Tag: review

Movie review: Life of Pi

After making it back home from the Madison Theatre after seeing Wreck-it Ralph, I went back there with my friend Mary, while The Wife and the Daughter went ice skating. We saw Life of Pi, the fifth Best Picture nomination I’ve seen this season.

One thing is for sure – I don’t believe in God any more than I did; that’s a reference to a line in the film. If you have seen the commercial of the young man on a boat with a Bengal tiger, you find out early on that that guy survives, because he’s telling this whole back story to some writer guy. This is only occasionally interesting to me, the growing up at a zoo, though there is an important early scene involving the tiger, and another setup involving swimming.

When the zoo is being moved from India to Canada, and a storm hits that imperils everyone aboard, human and animal, then it gets rather interesting. The bulk of the film is this vegetarian Catholic Hindu trying not to become a meal for this powerful carnivore.

This lengthy segment is alternating tense and quite lovely, with the 3D surprisingly effective. The Daughter would have been quite unsettled had she seen it, even though the film had a PG rating.

I liked this movie more than I think it sounds; it just took me a while to hone in on it, not having read the book on which it is based. All the actors playing Pi were strong, especially Suraj Sharma as the Pi on the boat. It’s quite an interesting, nonlinear tale, involving a mysterious island. It’ll stick with me for a while, I believe.

BOOK REVIEW: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

This is the narrative of a bunch of soldiers, including one named Tim O’Brien, who ended up fighting in the Vietnam war, not always clear on the motivation.

Each year, there is an event sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts called The Big Read. The idea is that whole communities, generally through the local library, pick one of (this year) 21 books for people to read. The Albany Fund for Education, a “not-for-profit charitable organization that raises funds for innovative programs in support of the Albany City School District” picked Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Free copies were distributed through the branches of the Albany Public Library, of which I am an active and vocal supporter. I had never participated before, but this time, someone literally had a copy of the book, said, “You ought to read this, it’s good,” and put it in my hands.

It’s helpful that it reads on the title page, “a work of fiction” because I would have thought otherwise. Indeed, the book is true, even if a few of the circumstances have changed. There’s quite a bit of contemplation about what “truth” is in the book, including the chapter, “How to tell a true war story.”

This is the narrative of a bunch of soldiers, including one named Tim O’Brien, who ended up fighting in the Vietnam war, not always clear on the motivation. Some of the guys made it back home, others didn’t. Those who made it sometimes had a difficult time, and those who didn’t have a hard time felt some pangs of guilt over THAT.

The writing style is intentionally nonlinear. It does not start at the beginning and go to the end. Sometimes, one gets a bit of recapitulation, so that by the end of the story, one KNOWS these guys, and can relate to their travails.

During the war, going off to Canada was an option many men considered, and some actually did, to avoid the war. Other thought of this as an act of cowardice, but if you read “On the Rainy River,” you might think otherwise.

The book was published in 1990, and about half of the 20-odd stories had been previously published, five in Esquire magazine. The edition I have is from 2009, suggesting that, when it is well told, the experience of war is, unfortunately, timeless.

Here’s a study guide of this extremely positively reviewed book.

BOOK REVIEW: Using Content-Area Graphic Texts for Learning

Regarding the graphic novel: I remember when the title was first being bandied about in the 1980s, I hated them, because they seemed like large, squarebound comic books.

I’m someone who used to sell graphic novels in a comic book store, not a teacher. My wife IS a teacher, though, and was excited to see that I had received a review copy of Using Content-Area Graphic Texts for Learning.

Even Meryl Jaffe, a co-author of this book, with Katie Monnin, mentioned in her blog that the title of this book is a bit of a mouthful. Basically, this should be called “Teaching with Graphic Novels.” Regardless of the name, this volume makes a convincing argument for using graphic novels in teaching math, language arts, social students, and science. More importantly, very early on, it makes the case, in the strongest terms, that the graphic novel is a legitimate teaching tool that broadens the educational palette for an increasingly diverse population.

Not that Meryl was always a believer. She used to be a “stay away from those comics and graphic novels” type until her children turned her on to Joe Kelly’s I Kill Giants. Now she attends comic book conventions from New York to San Diego.

In each of the four subject areas, the authors take a single book and show how students, labeled as Memory Megan, Attention Andy, Cognitive Coby, Language Larry and Sequencing Sue, can improve in the named areas. Just as important, they list many other graphic novels that might be used, identified by grade level, and the skills that will be gleaned.

Basically, if you are an educator that has considered using graphic novels, this book both gives practical steps for teaching and provides cover when dealing with school administrators about using such a “radical” tool.
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The above is what I wrote in as an Amazon review; I do that so rarely.

I first discovered Meryl Jaffe when she began contributing to the ABC Wednesday meme with which I’ve been involved. Her posts are always entertaining AND informational.

Regarding the graphic novel: I remember when the title was first being bandied about in the 1980s, I hated them because they seemed like large, squarebound comic books. Indeed, I have this vague memory of a couple of X-Men items touted as graphic novels. One was $4.95 and the other $5.95 when a comic book was going for 60 or 75 cents, and even a longer issue would go for under $1.50. It just seemed a greedy attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear; well, maybe not quite that bad, but totally unnecessary.

The graphic novel has grown tremendously over the past couple of decades. I’ve marveled that “funny books” are getting legitimate notice in Entertainment Weekly and other mainstream media, without that “BAM POW” condescension that some newspapers are always eager to use.

You may be interested in Rise of the Graphic Novel: everything you need to know about the comics field in 70 pages. Meryl has put together a list of 2012’s Best Non-Fiction or Historical Fiction Graphic Novels.

Movie Review: Les Miserables

A revelation in Les Miserables was Samantha Barks as Éponine; she played the part on the London stage, and she was wonderful in the film.

My wife and I were in Oneonta, NY for the holidays, visiting the parents-in-law. They watched the Daughter while The Wife and I went to the local mall to see the movie Les Miserables.

I should note that I have never seen the musical, though, in fact, we will later this spring. Missed the 1998 iteration of the film with Liam Neeson and Gerard Depardieu. Not familiar with the songs at all, except one. Didn’t even know the story beyond the fact that some character named Jean Valjean went to jail for a long time for stealing bread. I had read some reviews suggesting that it was wonderful, but others, such as the one by Ken Levine, indicated that some in the cast, notably Russell Crowe, playing Javert, the official who pursues Valjean, could not sing. It took me a while to figure it out: many of the more critical opinions were based on their notions of the characters based on what they experienced before.

The “big deal” about this film is that director Tom Hooper decided that the singing should be done “live” as they are acting. They don’t record it first and then lip-synch to the track, as is usually done, where the voices can be “sweetened.” And this movie is almost all singing; the amount of standard dialogue wouldn’t fill a Twitter tweet, someone quipped.

Apparently, Javert is generally played by a bass with a richer tone. Still, I thought Crowe was perfectly adequate, consistent with his character’s persona. To my surprise, I had a greater difficulty listening to Hugh Jackman, who played Valjean. I know he CAN sing; he’s been on Broadway, and I’ve seen him on the Tonys. Here, though, everything seemed high in his range, and it was exhausting for me to listen to after a while.

Give Anne Hathaway her Oscar now. Not only will she be nominated this week for Best Supporting Actress, but she will also win for playing Fantine. She sings “I Dreamed a Dream,” that song that made Susan Boyle famous, but the passion here was just staggering.

Some thought Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier were too over-the-top goofy, but I found their first appearance, in particular, a welcome respite from the overwhelming gloominess of the story to that point.

Eddie Redmayne as Marius, a would-be suitor to Valjean’s ward, Cosette, was a better actor than singer. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette has a thin voice, though she had a limited amount to sing. However, a revelation was Samantha Barks as Éponine, who secretly loved Marius; she played the part on the London stage, and she was wonderful in the film. Aaron Tveit, as Enjolras, leader of the rebels, was very good, and I enjoyed Daniel Huttlestone as the boy Gavroche.

Still, I was moved at the end. At 158 minutes, it WAS too long, but the overarching story, as I understood it, of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice, came through.

Book Review: A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite as a morning show newsreader had dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick van Dyke.

At some point a year or two ago, I bought a whole bunch of books for not very much money; can’t remember where. They sat on my bookshelf en masse, all but untouched until I got into this recent reading binge. First up had to be the 1996 autobiography of Walter Cronkite (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009), for he was my all-time favorite news anchor.

The early chapters, about him growing up in Kansas City and later Houston, I found to be a bit bloodless, even as he tells about murderous racism. It seemed very “that’s the way it was.” His World War II retelling was somewhat livelier. When he described being stationed in Moscow for CBS News, he realized “how effective lies can be when the truth is suppressed,” so that his Russian driver was convinced that the Soviets had invented baseball and the Jeep.

When he gets to the issue of television, though, he lets his personality, and his opinions, shine through. He believes that the press’s focus on the “sizzle rather than the steak” of politics created a cynicism that resulted in an “international embarrassment” of low voter participation.

During Cronkite’s tenure as the anchor, US government officials were looking for the network to take a more supportive role toward the Vietnam war. He replied, “It is not the journalist’s job to be patriotic. How can patriotism be determined anyway? Is patriotism simply agreeing unquestioningly with every action of one’s government? Or might we define patriotism as having the courage to speak and act on those principles one thinks are best for the country…?”

My favorite parts of the book are the insights about the early days of television, where folks established in radio and print figuring out the new medium, including his tenure as a morning show newsreader having dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick Van Dyke. Later, he recognizes that he had become an “800-pound gorilla” of news trying not to upstage his news colleagues. When he retired, he developed disgust with the new CBS News ownership of the early 1980s over its concern with profits over content.

Of course, he tells about reporting the important events of the times, including the John Kennedy assassination and the landing on the moon. He namechecks his college physics teacher, who would be amazed how well Cronkite explained the technical aspects of the space missions.

I think that the state of television news, from the time he wrote this book until he died, must have filled him with despair for his chosen profession. Still, it was a most interesting read by a most stellar individual.

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