Milk

Film, 2008, dir. Gus Van Sant

I always meant to see this movie, but then never did because I was afraid it would be too sad.  So we put it on the Netflix queue somewhere, and lo and behold it showed up in the mailbox one day.  Then it sat on top of our DVD player for the next two months.  (Granted, it was high wedding season at the time so there wasn't a lot of movie watching going on, period.  But still.)  Finally we watched it the other night because the new season of Dexter is finally on Netflix so we had to send the old DVD back.

Well, I'm glad we watched it.  It's a very well-made movie, visually pleasing and with great acting.  Sean Penn was phenomenal as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay official elected to public office--he completely brought the character to life for me, from the accent to the mannerisms to the individual dynamic he created with each character.  I guess that's why he won the Best Actor Oscar for it.  I also really felt like I learned a lot about a story I knew next to nothing about before seeing the movie.  It was a fascinating look (although I can't attest to how accurate) at the rise of political activism in the gay community in San Francisco while also being a compelling character narrative about Harvey.

Yeah, it was sad, but it was also uplifting to see the progress that Harvey and his colleagues made for the gay rights movement.  The film did not shy away from the characters' gay lifestyles (appropriately), and I thought it treated every character with great respect.  I don't really have any drawbacks to this movie, except that it's a little bit emotionally draining, like many great films, I suppose.  So check it out if you didn't see it when it made a splash 3 years ago.  And don't ignore it on your Netflix queue.

World War Z

Novel, Max Brooks, 2006

This is a unique book.  If you are looking to try something a little different, here it is.

World War Z is a series of interviews about what happened when the Earth that we know and love was overcome by a devastating zombie apocalypse.  It's implied that this happened right around our current time (2000s ish).  The "editor" interviews people from all around the world about their experiences and thus chronicles the initial outbreaks, the ensuing chaos as more and more people are infected, and how humans eventually rally to fight and bring about the resolution of the war against the zombies (this isn't a spoiler--the opening pages let you know it's been about ten years since the end of the war).

Brooks works very hard to capture the details of what it would really be like to have an all-out zombie apocalypse on our hands.  The interviews show how different countries' militaries were prepared (or not) for the formation of active armies and massive stocks of weaponry, what strategies civilians took to try to save their own lives, even what happens to the economy in a state of global warfare.  It is a truly impressive feat of imagination, and Brooks' interviewees are fully-fleshed out to deliver all his horrifying details--even requiring footnotes where the "editor" explains the acronyms and other post-apocalypic-critical knowledge.  (Side note: this footnote business was very annoying on my Kindle--I recommend picking up a hard copy.)

Some of my favorite interviews were with an American business tycoon who invented a "cure" for the zombie disease and then moved to Antarctica with his riches, a Japanese computer nerd who has to rappel his way down his high-rise building to escape, and a man who runs a shelter for the dogs who were trained for zombie combat.

As much as these individual and widely varying interviews are fascinating, they also create the book's major weakness--it's very hard to build momentum or engagement in the novel as a whole when it functions more a a series of short stories.  There starts to be a certain dreariness in hearing about the same thing over and over again even though the telling varies each time.  About 75% of the way through the book I had to drag myself through each interview, even though if I had been reading them as stand-alone pieces I probably still would have enjoyed them.  (It did pick up again towards the end, happily.)  There's also a lot of technical military talk that's a little dry for my tastes, but I'm sure other people enjoy all those details.

Still, definitely worth a read (or a skim, if you get bored partway through).  And, in continuing with the theme of every book I read these days, it's going to be a movie in 2012!  With Brad Pitt!  And that girl from The Killing!  I do like her.

Thoughts about The Help

The movie version of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel opens today, I believe.  My mom gave me this book last year, and I read and enjoyed it.  There were some interesting writing techniques too--Stockett uses three different first person narrators, which I found entertaining but some people apparently found annoying due to the dialect she employs.  I recommend it for a fun read, but it's not the Best Book Ever and I think it was way over-hyped.

The plot is that a young white woman in the South interviews several local black maids about what it's really like to be them and work in white ladies' houses (not naming names of course).  The story follows her difficulties getting the book written and the controversy it causes when she publishes it.  Spoiler alert: it's mostly uplifting.

There's a lot of jibber jabber floating around about whether or not The Help is politically correct (see this article on Slate for a nice summary of the various opinions).  It does bother me when white people seem to drop in to save the day for black people in popular fiction/movies (see The Blind Side for another example).  But, as Slate says, you can argue that that's not exactly the situation here, which leaves me free and clear to be really excited to see this movie.  I'm getting good vibes from all the actresses (Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard) and it seems be holding strong in the 70s on Rotten Tomatoes.

So who wants to go see it with me?

Cowboys and Aliens

Movie, 2011, dir. Jon Favreau

The key to enjoying this movie is managing expectations.  I went into this movie expecting something akin to Snakes on a Plane in terms of tongue-in-cheek-itude, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a fun little Western instead.

If you are expecting something new and genre-bending a la Black Swan (dance/horror!) or anyting by Tarantino, you will be disappointed.  It's basically just a standard Western, but the shoot-outs happen to be with aliens.  And the Indians are the allies.  I was sort of hoping that we would get the aliens' perspective on things too, but it was indisputably good guy = humans, bad guy = aliens.

Here's Harrison Ford's third appearance on my short blog, and probably my favorite of the three.  He's great as a tough guy cowboy (what?? Ford as a tough guy?? inventive casting!) who is the big man in town because's he's rich, but has to deal with the tomfoolery of his weirdo son (the teenager from Little Miss Sunshine, who was also good) and the arrival of a new tough guy in town--Daniel Craig.  They don't get much touger than Daniel Craig, so that's a definite challenge to your manhood.  Luckily Craig and Ford band together to work on the movie's central plot--chasing down the aliens who have abducted some of the townspeople.

It's worth mentioning that there are some great supporting actors as well--Sam Rockwell and Keith Carradine were both good, but they played a distant second fiddle to the leads in terms of material.  The male-dominated theater I was in on Friday night approved highly of Olivia Wilde as well.

A warning to all you sensitive types: this movie was, for lack of a better word, scarier than I was expecting.  There are a few make-you-jump moments, and a lot of loud noise and generally startling fight scenes.

The bottom line on this one is that if you're looking for a fun summer shoot-em-up, you'll be satsified.  If you were hoping for more, lower your expectations.