Stoker (Movie Review)

This movie is creepy, weird, awkward, and absolutely amazing. The director is best known for his equally weird and creepy "Vengeance Trilogy" which includes the movie Old Boy. Old Boy is sometimes referred to as the Korean Pulp Fiction for the role is plays in the director's career and in Korean art house cinema.

Stoker is definitely an art house film. I saw it in a theater with 6 other people. Ten minutes in I was hooked. The story centers on a daughter, India,  whose father has just died. At the funeral her mom introduces her to an uncle, Charlie,  she never knew she had. He has a fascination with India that is apparent from the start. She is immediately uneasy around him, but drawn to him all the same. So begins a story of the uncanny depravity that flows through the blood of the Stoker family.

The film's - I hesitate to use this word - 'gothic' sensibilities give it a great tension and atmosphere. This contrasts well with its almost Bretchian sensibility, which seems to invite each frame to be absorbed whole and each scene to be critiqued and enjoyed simultaneously. I watched most of this movie with a smirk on my face. There were scenes that I wanted to freeze frame and rewind, just to enjoy the obtuse meanings that were present. I felt like I was drowning and dying of thirst at the same time.

Add to this a strong script, non-cliche plot, beautiful cinematography, lighting, make-up, etc. and you have a great film.

This is my favorite movie of the still early year. In fact, it is probably the best movie I have seen in theaters since Inglourious Basterds. This movie has made me want to re-explore some of the other movies of Park Chan-wook.

If you are at all interested give it a chance, just know this is not your Hollywood blockbuster.

Coping with Loss

There is a movie idea that has been bouncing around in my head lately. The general concept behind it is the different ways people cope with traumatic events, tragedies, or difficult times. The idea for writing it would be something like a bunch of little vignettes each with a different main character. The vignettes would all take place a week or so after something major happening in the person's life - death of a loved one, end of a marriage, natural disaster, etc. There is an underlying point I want to make, but i'll leave that to come out in the story itself.

However, the point is with this on my mind I re-watched some of Buffy Season 6 - a season that is not my favorite. I realized that this season could easily be renamed - "How to not cope with loss." Going to have to re-watch the whole season now with this in mind. Sad. One of these days I will give a more in depth post about this topic. Any reason to write about Buffy or Firefly!

How to Read Derrida

Here is what I learned today:

Derrida makes so much more sense, read in the sun, on a full stomach, with a cup of coffee in front of you, and tedious detail oriented work as the alternative. Then you see his writing is a novel of the infinite possibilities for communication.

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

I am back. Hopefully with more consistency. I joined a book club or two and have like 10 books on backlog to review, plus some movies I want to talk about.

About a month ago I decided to read Michael Chabon's "Wonder Boys." This is the sixth book of Chabon's that I have read. As an overall writer he seems to epitomize what, in my mind, I call 'glimpses of greatness. 'By this I mean he is the type of writer who, at times, will strike you with an incredible insight, with full awareness that he is doing it. He shows the reader what is possible with writing, but never quite gets there himself. This being said he is still one of my favorites to read. This is in part because most of the 'insights' of his novels are meta-fictional in nature, but focus on questions of identity.

"Wonder Boys" is no different in this respect. At the center of the story are a washed up author and creative writing professor coming to terms with the failure of every aspect of his life - marriage, job, relationships, health, new novel. Over the span of a weekend he is forced to face each of these failings. Facing these failings in essence means reassessing and restructuring his identity. As Grady Tripp uses weed and denial to stave off nihilism, the reader is continually presented with brief and beautiful insights from the lucid moments of his mind. These range from attempts at diagnosing the disease that makes writers write to the way writers create their own problems to then have stories to tell later. One of these moments, my favorite of the novel, taps into a fear present in a lot of American literature with beautiful precision and subtlety:

"Most of the love parade seemed to have been crafted out of echoes and fragments and secondhand threads. The people spoke, amused themselves, and reacted to one another like people in movies. The things that happened were kinds of things that happened in the movies. Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as written by isolate Miranda, raised on the romances in her father's library."

What I love in this quote is the trepidation of the cyclical nature of 'art' and 'reality' and their imitations of one another. Whereas many authors - Adorno, Twain, Vonnegut - seem to fear that media controls the minds of the populace. Chabon takes a meta-fictional direction and bleaker direction: the media controls the minds of those creating the media creating a vicious cycle. There is an interesting producer/consumer desire here that is worth considering. Have we reached a point of utter confusion and integration of 'art' and 'reality' when the producers of the art can no longer distinguish their product from what we call 'real?' When does this distinction cease to exist and/or matter?

These are the questions that Chabon's novel seems to bring up. Having a compelling plot, well-crafted prose, and some moments of clarity the novel can definitely be said to be a worthwhile read - especially if you like meta-fictional ‘play.’ I have already recommended this book to two people who I know would enjoy it.

Also, they made a movie out of this book. I have not seen it, but have been told by people I trust that it is good. I will be checking it out. If any of you have seen it or read the book let me know what you think.

Choosing a Book is Like Choosing a Lover - Prelim

The title is the conclusion I have come to. I am having issues choosing what book to read next. While staring at my bookshelf, longingly scanning over their titles and their attractive facades. I have an idea of what most of them contain. I know what they could offer, the level of commitment they will require, the experiences and knowledge they might share.

However, I cannot choose. Because I cannot commit. War and Peace is staring at me. It is saying I offer love of the highest grade, love you have often thought of, love in a epic fashion. Your life will be richer with me in it. War and Peace is right of course, but it will also take time. It will take effort. It will take some degree of exclusivity and investment. I am not sure I am ready for that. And we know if you start a relationship we are not ready for it is harder to pick it back up later. We must see it through to the end and offer the commitment required to do just that.

So, I read a book I know I can finish quickly and enjoy it for the weekend - in the most recent case Wonder Boys (review coming). Then I move on and stare again at my shelf and all the books waiting to be read. Like un-examined lives, paths that might be taken, people who we might meet. It all terrifies me. How does on commit wholly to an endeavor knowing it will end and pursuing that end for some form of resolution when they know the end will be the end of that world.

One of my Professors says he no longer reads Bleak House, but he lives in that book. At this point it has become so much a part of his life. It holds the position of an exalted lover. Sure they are not exclusive, no love should be, but there is a commitment there.

I have often said I want to find a book I can live in, a story that I can inhabit, but I am afraid what will happen when I do. There are so many books out there screaming for attention screaming about the possibilities that they might hold. Who knows if War and Peace will do for me what In Search of Lost Time or Ulysses can do?

Like the rest of my life I am faced with an impasse of thought. A realization that the postmodern condition, the lack of ability to say anything with certainty, makes me uncertain, indecisive, and fearful of being unjustly labeled by my choice of a companion.

The book I want right now does not exist. The one that requires little attention, hardly any focus, and offers unlimited rewards. Like a love affair this cannot exist because it would not be fair. Reading is not a hard activity, but it is an activity that requires time and rewards commitment.

So, I guess that means the question I need to answer is.... What am I willing to share my life with?

Some Great Literary Quotes

While I continue to play catch up with my work, putting this blog on hold, here are some quotes by literary figures that I have seen recently:

There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one’s idea for thirty-five years; there’s something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Will blog again soon!

What I Am Reading and Looking at Now

Since my last update of this sort I have let my reading load spiral out of control. I have 8ish books going at the moment. Today I got closer to finishing two.

The Prague Cemetery is now done.
Living in the End Times is on stall.
Collected Poems of Yeats are amazing.
The Hidden Reality is going to be reengaged with soon.
The Odyssey is going kinda.
Building Stories needs some attention
Sandman Vol. 6 is perhaps my favorite thus far
Stories of John Cheever are always a pleasure to read in small doses

I set out to spend a good deal of the day knocking more of these out. I ended up blogging on my personal blog, writing a poem, writing in a journal type thing I keep, going for a run, and funding some kickstarters. Not all that successful.

Anyways, look as these cool paintings:

I think they are cool so I thought I would share.

Anyways, expect a review of The Prague Cemetery soon along with my thoughts on some short stories I have been reading by various authors.