It's easy to portray fantastical situations, faraway lands and times, heroes and villains and people whom a normal person would never normally meet. It's a lot harder to portray convincingly the tiny frustrations and desperation of normal, everyday people. The subject of suburban distopia will come up again, but here is a sample of three films that deal with this issue.
Ghost World
This should have been a really hard movie to make, considering how difficult it is to like the main characters sometimes. Enid and Becky are two disaffected girls who, upon graduating from high school, vow to not do the same boring thing everyone else is doing, and instead to get an apartment and find jobs. They also play varieties of cruel pranks on the losers of their town, not realizing, of course, that they are headed down to the road to join them in a few years. Through one of these jokes, they meet Seymour, a bookish bachelor with a large, meticulous jazz vinyl collection, and Enid, sensing a kindred soul, becomes more and more involved in his life. Becky, on the other hand, is still proceeding with their plan to get an apartment, and is becoming increasingly impatient with Enid's wasting time with Seymour and inability to keep a job. The two girls begin to grow apart, and Enid is soon forced to confront who she is and who she wants to be.
However, this is a somewhat timeless film despite its portrayal of adolescent despair, for as people outgrow the ability to identify with Enid, they can still identify with Seymour, the shy, jaded dork ("You think it's healthy to obsessively collect stuff? Can't connect with people, so you fill your life with things..."). And Thora Birch, pre-American Beauty, does a wonderful, heartwrenching job of playing the cynical, callous Enid and all her insecurities -- her experimentation with different aesthetics of clothes that no one understands, her sarcastic treatment of customers that gets her fired from her concession stand job, and her ultimate loneliness when she realizes that everyone she loves has grown apart from her. This is a very truthful story about one girl trying to find out what she wants to be instead of who she doesn't want to be, and if the truth is ugly sometimes, then so be it. I should also mention that Seymour is played to perfection by Steve Buscemi, and Scarlett Johannsen, speaking as if she hadn't yet had voice training, plays the zeroing-in-to-normalcy Becky.
Revolutionary Road
Speaking of American Beauty...
This movie had a lot going for it -- Sam Mendes directed it, and brought along Thomas Neuman, also from American Beauty, to write the score. It had the cinematographer from No Country for Old Men. It even stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet. How could this movie suck?
While American Beauty may have been better in that the technical aspects of the film stood out more, I think this one is the better movie overall, not because it's a lot darker (which it is), but because it feels more truthful. The performances are all top-notch. Winslet's role is that of April, a failed actress turned housewife who clings to a fanciful idea that she and her husband Frank are not destined for the obscurity and mediocrity that plagues the people around them. Somehow, they are special, they are destined for something greater. Her eventual revelation is that Frank is not the man she thought he was -- and that she doesn't love him. In fact, she loathes him. She thinks he's an inexcusable coward. Dicaprio gets to play Frank, who must live with the reality of all his failures.
Despite its idyllic setting, it is a dark and brooding movie that does manage to convey the tone of quiet desperation extremely well.
Donnie Darko
Everyone's seen this movie by now, so I probably don't have to explain the plot. I was introduced to the movie by a friend who described it as "a darker version of American Beauty". And it's true. The movie is filled with a sense of foreboding, probably because most of it never actually happened -- or did it? Donnie is given over to sulking and fits of unprovoked hostility, saved from being a completely unsympathetic character by Jake Gyllenhall's dark dreamy eyes that seem to portend a deeper meaning, a redeeming layer of fear and frustration and despair beneath the surface. The movie is gorgeously filmed and has the dreamy atmosphere of unreality, which fits in very well with the events of the movie. A few of the small ridiculousnesses of suburban life get stirred to the surface and revealed for all to see, but unlike Ghost World, they're only backdrop events to the real story -- loneliness, powerlessness, and fear. It's darkly humorous and sad, ultimately the story of a boy so overwhelmed by his powerlessness over the things in life which intimidate him that he invents an entire alternate future in his head that allows him to do things he would not normally do in real life; or, in an even more unbelievable turn of events, he is actually given the power to travel through time and is able to influence events, and so sacrifices himself in order to save his girlfriend.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Film School Dropouts: Art, Fame, and the Lack Thereof
There is a line from the HBO movie RKO 281, about the making of the movie Citizen Kane, during which the actor who plays Orson Welles, speaking about film, laments the fact that the "most powerful expressive medium has fallen into the hands of bankers." Orson Welles probably never uttered that line. Someone involved in the making of the making of Citizen Kane came up with it. However, the fact of the matter is that no matter how expressive a medium is, if people can't be bothered to watch it, the message will be lost.
That is why, in compiling this series of "best of" movies, the entertainment factor is still very much a governing factor. I'm just as much a fan of edgy, experimental art films that make no sense whatsoever as the next guy, but on the other hand, I fell asleep during Transformers. I turned off Moulin Rouge when it was the onboard movie entertainment on a trans-Pacific flight. How bored do you have to be with a movie to turn it off on an airplane? The concept of good, pithy, powerful art that still has mass sex appeal is a concept that I'm sure some of the protagonists on this particular list may understand quite well:
The Velvet Goldmine
There's almost no way that a movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale would be bad. There just isn't. And despite the amazing performances of all three, this movie has a lot else going for it. JRM plays Brian Slade, whose story is a loose biopic of David Bowie and his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. However, the story is told through the lens of a reporter ten years after Brian's fall from fame, through a Citizen Kane- like structure (the reporter interviews various people from Brian's days of stardom, through which the details of his life emerge). Christian Bale plays the reporter, who aside from having personal connections to the Brian Slade story, being a former glam-rock fan himself, lives in a society vaguely reminiscent of 1984, a drab, colorless society whose main features seem to be large ever-present television screens. Ewan McGregor plays Kurt Wild, who is supposed to be Iggy Pop but channels quite a bit of Kurt Cobain as well. He represents the "real deal" to Brian's much more popular, but ultimately derivative, persona. The last piece of the puzzle is a pin that brings fame to whoever wears it, a pin that Brian steals from another man at the beginning of his career, a pin that supposedly belonged to Oscar Wilde (who is actually an alien. Go figure). How does this all fit together? It's almost more amazing that it does, at all.
It's a story about fame and the fall from it, about stardom and fandom in almost equal amounts, about style and shimmer and the lack of substance they cover. "A man's life is his image," says Brian, a philosophy which rings ominously true as his own image consumes him, not realizing until too late that the perfectly coiffed image hides an empty shell inside. However, the brash exuberance of the movie also poses the question of if, despite it all, it was still worth it in the end. Perhaps the film itself said it best in the opening credits: "Even though what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume."
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
This movie is actually a production of a Broadway musical by the same name, directed by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig, a transsexual East German musician, split between east and west, man and woman, much as the Berlin Wall divides his country, searching for the Platonic ideal of his other half (whatever that may be). As Hedwig's small band of misfits tours the bars and diners of the United States, tailing the tour of Hedwig's former protege and lover, Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig recounts his childhood in Communist Germany, his young misadventures ("I had just completed a brilliant thesis on the impact of German philosophy on modern rock music entitled "You, Kant, always get what you want...."), the impact of his botched sex-change operation, and his relationship with Tommy, whom he tutored in music and love, only to be betrayed and left behind as Tommy rockets to stardom on the strength of Hedwig's music.
It's a brilliant gem of a film that really stands out from other rock opera musicals involving transsexuals (Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'm pointing at you). Whereas it could easily have come across as ridiculous due to its campy subject matter, Hedwig's narration, by turns dryly humorous, bitterly angry, and melancholic, instead weaves a thoughtful, contemplative thread through his quest for love and self-realization. Of course, the music itself is wonderful, also.
High Art
In direct contrast to the previous two movies, High Art (the title of which is an uncharacteristic bad pun) is a very quiet, understated character piece. Radha Mitchell, who was in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel, which is not as terrible a movie as it might have been, plays Syd, a young yuppie woman working at a photography magazine, who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Lucy, a formerly famous lesbian photographer living directly above her. Lucy and her girlfriend, Greta, have moved to New York for Lucy's career, but they now don't do much besides lie around the apartment in heroin-induced torpors. Despite the disparity between their two worlds, Syd and Lucy slowly become friends, which evolves into a relationship.
It's not really a lesbian movie, even though it has quite a lesbian following because it portrays Syd's first sexual experience with a woman in a very truthful, down to earth way. It's actually a movie about the price of art, and the price of relationships. Syd and Lucy's relationship cost them Syd's former relationship with her (admittedly unworthy and douchebaggish) boyfriend, Lucy's old relationship with Greta, and put Syd's position at the magazine in trouble, but these sacrifices pale in comparison to what the cost of Lucy's art would ultimately be. The movie is a very simple production, but is all the more powerful because of it.
Gods and Monsters
Another subtle character study, but this movie has the advantage of having Magneto in it. Ian McKellen plays the aging gay director James Whale, who made the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein movies, but who is now elderly, frail, weakening, and mostly forgotten by the world except by film school students with interests in obscure subjects. The story is a fantasy about Whale's last days, during which he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his gardener, played by Brendan Fraser -- a somewhat surprising casting choice, but actually pretty fitting upon closer inspection, as the character of Clay Boone calls for a caveman who gains a soul through this friendship with Whale. McKellen, for his part, plays Whale to the hilt -- he's poised even when losing his memory, alternately polite, charming, poignant, and cutting, never senile, or lecherous, or laughable even at his most vulnerable. These two men, completely different both in temperament and background, form a somewhat awkward friendship that will nevertheless change both their lives.
Now, let's go back to sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- 18th century style.
Farinelli
This is the (true-but-not-really-true) story of Farinelli, a castrato singer who was so famous that he became something of an international sensation -- the first true rock star, if you will. Mutilated at an early age to preserve the angelic boy soprano he was to become famous for, he became the darling of royals and aristocrats everywhere, with his brother Ricardo, a talentless composer, hanging onto his coattails. It's not only fame that the two share, either -- the women that Farinelli attracts but cannot satisfy end up primed in Ricardo's lap. As Farinelli's star rises, he catches the eye of the great composer Handel, who acknowledges his talent but thinks him a heartless singing machine. For his part, Farinelli longs to sing the beautiful music Handel writes, but is bound to his brother and his mediocrity.
It's a rich, lavish production (a Belgian film made about Italians speaking French, although Handel speaks English occasionally), full of lush sets, wigged and powdered women (and men), and bosoms heaving in the candlelight. The story that emerges is a bit frothy, but by turns lyrical and moving. Since there is no modern day equivalent of Farinelli's voice, the director concocted a synthetic voice by fusing together a male and female singers' voices.
Frost/Nixon
By far the best thing about this movie is the performances by its two leading men. The history behind the story was diluted somewhat for dramatic effect, what emerged is rather more a flight of fancy than a real piece of reporting. However, Ron Howard, who directed Apollo 13, also directed this stage adaptation, so you know you're in for a good piece of storytelling, no matter what. And it's worth suspending your historical judgment to watch Sheen and Frank Langella go at it on the screen -- a clash between titans if there ever was one. I am a little bit reminded of RKO 281 again, and the showdown between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, which also centered on the rise of the younger man's career through the destruction of the older man's career.
I Shot Andy Warhol
I suspect a lot of people think this movie is utter trash. Its subject matter certainly doesn't do anthing to dispel this idea -- Lili Taylor plays "motor-mouth street freak writer-prostitute-lesbian-gun-wielding assailant Valerie Solanas," as described by Amazon, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto (which is basically a huge rant about how men are inferior to women in every way) and did, indeed, shoot Andy Warhol after he refused to produce her play called "Up Your Ass." The performance, however, is amazing, and the character of Solanas is strong enough to be sympathetic despite her many roughnesses. She comes across as tough, lonely, misunderstood, witty, and driven, which is in direct contrast to the rather slimy persona of Andy Warhol, who doesn't seem to be so much a genius as just a really aloof, elitist prick that surrounds himself with pretentious ass-kissers. One of them, when watching footage of Solanas's transvestite friend Candy Darling (who hands out with the pack as kind of their star freak-show attraction), remarks "Oh, I love her. She's so real. She just gets realer and realer and realer."
The movie is filled with witty lines and and a lot of droll moments to capture the mood of the anti-establishment, counter-culture vibe and lifestyles. It's definitely worth a see.
That is why, in compiling this series of "best of" movies, the entertainment factor is still very much a governing factor. I'm just as much a fan of edgy, experimental art films that make no sense whatsoever as the next guy, but on the other hand, I fell asleep during Transformers. I turned off Moulin Rouge when it was the onboard movie entertainment on a trans-Pacific flight. How bored do you have to be with a movie to turn it off on an airplane? The concept of good, pithy, powerful art that still has mass sex appeal is a concept that I'm sure some of the protagonists on this particular list may understand quite well:
The Velvet Goldmine
There's almost no way that a movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale would be bad. There just isn't. And despite the amazing performances of all three, this movie has a lot else going for it. JRM plays Brian Slade, whose story is a loose biopic of David Bowie and his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. However, the story is told through the lens of a reporter ten years after Brian's fall from fame, through a Citizen Kane- like structure (the reporter interviews various people from Brian's days of stardom, through which the details of his life emerge). Christian Bale plays the reporter, who aside from having personal connections to the Brian Slade story, being a former glam-rock fan himself, lives in a society vaguely reminiscent of 1984, a drab, colorless society whose main features seem to be large ever-present television screens. Ewan McGregor plays Kurt Wild, who is supposed to be Iggy Pop but channels quite a bit of Kurt Cobain as well. He represents the "real deal" to Brian's much more popular, but ultimately derivative, persona. The last piece of the puzzle is a pin that brings fame to whoever wears it, a pin that Brian steals from another man at the beginning of his career, a pin that supposedly belonged to Oscar Wilde (who is actually an alien. Go figure). How does this all fit together? It's almost more amazing that it does, at all.
It's a story about fame and the fall from it, about stardom and fandom in almost equal amounts, about style and shimmer and the lack of substance they cover. "A man's life is his image," says Brian, a philosophy which rings ominously true as his own image consumes him, not realizing until too late that the perfectly coiffed image hides an empty shell inside. However, the brash exuberance of the movie also poses the question of if, despite it all, it was still worth it in the end. Perhaps the film itself said it best in the opening credits: "Even though what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume."
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
This movie is actually a production of a Broadway musical by the same name, directed by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig, a transsexual East German musician, split between east and west, man and woman, much as the Berlin Wall divides his country, searching for the Platonic ideal of his other half (whatever that may be). As Hedwig's small band of misfits tours the bars and diners of the United States, tailing the tour of Hedwig's former protege and lover, Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig recounts his childhood in Communist Germany, his young misadventures ("I had just completed a brilliant thesis on the impact of German philosophy on modern rock music entitled "You, Kant, always get what you want...."), the impact of his botched sex-change operation, and his relationship with Tommy, whom he tutored in music and love, only to be betrayed and left behind as Tommy rockets to stardom on the strength of Hedwig's music.
It's a brilliant gem of a film that really stands out from other rock opera musicals involving transsexuals (Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'm pointing at you). Whereas it could easily have come across as ridiculous due to its campy subject matter, Hedwig's narration, by turns dryly humorous, bitterly angry, and melancholic, instead weaves a thoughtful, contemplative thread through his quest for love and self-realization. Of course, the music itself is wonderful, also.
High Art
In direct contrast to the previous two movies, High Art (the title of which is an uncharacteristic bad pun) is a very quiet, understated character piece. Radha Mitchell, who was in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel, which is not as terrible a movie as it might have been, plays Syd, a young yuppie woman working at a photography magazine, who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Lucy, a formerly famous lesbian photographer living directly above her. Lucy and her girlfriend, Greta, have moved to New York for Lucy's career, but they now don't do much besides lie around the apartment in heroin-induced torpors. Despite the disparity between their two worlds, Syd and Lucy slowly become friends, which evolves into a relationship.
It's not really a lesbian movie, even though it has quite a lesbian following because it portrays Syd's first sexual experience with a woman in a very truthful, down to earth way. It's actually a movie about the price of art, and the price of relationships. Syd and Lucy's relationship cost them Syd's former relationship with her (admittedly unworthy and douchebaggish) boyfriend, Lucy's old relationship with Greta, and put Syd's position at the magazine in trouble, but these sacrifices pale in comparison to what the cost of Lucy's art would ultimately be. The movie is a very simple production, but is all the more powerful because of it.
Gods and Monsters
Another subtle character study, but this movie has the advantage of having Magneto in it. Ian McKellen plays the aging gay director James Whale, who made the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein movies, but who is now elderly, frail, weakening, and mostly forgotten by the world except by film school students with interests in obscure subjects. The story is a fantasy about Whale's last days, during which he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his gardener, played by Brendan Fraser -- a somewhat surprising casting choice, but actually pretty fitting upon closer inspection, as the character of Clay Boone calls for a caveman who gains a soul through this friendship with Whale. McKellen, for his part, plays Whale to the hilt -- he's poised even when losing his memory, alternately polite, charming, poignant, and cutting, never senile, or lecherous, or laughable even at his most vulnerable. These two men, completely different both in temperament and background, form a somewhat awkward friendship that will nevertheless change both their lives.
Now, let's go back to sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- 18th century style.
Farinelli
This is the (true-but-not-really-true) story of Farinelli, a castrato singer who was so famous that he became something of an international sensation -- the first true rock star, if you will. Mutilated at an early age to preserve the angelic boy soprano he was to become famous for, he became the darling of royals and aristocrats everywhere, with his brother Ricardo, a talentless composer, hanging onto his coattails. It's not only fame that the two share, either -- the women that Farinelli attracts but cannot satisfy end up primed in Ricardo's lap. As Farinelli's star rises, he catches the eye of the great composer Handel, who acknowledges his talent but thinks him a heartless singing machine. For his part, Farinelli longs to sing the beautiful music Handel writes, but is bound to his brother and his mediocrity.
It's a rich, lavish production (a Belgian film made about Italians speaking French, although Handel speaks English occasionally), full of lush sets, wigged and powdered women (and men), and bosoms heaving in the candlelight. The story that emerges is a bit frothy, but by turns lyrical and moving. Since there is no modern day equivalent of Farinelli's voice, the director concocted a synthetic voice by fusing together a male and female singers' voices.
Frost/Nixon
By far the best thing about this movie is the performances by its two leading men. The history behind the story was diluted somewhat for dramatic effect, what emerged is rather more a flight of fancy than a real piece of reporting. However, Ron Howard, who directed Apollo 13, also directed this stage adaptation, so you know you're in for a good piece of storytelling, no matter what. And it's worth suspending your historical judgment to watch Sheen and Frank Langella go at it on the screen -- a clash between titans if there ever was one. I am a little bit reminded of RKO 281 again, and the showdown between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, which also centered on the rise of the younger man's career through the destruction of the older man's career.
I Shot Andy Warhol
I suspect a lot of people think this movie is utter trash. Its subject matter certainly doesn't do anthing to dispel this idea -- Lili Taylor plays "motor-mouth street freak writer-prostitute-lesbian-gun-wielding assailant Valerie Solanas," as described by Amazon, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto (which is basically a huge rant about how men are inferior to women in every way) and did, indeed, shoot Andy Warhol after he refused to produce her play called "Up Your Ass." The performance, however, is amazing, and the character of Solanas is strong enough to be sympathetic despite her many roughnesses. She comes across as tough, lonely, misunderstood, witty, and driven, which is in direct contrast to the rather slimy persona of Andy Warhol, who doesn't seem to be so much a genius as just a really aloof, elitist prick that surrounds himself with pretentious ass-kissers. One of them, when watching footage of Solanas's transvestite friend Candy Darling (who hands out with the pack as kind of their star freak-show attraction), remarks "Oh, I love her. She's so real. She just gets realer and realer and realer."
The movie is filled with witty lines and and a lot of droll moments to capture the mood of the anti-establishment, counter-culture vibe and lifestyles. It's definitely worth a see.
vintage thirst returning
That phrase is from the Mr. Bungle song, "Retrovertigo."
Now I'm finding truth is a ruin
Nauseous end that nobody is pursuing
Staring into glassy eyes, mesmerized
There's a vintage thirst returning
But I'm sheltered by my channel surfing
Every famine virtual,
Retrovertigo...
It's been a year. Maybe there's time enough.
I've quit WoW, again, for who knows how long this time. And again, it was another Bethesda game that pulled me away -- I've finished Fallout3, which I really liked, to the point where I was sad to see it end. Of course, I could always play the expansion packs, but that always feels sort of like trying to relive a good memory that's already lost -- like hanging around a college you already graduated from in the hopes of recapturing the spirit of undergraduate days, when you were probably a much hipper person and more interesting to be around.
Next on the list: SPORE, Assassin's Creed, F.E.A.R.
I've moved, again, hopefully for good this time -- but I'm going to reserve comment on this until some things settle down. They're out there. And they're listening. And some decidedly un-cool corporate person may completely miss the point of personal blog versus professional blog, once again, and that's as much as I'm going to say.
Now I'm finding truth is a ruin
Nauseous end that nobody is pursuing
Staring into glassy eyes, mesmerized
There's a vintage thirst returning
But I'm sheltered by my channel surfing
Every famine virtual,
Retrovertigo...
It's been a year. Maybe there's time enough.
I've quit WoW, again, for who knows how long this time. And again, it was another Bethesda game that pulled me away -- I've finished Fallout3, which I really liked, to the point where I was sad to see it end. Of course, I could always play the expansion packs, but that always feels sort of like trying to relive a good memory that's already lost -- like hanging around a college you already graduated from in the hopes of recapturing the spirit of undergraduate days, when you were probably a much hipper person and more interesting to be around.
Next on the list: SPORE, Assassin's Creed, F.E.A.R.
I've moved, again, hopefully for good this time -- but I'm going to reserve comment on this until some things settle down. They're out there. And they're listening. And some decidedly un-cool corporate person may completely miss the point of personal blog versus professional blog, once again, and that's as much as I'm going to say.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Chicks dig my attack bike...
- Lo, I have seen the Dark Knight in IMAX, and it is good.
- The iPhone 3G is still just a phone. Pandora Radio is not THAT amazing (maybe I'm just hard to please). And do you really need to be able to access Yelp everywhere you go? Whatever happened to old-fashioned planning?
- Games I have played since quitting WoW: Call of Duty 4 (pretty good), Crysis (meh), Bioshock (awesome), Titan Quest (okay), Civilization 4 (addicted), Neverwinter Nights 2 (slow), C&C3 (fun). Somehow I managed to play and beat Oblivion while playing WoW.
- My new apartment is on the fifth floor. That is higher than I have ever been in the state of California, because this state doesn't like to build up. You have no one to blame for your exorbitant real estate prices but yourself.
- My quest to adopt kitties has failed. Poor unadopted, uncaptioned kittehs! :(
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
100 Must-Read Books for Women
A very optimistically-named blog called The Art of Manliness posted an article:
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library.
I disagree with some of it (not to mention it's a fairly American-centric list), but it's not a bad list -- plus it's largely a collection of books that are just good in general, and could probably benefit a woman's education as well. Thus, I have started my own list:
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Woman's Library
In no particular order:
Classics
1) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
Yes, I know it doesn't get any more American-centric than this.
It is a fairly realistic romance for those who don't necessarily like happily-ever-after romances -- plus, in Scarlett and Rhett Butler, it has two of the strongest and most intriguing literary characters ever conceived, set against a fairly epic time scale and weighing in at over 1k pages in most editions.
2) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style" means, loosely translated, that you can be writing about pedophilia, kidnapping, and just all-around bad parenting, and still create an amazing book if your prose is pretty enough. The book gets rather sickening in the second half, however -- which little girl doesn't remember a guardian not allowing her to stay out late and hang out with boys? Now imagine if you were also having sex with that guardian on a regular basis. And that he was holding you against your will because he married and attempted to murder your mother to have sex with you on a regular basis.
3) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I never said Fitzgerald was any good at characterizing women, which is a fault of a lot of books on this list. I don't much care for Daisy, who seems like the flighty indecisive type of woman whom we all can't stand, but Gatsby is a very interesting and empathetic character, the quintessential man who built an empire chasing a dream that turned out to be empty and illusional, and he alone carries the book, in spite of the boring narrator and the ice queen Jordan.
4) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A book set in France and Spain in the aftermath of WWI has a bunch of American expatriates drinking away their woes on literally every page. Continuing in the trend of famous male authors who can't write a convincing woman, Hemingway has often been criticized for his weak characterization of women, and this book is no different. However, I liked Brett Ashley and found her to be a much more convincing character than his other female leads.
5) Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
It's been compared to Gone with the Wind a lot, in that they are both stories about strong-willed, resourceful women struggling to succeed in a man's world.
6) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
It is still THE defining teenage angst book of the twentieth century, and let's face it, angst is universal, all you Death Cab for Cutie fans.
7) 1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm is too full of itself by far and kind of boring. 1984, however, is a much more intelligent book because it offers a lot of very insightful observations about totalitarianism, many of which seem eerily applicable today.
8) Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
It's the story of a man from Mars who comes to Earth, learns about our ways, and teaches us a few things, mostly about love. It's been hailed as the "hippie Bible" of the 1960s, and that's easy to believe. Science fiction always suffers from bad women characters. I like to think this is a product of science fiction's popularity during the Cold War era, where the stay at home mom was a staple of life, and not because all science fiction fans are nerds who can't get a date to save their lives. And Heinlein has some of the strongest and boldly expressed views on that subject...but the book is still good, nevertheless. I'm always surprised this one doesn't make it on that many required-reading lists in high school, it's really such an amazing book -- but probably fairly likely to be misinterpreted by a high-school crowd. Probably more of a college book.
9) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde is the quintessential British wit and the book makes for a very enjoyable read, as well as being a very well-documented litany of sins. And sinning is always fashionable.
10) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
It's kind of like 1984 and good for the same reasons.
11) A Clockwork Orange by Alan Burgess
I'm really surprised this book didn't make it onto the man's list. What trinity of dystopia books would be complete without this? It has a lot to say about free will and the nature of good and evil, and may be one of the few book to movie adaptations where the movie is actually good.
12) either Bluebeard or Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
People who really like Vonnegut don't even consider Slaughterhouse-5 to be among his best works. It's just the one that's easily taught in school because everyone understands when you criticize war for being inhumane. Bluebeard is superficially about art, I suppose, but Breakfast of Champions is all over the place and doesn't ever seem to have any sort of logical underpinning at all. HOW WILL I MAKE THE CHILDREN UNDERSTAND? C'mon, you're smarter than that.
13) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
You either love or you hate Ayn Rand, there is no in between. And this book proves beyond a doubt that women authors are not necessarily any better at creating believable female leads than men are. What the hell is Dominique supposed to be, really? Despite all this, the book is strongly written in that it kind of has its own streamrolling pace, and the ideas (it's called "objectivism" but it's really just a glorification for the "invisible hand" and the selfishness underpinning modern capitalism) are interesting and worth reading about even if you don't agree with them.
14) The Forever War by Joe Halderman
It's considered one of the best "military science fiction" ever written, and for a good reason -- it focuses on the possible mental and emotional ramifications of warfare, which despite taking place in a science fiction setting and over the course of thousands of years, are applicable even to soldiers who are sent away for a few years to Iraq.
15) The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke was always good at imparting a sense of awe and wonder at the world, which may explain why he is considered one of the grandmasters of science fiction, even though this book takes place not in space but in Sri Lanka and doesn't have spaceships and androids in it. He's also a "hard science fiction" proponent, which will explain why there isn't any mention of hyperspace drives and traveling through black holes in his books.
16) Neuromancer by William Gibson
One of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, books of all time. The Devil is definitely in the details here, and it will probably take more than one reading to simply absorb all the density of the prose here. It's about a hacker and his female bodyguard with the artificial eyes and razors for fingernails as they meet the first "organic" artificial intelligence.
17) Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
I've kind of digressed into science fiction world here, but I included some romances up above, and there's more literary stuff to follow. Neal Stephenson wrote some other trilogies that seem to be more or less capitalistic nonsense, but Snowcrash is basically just a fun, instant classic, that seemed to pretty much envision the future of the Internet or possibly, Second Life, way before it actually happened.
18) Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
This is the last book I read that I was honestly blown away by. I do believe Gibson predicted the "viral internet trend" before it became a household concept.
19) The Once and Future King by T.B. White
This is the story of King Arthur and his knights, the first part of which was the inspiration for the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. It is a re-interpretation of the old legend as seen through the lens of WWII, especially surrounding the idea of "Might is Right." It is also the only Arthurian romance in which Lancelot is actually a depressed, ugly, and sadistic guy desperately striving for acceptance, which is a lot more interesting than his usual playboy image.
20) The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This one and the one above go hand in hand, for this one is a retelling of the Arthurian legends from the POV of the women in the story.
21) Hyperion by Dan Simmons
This book is a piece of good storytelling. It's also the first book in a 4-part series, although he introduced a new main character for books 3 and 4, a Messiah-type precocious girl, that annoys me so much that I could never finish the series.
22) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
He wrote a lot of other good science fiction as well, but this one became the basis for the movie Blade Runner, which is still one of the most amazing movies of all time. It focuses on the nature of humanity and identity, with a healthy dash of his usual paranoia thrown in.
23) Microserfs or Generation X by Douglas Coupland
Microserfs is a nice commentary for the nerd generation, but Generation X, which was written in the 70s, is startlingly reflective even for today's society.
24) Choke, Survivor, or if you're really adventurous, Haunted by Chuck Palahnuik
He also wrote Fight Club, but the three books above trump it both in content and in shock value, which he uses a great deal of. His books are really graphic and not for the faint of heart.
25) Gormenghast by Mervyn Peak
He swears it's not a political commentary but certain parts of it may almost read as such. It could most convincingly be categorized as fantasy, but few fantasy worlds are both so detailed and so self-contained. It's a sprawling epic that's easily overlooked, about a young ambitious man who is trying to usurp power from inside a castle so bowled over by its own traditions that it's become stagnant and ineffectual.
26) Perdido Street Station by China Meiville
Good Reads
Spin State and Spin Control
Educational and Foundational
The Prince
The Art of War
The Metrosexual's Guide to Style
The Iliad and the Odyssey
The Elegant Universe
Guns Germs and Steel
Civilization
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Lucifer Principle
The Selfish Gene
An Autobiography of Cleopatra
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library.
I disagree with some of it (not to mention it's a fairly American-centric list), but it's not a bad list -- plus it's largely a collection of books that are just good in general, and could probably benefit a woman's education as well. Thus, I have started my own list:
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Woman's Library
In no particular order:
Classics
1) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
Yes, I know it doesn't get any more American-centric than this.
It is a fairly realistic romance for those who don't necessarily like happily-ever-after romances -- plus, in Scarlett and Rhett Butler, it has two of the strongest and most intriguing literary characters ever conceived, set against a fairly epic time scale and weighing in at over 1k pages in most editions.
2) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style" means, loosely translated, that you can be writing about pedophilia, kidnapping, and just all-around bad parenting, and still create an amazing book if your prose is pretty enough. The book gets rather sickening in the second half, however -- which little girl doesn't remember a guardian not allowing her to stay out late and hang out with boys? Now imagine if you were also having sex with that guardian on a regular basis. And that he was holding you against your will because he married and attempted to murder your mother to have sex with you on a regular basis.
3) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I never said Fitzgerald was any good at characterizing women, which is a fault of a lot of books on this list. I don't much care for Daisy, who seems like the flighty indecisive type of woman whom we all can't stand, but Gatsby is a very interesting and empathetic character, the quintessential man who built an empire chasing a dream that turned out to be empty and illusional, and he alone carries the book, in spite of the boring narrator and the ice queen Jordan.
4) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A book set in France and Spain in the aftermath of WWI has a bunch of American expatriates drinking away their woes on literally every page. Continuing in the trend of famous male authors who can't write a convincing woman, Hemingway has often been criticized for his weak characterization of women, and this book is no different. However, I liked Brett Ashley and found her to be a much more convincing character than his other female leads.
5) Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
It's been compared to Gone with the Wind a lot, in that they are both stories about strong-willed, resourceful women struggling to succeed in a man's world.
6) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
It is still THE defining teenage angst book of the twentieth century, and let's face it, angst is universal, all you Death Cab for Cutie fans.
7) 1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm is too full of itself by far and kind of boring. 1984, however, is a much more intelligent book because it offers a lot of very insightful observations about totalitarianism, many of which seem eerily applicable today.
8) Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
It's the story of a man from Mars who comes to Earth, learns about our ways, and teaches us a few things, mostly about love. It's been hailed as the "hippie Bible" of the 1960s, and that's easy to believe. Science fiction always suffers from bad women characters. I like to think this is a product of science fiction's popularity during the Cold War era, where the stay at home mom was a staple of life, and not because all science fiction fans are nerds who can't get a date to save their lives. And Heinlein has some of the strongest and boldly expressed views on that subject...but the book is still good, nevertheless. I'm always surprised this one doesn't make it on that many required-reading lists in high school, it's really such an amazing book -- but probably fairly likely to be misinterpreted by a high-school crowd. Probably more of a college book.
9) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde is the quintessential British wit and the book makes for a very enjoyable read, as well as being a very well-documented litany of sins. And sinning is always fashionable.
10) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
It's kind of like 1984 and good for the same reasons.
11) A Clockwork Orange by Alan Burgess
I'm really surprised this book didn't make it onto the man's list. What trinity of dystopia books would be complete without this? It has a lot to say about free will and the nature of good and evil, and may be one of the few book to movie adaptations where the movie is actually good.
12) either Bluebeard or Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
People who really like Vonnegut don't even consider Slaughterhouse-5 to be among his best works. It's just the one that's easily taught in school because everyone understands when you criticize war for being inhumane. Bluebeard is superficially about art, I suppose, but Breakfast of Champions is all over the place and doesn't ever seem to have any sort of logical underpinning at all. HOW WILL I MAKE THE CHILDREN UNDERSTAND? C'mon, you're smarter than that.
13) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
You either love or you hate Ayn Rand, there is no in between. And this book proves beyond a doubt that women authors are not necessarily any better at creating believable female leads than men are. What the hell is Dominique supposed to be, really? Despite all this, the book is strongly written in that it kind of has its own streamrolling pace, and the ideas (it's called "objectivism" but it's really just a glorification for the "invisible hand" and the selfishness underpinning modern capitalism) are interesting and worth reading about even if you don't agree with them.
14) The Forever War by Joe Halderman
It's considered one of the best "military science fiction" ever written, and for a good reason -- it focuses on the possible mental and emotional ramifications of warfare, which despite taking place in a science fiction setting and over the course of thousands of years, are applicable even to soldiers who are sent away for a few years to Iraq.
15) The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke was always good at imparting a sense of awe and wonder at the world, which may explain why he is considered one of the grandmasters of science fiction, even though this book takes place not in space but in Sri Lanka and doesn't have spaceships and androids in it. He's also a "hard science fiction" proponent, which will explain why there isn't any mention of hyperspace drives and traveling through black holes in his books.
16) Neuromancer by William Gibson
One of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, books of all time. The Devil is definitely in the details here, and it will probably take more than one reading to simply absorb all the density of the prose here. It's about a hacker and his female bodyguard with the artificial eyes and razors for fingernails as they meet the first "organic" artificial intelligence.
17) Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
I've kind of digressed into science fiction world here, but I included some romances up above, and there's more literary stuff to follow. Neal Stephenson wrote some other trilogies that seem to be more or less capitalistic nonsense, but Snowcrash is basically just a fun, instant classic, that seemed to pretty much envision the future of the Internet or possibly, Second Life, way before it actually happened.
18) Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
This is the last book I read that I was honestly blown away by. I do believe Gibson predicted the "viral internet trend" before it became a household concept.
19) The Once and Future King by T.B. White
This is the story of King Arthur and his knights, the first part of which was the inspiration for the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. It is a re-interpretation of the old legend as seen through the lens of WWII, especially surrounding the idea of "Might is Right." It is also the only Arthurian romance in which Lancelot is actually a depressed, ugly, and sadistic guy desperately striving for acceptance, which is a lot more interesting than his usual playboy image.
20) The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This one and the one above go hand in hand, for this one is a retelling of the Arthurian legends from the POV of the women in the story.
21) Hyperion by Dan Simmons
This book is a piece of good storytelling. It's also the first book in a 4-part series, although he introduced a new main character for books 3 and 4, a Messiah-type precocious girl, that annoys me so much that I could never finish the series.
22) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
He wrote a lot of other good science fiction as well, but this one became the basis for the movie Blade Runner, which is still one of the most amazing movies of all time. It focuses on the nature of humanity and identity, with a healthy dash of his usual paranoia thrown in.
23) Microserfs or Generation X by Douglas Coupland
Microserfs is a nice commentary for the nerd generation, but Generation X, which was written in the 70s, is startlingly reflective even for today's society.
24) Choke, Survivor, or if you're really adventurous, Haunted by Chuck Palahnuik
He also wrote Fight Club, but the three books above trump it both in content and in shock value, which he uses a great deal of. His books are really graphic and not for the faint of heart.
25) Gormenghast by Mervyn Peak
He swears it's not a political commentary but certain parts of it may almost read as such. It could most convincingly be categorized as fantasy, but few fantasy worlds are both so detailed and so self-contained. It's a sprawling epic that's easily overlooked, about a young ambitious man who is trying to usurp power from inside a castle so bowled over by its own traditions that it's become stagnant and ineffectual.
26) Perdido Street Station by China Meiville
Good Reads
Spin State and Spin Control
Educational and Foundational
The Prince
The Art of War
The Metrosexual's Guide to Style
The Iliad and the Odyssey
The Elegant Universe
Guns Germs and Steel
Civilization
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Lucifer Principle
The Selfish Gene
An Autobiography of Cleopatra
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Sometimes, Itunes gets it right...
I seeded Shuffle with "Strange Days" by Matthew Good Band and it came up with:
Strange Days - Matthew Good Band
Heaven Please - Devics
Gymnopedie No. 1 - Erik Satie
Serenade - Ritsuko Okazaki (from Fruits Basket)
Cancao Do Mar - Dulce Pontes
Mayonnaise (acoustic) - Smashing Pumpkins
Rapture - Pedro the Lion
The Scientist (Coldplay cover) - Johnette Napolitano and Danny Lohner
My Glowing Morning Dreams - As Tall As Lions
Not bad...
Strange Days - Matthew Good Band
Heaven Please - Devics
Gymnopedie No. 1 - Erik Satie
Serenade - Ritsuko Okazaki (from Fruits Basket)
Cancao Do Mar - Dulce Pontes
Mayonnaise (acoustic) - Smashing Pumpkins
Rapture - Pedro the Lion
The Scientist (Coldplay cover) - Johnette Napolitano and Danny Lohner
My Glowing Morning Dreams - As Tall As Lions
Not bad...
Thursday, March 6, 2008
On the Road...
Live, work, and play from anywhere.
You will need:
You will need:
- Laptop - lightweight and small, yet powerful enough to run ITunes, your favorite file-sharing application, multiple browsers, GAIM, your email client, and World of Warcraft at the same time. Good sized screen, and a good wireless card.
- Laptop bag - sturdy, water-proof, and equipped with lots of pockets. Preferably made of some nondestructible material such as military grade ballistic nylon.
- Universal adapter
- Power strip
- Ethernet cord
- iPod + USB cable + charger
- Camera with extra memory, computer adapter, and charger
- Cell phone + charger
- Noise-cancelling headphones
- Headphones with a mic
- Earbuds
- Cordless laser mouse
- Privacy filter
- Fleece blanket
- Thermal Sleeping Bag
- Chapstick
- Ipod adapter for car
- Skype
- Flash memory drive
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