Assorted viewing

Big Fan (Robert D. Siegel 2009) - This is one of a few recent comedies that appear to have been made as comedies only because there was production money doing that as opposed to the more sober films they actually are - think of Observe and Report, Due Date or even Bridesmaids.  Still, Big Fan is probably the least comic, in fact about the only thing that would have even caused it to be labelled a comedy is the presence of Patton Oswalt.  Instead it's a stark, even blunt look at fan thinking and disillusionment though more complex than merely a fall from celebrity grace.  Oswalt effectively negotiates a tricky role while director Siegel favors an almost distanced style that avoids melodrama.  Like the films mentioned earlier something of a minor classic and deserves much more attention than it received.

The Adventures of Gerard (Jerzy Skolimowski 1970) - I had no idea that anybody made a film of Conan Doyle's Gerard stories and Skolimowski seemed like a nice choice.  The result, though, is something of a wreck with a confusing story, strained comedy and an overall feel of a home movie.  I have a feeling that there were production troubles or possibly just another attempt at quick multi-national money and nobody was too invested in the film.  For curious Conan Doyle fans only.

Rare Exports: From the Land of the Original Santa Claus (Jalmari Helander 2010) - The IMDB lists a different subtitle but mine is what's actually on the print.  This Finnish effort has an unusual idea about the origin of Santa Claus but takes quite a while to get around to using it.  It's not padded exactly but does meander more than necessary.  Perhaps it's needless to point out that the original short included on the DVD is much more effective.  Perhaps worth a look if you're looking for a darker Christmas story (that really doesn't have much to do with Christmas) but I wouldn't suggest making much of an effort.

Cop Hater (William Berke 1958) - An adaptation of the first of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels made shortly after the book's appearance.  It's actually fairly close to the original though it almost inevitably feels a bit tidied up.  Some of the less pleasant human motivations are toned down and the procedural aspects reduced to brief bits - probably more in the interests of telling a quick story than in any deliberate lightening of the book.  Mostly b-movie bluntness and certainly no lost gem though at least not boring.

Hot Cars (Don McDougall 1956) - I have a feeling that this was either intended for TV or was a low-budget shot at easy money (sort of how Hitchcock shot Psycho with a TV crew).  In any case it appears to be the only theatrical release for prolific TV director McDougall and the entire thing feels like TV.  It has the same even lighting, sets that look like they would push over and actors who run through dialogue with little inflection or variation.  The story about a man who gets pulled into a car theft ring is handled with few distractions.  It does have some nice location shooting, a somewhat imaginative finale in an amusement park and the presence of Joi Lansing (who has little talent but a cult following due to a couple of wild Scopiotones).

Library book sale

The last thing I need is more books but it's hard to resist the library book sales when they appear.  You never know what will show up and it's all a buck or two.  There were a few things I skipped.  Didn't know Pirandello wrote a novel about the film business (Shoot) but the copy was poor condition.  There was a Freya Stark book also with the cover coming off.  And a nice collection of "great essays" (mainly 18th and 19th century) but it was one of those tiny 60s paperbacks that the type was too small to be easily read.

But I did pick up:

Kogan - Shutterbabe
Ellis - His Excellency George Washington
Tannahill - Food in History
Swafford - Charles Ives
Moaveni - Lipstick Jihad
Elliott - An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Zhukov - Marshall Zhukov's Greatest Battles
Henderson - Pushcart Prize 2008
Halpern - Our Private Lives
Auster - The New York Trilogy
Cooper - The German Army 1933-1945

German Book 1

Nicholas Boyle - German Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2008)

It would have been nice if my first post about a German book had been about, well, a German book.  This one is by a British author, from a British press, with British spelling, using British pagination - it's turtles all the way down.  But when starting my project I had forgotten about this book and it seems appropriate.  The library also had another not-very-short introduction (well they're calling it a "companion") to German lit so that will be included too unless it gets too dull.

The Very Short Introduction series sounds awful, like little compressed textbooks mainly useful as cribs, though in fact they're usually quite imaginative and worth reading even for topics you might know.  There are a few that take the quick overview approach but more commonly the books really are introductions (or even essays) that don't attempt to touch on every key point.  The one on classics for instance takes a Greek temple and uses that to bring up various approaches to classics; similarly the one on Russian literature uses Pushkin for its different topics.  

Boyle's book on German literature is more of an overview though a somewhat odd one.  It opens with a chapter that runs quickly through German history though this version is one of large abstract forces and barely mentions dates, people or even political events.  It's a kind of hazy tussle among towns, universities and churches that for all I know may be the best way to approach the literature - for the rest I suppose the quick overview is on Wikipedia.  This chapter does underline that "German" is an even more amorphous designation that I had realized so even though Boyle more or less excludes Austrian and Swiss writers I won't, as long as they wrote in German.

Then the chapters on literature proper, going chronologically for the most part.  As fits the opening these writers are either working out hidden tectonic frictions or pursuing grand themes.  There's not much formal exploration or technical issues in Boyle's approach (then again this is a very short intro).  At times it's not entirely clear what Boyle thinks these writers are trying to resolve but for the most part his approach is direct and readable, at least given what he's trying to do.  One result is that he doesn't give much of the "flavor" of particular writes so they tend to blur together but as far as I can tell he touches on the main names and movements.  Missing of course are any popular writers such as Patrick Suskind or Edgar Wallace who were great successes in the English-speaking world, though not having read either I have no idea if they're even worth inclusion.  He's also not just relaying received wisdom - for instance dismissing Brecht's theoretical writings in an abrupt sneering aside.  In the end, even though I know little about German literature I'm not sure I learned much from the book.  Decades of travelling around the book world means I can locate the mountains, rivers and landmarks - it's actually climbing or swimming that's the point.

2013: My Year of German Literature

One of my favorite professors at work was Max Aue who taught German.  I didn’t see him often but it was always interesting when he stopped by, usually for business but we often ended up chatting.  He even invited me to sit in on a class once because, in his phrase, it would be good to have another adult in the room.  Frequently what we talked about was how little Americans knew about German literature.  I told him to not worry too much because most Americans don’t really know anything about American literature either.  But his basic point was true enough and I’m an example.  Even though I've seen a bunch of German films, I’ve read only a few German books and most of those actually by Austrian writers or in one obvious case Czech (or Austrian-Czech or Austro-Hungarian-Czech or whatever is the appropriate pigeonhole).

Last August Max died in a traffic accident.  As a way of paying tribute I decided to read more German books in 2013 and came up with the idea of one a month.  Twelve isn’t very many and I already decided to go with twelve for the entire year because there’s no way I can follow a schedule.  At one point I considered doing one fiction book and one history because after reading Simon Winder’s Germania last Spring I realized I have a very spotty knowledge of German history between the Roman empire (or at least Arminius and Teutoburg Forest) and the 20th century.  But I’m going to be more lax about the history or I’d likely end up just reading war books all year.

I already have a list of about 40 titles but won’t post it because certainly I won’t read most of them.  After all Novalis may sound worth checking out (Borges seems to have liked him) but really how far am I likely to get past an introduction?  I'm not completely trying to fill in cultural blank spots but to find worthwhile books and writers so no survey approach.  And to continue overthinking what is basically a pretty modest project I’m going to mainly focus on Germany proper however confusing or improper or vague that might be but won’t worry much if something is from an Austrian or Swiss writer (if only because I’ve always planned to read Joseph Roth and this is as good a time as any). I'm still looking for travel narratives about Germany (Theroux seems to have skipped it) or from Germans (is there a German Toqueville or Custine?) as well as some less academic (ie narrowly focused) histories or biographies.

With any luck a post about the first book will appear in a few days.

Writers No One Reads • Dalkey Archive Press, or How to Publish Writers No One Reads
I always find it odd when people complain about things that are, when you get down to it, not really their concern. In this case somebody upset with how a publisher chooses to market their books. Sure maybe that choice is a bad one but still they get to make it. As a critic I often use the idea of what a creator "should have done" but that's mainly a tactic to expose flaws (or at least expose decisions I don't agree with). Not exactly the same thing because not only is reconceiving art an ancient practice but such commentary is actually an essential part of the process even of usually internalized.

This post was done on my tablet as an experiment. Not sure it will be repeated often because it's so much slower than a desktop.

The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb 2012)

This seemed like a "what were they thinking" film except I know what they were thinking - money.  Something worked before so let's just repeat it then we can rake in the cash.  Which apparently worked since it was the 6th highest grossing film of the year.

Still the decision to basically repeat the first film was a deadening mistake.  Origin stories are always the least interesting and in this case we get it again in tedious step by tedious step.  This is a film that really needed J. Jonah Jameson.  One odd change is the removal of one of the most interesting aspects of the story.  When Parker first acquires powers his immediate reaction is how can I make money with this?  That may or may not be purely American but it's certainly reasonable and honest.  The wrestling bit also explains his costume but in Amazing that's all gone leaving a more convoluted reason for the pose.  My guess is the filmmakers were trying to be "serious" and follow the Nolan path (perhaps why Parker seems so dour) except what they did was make Parker a more narrow character.

It doesn't help that the conception of Parker is a bit less, well, heroic.  For one thing he steals the ID of a student at Oscorp and it's hard to overlook this when we're treated to a shot of the real student being forcibly evicted.  Parker doesn't seem to care.  He later steals a drink from the convenience store and I wonder if viewers are supposed to not notice that's what he did.  There's even a mean-spirited scene on the subway where Parker beats up (mostly) innocent bystanders and humiliates a woman by ripping her shirt off.  Admittedly Parker doesn't do this deliberately but the filmmakers conceived, wrote and shot it so clearly this was intentional.

By now we're used to Hollywood high school students not actually looking like high school students but the actors here seem to be almost a parody of that.  Garfield always seems a little befuddled as Parker and Emma Stone apparently wanders the halls most of the day.  There's not much to the rest of the cast either.  I assume if I'd ever seen Rescue Me then I could accept Dennis Leary in a dramatic role but I haven't and I can't.  The one good thing about the film though is Martin Sheen who is far more lively than the mask-like Cliff Robertson in the first film.

The IMDB says the film had an estimated budget of $230 million but I wonder where that went.  The fx for The Lizard are almost laughable, looking like something from a direct-to-video B-movie.  The city shots are closer to animation than to anything that might appear to be a person swinging on slender threads between buildings.  Even the final fight happens on a set where little has been done to make it less set-like.  In itself this isn't necessarily a problem (much of The Avengers is also barely disguised sets) but since the intention appears to have been grit and darkness then artificiality doesn't sit very well.

The film mashes together the familiar origin story with elements of the Captain Stacy sequence and The Lizard origin.  Parker's parents follow the Ultimate versions but their fate is left open, probably a subject for the sequel.  It's hardly surprising this doesn't all fit very well.  At one point The Lizard discovers Parker is Spider-Man because Parker used cameras with large "Property of Peter Parker" stickers.  People do dumb things in real life but this is a stretch.  Gwen is made something of a budding scientist (though that is toned down for Parker) but still ends up mostly the damsel.  Just imagine if when she was hiding in the closet and The Lizard's face bursts through that she punched him between the eyes instead of screaming.  That's why her character is no kind of improvement.

I have a feeling that the people behind Amazing were mostly hired guns.  It's no accident that the best superhero films have been made by real fans like Sam Raimi, Bryan Singer and Joss Whedon, people who understand the source and how that can be brought to another medium.  Amazing's staff are on board for the sequel so all we can hope is that they learned from their mistakes - unlikely but that's what hope is for.

Skyfall (Sam Mendes 2012)

One surprising thing about Casino Royale is how much the Bond fans loved it when the entire purpose of the film is to show that Bond became Bond by systematically removing every human element until he’s little more than an android.  The Daniel Craig Bond relaunch benefitted from being “of our time” so that while I would still say those are the best two Bond films (and I’ve never been any kind of fan) the reactions were also colored by their apparent rejection of some of the silliness and excesses of earlier efforts.

Skyfall, though, would fit in the mid-range of the Brosnan films, closer to straight thriller and somewhat plausible but still lacking the focus and intensity of the first two Craig or the better Brosnan.  In fact, Skyfall overall recycles the premise of The World Is Not Enough with some wronged person seeking revenge on M for her past transgressions though Skyfall combines the smart, scheming villain and the physically damaged, violent villain into one character.  Skyfall even repeats the device of an illegal transaction being paid through a casino gambling debt.

And it’s that one character that’s the biggest hurdle the film never overcomes.   Despite early claims that he can show fear like nobody, not even Bond, has seen in the end Silva (Javier Bardem) turns out to be just another Bond evil genius complete with lair and a barely plausible motive.  His dastardly scheme requires to-the-second timing involving numerous people across many blocks of London needing months of elaborate preparation just so that he can simply shoot M.  Sure he has to Make A Statement but there are more effective ways.  Though the filmmakers wisely chose to omit Silva tracking Bond towards the end they still had the Hollywood idea (even if this is technically a British film) that hackers can do anything, even blowing up MI6 offices in some way that makes no sense at all.  The revelation that Silva was formerly with MI6 teases us with the idea of a much more interesting film: 007 vs 006.

It’s odd that the film shares a major plot device with The Avengers where the bad guy engineers his own capture and is then held in a completely transparent cell while being visited by the chief spymaster.  Considering production time there’s no way the Skyfall writers could have seen The Avengers in time but it’s hard not to wonder if they’d read the script, whether this was just a coincidence or if they were both inspired by something else that escapes my memory.

But Skyfall mostly runs on these ramshackle ideas much like the series always has.  I suppose the point of Bond’s fake death at the opening is to establish that he’s burned out because another agent was killed or because he’s after a MacGuffin or because uh just because.  You have to wonder why a fabulously wealthy crook would want a dusty, dirty deserted island – at least previous Bond villains hired enough henchmen to clean up a bit.  (Not to mention that a faked disaster that sends everybody off the island will attract vastly more attention not less.)  Why is Bond given a 1950s-style tracker that he has to turn on?  This is the 21st century so it would make more sense to give him a permanent subcutaneous device.  We’re asked to believe that Bond of all people will store his old car but has not a single emergency pouch of weapons and supplies anywhere.  After all he didn’t just walk out of that river at the beginning of the film and then swim over to the tropical island.  If Silva is such a threat why send just one agent, especially one of dubious ability. 

And is this the place to point out that 2012 is a bit late in the day to continue the long tradition of Bond misogyny?  Of the three main women characters one is killed as a game, one is killed after being hunted (during which she says she’s bad at shooting just like any damsel) and one is literally sent to be a secretary.  Bloody hell.  Even the doctor is so overwhelmed by Bond’s manliness that she abandons various professional responsibilities and legal duties to give him information.

I suspect that the idea behind Skyfall is that it would be the fall and redemption of a “hero” (since Bond always seems to me like a mercenary who just happens to be working for the good guys).  Something along the lines of Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again though with less color.  Or maybe that never entered anybody’s head.  In any case the script is too episodic and Bond far too blank a character (despite Craig being easily the best actual actor to play the role) for the film to be anything more than the usual spy outing.  The Tennyson quote was a nice touch though.