(1) Did anyone else cry at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (TLTWATW)? Those bombers really got to me -- really put the books in a new perspective.
(2) I'm reading a book on culture (see a recent comment on my xanga for more info), and I realize that I've been living my life in the way I was raised to live it. BUT I don't feel as if I make the same cultural assumptions as most other Americans. Are there any ways of talking about our American culture as a whole? Are we having a cultural identity crisis? Is culture no longer a national affair? Or have I just been raised counter-culturally?
(3) Jane Austen (Emma, Pride and Predjudice) is reminding me of Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell). I'm reading them at the same time. Although they aren't contemporary authors, both of them remind me of Dickens. Austen reminds me of him because both of them were contemporaries, to some extent. Clarke reminds me of him because I think she's consciously imitating his style. Neither Austen nor Clarke is impressing me because I'm reading them through a Dickens rubric -- any suggestings for getting more out of these authors?
(4) Who needs my long-term mailing address? Email me and you shall receive it.
Love, me.
Jason Herrod is inside my computer, and he's singing God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen through the little speakers in front. Man, he's singing his head off! Look out! He's on a roll!
When I grow up, I want to be a singer. I want to be a singer in the old fashioned way, singing in bars, subway stations and weddings. One of these days, I'm gonna take some lessons. I'll learn how to sing when no one else is singing. I'll learn how to really be loud without a microphone and without yelling. I might even learn the guitar. There's nothing like the sight of somebody really going to town with their lungs, et al. You can see their neck moving, you can see their belly stick out whenever they take a breath, and you notice their hands moving about without anything more specific to do. Sometimes, you can even hear that little something that says they really know who they are.
Even though his technique might not fly in a concert hall, I could hear it when Jason Herrod was singing. He knew who he was, and he certainly knew what he was doing.
Right now I think I would settle for singing in a public place with a big sign that reads: "Will Sing For Monthly Pledges!" Then in little letters underneath, it says, "Raising Money for Research in Europe. God Bless You." If only it was that easy.
Sorry these are a bit out-of-nowhere. This is an excerpt from a friend on Syriana, the new movie based on the memoir of former CIA operative Robert Baer, See No Evil.
* It really seemed like Stephen Gaghan (dir.) was trying to make a new kind of movie -- lots of innovative camera shots and styles helped bring in a documentarian sensibility to a fictional movie. This, added to the fact that the director and writer used a minimalist script (which I like) and experimented with a loosely-developed plot and loosely-developed characters, leaves the viewer with a deeper sympathy for the big picture than for any single storyline. It almost seemed like the individual characters weren't as important as the sum of their stories -- what was happening in the region, around the globe, etc.
* At the same time, there were too many traditional moves to make this "new kind of movie" label really stick. Maybe it was because there were too many big stars involved? Maybe it was because oil and Mid. East regional issues are too cliche? All I know is, as soon as one scene really prepares me to think in big picture terms (i.e. a scene where the Pakistani boys recruited by Saudi fundamentalists are watching a tape of last wishes from a suicide bomber), we have a really traditional scene that makes us want to go back to individualized, psychological ways of viewing film (Amanda Peet's character has an emotional interchange with Matt Damon in a park). Contrast is all well and good, but give us some common frameworks for viewing.
* Everybody did a good job in the acting category. I almost feel like there were too many characters, in fact. Each of the 4 or 5 storylines had three or four main characters, which meant the obvious thing for the filmmakers to do would be to make a choice. Either forget explaining emotion, motivation, and character background entirely, or limit these revelations to one or possibly two characters in each storyline. Instead, Syriana's crew and cast decided to tempt us with lots of information about nearly all of the key players in each storyline, which means they didn't do justice to any of them. Maybe I'm being too character-driven here, but my questions about each character kept distracting me from what was really going on. ("What don't we know about the Nadir brothers' relationship to their father?" "How big of a priority is Bob's (George Clooney's character's) family in his decision-making?" "What was Bob's role in Beirut in 1984?" "Why isn't Matt Damon's character greiving?" )
So there you go. I left with the feeling that it was an important movie, in terms of Hollywood's involvement in politics. I also left with a strong desire to read Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil, upon which the movie was based -- especially since one of the CIA characters is named Bob. How does the movie's bias (and facts, for that matter) compare with those of the book? I would definitely see it again if somebody rented it. I would even recommend it, except to people who can't stomach violence. (It had lots of violence, but thankfully none of those really terrible and manipulative camera shots of violence -- I was really surprised.)