February Reading and Watching

At least I am moving through the letter "C' after sitting on some movies for awhile.

Control: Movie about Ian Curtis, former lead singer of Joy Division. Cheery movie. No, not really. It is one of those movies that I am still thinking about even though it has been several weeks. Excellent performances. I keep listening to Joy Division, which is really helping my mood.

The Class: takes place in Paris at a school in a "rough" area. The movie is told from the perspective of one of the teachers. I liked it because it showed a side of Paris that I've read about, but never seen. Think of the third season (?) of the Wire in Paris but not as much of the home life shown. Okay, it is nothing like that season other than it involves a school, teacher trying to reach his students, and some kids acting up.

Charlie Wilson's War: this was the start of eerie encounters with real life. I watched this movie a few days after Charlie Wilson died. I hadn't planned it that way because my Netflix queue controls my life. I loved this movie! It was also nice to finally like Tom Hanks again. Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors.

Cassandra's Dream: fairly forgettable. Save your time and just watch Crimes and Misdemeanors. You will save yourself from watching Tom Wilkinson perform some really bad scenes.

The Cove: I also hadn't planned watching this movie after the death of the SeaWorld trainer. I highly recommend this documentary that is up for an Oscar. It is basically an expose on the fishing industry in a small Japanese community. They slaughter dolphins and sell dolphin meat off as a mislabeled, higher end product. One of the problems is that dolphin meat is high in mercury. Oh, and they also sell dolphins to places like SeaWorld that lead dolphins to kill themselves from all of the stress and anxiety. It is what happened to one of the dolphins that played Flipper. One of the key players in the movie is the former trainer for the Flipper dolphins who now dedicates his life to rescuing dolphins. I know I watched Flipper but I can't remember what the show was about. It wasn't like Lassie where the dog would rescue Timmy. I need to go to Wikipedia.

Reading:

February was a slow month.

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker: This was one of the Powell's Indiespensable club offerings. Good, quick read. Loads of useful information, huh?

Home Girl by Judith Matloff: I started out liking this book about a former foreign correspondent who moves back to NYC with her husband. They buy a house in West Harlem before gentrification hit the area. As I hit the halfway mark, I decided that the author pissed me off. She bitched about the contractors, the crime in the area, the crack dealers, and lack of police or political response. What the hell did she think? She had several attempts to get out of this purchase with enough clues that she was purchasing a mess. I once lived in a really bad Chicago neighborhood while I was a VISTA volunteer. I saw the crack dealers, the empty houses, the stares from residents and I didn't go out and buy a house. If I had, I would have known that it was going to be a rough road. Naive. Annoying.

January Reading

The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Patricia Williams: I'll admit that I started skimming the book during the last 1/4. My sister gave me this book years ago after she read it for one of her graduate courses. The entire time I read the book, I wondered what Williams thought of President Obama and some of our recent cultural wars. After finishing the book, I started reading some of her columns in The Nation and realized that I preferred her contemporary writing more than this book.

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard: I'm kind of dense at times. It took me forever to realize that this book was Dillard's story of her childhood. I really enjoyed her description of Pittsburgh and its history. It made me want to actually visit the city of her youth. She was definitely a quirky kid, which I could relate to since I had my own weird childhood habits. I wish she would have delved more into the conflict of her quirkiness and the reception she received in a wealthy circle of private school girls.

The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin: I can't recommend this book enough, especially if you are interested in American politics and culture. The Supreme Court strikes me as such a strange institution with plenty of personalities that are mostly mysterious. Toobin had some great insiders who fed him a lot of information. I suspect Sandra Day O'Connor was trying to redeem her reputation after her vote in Bush vs Gore. Given some recent Supreme Court rulings, I have a better understanding of how things work and how close we came to losing control of the courts if McCain had beat Obama.