Category Archives: Movies

A deluge of rain hit here this past week. In fact it’s been about three weeks of wet weather, and if I hadn’t had that trip to California earlier in July, I would’ve lost my mind by now. Where has … Continue reading →

Thanks to those who commented last week about Harper Lee’s legacy and books; there was quite a good discussion with various excellent points raised. Now today is the Academy Awards, which has its share of controversy this year (or once … Continue reading →

Well winter has fully arrived today as it’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit out with a wind chill of -3. Ouch. They say this “Arctic blast” should be over by tomorrow though. We have about five inches of snow on the ground. My dog loves it of course and still wants her long walks, sigh. It’s okay though because next week we’ll be celebrating the Christmas holiday with family in Southern Cal, enjoying balmier temperatures.

My reading has taken a hit this month as the Christmas season has prevailed over all things. Though Ti over at Book Chatter and I are doing a read-along of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel “Tender Is the Night.” I’m struggling a bit with it and trying to hang on to the story of Dick and Nicole Divers set amid the French Riviera and Switzerland. Perhaps they’re a kind of flip side to Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Of course Ti has zoomed through the novel and is done, waiting to discuss it. I will see “Tender Is the Night” through or else be damned.

Meanwhile I continue to have good luck with audiobooks from the library, which I listen to while on my frozen walks with my dog. I finished the audiobook of Amy Rowland’s 2014 debut novel “The Transcriptionist,” which I very much enjoyed. It’s about 33-year-old Lena, who works as a transcriptionist for a big NYC newspaper called The Record. She sits alone in a room all day with a headset and Dictaphone transcribing stories from reporters out in the field — until one day she comes across a story so shocking that it gets under her skin and eventually unravels her world.

Wow, this little gem of a novel is both funny and heartfelt, though dark too. It’s apparent from it the author worked at a major newspaper and indeed she was a transcriptionist at the New York Times for a few years from 2001, before transferring to the book review section. Like the character Lena, she sat in a room transcribing the words from reporters’ calls and tapes. I remember those days, now obsolete, when I was at The Post. So old school but good. Funny to think back on the by-gone newspaper days when transcription and newspaper paste-up and typesetting were commonplace.

In “The Transcriptionist” the author nails the experience of a low-life newspaper employee and how the job and the tragic stories she transcribes begin to fray her soul. The other newsroom employees she comes in contact with are wonderfully drawn and caricatured. In time, Lena plays her card at the paper, which has its consequences, but not before raising ethical journalistic infractions going on there.

The book rang true for me, which was cool. You don’t necessarily need to have been at a newspaper to be engaged by “The Transcriptionist,” but it’s sort of a kick if you have. Anyone might like how the novel touches on themes of the written word, isolation, technology, ethics, and the discontentment with a job.

This audiobook was expertly narrated by Xe Sands. One sign of a good audio is that you want to read the print version as well soon afterwards, and you likely want a copy of the book for your shelves too. So far, I can say that about “The Transcriptionist” and “Station Eleven.”

As for movies, the husband and I saw “Spotlight” about the Boston Globe’s 2002 uncovering of the sex abuse scandal of minors by priests and the cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese. It’s hard to turn investigative newspaper stories into dynamic movies but the screenwriters pulled this one off. It’s a powerful rendering of the explosive scandal and focuses on how the journalists pieced the story together. The cast is superb, and the victims stories are horrific (a couple cases are briefly described, the rest implied). It’s hard to fathom the scale of the abuse and the cover-up even now long after it’s been made public.

We also just saw the movie “In the Heart of the Sea” about the sinking of the whaling ship (Essex) in 1820 by a giant whale. Much of the movie focuses on the captain and the first mate (played by the hunky Chris Hemsworth) who don’t see eye-to-eye over the ship’s destination or seamanship — and how the ship’s surviving crew are pushed to the brink to stay alive. We liked the film, though it received just a 41% favorable critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It deserves better! Be forewarned: it’s not easy to watch majestic whales being hunted and killed, but it’s hard to deny whaling was a considerable part of U.S. history. The film’s visual effects may seem unreal at times, but the story of the real-life maritime disaster is well worth seeing, as well as for its role in inspiring Herman Melville’s epic “Moby-Dick.” Melville, played by British actor Ben Whishaw, has an interesting part in the movie.

What about you — have you read “The Transcriptionist” or seen the movies “Spotlight” or “In the Heart of the Sea” — and if so, what did you think?

Till the next time, have a happy holiday season!
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For those in the U.S., Thanksgiving is nearly here so I’m wishing everyone a very happy turkey day in advance. My husband and I usually do not travel for Thanksgiving but this year we are going to San Francisco for a rare family get-together at my sister’s. I think 15 relatives or so will be there, which is pretty exciting. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Meanwhile this week I finished Australian author Kate Grenville’s 2005 novel “The Secret River,” which is set during the early 1800s about an English bargeman, William Thornhill, who is deported (for stealing) along with his wife to the colony of New South Wales in what later would become Australia. After a few years, Thornhill’s pardoned and settles with his family fifty miles beyond Sydney on the frontier — with dreams of owning his own farm land along the banks of the Hawkesbury River. The only problem is the land has long been the territory of an Aboriginal group that uses the land as well. A culture clash between the settlers and the natives ensues with the hostility gradually escalating until one final act ends up changing all of their lives forever.

What starts out as a pretty measured-paced novel builds to a crescendo toward the end. Grenville is quite a gifted storyteller and I felt in “The Secret River” she captured the sensibilities of the characters, the densely forested landscape along the river, and the settler-Aboriginal conflict very well. It was like I was on the edge of the Australian frontier in 1814 with circumstances and the heat about to boil over — the wife wanting to return to England, Thornhill wanting to stay, and the other settlers pushing to settle things with the natives once and for all. I credit Grenville for writing such a well-researched historical novel that flows so easily; she definitely seems to be a born storyteller. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, “The Secret River” was inspired by Grenville’s interest in finding out about an ancestor of hers who settled along the Hawkesbury River, and it took her five years and twenty drafts to complete. Oh my, no wonder the novel turned out right.

I read “The Secret River” as part of AusReadingMonth, which is being hosted by Brona at Brona’s Books. She helped pick out this novel for me and I’m glad because it seemed right up my alley. I’ve read a lot of fiction by Australian author Tim Winton but never had read Grenville before. “The Secret River” is the first novel in a trilogy and I’m interested in reading the other two books about the Thornhill family. From the first one, I could visualize Australia so well even though I’ve never been there, but I sure would like to go. I meet quite a few Aussies here in Western Canada — as the people of the Commonwealth countries sure seem to keep together.

In other news last week, I finished the audiobook of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 children’s classic “A Wrinkle in Time.” I had not remembered the fine details of the book from my youth so I returned to rectify that. I’m so glad I did. I really enjoyed listening to the story of Meg and her younger brother Charles Wallace (who can forget Charles?) as they journey along with schoolmate Calvin O’Keefe to find their missing father, a scientist who had been working on fifth dimensional time-travel before disappearing. I loved the trio of their helpers: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, and was appropriately intimidated by the dark planet of Camazotz and the disembodied brain that controls the place. Blech! Run Charles Wallace, Run! Luckily Meg seems to learn some valuable lessons about fighting conformity and evil along the way. I listened to the audiobook narrated by actress Hope Davis that came out with the 50th anniversary edition a few years ago. I highly recommend Hope’s reading of “A Wrinkle in Time.” It’s good fun.

Also my Hub and I finally saw Steven Spielberg’s Cold War film “Bridge of Spies” last week. It has all the historical intrigue and ingredients to be quite fascinating — and it is to a certain extent. It’s about an American lawyer trying to get back a captured U.S. spy pilot in a prisoner exchange with a Soviet spy. The movie is good, but in some respects “Bridge of Spies” seems to come across a tad dry (I think from the script) despite how much tension and anxiety you would think such circumstances would involve during the Cold War. The movie is definitely worth going to — it’s quite an interesting event in history. I just felt it could’ve had more intensity or pulse to it (instead there is a bit of Coen Brothers’ humor in there). For goodness sakes, world annihilation was on the line.

Lastly in news, congratulations to last week’s National Book Award winners: Adam Johnson for his short story collection “Fortune Smiles” and Ta-Nehisi Coates for his nonfiction book “Between the World and Me.” I haven’t read either author just yet, but I have their books on my radar. Both seem quite thought-provoking.

How about you — have you read any of these books mentioned above or seen the Spielberg movie — and if so, what did you think? Continue reading →

This week I’ve been reading a nonfiction book about the doomed Donner Party — you know, the group of emigrants lead by George Donner and James Reed who set out from Missouri for California in covered wagons in 1846. It’s by the same author — Daniel James Brown — who wrote “The Boys in the Boat” and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I’ll report back more once I get through its snows of the Sierra Nevadas and it comes to an end.

Meanwhile I finished listening to the audiobook of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel “The Dog Stars.” Of course it’s another apocalyptic novel — where is my mind this year — ready for end of the world?! Like Emily St. John Mandel’s novel “Station Eleven,” “The Dog Stars” is set quite a few years after a flu or virus has wiped out most of humanity. It’s two primary characters are a fortyish pilot and fisherman named Hig and an older, gun nut named Bangley who have settled at a country airstrip in Colorado, trying to fend off occasional attacks from violent survivors. Their families didn’t survive the pandemic, but Hig still relies on his very dear dog companion Jasper, a Blue Healer mix.

A lot of the time, Hig spends flying an old Cessna around, monitoring the area for intruders and visiting a hamlet of sick families a distance away who have the tainted blood. Then one day, he hears a distant response on his plane’s intercom and realizes good things might still be out there. He leaves their place behind, and sets out to investigate. What happens and whether he will return kept me glued to the audio all week while raking leaves, doing chores, and walking my dog.

I liked the characters of Hig and Bangley — a crotchety, but winning combo. And Jasper of course. Hig’s love for his dog in the story earned major points with me, being a dog lover. I was also impressed by the author’s vivid descriptions of life under such dire conditions. His writing was at times poetic and touching. Though I wasn’t sure about parts of a romance in the book, it seemed a bit goofy or just perhaps out of place, but I was willing to let it ride.

To compare, “The Dog Stars” is perhaps a tad scarier and more survival focused perhaps than “Station Eleven,” but not as scary or as dark as Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” The novel is a bit hopeful, which is nice when you’re facing extinction. I liked “Station Eleven” best, but also enjoyed “The Dog Stars” as it’s both suspenseful and well written. It has heart. Actor Mark Deakins read the novel for the audio, and is quite excellent.

As for brief impressions of three fall movies I’ve seen:

“The Intern” — I had to suspend my disbelief in a couple places in this Nancy Meyers’ movie, but I still ended up enjoying it. I credit actors Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway for their performances and the cool shots of New York. I also had low expectations going in and so was pleasantly surprised it exceeded that. I found it a nice feel-good story but not over-the-top saccharine.

“The Martian” — Oh yeah I had been looking forward to Matt Damon as Mark Watney, and I was definitely entertained by this 3-D action space film adapted from Andy Weir’s bestselling book. I liked it but I guess I liked the book a tad better. The film had some great imagery, but for whatever reason it did not stay with me for long like substantial films usually do.

“Steve Jobs” — Whoa, does this film have a lot of dialogue in it or what. It’s filled to the brink, courtesy of Aaron Sorkin, and slightly reminiscent of “The West Wing.” It’s innovative and cuts to some of Steve Jobs’s inner character. I liked it but it also wore me out in parts — with the around and around cerebral dialogue. But Michael Fassbender seemed amazing as Jobs, and Kate Winslet and Seth Rogen were quite excellent too.

That’s it for now. How about you — have you read “The Dog Stars” or seen any of these movies, and if so, what did you think? Continue reading →

Yes, Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” is out Tuesday and the Twitter-sphere is awash with the news that Atticus Finch is now a racist who once attended a Klan meeting etc. When I read Michiko Kakutani’s New York Times review of it on Friday I just about fell out of my chair. I couldn’t believe it. I about gagged. Obviously I wasn’t expecting Atticus to be turned into a racist and Jem to be dead in the new book. I’m not sure what I expected but surely it wasn’t a complete reversal of things in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Just last week I reread “To Kill a Mockingbird” to get myself ready for the new book. I revisited Jem, Scout, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, Boo Radley, and the small town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s, and I thought the novel held up from when I read it in school. Scout as the six-year-old narrator is funny but sincere. She’s a tomboy who butts heads with authority and gets into fights at school with name-callers. I identified with her when I was younger. So many did. Atticus, too, was someone you looked up to. He stood for equal rights, justice and being a devoted father. He was a lawyer, defending Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape against a white woman. It wasn’t an easy time; the story is set in the Deep South during the Depression and times of racial inequality.

As soon as I finished the book, I rewatched the 1962 film of it, with Gregory Peck as Atticus. I had to see if everything was the same. The film condenses the book but maintains the essentials and keeps the ending. But while the novel deals more with the daily life and adventures of Scout and Jem in Maycomb, the film focuses more on Atticus and Tom Robinson’s trial. I mean if you had Gregory Peck for the role, wouldn’t you? Gregory Peck is Atticus, or was to me. The kid actors are wonderful too; I still laugh at Dill. The characters in the book are so relatable, and who hasn’t come upon a Boo Radley house or person? The story long ago had sunk into the American psyche, and I made myself familiar upon this second reading with even its smallest details.

And now — somehow — I need to wrap my head around everything surrounding Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman.” I’ve calmed down a bit since my initial reaction a few days ago. I must say since I just read “Mockingbird” and have good feelings from that, I feel less inclined to read “Watchman” right away. If Atticus is a racist and the story is a bit of a mess (from what I hear of the second half), do I really want to go down that path immediately?

I’m aware that apparently “Watchman” was a prototype or an early draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” though “Watchman” picks up the characters’ lives 20 years later. It’s hard to even reconcile how this early draft morphed into the eventual classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which indicted racism and became associated with the civil rights movement.

For now I’ll look at these novels as two separate creations of Lee’s. It seems she explored ways in which she sought to write her narrative — first, as an adult in New York coming home to a segregated South — and second as a child who hadn’t left her hometown yet. I sort of see the two Atticuses as separate people in the two books, and not one and the same person. (Maybe that’s just my way to deal with how opposite Atticus is in “Watchman” from “Mockingbird” — a transformation that obviously is bizarre and bewildering to so many.) If Lee’s goal was to write about the racial injustices she grew up with, the narratives in the “Watchman” and “Mockingbird” are definitely two different ways of doing it.

I still plan to read “Go Set a Watchman” but maybe not while “To Kill a Mockingbird” is so fresh in my mind. I’m curious about Lee’s theme of the alienation of a daughter returning home — as apparently, the main conflict in “Watchman” is Scout’s struggle in coming to terms with a father who is not who she believed he was. This could be an interesting theme — or then maybe not — if it fails to compel or is not done well.

Though many believe “Watchman” will forever change how we read or view “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Harper Lee, I still value the 1960 version for what it is on the page and the story it portrays.

What about you — what do you think about the two books and will you be reading “Go Set a Watchman”?

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Happy 4th of July weekend to all those in the U.S. I hope you enjoyed some fireworks and barbecues. We had a nice Canada Day here on July 1, hiking in the mountains, see photo at left. On Sunday, we plan to go for a bike ride and then watch the U.S. women’s soccer team hopefully win the World Cup against defending champs, Japan. Go team!

Meanwhile this week, I did some “beach” reading, though I live no where near the ocean. I wanted to lighten things up with a good summer read, so I snapped up an e-copy of Beatriz Williams’s latest novel “Tiny Little Thing” from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and though it was fine, I wasn’t overly taken with it. Maybe I had heard so much about this author and how her novel “A Hundred Summers” is a favorite beach read of so many people that I was expecting beach magic. Or alas, maybe this genre of fiction isn’t exactly my cup of tea? Would you call it commercial historical fiction or historical romantic fiction or something else? Whichever, I have a feeling that Williams’ fans, despite any of my misgivings — I am likely in the minority here — will like this novel just as well.

Set in the 1960s, “Tiny Little Thing” is about a woman (Christina “Tiny” Schuyler) who thinks she’s doing the right thing by marrying Frank Hardcastle, a man from a wealthy Cape Cod family who’s apparently destined for political greatness. He’s running for Congress and Tiny is the perfect “trophy” wife. They make an attractive power couple and have a promising future.

But as the campaign gets underway, various occurrences lead Tiny to doubt her life’s direction and the relationship with her husband. Her volatile sister arrives for a visit, as well as her husband’s cousin, Caspian, who became close to Tiny two years before. Tiny’s also being blackmailed by somebody who has incriminating photos of her. It appears everyone has a secret of some sort which plays out toward the end.

The characters felt a bit dopey to me in this “Mad Men”-era tale, but after awhile enough was happening to keep me going. I typically like political novels, and this one had a Kennedy-esque feel of a privileged wealthy family gone wrong. “Tiny Little Thing” was all right as a beach read — I liked how Tiny questions her identity of always having to be the good girl and doing what’s right because of her family’s expectations — but I felt the story seemed sort of contrived at times with not a great deal of depth.

I didn’t realize it’s one of three novels by Beatriz Williams about the Schuyler sisters — the first being “The Secret Life of Violet Grant” about Vivian Schuyler, then there’s “Tiny Little Thing” about older sister Tiny, and in November the last one will be about sister Pepper Schuyler called “Along the Infinite Sea.” I probably just need to go back sometime and read Williams’s bestseller “A Hundred Summers,” which everyone seems to talk about.

Meanwhile our small artsy theater in town is playing the film “Suite Francaise,” which we enjoyed seeing last night. Do you remember the novel of it by Irène Némirovsky, which was published in France in 2004 and became an international bestseller? It’s incredible that the story was written during the Occupation of France in 1940 and ’41 and was only read and published by the author’s daughter some fifty or sixty years later. Nemirovsky tragically died at Auschwitz in 1942, but her writing carried on and made quite a mark.

In the film, American actress Michelle Williams plays Lucile Angellier, a French villager who’s husband has gone off to fight in the war. Lucile lives with her well-off mother-in-law (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) who’s a landlord of several properties. As Germany takes over, they are billeted with a German soldier who shows them kindness. Over time, Lucile and the soldier start to fall for one another, but harsh wartime events intercede.

It reminded me a little of the recent novel “All the Light We Cannot See,” since it involves a young French villager and a German soldier, but “Suite Francaise” takes place earlier in the Occupation and is more involved in ways. You get an idea of how villagers snitched on one another, stole, and did what was necessary to stay alive under the scary circumstances. It’s a pretty powerful movie with a bit of action that’ll put you on edge. I didn’t realize this important book had been made into a movie, but I’m glad it did. It broadens my horizons once again on WWII events and made me feel the humanness of people even under war.

What about you, have you seen or read “Suite Francaise” and what did you think? Or what did you think of “Tiny Little Thing” or other Beatriz Williams’s novels? Continue reading →