Reading Well: Lock In by John Scalzi

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

In some ways, Lock In by John Scalzi is two different things lurking inside one book. On the one hand, it is a sketch of a fascinating possible future where an epidemic has left millions of people fully conscious in fully paralyzed bodies, yet where technology exists that allow them to project their consciousness into androids or (more rarely) specially gifted human beings. On the other, it’s a page-turner of a police procedural, strong on the not-quite-buddy cop dynamic.

I was deeply intrigued by the former, then entertained by the latter. But I believe the world Scalzi created deserves further exploration: he sketches the possible technology, the political and social implications, and the impact of the presence of such a sizable population of lock-in’s (as they’re called) in a way that cries out for more. Wikipedia claims a sequel is in the mix, but given there is a decade of latitude in its publication date, I’ll believe (and buy) it when I see it.

Once the police procedural kicks in, the story moves very quickly, and the obligatory twists at the end are satisfying and believable within the world and characters he has created. So, well done, there.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

As the kids these days would say, I wish I could genre. Scalzi does, impeccably: he is writing within an established form and he stays faithful to its limits, its rhythm, and its tone. Doing that well–and he does–is one way to build and maintain a faithful audience of enthused readers.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Clouds of Sils Maria

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Clouds of Sils Maria is a 2014 film, written and directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz.

This is a very interesting film dealing with several layered themes: aging; acting; “real” life and fiction among them. Binoche plays an aging actress whose career was made playing the younger woman in a play in which, as a personal assistant to an aging actress, she coldly enters into an affair with her and eventually dispossesses her. Now, 20 years later, she agrees to redo the play for the London stage, this time playing the older woman to an up and coming young and calculating actress (Moretz). Stewart plays Binoche’s real life personal assistant. Their relationship and the older-younger woman relationship in the play have some parallels (and many differences) – to the point where when they’re reading lines from the play, it’s at times difficult to know whether the exchanges are from their actual relationship or from the play’s script.

The title refers to a phenomenon at a particular place in the Swiss Alps when at times the clouds roll in along a river bed appearing as a great white snake moving along the river – an actual phenomenon, and hence the name of the play in the film, the Maloja Snake. The setting and photography are stunning.

There are many more relationship complications, and for a film with minimal “action,” the dialogue and technique are riveting.

I didn’t think it a great film, but a fascinating one, and quite worth its two hours.

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Reading Well: Waiting by Ha Jin

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Waiting is a novel by Ha Jin, set in near-contemporary China and focused (although it never quotes nor acknowledges Langston Hughes) on exploring the question of deferred dreams. The protagonist is a comfortably successful doctor, stationed at an urban military base. He has a wife, and a daughter, in a distant village, but is in love with a younger nurse on the base.

And … well … that’s really it. Both are too confined in their own morality to act on their love as long as the prior marriage exists; once it is dissolved, they find that, perhaps, they have missed their moment.

The book is full of lost moments, of things that could–even, should–have been, but never where, and as such, it is a touching, often sweet, and ultimately sad story. There is pain and suffering–and a theme of impotence that culminates in a rape that is handled with some delicacy, but perhaps not enough force–but the ultimate narrative surrounds the cost of choosing to do nothing.

It also has some lovely insights into modern China, both its beauty and its bureaucracy, as well as its ongoing struggles with a growing divide between urban and rural lives.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Ha Jin often catches visual detail with the skill of a photographer, adding resonant description that is not burdened with meaning, but just exists: the way branches sway in a breeze, the flight patterns of insects, the types of shops on a high street. None of it is essential to the scene, but all of it contributes to an immersion that is effective and quite impressive.

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Reading Well: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Southern Reach Trilogy (the individual books are Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) is an engaging and intriguing piece of horror fantasy, somewhere between traditional Southern Gothic and HP Lovecraft. Each books is pretty short–the whole trilogy is about 800 small-size pages.

Area X appeared a few decades ago: an area on the Southern coast of the USA that is populated by fantastic creatures, holds no industrial pollution, and seems to repel all attempts at understanding. Tasked with exploring it is our hero, John Rodriguez. He initially focuses on two twin structures: one a lighthouse that dominates the coastline of Area X, the other a spiral staircase that winds into the ground nearby.

What makes this more than a standard procedural is the depth of commitment to the setting and the skill with which Jeff Vandermeer pulls that off. These are books of swamps and mosses, of spores and fungus, of luminescence and slow rot, and that is where the magic lies. The narrative is almost always creepy, sometimes spectacularly so, and there are images–a glowing fungus that writes fantastic scripture on the wall of a stairwell, a figure sitting at the nexus of glowing webs, a molding midden-pile of notebooks sitting beneath a trapdoor–that will stay with you long after you finish.

It’s a good read, and if that kind of horror is your thing, you’ll like it even more.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The total commitment to tone and setting. Vandermeer never strays, and the ability to maintain that throughout the trilogy is impressive: it’s the same thing that Lovecraft–or Poe–is able to do, and something with which I struggle.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Timbuktu

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Timbuktu, a 2014 nominee for best foreign film comes from director Abderrahamane Sissako, born in Mauritania but known as a Malian film director (a prior film of his is Bamako). It’s a powerful, beautiful, and often times difficult film, set in and around Timbuktu during the time it was under jihadist control – a few years ago. The film does not focus on the well known story of the Timbuktu manuscripts but rather on the day to day lives of folks and the impact of jihadist control – on both Timbuktu’s residents and the jihadists.

There are several story lines: a Tuareg family living in a tent on the dunes, a woman who sells fish, some musicians, the local commander, and many more. What we see is the absurdity of the dimensions of life the jihadists wish to control, the extremes of Sharia law as applied, and most importantly, many acts of passive and subtle resistance and the human strength they convey. Dress for men and women is controlled, smoking, music and sports are forbidden, etc. (One of the wonderful scenes is some young boys playing soccer without a ball!) Women and their particular struggles are central to the movie.

What the movie is really about is how today’s neighbors can become tomorrow’s oppressors; how long standing differences can become caught in the oppression; how the oppressors lose their humanity in their obsession with power; and how strong are the impulses for resistance and maintenance of humanity.

The movie is in multiple languages: French, Tuareg, English and another local language or two. There are English subtitles, except for sections where the particular translation is unimportant. The capturing of the beauty – sometimes stark, sometimes gorgeous – and the reality of sophisticated urban life (as urban as Timbuktu is) is extraordinary.

It’s not always a comfortable movie to watch, but it’s a film not to be missed.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Pariah

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Pariah is a far better and more interesting movie than the trailers would indicate. It’s the story of a young teen who has realized she’s a lesbian and is struggling with family, peers, and the existing lesbian community, taking place in current times in Brooklyn.

The movie is terribly mistitled in that she’s not a pariah by any means, but a struggling young woman finding her way. And the emphasis in the trailers on the yelling and screaming in her family is not what the movie is essentially about. I found it not only a very well done movie, but one that provided insights into what it’s like for young persons on the brink of coming out. Try to see it.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Even the Rain

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Even the Rain (2010) is a very well done fascinating film that layers two stories. The first is of a film crew that comes to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000 to make a left wing perspective film (film is dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn!) on the interface of Columbus and the Taino Indians (yes, they realize Columbus and the Taino’s were Caribbean and they’re filming in the Andes).

The second is the Bolivian “water wars” (Bolivia’s attempt to privatize its water supply and the Indian-led revolt that forced a reversal of policy) that break out during filming, involving some of the Indians who have been recruited for the film who are also community leaders of the revolt. During the course of the film, lots of lessons are learned by lots of folks — and none by some. It’s quite well done and well worth seeing.

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@The Movies with PopPop: The Wind Rises

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Wind Rises is a 2013 animated Japanese film by Hayao Miyazaki, possibly his final film. It’s an animated biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer who did wondrous things in improving airplanes, unfortunately including the Japanese WW II fighters. The movie never forgets the dark side, though it’s in the background.

The film is wonderfully drawn, incredibly beautiful and just a delight. It’s been dubbed into English, so no subtitles — virtually flawless dubbing. Worth seeing. This article from the NY Times does a far better job describing it than I could!

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@The Movies with PopPop: Chinese Coffee

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Chinese Coffee (2000) is another of those films directed by and starring Al Pacino that after limited festival showings was never generally released. It’s now part of a boxed set that also includes The Local Stigmatic and Looking for Richard.

It’s a film version of a play by Ira Lewis, written in the early 1990’s and worked on by Pacino and others at the Actor’s Studio throughout the ’90’s. It’s essentially a two person play set in the ’80’s in Greenwich Village, starring Pacino as Harry Levine and Jerry Ohrbach as Jake Mannheim. Harry is 42, an old fashioned, NY, Village starving writer, full of neuroses, eking out an existence so he can continue to write. He’s had two books published that went nowhere, and has just finished his third book, essentially an imaginative take on his life over the past years and his relationship with his long term, now-ex, girlfriend, and Jake and his wife. Jake, perhaps a decade older, is a brilliant, omni-knowledgeable, read everything guy who earns a living as a nightclub photographer. Having written two short stories when he was 19 — and nothing since — he still likes to think of himself as a writer.

Harry has come to see him on a cold February night, trying both to collect some money Jake owes him, and more importantly to find out what Jake thinks of the new book.

Like all Pacino, it’s quite intense, penetrating, witty, and often dark — and very funny. The dialogue is extraordinary, and the understanding of someone who has to write because that’s what he’s about and someone who can’t ultimately deal with that is quite powerful — and resonates far beyond the issue of being a writer!

If you like Pacino, and like great dialogue, you’ll love it.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Barbara

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Barbara is a film about an East German doctor prior to the collapse of the Wall and reunification, who as a result of trying to leave East Germany has been sent to a rural location to practice medicine. The doctor in charge of the hospital she works in, while required to be the eyes and ears of the East German authorities is also both a good doctor and a more complex character than he appears at first.

The movie is essentially about Barbara’s relationships with the town to which she’s sent, with a female adolescent work camp prisoner she takes care of, with the doctor, and with her plans for escape. It’s well done and interesting, if not great.

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