Whatta Fiasco

Hooray for more Jig the goblin and his pet fire spider. I’d call the three Jog books a guilty pleasure, except that I don’t feel at all guilty about reading them. And as much as I’ve enjoyed the books, I’m also pleased to see that this is probably the last of them, and that this third book sustains itself so well. Great fun.

[powells]

Has this one really been on my to read list since 2005? Well, it’s about time I got to it. I’ve been a fan of Maureen McHugh’s work ever since getting hold of China Mountain Zhang, but as good as they’ve been, I haven’t been as fond of any of her subsequent novels. So it’s very pleasant to find that her short stories are very good indeed.

[powells]

If you’ve ever read and enjoyed the Yarn Harlot blog, then you’ll love this little book that’s more about knitters than it is about knitting.

[powells]

[How very odd. That's two movies in a row that I've seen on opening night.]
This was pretty much what I had expected, and my expectations weren’t terribly high. The first twenty minutes were the worst. (Predictably poor dialog, slow pacing, low energy, and a movie that was too busy enjoying its own jokes.) The whole thing needed tightening up both in terms of tension and making better use of the material and characters presented. But it still managed to be a fun film, and every now and then you got a flash of what the Indiana Jones character used to be. But I still think it would have been a much better film if Karen Allen had played the part of Indy. No, really.

[imdb]

A collection of appropriately incendiary essays. Delightful and thought-provoking. The essays on stillness and poetic action were my favorites, but they were all worthwhile. (And I got bonus self-amusement points by cracking this book open on David Byrne’s birthday.)

[powells]

This is a semi-documentary about one filmmaker (Lars von Trier) torturing another (Joergen Leth) to make series of new versions of an old short film of his (The Perfect Human, which we see bits and pieces of integrated as part of this film about film) under increasingly stringent and odd constraints. The results are fascinating. And in the end, it is also a touching love letter between them. Memorable.

Oh, wicked twisty plots! The wife and the mistress set out to kill the husband, and nothing goes quite right. Quite good.

What a refreshing book. It’s a history of free thought (aka secular humanism) in the US, and about the shifting alliances between atheists, communists, socialists, women’s rights activists, abortion rights activists, and civil rights activists. The ending (particularly the discussion of Justice Scalia’s views) gets a little strident and but it does so with deliberation. Beyond that, it’s an interesting overview of the intersection between politics and religion in the US, and many names I hadn’t heard of before.

[powells]

Last night I went to see my last opera of the 50th anniversary season for the Lyric Opera in Kansas City. To celebrate, they had the world premier of “John Brown”, by Kirke Mechem, who was in attendance. Yes, that John Brown. The opera starts in Lawrence, in Bleeding Kansas. It ends in Virginia, at Harper’s Ferry, and with the hanging of John Brown. James Maddalena, the baritone playing John Brown, did a wonderful job playing the tortured fanatic who knew he was right, and knew full well the price he would pay for following his heart. The other stand out was Donnie Ray Albert, the baritone singing the part of Frederick Douglass. What a gorgeous role. He came out on stage looking like a cartoon, then opened his mouth and swept me away.

The downside to the evening: if you’re going to burn a flag on stage, think carefully about what that flag is made of. When they lifted the pole with flames already licking around the stars and bars, I caught the glint of shiny, reflective fabric and prepared for the cloud of toxic smoke. I really hope the ventilation wafted that nastiness away from the singers.

I recently renewed my season tickets to the Lyric, and last night I got reminded that 2009 is the last year that the Lyric will be in its current home. In 2010 it will move into the new performing arts center that’s currently a blighted construction site on the hillside above the crossroads district. As a subscriber, I’ll be first in line to pick my seat at the new facility, but I probably won’t be in the second row, front orchestra anymore. I wonder if we’ll get a chance to tour the facility before we have to pick our new seats?

Yes, this is a comic book movie, clearly marketed to the adolescent and formerly adolescent male. We’ve got clearly bad bad guys. The protagonist is an asshole with a heart of gold and enough assets to buy his way out of any plot holes. The effects were done well and walked the fine line to look comic book real, and the final suits reached the level of techno porn sleekness. The foley work went a little over the top, but was made up for by the score. Double bonus points to the filmmakers for knowing their target audience spot on. And a gold star for not letting the film ever pretend it was anything more than it was. Apparently part of me is (or was) a sixteen year old boy, because I enjoyed this one a lot.

(But the trailer for the new Incredible Hulk movie proved once again that no one has figured out how to render the Hulk properly in CGI. Fail.)

[imdb]