Everything I Consume: Midcentury and Innumeracy

These were two busts. I loved John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy and this book is written in the same style. There are multiple narrators, profiles of important representative people of the times and chapters that are snippets of songs, articles and expressions of the time. He was very ahead of his time. While U.S.A. was filled with a compelling variety of characters this book is mostly about bitter old ex-radicals and their miserable life dealing with labor unions. I gave up after 160-odd pages.

I think my train was barely into Manhattan the day I started Innumeracy before I bailed on it. It was supposed to be about teaching important math concepts that average Joes, Joe Sixpacks, what have you don't know and are important in our daily lives. Well, we'll never pick it up when it's written this poorly. His jokes weren't funny either.

Everything I Consume: Pirate's Cove Mini Adventure Golf

The family spent a week in Maine last month and it was great: Acadia National Park, lobster every day, blueberry softserve, christian Oceanariums, Bar Harbor, alleged moose sightings and best of all, mini adventure golf. Well, maybe not best of all but still pretty cool. Gwendolyn and I got to take in two rounds at the fabulous Pirate's Cove course just outside of Bar Harbor. My hole-in-one on the fourteenth hole made me my daughter's hero for at least two days. And, in fairness, it was an awesome shot. My ball jumped two upward steps to fall right in the hole. After the game the Pirate's Cove people loaded us with booty, eyepatches, activity books and even a free game. I love that place. If you ever find yourself in Bar Harbor or Lake George or Brainerd you've got to go to a Pirate's Cove.

Here's a little movie of our family hijinks:

Everything I Consume: Tropic Thunder

Many years ago there was a great show on PBS called Sneak Previews. There were two movie critics talking about movies and it was really good. The knew their shit and loved talking about it. The two guys were a little annoying on their own and didn't seem to like each other but boy, did they have chemistry together. Like Astaire and Rogers or Lemmon and Matthau or one part hydrogen and two parts oxygen. Of course, I'm talking about Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

They did the show for a long time and became famous. The name changed to At The Movies and moved to commercial television. Everyone in the world knew what "Two Thumbs Up" meant. They taught a lot of people, like me and my brother, about movies and gave time to everything from My Dinner with Andre to Friday the 13th. They really cared. When the last Star Wars movie came out Roger Ebert watched two days in a row from the same seat, once in in digital video, once in film to judge how the special effects looked. When the re-edited the ending of Jade before it was released, Roger went to see it again.

My favorite memory was the Worst Movies of 1995 episode. That was a year I saw a lot of movies. Gene Siskel picked Jade as the absolute worst movie of 1995, a choice I totally agreed with. When it was Roger's turn he said, "Just for the record Jade was my worst movie too but Gene won the coin toss and I had to pick something else."

The show was frequently imitated but nobody came close. Still, it was always nice to hear two people who loved movies talking about them even if one of them was Rex Reed. At the Movies lasted for about twenty years until Gene Siskel got sick and died.

He is buried in the white suit from Saturday Night Fever. Really, look it up on his Wikipedia page.

Roger Ebert continued the show with a variety of hosts before settling on a decent guy called Richard Roeper. It wasn't bad. But Roger got sick a few years ago and even though he's healthy he can't talk any more. He's still going strong. They tried some guest critics but the people in charge of the show decided to chuck Roeper and try something new.

The new At the Movies has five critics who spend about five seconds apiece telling you whether you should "See It", "Wait for the DVD" or "Skip It". Here's a math problem, if two people you've never heard of tell you see a movie, two people you never heard of tell you to rent the DVD and one person you've never heard of tell you to skip it what do you do?

The only person I recognized in Ben Mankiewicz from TCM who is supposed to be the snarky kid but comes off as a burned-out art director who will never get the promotion to head creative and realized it years ago but is too lazy to quit. Sadly, At the Movies now just reminds me of the political shoutfests that have destroyed American democracy. There's no depth and no kids are going to learn anything about movies, or anything, watching this show.

Anyway, Tropic Thunder was great and everyone should see it.

Everything I Consume: No Country For Old Men

If I were David Spade I'd say I liked this movie better when they set it in Minnesota and called it Fargo.

Really, that's all I got. This was well-acted and looked fantastic but it was pretty soulless. These lifetime achievemnt Best Picture winners (The Departed, Return of the King)just remind me that all the best people are working in television these days.

Everything I Consume: Wall-E

Whenever I tell people I thought Wall-E was a good movie but nothing special they look at me and say, "You're the first person I know who didn't LOVE Wall-E." It's awkward. Maybe I was a little tense because I went to see it with Gwendolyn and I spend half the movies I see with her worried about her reaction. She had a great time. Towards the end of the movie I heard her making a weird sound like she was yawning but when I looked I saw she was holding back tears at the story. It was a moment that was heartbreaking but wonderful at the same time. I told her everything was going to be OK and, of course, it was but I wanted to tell her how lucky she was to be four and see everything for the first time and not know there's going to be a happy ending.

Everything I Consume: The Daughter of Time and The Crown Crime Companion

Years ago I read an interview with V.S Naipaul, I have no idea why, where he said he would give a book 100 pages or so and if he didn't like it he would just stop reading. I've never actually read any of V.S Naipaul's books but I figure if a Nobel Prize-winning author would quit on a book he didn't like I certainly could. This was a revelation. I've been much more aggressive about giving up on books ever since. So, I bailed on The Daughter of Time after about fifty pages. I'd only been reading it because The Crown Crime Companion said it was the fourth-best mystery ever written. Better than Murder Must Advertise, Red Harvest, The Long Goodbye or Murder on the Orient Express. Better than anything written by Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald or Ken Follett. I beg to differ. After fifty or so pages I found myself with that familiar feeling on involuntarily skimming paragraphs, then whole pages and then not caring enough to go back.

The story is about a English policeman stuck in the hospital who decides to solve the mystery of whether Richard III actually killed his two nephews. This was an interesting premise but there's too much of that breezy British dialogue that I can't stand. I just don't see the point of reading this book when there are still Agatha Christies and Dorothy Sayers I haven't read.

Since I only read this book because The Crown Crime Companion recommended it that book gets sent to paperbackswap.com too. Go, false guide to mystery novels, go! And I'm not going to read Presumed Innocent, either.

Everything I Consume: The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse

I love the style of 1930s medicine in old movies. Everything is white and sterile and made of chrome and porcelain yet people can still smoke cigarettes in the operating room. The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is Edward G. Robinson, who becomes a criminal to study the physical effects of crime on the human body. Eventually, he takes over a gang and even does blood work on them before their heists. This movie was a lot of fun and has a cool ending. Highly recommended.

For a guy who has been frequently caricatured, Robinson could be a versatile and subtle actor who tried many different kinds characters in the course of his career. I think he's great in Double Indemnity. In fact, his final role was being turned into Soylent Green. Claire Trevor is also great as one of the criminals.

This movie was written by John Huston and was the beginning of an amazing collaboration with Humphrey Bogart (Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, African Queen) that ranks with Scorsese-DeNiro, Wilder-Lemmon and Jones-Bunny as the best in movie history.

Everything I Consume: A Spectacle of Corruption

This book is David Liss' sequel to his book, A Conspiracy of Paper. That book was set in 1720 London and told the story of Jewish ex-boxer turned proto-private detective Benjamin Weaver navigating the financial shenanigans leading up to the collapse of the South Sea stock market bubble. I'm pretty ignorant about that period of time so I learned a lot. That's one of the things I like about mysteries, they can take you to so many different places and times. Anyway, Conspiracy of Paper was a good book and I think it won an Edgar Award. When I was reading it I bumped into my friend Annie on the subway and she said she was envious of me reading it for the first time. IMHO, it's a good book but not that good.

The sequel is set a few years later and opens as Weaver is being falsely convicted of murder. Not only is he being set up for execution he is also set up to escape prison. It's a complex story set against the background of the 1722 parliamentary election. There's a much-needed historical note in the front of the book and the players are often recapped. Still, I don't think I ever got a handle on it. Throw in a conspiracy where people may be trying to implicate the other side of crimes and it's very hard to follow. Like Conspiracy of Paper, it's all talked out in a lengthy explanation at the end of the book.

This book seemed to lurch in a pattern of Weaver interviewing someone, finding out a small piece of information then he talks to someone else and finds out more information. Then there's a fight scene. Repeat. Maybe most mysteries and even most books and movies are like this and it just seemed more artificial and exposed in this book. Like I said before there's lots of recapping.

Despite all my complaints I really liked this book. I fell into the rhythm of the plot and the dialogue was great as were the descriptions of London. Weaver is a great character. He is strong but unsure of himself intellectually. Weaver is constantly proud of himself when he figures something out or says something witty. I cared about the mysterious conspiracy and even the election. So, go figure.

Everything I Consume: The Guns of Heaven

This was a good, quick read from Pete Hamill about a reporter who gets involved with the IRA. I liked this book but even at 250 pages there's a lot of padding about Irish history and New York City locales. For some reason the author even threw in an albino near the end of the book. I guess you toss the rulebook when you're trying to make a deadline, I don't know. Here are a couple of reviews.

Everything I Consume: Father's Day Edition

Because of the whole Father's Day thing The Wife let me choose the movies for the weekend and I blew it, blew it when it should have been so easy like the Celtics in Game 5 or the Red Wings in Game 5. But it's OK, just like those teams I won in the end.

I can't believe I let my extended metaphor take over my post.

First up, was The Bigamist which I have to say gives away a crucial plot point in the title. As anyone who's seen D.O.A. knows when Edmond O'Brien is away from the wife (not The Wife, who never met Edmond O'Brien to the best of my knowledge) bad things happen. In this movie he hooks up with waitress Ida Lupino, doesn't tell her he's married, and has a baby with her (Edmond's wife can't get pregnant). Apparently his motivation was that his wife becoming too important in their business and this threatened him. So, woman who help their husbands succeed while jumping through hoops to adopt a child heed this movie as a warning! Or better yet take a night off and see Sex & The City or something.

Charlie Chan in Shanghai was below par for the series and most of its plot twists were easy to see coming. Anyway, it was a good Father's Day movie since the Chans are a great father-son team. Oddly, I kept having the feeling I'd seen this movie before but I'm pretty sure I hadn't. Weird.

Father's Day itself was a lot of fun. I got to sleep in, got some nice cards, from both kids for a change! Gwendolyn got me a remote controlled triceratops. She has decided the triceratops is my favorite dinosaur and is always pointing them out to me. My other present was an awesome GPS watch so I can now use satellites to tell me how far I've been running. Thank you, NASA. I've been playing with the mapping websites all week so expect to see more of these soon.

Everything I Consume: I'm Not There

My very wise high school video teacher Maureen Schaeffler once told me that art should never be explained first, it should just be presented. That was one of the smartest things anyone ever told me. So, the fact that the DVD of Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There comes with a whole section called "Intro to the Film" is a warning sign that what we are going to see is going to be very confusing and won't hold up on it's own. Another warning sign is a character is watching the Vietnam War on television with loud music playing. Anyway, the DVD has four articles explaining we'll be seeing multiple actors playing different personas of Bob Dylan (who played Warsaw last night) all with different names. And the facts will be a little bit off from the truth but sometimes they won't be. Anyway, The Wife and I gave this an hour or so before fast forwarding to the end. At least there's a lot of original Dylan music and that's always great.

What is it about Bob Dylan that makes us all try to explain him? Magazines, books, websites, movies, what is it about him that we can't get out of our heads? That would have made a good movie.

Everything I Consume: Seize The Daylight

If you are looking for an irony-free and exhaustive look at the history of Daylight Saving Time, look no further! This was an enjoyable and trivia-filled read, perfect as I get into Jeopardy! audition mode. I think it could have used a little more sense of humor about the subject because some of the inventions, organizations and laws mentioned sound like they come out of a science-fiction or Thomas Pynchon novel: time balls, railroad time, the General Time Convention of 1883, The "Day of Two Noons", the International Meridian Conference, the National Daylight Association of Cincinnati, the More-Daylight Club, Double British Summer Time, the Uniform Time Act and the Uniform Time Act (Two Time Zone Amendment) and on and on.

Everything I Consume: The White Lioness

I used to belong to a writer's group where everyone loved Henning Mankell. I like the guy but I always have the same reaction to his books. I start them and I'm totally hooked and make a mental note to ask for his next book on paperbackswap.com, then I start to lose interest, then I want it to end soon and then I enjoy the ending and think it was a decent read. About a year later I pick up another one. That was the reaction I had to this book. It's a little different from the earlier books in the series (I recommend Dogs of Riga if you've never read Mankell) in that it switches between various characters and is more of a thriller than a mystery after the opening murder is explained.

The detective, Kurt Wallander is unusual for a few reasons. He is a detective in the small Swedish city of Ystad. Unlike a lot of modern writers who saddle their detectives with all manner of tragedy and handicaps Kurt is merely divorced, drinks a little too much, weighs a little too much and has a difficult but not impossible relationship with his father and daughter. It's not ideal but I think we can relate.

Wallander also seems to take longer to solve his cases than any other detective I've ever read. His cases take weeks if not months to resolve themselves. This book is about two months in book time from start to finish but I know some of his earlier cases took even longer. I find that endearing for some reason.

Everything I Consume: The Golden Compass

I will admit that I was pretty tired when I saw this movie and dozed off a couple of times but I liked it. It's a great story (I loved the book) but I think the filmakers tried to put too much of the book into the movie and everything seems rushed and a little forced. It probably would have benefitted from being about twenty to thirty minutes longer which is something I never say. I'm sure they'll be a director's cut on DVD sometime soon and I can test out my theory.

Everything I Consume: City of Tiny Lights

This book is a mystery set in London centered around a Ugandan-Pakistani private detective who is looking for a missing prostitute. It has a great cover.

This is one of those novels where a writer of "serious" fiction decides to slum as a mystery writer. This kind of book can work if the writer understands the mystery genre but author Patrick Neate clearly doesn't. The book is filled with numerous lengthy asides that do nothing to illuminate the plot or reveal character. The plot eventually grinds to halt at the middle when the private detective finds the woman he's been hired to find and then spends a couple of chapters getting him motivated again to solve the murder that, I guess, is at the heart of the case. I stopped reading about halfway through after the detective's father gave a lengthy biography on the terrorist who is somehow involved in the murder.

It reminded me of two other books, Like a Hole in the Head by Jennifer Banbury, another book that sought to "transcend" the mystery genre with poor results and Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. Murder Must Advertise is a great book and has a climactic cricket scene that is one of my favorites. Oh, geez, my bad, the protagonist of City of Tiny Lights is constantly making references to cricket.

This book does raise the interesting question of what counts as consuming a book or movie. I read a little over half of this book and I think it counts but the other day I watched bits and pieces of Infamous, maybe about a third, and I don't think that counts as watching so it's not on my list of movies seen in 2008. A question for the philosophers I guess.

Everything I Consume: Sh! The Octopus

Well, this was a terrible movie. There was an impressive amount of irresponsible shooting, women screaming and cases of mistaken identity. Much of the dialogue goes like this:
Dempsey: What's your business, mister?
Morgan: I'm a marine painter. There's some paintings of mine behind you if you doubt it.
Dempsey: Painter, huh? Where's your palate? Kelly, see if you can find his palate.
Kelly: Open your mouth, open your mouth.
Dempsey: No! What do you think he paints, tonsils? You now an artist's palate, one of them stands they put paintings on.
Kelly: Oh, a weasel.

It's all supposed to be silly and over the top but at less then an hour it still felt stretched and forced. Here's a detailed critique and plot summary. This is the website of a Michigan band named Sh! The Octopus.

Everything I Consume: The X From Outer Space

Here's the description of this movie from the TCM website:

The spaceship AAB-Gamma is dispatched from FAFC headquarters in Japan to make a landing on the planet Mars and investigate reports of UFOs in the area. As they near the red planet,they encounter a mysterious UFO that coats the ship's hull with unusual spores. Taking one of the specimens back to earth, it soon develops and grows into a giant chicken-lizard-alien monster that tramples Japan.

This was a fun movie and Gwendolyn really liked it. She identified with the blond-haired blue-eyed American actress plopped down in the middle of the picture (see below). I love Japanese monster movies but mostly I love the beginnings, the madder-than-Mad Men Japan of cool science, heavy smoking and rampant misogyny. When the guy in the rubber suit shows up and starts destroying the models I'm always a little bored. My favorite scene was when the spaceship made a stop at the moon base where the two women in the movie take a shower then change into cocktail dresses for a trip to the lounge where they order cognacs and chat with the jumpsuit-clad cigarette smoking men.

The lead actress was played by a Peggy Neal whose IMDB page is three Japanese movie, this one (as Lisa), The Terroe Beneathe the Sea (as Jenny) and Las Vegas Free-for-All or Operation Crazy Gold (as Mary). Gone are the days when you could take a trip to Japan, make three movies and diappear from the face of the Earth.

This movie was released in 1967 but didn't make Pictures At a Revolution for some reason. Here's a review and plot synopsis.

Everything I Consume: Pictures At A Revolution

Lately, almost everything I consume has been Purim candy and over-the-counter allergy or cold remedies (depending on what I think is causing this endless cough and runny nose) and I've fallen way behind on my Everything I Consumes. Heck, I'm two books past this one!

Pictures at the Revolution by Mark Harris was fantastic, I kept sneaking time in to read it and I was sorry when it was over. Starting with Robert Benton and David Newman conceiving Bonnie and Clyde in 1963 it tells the interwoven story of the five Best Picture nominees from 1967 (Dr. Doolittle, In The Heat of The Night, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? and The Graduate). The stories of how movies are made are always fascinating and this book goes from conception to creation to production to distribution to Oscar night. There's incredible detail and great interviews with Warren Beatty, Mike Nichols, Dustin Hoffman, Buck Henry and many of the people involved in the five movies. Hovering above it all is Sidney Poitier, the biggest star in the world in 1967 and about to flame out. Harris has some great observations, my favorite being that Hollywood has as much trouble dealing with unexpected successes as unexpected failures. I give it my highest possible recommendation.

When you read a book about a slice in time you can't help but think of how the characters paths diverged after the end of the book. Some on the way up (Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman) and others on the way down (Rex Harrison and Sidney Poitier).

Another reason I was interested in this book was that I was born in 1967. Incredibly, that year's Oscars were midpoint in their history. That year was the 40th Oscars and this year's was the 80th. In my mind 1967 is the edge of current history but it's really quite a while ago.

Everything I Consume: NFL Super Bowl XLII - New York Giants Championship DVD

This movie started a little slow but had a fantastic ending. I liked all the good guys like the quarterback in need of redemption, the coach who must changes his ways to succeed and the aging veteran back for one last go around. The villains were even colorful than the heroes. I loved to hate the cold, calculating Patriots coach and got a good laugh out of the hapless Dallas quarterback. I was even sort of rooting for the Green Bay Packers quarterback playing what would turn out to be his final game. Highly recommended, they don't make them like this any more.

Everything I Consume: Bonnie and Clyde

A few years ago I went to Film Forum with my friends Bonnie and Aaron to see a revival of On The Waterfront. It was great, you should check it out, Brando's in it. Anyway, after the movie was over we all admitted to each other that we had never seen On The Waterfront and were too embarrassed to admit it earlier. So, now that I've seen Bonnie and Clyde I can tell you I'd never seen it before, just bits and pieces. It was great, you should check it out. The Texas locations of dying small towns and bleak endless plains were unforgettable. The cast is great and the movie has an energy that just carries you along. I thought it dragged a bit at the end but that sort of worked and, to be honest, most movies drag for me at the end these days. Like a lot of imitated movies (Badlands for instance) you feel like you've seen it before, even if you haven't.

The reason I finally saw it, you may wonder, is because I am reading Mark Harris' excellent Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, the story of the five best picture nominees from 1967. Ever since my film professor at Northwestern got on her soap box about how students shouldn't read or write about movies they haven't seen I've always tried to actually see a movie if I'm reading about it.

Even though I hadn't see the movie until Saturday I did see the Bonnie and Clyde death car at a Nevada casino several years ago. As you can see here the car has quite a history.