Category Archives: Writing

TODAY’S RANT: The Era of the Ambiguously Ethnic Actor Continues

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That Indian looks like Captain Jack Sparrow.

That Indian looks like Captain Jack Sparrow.

It’s not bad enough that past generations herded all the Indians (feathers, not dots) onto the most inhospitable land imaginable. (No offense, Oklahoma, but the last time anyone said, “I wanna see Oklahoma,” they were talking about the musical, which means no one has said those words in twenty years.) Now Hollywood gives the only part for an Indian since Billy Jack to Johnny Depp.

In the 50’s no one batted an eyelash when the marauding scalper in their Spaghetti Western looked strikingly like the Italian waiter in the movie that followed. Hell, I thought the name Spaghetti Western came from the fact that all the Indians were really Italians. A vaguely foreign-ish looking actor might have been good enough for the early days of cinema, but aren’t we more sophisticated today?    Back then every location that moviegoers saw, from Ancient Rome to 23rd century Mars, looked a lot like somewhere within 20 miles of Burbank. Today –through the miracle of airplanes and frequent flyer miles — many people have been out of their zip code, and film-makers have been forced to shoot on location all over the world. They can’t even pass off Budapest as Moscow any more. Yet, we still live in the age of the ambiguously ethnic actor / actress.

We live in the great melting pot, surely we can find an Indian to play Tanto or a Chinese person to play Mandarin. The latter case is particularly interesting because China is about eight months from buying Hollywood lock-stock- and-barrel.  Perhaps we should break ourselves in by having a Chinese guy play a non-Kung fu master Chinese guy before we have to deal with the culture shock of watching Chen Dao Ming play George Washington –with English subtitles.

What is up with Tom Cruise having the starring role in a movie in which Ken Watanabe’s character is the title character? Why was Tom Cruise needed to tell the story of Saigo Takamori? If you said, “Because he’s such a better actor than Ken Watanabe,” then you will have been the first person ever in the world to utter words so ridiculously ridiculous. If you said, “Because Watanabe is difficult to understand because of his accent” to that I reply, have you heard Tom Cruise talk lately?

“KAATTIEE :)”

“All of psychiatry is bunk.”

“Oh, kattiee :(”

Yes it may be the Queen’s English, and I understand the words. Yet,  I have no idea what that guy is talking about.

Gandhi and Mandarin

Gandhi / Mandarin

 

Book Review: ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson

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RobopocalypseRobopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author of Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson, has a unique perspective on the novel’s subject because he’s a Carnegie Mellon trained PhD-level roboticist. His unique insight makes the book an interesting read despite the fact that the concept will be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Terminator movies. An artificial intelligence (AI) decides that machine life requires that humanity die, and soon thereafter our mechanized helpers begin to turn on us.

The book is organized as a series of records pulled together by a survivor of the war. Said survivor is the protagonist –to the extent there is one (it’s really an ensemble piece.)

The cast of characters is introduced in the first part of the book through a series of what seem like machine malfunctions, which turn out to be harbingers of the war to come. These malfunctions include a military robot, the air traffic control system, and a “robotic wife.” The book follows these human characters through the beginning of the war and the development of centers of human resistance. The resistance ranges from Japanese man who fights fire with fire to Native American tribesmen who survive in part owing to their limited exposure to technology. It all culminates in a fight in Alaska to gain control of the buried server in which the AI resides.

It’s an old concept, humanity replaced by the species it spawned. However, it’s much less outlandish than the Terminator series which relies heavily on time travel. Wilson’s vision is much scarier because it’s much easier to imagine coming to fruition.

Robopocalypse is being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg that is due out on April 25, 2014

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Bronze People Really Chap My Ass

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My dogs barking, having walked for hours, nearing the point of collapse, searching high and low for that mainstay of metropolitan rest, I spy a cast iron armrest around a corner, but inevitably find the last bench in the city to be occupied by a bronze bench-hog.

“Hey, George Hamilton, why don’t you move it along already.”

Nashville, TN

Nashville, TN

Okay, these are old people, but that bench is big enough for at least one more person. Skootch.

When they do leave enough room, they are busy having  an intimate moment. Do know how awkward it feels to sit down to something like this?

Beijing, China

Beijing, China

Oh, I still do it, mind you. Every mother wants more for her son than to be a bus driver. But the place for that talk is at home.

Here’s the worst though, the bench hog who leaves room, but dresses really creepy and puts his arm over the backrest.

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

“Yes, yes, come and snuggle up to ole Death.”

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn, Estonia

Here, this guy gives you a little room, but look at the hostile body language: arms crossed, head and torso twisted slightly away. He acts like you’re a filthy, syphilitic leper just for contemplating sitting next to him.

“What makes you so much better than me, Mr. Anton Hansen Tammsaare?… Oh, the fact that they put a statue of you up for eternity in a prominent public park… Touché, well-played, Tammsaare, well-played.”

I’ll save the topic of all the bronze nudists for another occasion. Yes, we get it that you have an awesome tan and metallic abs, but no one wants to see Wee-Willy-Winky while they’re eating their sub sandwich.

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

Book Review: WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams

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Watership DownWatership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel follows the trials and tribulations of a group of rabbits who leave a warren upon a warning from a prescient little rabbit named Fiver. Their exodus is fraught with peril from nature, man, other animals, and even other rabbits. The challenges they face threaten their unity as well as their survival.

Adams builds an intriguing cast of characters. Hazel is thrust into a leadership role. Bigwig is the physically powerful security chief. Fiver is the intelligent runt gifted with ESP. General Woundwort is the cunning and terror-inspiring enemy they must defeat to live in peace.

The book contains life lessons interspersed:
– One learns that the quintessential lover may also be a fighter.

– It shows how building alliances outside one’s comfort zone (sometimes outside one’s species) may allow one to win out over those rigidly uncompromising

– One discovers that sometimes one can only win by risking everything.

I found it to be a unique concept and very readable.

You’ll have to learn a little rabbit vocabulary and mythology, but there’s a glossary.

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Book Review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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1Q84 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1Q84 interweaves the tales of two people, a man and a woman, who stumble down the rabbit-hole into the same alternate universe. The male lead, Tengo, is a writer with an artful gift for language, but no success developing his own idea –the perfect ghost writer. The female lead, Aomame, is a personal trainer who, in her spare time,… let’s just say makes problems (abusive male problems) go away. The two had met briefly in their youth, but were separated. While they each have “the one that got away” thoughts for each other, both have given up on the notion that they’d ever be reunited. Even in the same alternate reality, the question of whether they will reunite remains.

Most 900+ page novels I’ve read would benefit tremendously from editing. However, Murakami makes good use of the space. Besides the two main leads, there are a number of other essential characters. For example,there is not a novel without Fuka-Eri, the teenage girl who seems barely literate but yet who managed mysteriously to write a story that is perfect once Tengo has recrafted it. There is also an engaging sub-story in “The Town of Cats.”

The name comes from it being Murakami’s take on Orwell’s “1984.” It takes place in 1984, but one of the MC’s take to calling the period in the alternative universe, 1Q84 (which plays on the Japanese pronunciation of 9 (kyu)). Murakami’s alternative universe is much subtler than Orwell’s (or Huxley’s or Atwood’s.)However, unlike those other alternate universes, there is a supernatural element that is mostly at the fringes in this one. Perhaps owing to Murakami’s look into the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the nefarious entity in this book is a massive powerful cult – as opposed to Orwell’s authoritarian leviathan.

I highly recommend this book. While it’s long, Murakami keeps one guessing by masterfully removing the onion layers gradually — giving one little victories and new mysteries along the way like nefarious enemies and immaculate conceptions. For the really deep literary types, the book is packed with symbolism that I’m sure I only vaguely got. For writers, we get advice from Murakami in the form of dialogue between Tengo and his editor Komatsu.

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Book Review: I AM LEGEND by Matheson

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I Am LegendI Am Legend by Richard Matheson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Matheson brings the vampire tale into the age of science and reason. The protagonist, Robert Neville, considers the science of why the vampires are in some ways like the legends (e.g. Bram Stoker’s) Actually, Bram Stoker may be said have done so with a much more rudimentary state of science, but Matheson dispenses with the supernatural altogether.

Of course, where the book really shines is in Neville’s realization at the end, which I will not go into to avoid spoilers, but which makes the title quite apropos. (As opposed to the movie.)

For those having seen the Will Smith movie of the same name and wondering if the book will offer them some thing new, it certainly does. As alluded to above, the ending is entirely different, and the story-line bares little resemblance besides the existence of vampire-esque creatures.

I didn’t get why the vampires were so helpless to get into his house night after night (the old wives’ tale about having to invite them in is unmentioned), or at least I wondered about it throughout most of the book. I guess one can reason it out near the end. Some of Matheson’s descriptions reads like descriptions but turn out to be metaphor, and that can be a little confusing. (i.e. something like, “he felt a spike pierce his chest”, and you later realize he was just saying that it hurt sharply and intensely that there was no actual piercing and no literal spike.

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Book Review: 2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

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2BR02B2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many parents of twins or triplets probably feel an odd mix of joy and terror, but what if you had to find someone to agree to die for ever child you brought into the world? What would you do if you were then surprised by twins? This is the clever premise of Vonnegut’s short story / novella. It’s set in a future where people can live forever unless they voluntarily decide to take themselves from the world.

It is typical Vonnegut, written with humor and a touch of darkness.

It’s a great read.

FYI – Pronounce 0 (zero) as “naught” and the name will make sense.

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BOOK REVIEW: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

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First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia RemembersFirst They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Warning: This is about as depressing a book as one can imagine reading. It is told from the author’s perspective as a child during the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodia’s history. Her father had been in the Lon Nol government, and this made life particularly perilous for their family. It follows the family from the day they are forced to leave their comfortable upper-middle-class existence in Phnom Penh through her move to the US. In between, you are shown what its like to be starving (literally), to be a child separated from one’s family, and to see a long string of man’s inhumanity to man.

While it is a sad story, it is well-written and candid.

I was often reminded about what Viktor Frankl wrote (much more eloquently than my paraphrase), that the sad fact that survivors have to live with is the knowledge that the best did not survive. The author tells of the actions that she was not proud of that she was driven to by starvation and life as an orphan.

I highly recommend this book, but be prepared to be sad.

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Book Review: SANCTUARY by Faulkner

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SanctuarySanctuary by William Faulkner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A debutante is kidnapped by a cold-eyed killer. A lawyer leaves his wife to return to his small-town home and gets caught up in the trial of a bootlegger accused of murder. This novel interweaves the tales of the two. It’s a story of murder and white slavery.

Faulkner’s employment of language is phenomenal, often poetic and always visceral. His slate of characters, virtually all of whom are fallen, is masterfully created. It’s immensely readable both with respect to the pace and  intensity of the story and the brilliant use of language.

If you haven’t gotten around to this one, I highly recommend this book.

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2013 Superhero Movies

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2013 will be a big year for superhero flicks. There will be two films in The Avengers domain. The third Iron Man film will be out at the beginning of the summer and Thor: The Dark World is out at year-end. Given my preference for superheroes that don’t wear tights as outer garments, I have to say that Iron Man 3 is shaping up to be my favorite. The Wolverine is also unlikely be in tights in this personification, but I’ll go into that one with low expectations. (Don’t disappoint me again, X-men. Actually, I liked First Class, but the others were making me consider a life of  super-villainy.) I’m not big on gods as heroes, but that’s just me.

I am serious about having high hopes for Iron Man 3. The trailer suggests they are putting Stark in his darkest hour. Hopefully, they won’t entirely lose the trademark humor of the franchise. Having said that, I think some enhanced tension could be good. I don’t know why they couldn’t find a Chinese guy to play Mandarin, but it’s a good arch-villain and will be mirrored by some brawn. (I’m not down on Ben Kingsley. I loved him in Ghandi. I just think we should have left casting Caucasians for non-Caucasian parts with 1950’s Westerns.)

I recently did a post on the Man of Steel. As I suggested, I like my superheroes more flawed and vincible (it’s  a word, and it doesn’t mean capable of being turned into a Vince.) It sounds like they’ve made efforts to build tension, but in the trailer we pretty much see that as superman v. man conflict (which doesn’t sound like a thrill-ride.)  I’m leaving room to be pleasantly surprised.

The most tight-lipped franchise is that of Kickass 2. I don’t know if that should be taken ominously or not. They may have been so surprised by response to the first that they don’t want to jinx things.

Iron Man 3 (May 3)

Man of Steel (June 14)

Kickass 2 (June 28)

The Wolverine (July 26)
(This is not a trailer, but it’s a summation of movie’s development that is humorous in places.)

Thor: The Dark World (Nov 8)
Also not a trailer