, and the protagonist’s memory loss makes all the narrators somewhat unreliable, which is handled deftly.

It’s all a bit complicated–the planets are actually spaceships, and they are alive, and the various nested areas within them are unaware of each other, and the advanced technology is decidedly nature-based (the best example being the lovely invention of a cephalopod gun, which shoots octopus-like things that burn through any flesh to which they attach).

It’s a nicely executed page-turner, and recommended if that’s what you’re looking for.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I mean, come on, cephalopod guns. I mean that in a more general sense: the nature/technology fusion that Hurley invents is intriguing, and I like both the inventiveness and her trust in the reader that allows her not even to attempt to explain how it all works.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Strawberry and Chocolate

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

When we were in Cuba in March, we asked several people to recommend Cuban films. Usually the first one mentioned was Strawberry and Chocolate, a 1993 film directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío and nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film of that year. We saw it via Netflix a couple of days ago.

It’s a first rate film, quite amusing, yet with deep engagement of politics and ideology – to a degree that it’s somewhat surprising it got past the Cuban censors back then. The film is set in Havana in the late 1970’s, though I saw nothing to date it earlier than when it was actually made. It’s the story of the meeting, the development of a friendship, and the attempted seduction of mind and body between two seemingly as-different-as-they-could-be young men: David, a militantly ideological university student, gorgeous, heterosexual (though a virgin); and Diego, a somewhat older, obviously gay artist and arts advocate, deeply distressed and in constant trouble by the government’s anti-gay and anti-free artistic expression policies. From antagonism to friendship to deep concern, though never overtly sexual, their relationship grows, and David’s eyes on the world are opened far wider. His time with Diego infuriates some of David’s more narrowly ideological peers, and he is labeled gay because of the association. He also develops a relationship with Nancy, an older party member who’s part of the neighborhood watch, carries on black market trade, and lives in the apartment above Diego’s.

The film is funny and penetrating, the discussions of social policy, government, and culture well done and intellectually balanced, and the scenes of Havana delightful. The acting is excellent and the capture of time and place near perfect. For those who’ve been there, the apartments are in a building you’ll recognize that now houses La Guarida restaurant on the top floor and roof. Well worth seeing.

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Reading Well: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

History of Wolves (2017) by Emily Fridlund is a fantastic book, certainly one of the best I read this year. It’s a whodunnit that manages to preserve dramatic tension throughout, despite having made “the big reveal” quite early in the book. That alone is a great achievement; throw in a narrator who, as a teenager, remains both fascinating and believable, and an ongoing series of secondary plots that constantly interrogate notions of blame, of culpability, and of the relationship between thinking–or even desiring–a path of action and actually pursuing it, and you have a book that is a pleasure to read.

Both the scenes from the protagonist’s adult life and some of the secondary characters may run a little thin, but those are, ultimately, minor quibbles: I was thoroughly engaged in the emotional journey. One note, though: all of the characters in History of Wolves are damaged, and redemption is not easy to find; if you need your protagonists triumphant, the book may very well leave you cold and more than a little disappointed.

Additionally, while the novel explicitly struggles with some “big questions,” it neither offers a simple answer (this is a novel, not a fable), nor does it lose sight of the mechanics of fiction when doing so. Those are lofty achievements. Very highly recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The woods of northern Minnesota, and specifically those woods in winter, are so gorgeously drawn, with as much detail as to nearly be a character on their own. It’s an amazing job of incorporating a highly specific local feel into a narrative in a way that deepens a reader’s connection to the material.

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Reading Well: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I’ve been a fan of Louise Erdrich for decades, and remember thinking that Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks were as fine a sequence of three novels as I had read. I hadn’t read much from her since then–perhaps a couple novels and a book of poetry. And then I saw something that mentioned Future Home of the Living God (2017), describing it as her entry into dystopian fiction.

Sign me up!

It does not disappoint: Erdrich creates a confident and sure-footed narrative, set in the near-future where an unexplained occurrence has led to evolution reversing its course (yes, there is an appearance by a sabre-toothed tiger, but that’s not really the point). The protagonist is young and pregnant–something so rare as to subject her to an immediate threat of state control–and the novel traces her struggles to remain free, while also discovering what she can about her own family history, encompassing her own Native American roots and adoption by a white American family, as well as her fairly sophisticated integration of Catholicism into her world.

The journey is both page-turning and emotionally compelling, and Erdrich’s creative insights into feminism, faith, and resistance are all made while steering the book well-clear of a simplistic allegory. It’s a solid book, recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Publish as regularly and successfully as Erdrich? OK, aside from that, create a character with the complexity of the protagonist, who is in turns highly intellectual, naive about the workings of the world, reactionary in her reactions to her family, and carefully considered in how she should proceed: an excellent capturing of a young adult struggling to survive, having been thrown into a world far beyond her capabilities.

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@TheMovies with PopPop: The Salesman

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Salesman is another excellent film from Iranian Director Asghar Farhadi. The film won the 2016 Best Foreign Film Oscar, and Farhadi made additional waves when he refused to attend the ceremony in response to Trump’s travel ban.

The movie focuses on a married couple in the center of a Tehran-based theatre company that is staging Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Various scenes from the play are part and parcel of the film, shot in present day Tehran.

The married couple at the center (playing much older Willy and Linda Loman in the play) along with other tenants, have to evacuate their house after serious structural weaknesses occur, likely from construction going on nearby. A member of the acting troupe offers them an apartment they take on a temporary basis. Shortly after moving in, the wife, thinking her husband is returning, buzzes him in while she is showering. We then see her at the hospital being treated for quite serious wounds and injuries. It appears the apartment’s previous tenant had been a woman “with numerous make visitors” and the assumption is that one of them came to do her harm, and not knowing she’d moved, attacked the wrong woman.

The wife, Rana, is devastated and humiliated by the attack, suffers greatly psychologically as well as physically, and feels guilty for having let the man in. She doesn’t want to go to the police to report the incident because of the humiliation involved. The husband, Emad, acquiesces, but decides to pursue the attacker on his own. The attacker has left possessions including his car keys, phone and money in the apartment when he was apparently spooked by Rana’s screams, and using these, Emad tracks down the attacker. Stresses and consequences occur along the way for Rana and Emad as individuals, as a couple, as neighborhood residents, and as acting troupe members.

Many of the themes of Miller’s play, particularly those related to humiliation, respect, and situations that change who we are, are interwoven with the film plot, and their lives and roles continually impact each other.

Extremely well acted and directed, and not to be missed. We’ve now seen maybe 3 of Farhadi’s films, and they are all excellent.

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Reading Well: Sequels & Other Novels

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{More follow-ups and other works …}

I hadn’t realized Colson Whitehead, long before The Underground Railroad, wrote The Noble Hustle, a first person account focusing on one of my favorite topics: poker, and specifically, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Published in 2014, Whitehead’s book was written at the height of the poker boom in the late 2000’s, when you could barely turn a channel without seeing players at the felt with chips and cards.

The more interesting parts of the book are the more introspective: Whitehead claims to be a representative of the Republic of Anhedonia, even getting a custom red hoodie made proclaiming his allegiance. Anhedonia is defined as an inability to feel pleasure, and the best parts of the book are Whitehead’s reflections on how that impacts his life, how he struggles and benefits from it, and how it intersects with the skills needed to successfully play poker.

The problem, of course, is that out of thousands of players, only a few hundred survive long enough to make money at the World Series of Poker, and only a few dozen make serious money. And that takes incredible levels of both luck and skill: Colson lacks the latter, and the former runs out on him well before people get paid, leaving the central “plot” of the book somewhat unsatisfying. Still, a decent read, and if either poker or anhedonia seem of interest, better than that.

Sword & Citadel (1982) completes the saga started in Shadow & Claw. This volume is more focused, and more plot-driven than the first, and it demands that you remember what has passed before: what seemed like small details in the first book emerge as major plot features here. The series ends up veering more towards sci-fi than fantasy, but the mechanics are inventive, with a few veering towards being highly memorable.

Whether you should read this one is probably a factor of your enjoyment of Shadow & Claw: if you liked it–or even if you can’t bear not knowing what happened–then Sword & Citadel is recommended.

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