A Passage to India

This is about the book by EM Forster. I listened to the audio book. WOW!! What a tremendous read. I don't think I've been this excited about a book in quite a long time. The book was published in 1924.

I don't know where to begin in explaining why this novel is so magnificent. Let me begin by saying that the audio book version I listed to was read by Sam Dastor. Amazing voice performance. I couldn't find too much about him on a quick google, but I did gather that he was born in India, but is either British or moved to England. At any rate, he masterfully invoked over a dozen different distinct voice personas, with consistent delivery throughout the narration. His Indian sounded true, as did his British.

The novel is set in the 20's, in India, during British rule. The novel's protagonist is Dr. Aziz, a young Indian, who, while attempting to befriend and honor some British folk, is mistakenly accused of 'almost' assaulting a British lady. If you really want to know the details of the plot, look at the wikipedia entry. However, with this novel, the plot seems to be incidental. The real driving force of the story is the magnificent representation of the social climate, the characters, and the Indian landscape. And the effect is perfect. While Heart of Darkness is flat and ineffective in looking at British Imperialism, A Passage to India is full, rich, expressive, and convincing in its portrayal of the British Raj. It highlights the appalling racial inequity and racism in the Raj with superior prose and devoid of any propaganda. It creates sympathy for most all the characters, despite their sometimes serious flaws. Truly moving.

The novel is rife with wisdom, some conventional, some profound. Because of this, I will be buying this book, to keep on my shelf at arm's reach. Yeah, it's that good. I put the 1984 movie version, directed by David Lean, in the netflix queue. The reviews seem to be really good, but as is often the case, I fear the movie will either not live up to the book, or will twist it into something entirely different. We shall see... but not anytime soon, it's #200 or something on the queue!

Shooter

To begin with, I think Mark Wahlberg is a fantastic actor. Although I do have Marky Mark and Funky Bunch from back in the day in my music collection, I'm glad Wahlberg made the transition to film.

Shooter was directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Wahlberg, Danny Glover, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, and Ned Beatty. Everyone delivered in this movie. My only issue was with Elias Koteas' character, Jack Payne. Either bad character writing, or bad interpretation.

Michael Pena looked a little familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. I'll remember him now, though, great performance. He was a bit goofy in the "making of" special feature, but that's not what counts, I suppose. I was not familiar with Kate Mara, but like Pena, a great performance, and what a cutie she is.
Rhona Mitra played a minor role, and again, I wasn't familiar with her, but a great performance.
Shooter is about a Marine Scout Sniper (which I suppose there is such a thing as, since the author of the book on which the movie is based spoke in the 'making of' featurette and mentioned he had based his book on the life of a real Marine Scout Sniper) played by Wahlberg. He gets screwed by the government while on an assignment and retreats to the mountains of Montana. He is summoned back to duty by what he thinks is a legitimate government operation, but gets mired in an evil conspiracy imbedded in the government. Again he is betrayed, but with the help of an rookie FBI agent (Pena) and his deceased partner's widow (Mara), he gets his revenge and rights the wrong.

The storyline is smooth. The plot twists are a little predictable, but fun. The action is top-notch. The technical details seem on. A must see.

Relative Strangers

This movie can't be good, I thought, looking at the DVD case. Then I saw who the actors were and I was more optimistic. I shouldn't have been.

It had Ron Livingston, who I've been a fan of since Office Space. It also had Neve Campbell, Danny DeVito, and Edward Herrmann. They tried, they really did here. I really wanted to like this movie, I really did.

It was about an up&coming psychologist with a liberal bent, Livingston, who's about to get married (to Campbell) and finds out he was adopted. He finds his birth parents (DeVito and Kathy Bates), but is quite distraught they are so... well... not in his class. They ruin his life and he treats them terribly, which sends his fiance (Campbell) packing because he's not practicing his 'love everyone' philosophy.

It all works out in the end, but it just didn't work for me. Good actors, trying hard, but I think the victim of bad writing.

Pass on this one.

Night at the Museum

Night a the Museum was a mildly entertaining movie starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Owen Wilson, and Steve Coogan.

In typical fashion, Ben Stiller plays a seriously goofy guy, who can't get life quite right. For fear of losing joint custody of his son, he takes the only job available to him -- security guard at the local Museum of Natural History.

But this museum comes alive at night. You are immediately thrown into the action which includes Teddy Roosevelt riding a horse, a puppy-like T-Rex skeleton, a group of Neanderthals, a group of Huns, Lewis & Clark guide Sacajewea, a mini-sized Roman army battling a a mini-sized railroad interest, and many other exhibits-come-to-life.

The rest of the plot is silly and not worth getting into, but it was entertaining, especially with the kids. They had to watch it multiple times, of course.

I did find a couple deep thoughts in the story, however. See, Stiller's character is constantly pursuing new schemes in hopes of finally finding his groove, so-to-speak. But he always seems to fail. He tells his son that he can feel his 'moment' coming real soon. His son responds something like, to paraphrase, "What if you're wrong, dad? What if you're just an ordinary guy who should get a job?" How shocking! What is that is me?!!?!?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Stiller is redeemed in the end, still a museum nightwatchman, but extraordinary in his ordinary role.

Yeah, I'd recommend this movie, I suppose, for pizza night.

Heart of Darkness

I read something in high school, or at least I think I read this... it's been many years now, you know... well anyway, I remember reading something, it might have been a short story or a novel, it could have been a poem, or even a reading out of some reader... The only thing I can be certain of is the impression this reading left.

The moral I carry with me, from this reading, is that when one seeks to enslave and control something (or someone), one instead becomes a slave to it.

I think the setting was British imperialism in either Africa or India, where some great white man thought himself quite alright enslaving a native population, but in the end he found that he was the real slave. I put the question to Yahoo answers, but got only reading suggestions I had come up with on my own. One being A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, another being Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Reading plot summaries of these, I didn't think either of these were it, but I got them on CD anyway to make sure. Why? Because it's driving me mad to know what this freakin' reading actually was!!!

So I listened to Heart of Darkness on CD. Before having listened to the novella, I read a bit about it on the web. All kinds of deep, metaphorical meanings are attributed to it and the title, about how it relates to the darkness of man. I know my high school AP English teacher would have a conniption, but I honestly thought it was nothing more than an eloquent yarn, a tale. And it seemed very Euro-centric: unapologetic about the imperial marginalization of natives and lauding the virtuosity of even idiotic white men. I was unimpressed. And I thought this was perhaps because I am only a quasi-intellectual.. but then I read the wikipedia entry and learned I was not alone in my opinion. A Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe criticized Heart of Darkness in a 1975 lecture, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." I'm too tired to look into this lecture more, but from the wiki snippet, I think Achebe was right on.

Heart of Darkness was probably autobiographical, and so I think it was just a tale of a trip up a river in Africa under European imperialism, with white men being all super-duper wonderous and the natives being seldom more than 'niggers' unless they served the white man in some capacity. Were I teaching a literature class, I would offer this book as nothing more than an example of the times. I could find nothing deep here. Darkness in man's heart? Oh wow, what a revolutionary concept.

I don't think this was 'the story,' though. The character Kurtz does end up controlling a tribe, and goes mad in the process... on second thought it may have been it. I could very well imagine my AP English teacher, Mrs. V. (name withheld to protect the innocent) coming up with some dictation that in enslaving this tribe to pursue his own greedy wants, Kurtz became a slave to the ivory he feverishly (literally) sought and to the tribesmen he used to get it, and in the end losing his life because of it.

Perhaps I'll never know.

Olive, the Other Reindeer

A few years ago, a cute little book made it's way into our home. It was Olive, the Other Reindeer by Vivian Walsh and J. Otto Seibold. My daughter absolutely loved the story, and I found it cute and amusing, especially the illustration. In brief, the book is about a little dog named Olive that hears "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer" on the radio and thinks it's saying "Olive the other reindeer," rather than "all of the other reindeer." So Olive sets out to the North Pole to help Santa.

The movie is not new, made in 1999 for TV, but I just ran across it at the library. A few share production credit (including Drew Barrymore - who is also the voice of Olive), but the standout is Matt Groening. I didn't know this when first watching the movie with the kids (guess I missed the credit on the jacket), and so I was beside myself at how fantastic the movie was. The story, although quite different from the book, was hilarious, and the animation was top-notch, especially because it closely followed the book's illustrations.

In the movie, you had The Postman (Dan Castellaneta) as the spectacular antagonist out to ruin Christmas. Olive (Drew Barrymore), goaded on by her pet flea, sets out for the North Pole in response to Santa's radio broadcast plea for help from "Olive, the other reindeer." On her journey, she encounters and is aided by a hilarious cast of characters including Martini the penguin (Joe Pantoliano), Richard Stans the bus driver, and Round John Virgin, the lumberjack-type guy. Along with Olive, these last two are mondegreens (here's your vocabulary word for the day). Richard Stans from the Pledge of Allegiance, and Round John Virgin from Silent Night. Ha ha!

Another witty reference in the movie that had me rolling on the floor was when Olive was trapped in the mail truck with no apparent way out. She suddenly notices a package addressed to her from a company called "Deus ex Machina" In it is a file which allows Olive to escape. You'd have to see the movie and understand Deus ex Machina to get it, but it is quite funny.

This movie goes right alongside Christmas Story and Elf as must-see holiday flicks.

Fire Sale

Another VI Warshaski novel, another good read. This time VI is thrust back into South Chicago (her childhood haunt) where a charitable stint as a high school basketball coach lands her in a web of corporate malfeasance, neighborhood activism, arson, and murder.

Religion takes a negative hit in this story, and I haven't really noticed if a negative view of religion is a common theme in Paretsky books. It was in both Ghost Country and Fire Sale, with religion and faith viewed antiquated, useless, hypocritical, or even harmful. Paretsky tries to be coy about it, presenting religion and faith in a matter-of-fact fashion with little narrative judgment, but we know that framing and lighting can be everything.

Regardless, the story is riveting. Another thing I'd like to point out is the fact the story is set in Chicago, as that is where VI hails from. But Chicago seems to be a commonly used back-drop. Chicago seems to be popping up everywhere for me. It's in all the Paretsky books I've read lately. Time Traveler's Wife was set in Chicago. And while watching the first episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on Netflix instant view, it was revealed that Buck Rogers hailed from Chicago as well. What is it about this town? I was there twice while I lived in Madison, WI. My wife and I spent a weekend in the middle of winter there, walking around in the cold, eating at great restaurants, and riding around in the horse-drawn carriages. Then we spent some more time one summer with my eldest daughter (an infant then) visiting sites and museums. I do have a visceral infatuation with Chicago, and I'm not sure why. I think... I know that I will be spending some time there in the future, but I can't know why...

Anyway, thumbs up on this one.


Fire Sale - VI Warshawski
Sara Paretsky
Putnam 2005