Ninja-tek

The Unvanquished
by William Faulkner
Grade: B

Cross between short stories and a novel, all about the Sartoris family during the Civil War. I read summaries before each chapter, knowing it would make more sense on a second reading. Faulkner loves to narrate as though you already know what happened, so it's sometimes confusing. Good writing and strong characters and an ambiguous look at the South.

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics
Edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly
Grade: A-

I don't usually like anthologies, so this is the exception to the rule.

These are comics from the 40s and 50s, beautifully reproduced, oversized, and dense. Lots of classic material - Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, John Stanley, Sheldon Mayer, Basil Wolverton - but plenty of stuff that was new to me. "Intellectual Amos", for instance, is clearly the inspiration behind Jack B. Quick in Alan Moore's Tomorrow Stories. There's one superhero comic (a Shazam story) but otherwise the book steers clear of genre.

All of the art is fairly cartoony. I find it more palatable than 99% of today's comics.

Faust: Part One

Faust: Part One
by J.W. von Goethe (translated by David Luke)
Grade: C+

I gave up on Faust after ten pages but came back and started enjoying it, then it lost me again near the end. Definitely more of a poem than a novel or play. Reads kind of like Shakespeare but more modern characterization. The events don't really fit my image of the Faust legend.

Other books on my to-read list for 2010:

Anna Karenina and/or War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Emerson's Essays (Library of America)
Gandhi's autobiography
A Bogart bio
Gravity's Rainbow

The Tarnished Angels

The Tarnished Angels (1958)
Grade: B+

This is a really good film and unlike The Sound and the Fury I can't believe it's not on DVD. Even though it's based on a Faulkner novel I haven't read (Pylon), it has a very Faulknerian feel - staring at the underbelly of society.

Rock Hudson's great. Everyone's pretty good. The stunts look great. It's got carnies.

The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control (2009)
Grade: C-

Zzzzz, BORINGGGUNG!!!!

I like Jim Jarmusch and I go into every movie to enjoy the experience for what it is. But this one is so bleh. The scenes (in Spain) are all kind of pretty and the actors seem like they have potential. So why isn't there any food on the plate?! Why isn't there a picture in the picture frame??!! Why isn't there candy in the piñata????!!!!! Why -

Feck it, don't waste you're time. I usually give up on stuff I don't like earlier, but it's Jarmusch and I hoped it would turn into something I could like as much as Dead Man or Broken Flowers. I ended up breaking it into three viewings because I kept losing interest.

No, there's no payoff.

World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad (2009)
Grade: A-

As if repenting for years of crappy family movies, Robin Williams stars in the ultimate anti-family movie, one of his best performances. I don't think I can easily call it a drama or a comedy, and it has elements of both. Brilliantly directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. Many unconventional avoidances of sappiness - a welcome surprise.

Superfreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Grade: B-

More counterintuitive research and stories. It seems to be getting flak for the sections on climate change and child car seats. I don't know anything about "science" - I liked it for challenging a lot of dogma we're fed, even if it does so with sensationalism. I've always been more interested in excitation than accuracy.

The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury (1959)
Grade: C

I knew this movie wouldn't be great. I knew it and watched anyway.

There's a reason you can't find it on DVD (or even VHS). It's so unfaithful to the book it may as well be from a different source altogether. But it's Yul Brynner. Like Bogart, Yul Brynner is so cool that I'll watch him in anything. But god, there are so many times I found myself laughing at scenes that were meant to be serious, at the strange convolutions of character, at the confused direction of the film.

Plus Joanne Woodward (above left) was 29 and playing a teenager!

It did prompt me to look at Yul Brynner's wikipedia page and discover he'd been in an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov with William Shatner in 1958. Want to see.

And found his anti-smoking commercial, recorded shortly before he died in 1985 (on the same day as Orson Welles apparently):

I am finally back in Santa Rosa.

Been down in Santa Maria since Christmas Eve and got back this afternoon. My favorite things I did:

-Saw the elephant seals near San Simeon (I also went to Hearst Castle but I'd been there before in 1999). There were probably 100 of them on the beach and I could have watched for hours. Some had just given birth, some were fighting. Most sat in lumps of coma using each other as pillows.

-Went to the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. Amazing. Walking out there I was surrounded by Sahara like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Also got a ton of Xmas loot. Also stopped at Palo Alto Ikea on the way home today.

Headache from the drive (I hate traveling) but a pill and food and now I'm dandy. Great to be back.

Avatar

Avatar (2009)
Grade: B

I won't spoil the story if you haven't seen it. It's hardly original. It reminds me most of Dances With Wolves, Enemy Mine and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (okay, I haven't actually seen that last one) The battle sequences are reminiscent of Return of the Jedi and Lord of the Rings. The bad guys are over-nefarious in their corporate-militant EVIL. Neat to watch, but my ass starts hurting after sitting for 3 hours.. I'll check out the sequels and hope the first Avatar is on par with the first Star Wars (A New Hope) and not the first Matrix (all downhill after that).

Duck Penis

Seriously one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. I can never look at Donald Duck the same way again.

Why not

Those kids are in a porn daze! Run!

The Four Immigrants Manga : A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924

The Four Immigrants Manga : A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924
by Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama and Frederik L. Schodt
Grade: C+

This book is best when it gets weird: samurai WWI action sequences that I thought were a dream but are apparently part of the real narrative, postmodern references by the characters to "the cartoonist of this strip", and the extreme depictions of every ethnic group (my favorite is a black woman - I like how in old comics and cartoons black people look almost like aliens). Is it a "graphic novel"? Sure, why not. The story doesn't really come together in a meaningful way but the narrative is historically interesting to comic nerds like me. It has a clunkiness that reminds me of the very first Fritz the Cat story by Robert Crumb (the one where Fritz comes home and has sex with his sister). The book was originally published in Japanese and English, but now the Japanese has been translated. The original (handwritten) English spoken by the rich white people remains, and I like how it's completely ungrammatical and misspelled.

I think my favorite line from the book is below: "Wow! White folks really are white!"

The Absentminded Fellow

The Absentminded Fellow
by Samuel Marshak etc.
Grade: C

Typical call-and-return structure found in many children's books (e.g. Green Eggs and Ham). Retro 30s cartoon art.

The Left Hand of God

The Left Hand of God (1955)
Grade: C-

Bogart as a priest in China... but he's not really a priest! He's got a gun!

Not nearly as cool as it sounds: drab movie. Only see it if you want to hear Bogart speak Chinese.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1
by Michael Kupperman
Grade: B+

Perhaps I've grown acclimatized to Michael Kupperman's humor... because I liked this volume slightly less than Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret. The art is as beautiful and refined and with the addition of color this is the best-designed book I've seen in a long while. Features the return of his classic characters (Snake & Bacon, the Mannister, Twain & Einstein etc), and lots of new characters and weirdness. I just wasn't laughing quite as hard or often - this was probably my most anticipated book for 2009, too, so maybe I set my expectations too high. Worth owning for sheer gorgeousness alone.

The Oakdale Affair

The Oakdale Affair
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Grade: C+

Last of the "Mucker" books (even though Billy Byrne is not a featured character) is all crime and vagabonds, gypsies and a ferocious bear seen on the cover above (growr). The first chapter is almost too Dickensian in its self-awareness. The book improves with some nice twists and surprises, yet might have been more powerful with a less saccharine ending. Feels like a 40s crime flick and not a 1918 pulp novel.

The Fall

The Fall (2006)
Grade: A-

One of the most visually arresting movies I've ever seen, from the gorgeous black and white opening sequence to the international Baraka vistas that seem like alien worlds, plus an ingenious animated sequence reminiscent of Pee-wee's dreams in Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

Using a Romanian girl as one of the main characters (child actors generally = bad) sounds like a mistake. She was really good though. This movie has a Princess Bride-Neverending Story-Time Bandits quality in its fantasy narrative that becomes dark near the end. I like it quite a bit.

Invitation to a Beheading

Invitation to a Beheading
by Vladimir Nabokov
Grade: A-

Ten years ago for a college lit class I read most of Kafka: Amerika, The Trial and all the short stories (never made it to The Castle). I found Kafka amateurish, aimless, occasionally humorous, not particularly talented.

I mention Kafka because Invitation to a Beheading is often described as Kafkaesque, and I agree with that appraisal. Nabokov claims he'd never heard of Kafka when he wrote it, and I also believe him. Nabokov spoke no German and Kafka's works were still relatively unknown in the 30s. Things often arise independently in the arts and sciences. It could just be the zeitgeist.

This book is about a man awaiting execution. Took a few chapters for me to get into it, but it got better with every page as I started understanding the style, Kafkaesque in its insane view of the world, but far more suspenseful and hallucinatory than anything Kafka wrote. It is an enigma (the man's crime is "gnostical turpitude"), clever, beautiful, simultaneously sad and funny. His jailers are insanely polite and affable, often downright silly. It's an introvert in a world of extroverts - the familiar Nabokovian theme of a brilliant man in an unbrilliant world. Great translation.

The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack

The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack
by Nicholas Gurewitch
Grade: B

To read all these strips in one sitting (only takes an hour or so) - along with bonus strips and sketches - is perhaps... well... overkill. The strips that were originally brilliant remain so. Others fail to shine and stack up in a strangely predictable humor formula. I really like Gurewitch's art and ingenuity. Take each of the best strips on its own and it's a masterpiece. Put them in a line like this (and waste tons of space on almost every page - why?) and the limitations of the comic strip format get on my nerves. I'll probably never like comic strips and even a great strip like this is gonna stay in the B range. I'd like to see what he could do with a graphic novel or longer illustrated story.

I Drink for a Reason

I Drink for a Reason
by David Cross
Grade: A-

Go for the audiobook of I Drink for a Reason. Cross reads it himself (despite what you'll initially think when you hear it) and it has lots of weird asides and guests (it was driving me crazy trying to figure out where I recognized the female "author" of You're Only Dead When You're Dead - it's Mel from Flight of the Conchords). Plus he will berate you at least a dozen times for being too lazy to read the regular book.

A Drifting Life

A Drifting Life
by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Grade: B

This is the third book I've read by Tatsumi and his longest sustained narrative (over 800 pages). It's also autobiographical unlike his eccentric short stories, and the events are generally more mundane. Not less interesting though - in fact, the first half of this book is incredibly engrossing, and I liked it more than any of his other stories. It's only when the main character really gets into manga publishing that the story starts to lose focus. This takes away from the ending and the book as a whole, but it remains a towering achievement. I think I've learned more about Japan from 1945 - 1970 in Tatsumi's works than from any other source.

There's also an emphasis on world culture and how it affected Japan in the postwar years, and how a young group of authors tried to expand the boundaries of manga. Tatsumi (who was born in 1935) has apparently been publishing comics since junior high school and continues to produce work today. It's amazing in terms of sheer quantity, and when you add the high quality of his stories... well, Osamu Tezuka may be the only competitor (in my admittedly narrow exposure to manga).

I look forward to more of his books (in English) in the future. I also get the impression that the amount of manga that makes it into English is just the tip of the iceberg. There are also translation issues (including Japan's right-to-left panel order), format changes, and other nonsense that makes me wish I spoke Japanese and could just read the originals. I refuse to touch Dark Horse's translations of Lone Wolf and Cub, for example, because I loathe the tiny format they chose to use.

Still waiting for a Babel fish.

We're No Angels

We're No Angels (1955)
Grade: C

Sappy sorta-comedy that reminds me of Mary Poppins if Mary Poppins had been a murderer, thief and rapist. Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray are pretty good foils for Bogart. It doesn't pretend to be realistic, but the ending screams of "bullshit". As if to make up for this film's ridiculous criminals, Bogart went on to make one last hardcore crime film, The Desperate Hours.

Gamer

Gamer (2009)
Grade: C-

With no more shitty Matrix movies on the horizon, what's a young pseudo-intellectual to do? I think this is the most ultraviolent movie I've ever seen. Some interesting cinematography and Robocop-esque evil media. Otherwise a ho-hum plot packed with cliche and bad acting. But you know what? Life's not a game. OR IS IT???????!!!#$@!$@#!@#$$#@ (Oh, you never thought of that, did you? Did you???)

Co-stars Ludacris as Laurence Fishburne.

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading (2008)
Grade: C+

Another movie with an incredible cast. A few performances stand out: Brad Pitt as a poofy fitness instructor and George Clooney as a high-strung and paranoid womanizer - both roles play against what these guys are usually typecast as (Pitt's role is as different from Inglourious Basterds as humanly possible). As a film, however, it tries to be something between a comedy and a thriller and doesn't win with either. A lot of dialogue feels too written - it belongs more in a P.G. Wodehouse novel of exaggerated "hijinks." The Coen Brothers often have mixed results when they do humor.

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Grade: B+

I had higher expectations for this film. I definitely enjoyed it, but it's not in the same league as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. You probably already know it has a ton of great actors. Brad Pitt stars and it always feels like he's "acting" yet he's so watchable that his ridiculousness goes with the character. I had hoped for a bigger role for B.J. Novak (above right) but it's almost as as small as his one-liners on The Office. The real great performance comes from Christoph Waltz as the nastiest Nazi in the film, and he certainly deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination. And even though I saw Mike Myers' name in the opening credits, I didn't even recognize him!

Loved the use of music (including Bowie's "Cat People"), loved the whole revitalization of the historical film genre, allowing an almost carny-like absurdity, and actually wanted it to be even more absurd and self-aware like Kill Bill. I did find some scenes really long and unbroken by anything but dialogue and Tarantino's obsessions. I still liked the movie quite a bit though.

Return of the Mucker

Return of the Mucker
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Grade: C

What begins as an interesting mix of On the Road and In Cold Blood devolves into a generic western. The threats never seem real and the intensity from the The Mucker are completely lost as this story is peopled with stock characters. Readable, but nothing remarkable in this one.

The Barefoot Contessa

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
Grade: B-

Late-era Bogart (when he always seems to wear a bow tie) and one of his few films in color. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, and Bogart's character is also a writer/director who looks to Ava Gardner to reignite his career. The movie is good at capturing the slimy side of 1950s Hollywood, corporate megatrolls, paparazzi, and wealthy wife-hunters. Bogart acts as godfather to Gardner amidst the parasites.

I haven't seen a lot of Gardner. She's got a similar lust power to Marilyn Monroe. Sometimes she overacts, but the movie is full of overacting and stereotypes, which sometimes make Mankiewicz's editorial voice a little too loud. The mystery of Ava Gardner's death (foreshadowed by a funeral framing sequence and flashbacks from three different points of view) kept me interested. Ending has a Breadfast at Tiffany's flavor.

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