Books Read: August 2010

August 6: One Day by David Nicholls

August 10: Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

August 13: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

In the past, before each new Harry Potter volume came out I would re-read all the preceding books. It became sort of a soothing summer ritual; it also means that I've read the first four books (Goblet of Fire became the division point because it's my favorite) many more times than the final three. I missed that old ritual, and the film of Half-Blood Prince has entered that endless loop of HBO play, so I decided to pick the book up again. It'll be interesting to see whether the Deathly Hallows movies pick up on any of the dropped themes or plot points from the book; I understand why they condensed the Pensieve memories, but the book places a bit more emphasis on the similarities between Harry and young Tom Riddle, which in turn could have lent more emotional heft to the film.

August 13: The Romantics by Galt Niederhoffer

I read Niederhoffer's previous novel, A Taxonomy of Barnacles, a few years ago, and when I saw in the trailer below that this novel had inspired the film, I decided to pick it up. Reading descriptions of the book made me wonder if it was set in the present day; indeed, though it is, it has what felt to me like a very retro take on white ethnicity, setting up conflict between Jewish Laura, Catholic Tom and WASP Lila. The characters' strong sense of social divisions generated from these backgrounds felt at times like a relic from Erich Segal's heyday.

I still feel like I'm not sure whether I liked this book or not. I'm genuinely unsure about whether Niederhoffer intended for her characters to come across as such horrible people. "Friends" usually connotes even a minimal degree of mutual affection, but I never believed that any of the characters ever liked each other. More like the kind of enmity-disguised-as-friendship that prompts normal people to abandon the relationships once they've left whatever school/employment that temporarily forces them into close proximity. As I'm sure is obvious from the television shows I like to watch, I like stories about unsavory people of all sorts as long as they're made with clarity, skill, and self-awareness. I just never felt like I could get a firm handle on assessing those qualities (particularly the last) in the book.

Can I rant for a minute? My personal rule of thumb in fictional depictions of Yalies is: if the author mentions secret societies more than residential colleges, it's a no-go. Normally I hate to be a nitpicker, but the inaccuracies made it difficult to tell whether Niederhoffer was intentionally making her characters seem like idiots. (I'll just cite one example: Laura remembers meeting Tom for the first time as a freshman on the Old Campus, where he asks her how to get to Linsly Chittenden. Now, if this is a serious question, he's an idiot. For 5/6 of the school's freshmen, this would indicate that one has walked out of the front door of the building in which they live and immediately misplaced a building that is more or less directly in front of them. There are buildings on the campus that are difficult to locate; LC is simply not one of them. If it's not a serious question, then she's an idiot for finding such a lame ploy charming. And I'm going to stop now, because I sound like an insufferable elitist just like this book's characters.) Wikipedia indicates that Niederhoffer went to Harvard - I don't understand why she didn't just utilize the environment with which she was already familiar. I'm pretty sure the characters would still be snobs either way.

August 14: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

August 28: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay is a slow starter, with too much time devoted to the specifics of life in District 13, but once it gets going it provides a haunting conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy. Collins deserves a lot of credit for being unwilling to pull punches - Mockingjay often depicts a brutal, violent world and never shies away from the consequences of the war at its center - the post-traumatic stress that lingers over each of the Games' "victors" throughout Mockingjay gives the book an emotional heft that wasn't quite present in the previous two books. The end isn't so much "and they lived happily ever after" as "and they lived, for whatever that's worth."

Word is that the film rights have (unsurprisingly) been picked up - it'll need a director and screenwriter with a sensitive touch and a flair for nuance to really pull it off. Hollywood seems to like these things a bit more cut-and-dry than what Collins offers - it's not good vs. evil so much as evil vs. lesser evil, and is there really such a thing as a "lesser evil" anyway? - and the relative mishandling of The Golden Compass doesn't necessarily portend great things for another trilogy rooted in ambiguity and the kinds of questions about life that many don't think need to be asked in works that are ostensibly "for children." With a sense of gravity and a good cast, a film could well capture the world of the books, but without it risks replicating the exploitation that the book critiques. We'll see.

Quoted X

"You can't show up and watch True Blood with the same criteria you'd show up to watch The Shield. Style, theme, pace, rhythm, all those things are never arbitrary in good shows. To judge all shows by the same set of expectations is ridiculous."

- Kurt Sutter

Mood Music XXXVI

Last night I was driving home from class and this song came up on the shuffle. Warm night, windows rolled down; it was kind of a perfect moment.

Week in TV: August 29-September 4

Primetime Emmy Awards

- I may or may not have watched the opening number ten times since Sunday.

There are many things I love about this, including but not limited to: the "prize" for the competition being $1205, Joel McHale's huge, super-fake smile in the segue into the dressing room sequence, and Jon Hamm's unflagging commitment to the whole thing. I don't think it's possible for him to be overhyped - just when you think the awesomeness has hit the roof, there he is, shimmying with Betty White.

- Other highlights: that shot of Jesse Tyler Ferguson weeping in the audience as Eric Stonestreet gave his acceptance speech; Temple Grandin enthusiastically embracing the producer of the biopic based on her life (it's kind of the perfect epilogue to the movie; they should make it a DVD extra or something); Matt Weiner pointedly taking exception to his being cut off earlier in the show when he accepted the Best Drama Emmy - I know some people find him annoying, but I love what a control freak he is.

- Jimmy Fallon did a respectable hosting job, and the show moved at a fairly quick pace. The structure was a little shaky - the show felt like it ground to a halt once they moved into Variety, even though they were still efficiently moving through awards. This is TV, and it's 2010; there's no need to give Al Pacino free range to ramble at will near the end of the show. I'd go Comedy, Miniseries/Movie, Variety, Drama, Reality, but that's just me.

- New winners! Just when you think the television academy is the stodgiest of all the awards-giving bodies, they pull out a slate of first-time winners across the board. This doesn't fully negate the argument that they are stodgy - their blind spots around shows like Sons of Anarchy, Treme and Friday Night Lights (sure, Chandler and Britton got nominated this year, but Zach Gilford not getting nominated - which, don't get me wrong, he still would've lost to John Lithgow, I'm not crazy - shows that there are still apexes of talent and quality left unrecognized) show that there's still room for marked improvement.

- Some interesting food for thought from Regina King - I really shouldn't be surprised by misidentified black actors anymore, but seriously? Identifying Rutina Wesley as Regina King? Seriously? I wish she wasn't so reluctant to engage the central conceit of her argument - for all its relative improvements in diversity in recent years, there is still a lot to challenge and question in television. Not asking the questions doesn't make the problems go away.

True Blood

- It's interesting watching this now after watching the final season of Deadwood and learning about their cancellation woes. (HBO didn't let them know until right before the season started airing that they wouldn't be renewed, so the season was left with plotlines that didn't quite neatly wrap up.) It remains to be seen with the season finale how things are left, but a lot of this show is feeling very disjointed, and several of the stories are feeling very "theater troupe"-esque. That is to say, would seem pointless if there was no season four.

- If there's anything we've learned from this season, it's that Bill and Sookie are much more interesting apart than they are together. Their drippy discussion about what they would do if their lives were "normal"? I can't be alone in thinking that Bill would be the worst third-grade teacher ever.

Mad Men

- I've always wanted to see a flashback to Don's storied fur-selling days, and this episode didn't disappoint. Jon Hamm seems to have such a clear sense of the differences in personality and physicality that distinguish Dick Whitman from Don Draper, and it was nice to see comparably nuanced work from Christina Hendricks and John Slattery.

- The drunken interludes leading up to this episode's blackout have cast alcohol consumption in a decidedly different light than previous seasons, but I think it's also interesting to see the way that they've put vocal criticism of that lifestyle in the mouths of the younger characters. SCDP is starting to build up a stable of new talent, but one comprised of people who see Don not as a suave role model, but as a shambling drunk.

Rubicon

Just when I'm ready to table this for the remainder of the season, they pull out an episode that grants depth to some of the supporting characters and subtly advances the conspiracy narrative. Though the conspiracy-deconstructing advancement wasn't big, I think it was important for Rubicon to show Will and Katherine getting the same information (Atlas MacDowell? That's a conspiracy-mongering corporation name if I ever heard one) at roughly the same time. It made it feel for the first time like their storylines could organically converge, where before Katherine's tie to the other plots felt very shaky.

Huge

A wonderful finale to a wonderful show. I hope ABC Family renews it, but it could easily remain as a time capsule of ten quality episodes (much like co-creator Winnie Holzman's lauded My So-Called Life). The finale was filled with finely-executed, low-key scenes - the conversation between Becca and Chloe in particular was painfully true to life. And I think it says a lot about the quality of the show that I actually felt surprised when Will, Ian and Trent's band came together - they managed to make me forget, temporarily at least, Nikki Blonsky's previous musical work. If Huge is through, I hope that the actors find good work in other projects; their work here should stand as a strike against flat characterization and typecasting.

Top Chef

Is it wrong if Tiffany being dismissed this week makes me not want to watch the remaining episodes in the season?

Ongoing:

Sons of Anarchy, Season Two

- Retroactive entry for the Dream Emmy Ballot! Katey Sagal was robbed, y'all. The narrative balance that the show maintained between its normal testosterone-heavy plots and the subtle handling of Gemma's feelings post-rape is a mark of how good this show truly is. "Balm" and "Service" are just a great, great duo of episodes. Entertainment-world nepotism would never have gotten such a bad rap if it was all as good as the material Kurt Sutter's written for his wife over the past two years.

- Beyond the fine dramatic beats Sagal got to play, the best part of the post-rape storyline was Gemma taking Tara under her wing and schooling her in the fine art of being a totally fierce shitkicker. Tara should've gotten her own Prospect vest, for all the Head Bitch in Charge training she got this season. Speaking of Prospects...

- Half-Sack! Noooo! I knew it was coming, but I still cried. Something always feels so incomplete about character exits dictated by actor dissatisfaction, but I guess those are the most like real-life deaths in that way. It's not difficult to see where Johnny Lewis might have felt unfulfilled by his second-season storyline. The testicular implant subplot never quite seemed to gel, though it did give us that excellent scene where he shows it to Tara, and she starts to address him but can't quite get the second syllable out, like she's physically incapable of saying the word "sack" in the presence of his grotesquely infected scrotum, plus Kim Coates' amazing spewing double-take. Broad comedy, but hilarious broad comedy nonetheless. (Can you tell that I'm in love with this show now? I'm so excited for Tuesday, you guys.) I still wish we could've seen Sack get patched in, though.

- I'm totally fascinated by Sutter's decision to put himself in the role of Otto. The writer-actor is something you see more frequently in comedy, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a drama that's featured one of its own writers, much less the showrunner, in a role that prominent. It seems to speak to a sense of camaraderie that Sutter feels with his cast, the kind of "us against the world" relationship that you see in some shows that have a strong ensemble, take place in a very unique universe and/or have a cult following (Joss Whedon and Firefly, Dan Harmon and Community).

- In the commentary for "Balm," Sutter jokes in discussing the introduction of Titus Welliver's character that he'd like to get all the actors from Deadwood on the show eventually, then says something slightly unintelligible about Ian McShane. Can I just say that McShane on SoA would probably be more awesomeness than the world could handle? I'd flip my shit if that happened.

So...

The Emmys technically mark the delineation between the television seasons past and present, though the increasing cable presence in the summer means that there's no hard-and-fast line between the two. There's sort of a breather here, but the new season of SoA starts on Tuesday, and the next three weeks have season and series premieres coming down like falling dominoes. Every year I think about trying to watch all the new pilots - we'll see how that all shakes out. I've got actual academic shit to do, so technically I shouldn't have time to tackle it all, and I already know that making myself watch some of them will be like pulling teeth. Like I said, we'll see.

Screened: August 2010

August 1: Star Trek

Screened: At home, from personal collection

It'll be a small miracle of blockbuster cinema if we get to the summer of 2012 without Star Trek 2 and The Avengers both collapsing under the weight of their own hype.

August 5: Dear John

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

Okay, but not great, though I think part of my reaction was due to the way the movie was marketed. The ads pitched it as being more in the vein of The Notebook or A Walk to Remember, which it decidedly isn't. That in and of itself is not a problem, but accompanied by the flat, personality-free way Amanda Seyfried's character was written, which made it difficult to understand why anyone would be so angst-ridden over her, it was kind of deadly.

August 6: The Kids are All Right

Screened: In the theater

I kind of feel about this like I felt about Up in the Air this past year: I can understand why it's accumulated early Oscar buzz and I think the performances were great, but it'll probably only ever stay in the "good" column for me. I liked it, but it didn't rock my world. I will say that each successive performance I see from Mia Wasikowska just makes me that much more excited to see her Jane Eyre.

August 8: Step Up 3-D

Screened: In the theater

Gorgeous dancing, inventive use of 3-D, aggressively cliche-riddled script. Sequences like the water-drenched middle battle and the Donen/Minnelli redux of "I Won't Dance" suggest that with a solid script, director Jon Chu could have a truly great dance movie (or musical) in him.

August 11: Kick-Ass

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

The film wears its claims to geekiness a bit self-consciously - slapping a pair of glasses on Aaron Johnson and telling us what a nerd he is doesn't magically make him not hot. (Though it is kind of refreshing to see that tactic attempted with a male actor for once.) While I didn't think Kick-Ass was bad, after seeing this and Wanted I'm not quite sure that I "get" Mark Millar's whole ethos. There's something very...Nice Guy about his protagonists. Anyway, between this, Watchmen, and Scott Pilgrim, can we all agree that the fans of graphic novels are really, really great at creating hype disproportionate to their actual numbers and buying power, and start having realistic expectations of how these movies are going to perform at the box office?

August 11: 12th and Delaware

Screened: At home, DVR from HBO

A fascinating, nuanced portrayal of the fight over abortion rights. I love a lot of HBO's original dramas, but the documentaries make me feel like the twelve dollars a month is really worth it.

August 11: Death at a Funeral (2010)

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

I feel like my primary interest in this movie, which has to do with work I did in the past year thinking about race and the concept of the commutation test for film acting, is a little too dense to go into here. I'll just say that while neither is exactly my particular flavor, comedy-wise, I found this one slightly funnier than the British version. (I know, sacrilege!)

August 13: The Women (1939)

Screened: At home, from personal collection

August 19: Where the Wild Things Are

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

August 20: The Lake House

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

Because sometimes you just want to curl up with a Chipotle burrito and a beer and watch something that you know is not going to tax you intellectually in any way, shape or form. I liked that this movie didn't even attempt any sort of pseudo-scientific explanation for the time-traveling letters; Sandra and Keanu didn't waste time asking questions, just accepted the situation and moved on.

August 21: The Way We Were

Screened: At home, from personal collection

August 25: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Screened: In the theater

Good, but I ultimately find myself disappointed that Universal decided to put all six books together in one movie. It was insanely well-cast, but the super-fast pacing meant that we only got a few minutes at a time with each of the exes. I wish they'd done three and three, mainly because the third book is my favorite and I wanted more time with the Clash at Demonhead. I love Envy, and I was kind of bummed that the movie made her seem like such a huge bitch; I mean, she's totally a bitch, but she's so much more! The flashbacks to her relationship with Scott give such great background!

Reading reviews before I saw the movie, I was surprised by how many critics seemed to think that liking Scott Pilgrim meant that you had to like Scott Pilgrim, but it makes more sense now. Focusing on the Evil Ex battles means that a lot of what the books do in addressing Scott's need to grow up, or his past with girls like Kim, Envy and Lisa, got shuttled to the side and really drained some of the emotional resonance from the story. It felt sometimes like the whole thing was taking place over the course of a week, shifts in Ramona's hair color nonwithstanding.

Anyway, I don't want it do seem like I didn't like this movie, because I really did. I love Edgar Wright's work, and I don't think anyone else could have realized the visual and referential world of the books with so much panache. I liked the way that the movie nudged music a bit more to the forefront, particularly in the literalized battle of the bands with the Katayanagis. (Though I have to say, I would've kind of liked to see the "Come Watch a Robot Kick Scott Pilgrim's Ass" flier, but I digress.) Very good. I just find myself wanting so much more.

Mood Music XXXV/Check Out This Awesomeness Right Here!

New template! I'm very excited! (Props to Hanna, whose redesign prompted me to just go ahead and change it up already.) Doesn't it look beautiful and spacious?

In celebration, some of my recent favorites. I keep a sort of rotating playlist of whatever's piquing my interest at the time (the track that's currently been on there the longest is "Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf" by the Killers), so these are just the ones that got added in the last couple of months.

Week in TV: August 22-28

True Blood

- Annual exposition dump! Sookie's part fairy! (As she so succinctly put it, "fucking lame." Hopefully, the inclusion of this plot point so early on in the series relative to the books means that the writers want to bring in those storylines where *spoiler alert!* fairies are less "fucking lame" and more "psychotically violent" and "doing terrible things to everyone, but especially Crystal.") Crystal's a were-panther! Hoyt loves Jessica and Jessica loves Hoyt!

- I like that the show has used past series regulars this season in sparing cameos - Michael Raymond-James (Rene) in a dream sequence two weeks ago, and then Michael McMillan this week. It was a perfect brief scene - Reverend Steve taking the opportunity to offer a televised "told you so" in the aftermath of Russell's on-air meltdown.

Mad Men

- Last week saw the return of Ken Cosgrove, this week Smitty. It's interesting that we're getting little hints that the splintering of Sterling Cooper set into motion by the events of "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." was followed by an exodus of personnel. Where did everyone else end up? I'd love to get an update on Paul Kinsey, just because you know his pompous ass had to seek out some new place to be as smug a hipster as he wanted to be.

- Lesli Linka Glatter is becoming the Queen of the Machine among Mad Men's directors, adding to the classic "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" with this episode's Honda subplot, including the hilarious shot of Peggy riding the motorcycle in circles around an empty soundstage.

- I didn't mention it previously, but I love that Deborah Lacey (Carla) has been bumped up to recognition in the opening credits. She frequently makes Carla seem like the most responsible, competent and professional adult among Mad Men's overgrown children and functional alcoholics. Her role remains small but vital; for all of Betty's hyperbolic whining about Don, it's striking that she didn't care to find the time to accompany Sally to her first session with the psychiatrist.

Rubicon

I think I'm going to let this one move to the background until its season wraps up - I'm liking it so far, but the conspiracy feels so dense right now that I don't feel like I can offer a coherent opinion from week to week. Hopefully the remaining weeks will give me time to start to distinguish between all the different conspiracy-mongering old white men - they might as well be called Shadowy Cabal Member A, B, and C for all I can tell them apart.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

The end of this daily summer run was a little anti-climactic - there's only so much you can do when you've been teasing a lockdown for the past two months. I think the set-up for the upcoming fall season worked well, though. Making the demand for change Snake's idea - putting it in the hands of the franchise's longest-running character - optimized the dramatic potential of it as a cliffhanger. I'm intrigued to see how the show shifts once it returns, and that renewed sense of excitement in a show is rare.

Also Watched: Huge, Top Chef

Ongoing:

Sons of Anarchy, Season 1

I've mentioned this before, that I started watching SoA when it first aired, but it fell by the wayside with the start of the school year and the rest of the tv season. Also, as an Undeclared fan from back in the day, I couldn't stop hearing this every time Charlie Hunnam does an American accent:

But I've so enjoyed the other shows I've crossed off the list in the past couple of months that I wanted to tackle another one, and with only two thirteen-episode seasons, I figured I'd have just enough time to catch up before the new season starts. And I'm glad I did, because it's my new most favorite thing ever. This season was a bit of a slow starter out of the gate, but once the insane ATF agents came into play, then everything just started clicking. One marker of a really great show for me is still enjoying it even after I've been spoiled on major plot points. (I read too many TV writers, it happens.) I was still riveted by the season's final episodes, even though I already knew about Donna's tragic fate.

- Gemma Teller Morrow may be one of my new favorite television characters. That scene with Cherry and the skateboard was amazing. Move over Cat Deeley - Katey Sagal is the new face of Things that are Wrong with the Emmys.

- I could rave about all the actors, so I'll just try to limit myself to a few: The Now-Obligatory Deadwood-related Excitement! Dayton Callie! Remains Awesome!; having grown up in Northern Virginia means that I've seen Remember the Titans approximately 50 times, and it always seemed like Ryan Hurst should've been way bigger after that movie, so it's exciting to see his work as Opie; did someone say "Inappropriate Crushes on Men Old Enough to be My Father"? Because, hellooo Kim Coates.

Mood Music XXXIV

The A.V. Club just wrapped up their multi-week series of covers, so I thought I'd share my favorite here:

Wye Oak covers The Kinks

Working on whittling down my backlog and mulling over a redesign - it's been nearly five years since I started up this thing, and I think it's time to consider the options now available to me.

Odds and Ends

It's the first weekend of school and Emmy weekend, so I'm trying to figure out how to balance all the things I'd like to do. I'm still fighting off a wave of exhaustion that hit me last night, causing me to fall asleep still clad in my clothes from the day, without brushing my teeth or anything, and then hit a combination of snooze buttons (phone and alarm clock) for two hours this morning, finally dragging my ass out of bed around 11. Which is not supposed to happen now that classes have formally begun. Waking up tired is one of those things that doesn't really get substantively better over the course of the day. Like, I had some coffee and I'm upright and all, but I just want to lie back down on the couch and stare at the ceiling for a while, or as my mother would say, "Rest my eyes." I'm debating whether or not to bake something for a barbecue tonight - people are supposed to bring something, but I don't have any fresh eggs and I don't feel like making something because I spent a good chunk of last night making this quiche:

Mmmm, delicious dairy goodness. With a delicious buttery, flaky crust, if I do say so myself. (I'd love to try to make puff pastry, but there isn't even approaching enough space in my kitchen. I thought about asking for a marble pastry slab for my birthday, but I've got enough shit in this apartment without adding mostly useless kitchen tools. Logic is the only thing keeping me from acquiring things like a pasta maker and a butane torch.)

I could make something with pre-fab dough, but that seems so half-assed. Ultimately, I'd rather just hang around my apartment awaiting the things that *fingers crossed* are supposed to be coming in the mail today - the next Sons of Anarchy disc and my copy of Mockingjay - but I'm the social chair for my grad program this year, so I feel like I should be...social.

I might try to do a live-blog on Sunday. It's probably something I won't officially decide until 7:50 that night. I've got another beginning-of-the-school-year event immediately beforehand, so we'll see what happens. Same for a prediction post - I don't feel sufficiently well-versed in all the shows to offer "Should Win" opinions, and I don't have any radical theories that would make "Will Win" predictions dramatically different from any of the other ones that are out there. The Emmys, like any other entertainment academy award, are a mix of talent, quality, familiarity, laziness, and hype; it's difficult to know in any given year which will factor most in any given category. Plus, they don't have a stream of precursor awards like the Oscars - other bodies (Hollywood Foreign Press, SAG and other guilds) give their television awards at the same time as their film awards, around the turn of the calendar year.

Some predictions/opinions from other writers:

Dan Fienberg

Alan Sepinwall (comedy/drama)

Alessandra Stanley (Her point about the Emmys needing to diversify is a good one, but her evidence isn't grounded in points about the specific television season being considered in this particular go-round.)

The Envelope/Gold Derby blog roundup

Finally, I can't tell how much is actually thinking this looks good, and how much is loving the song choice in "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore," but I'm officially psyched about this show:

AMC's got a fairly solid batting average so far, and I like that TV seems to be increasingly recognized as an adaptive medium that offers the potential for more depth than film.

A Sweet Postscript

I totally forgot one!

I love baking and have middling feelings about cooking, so I'm way excited about this new edition of Top Chef. I foresee a lot of late Wednesday nights with some butter, sugar, flour and eggs and Thursday mornings where my friends and classmates get showered with baked goods.

Books Read: July 2010

July 4: How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

July 5: I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee

July 8: For You, For You I am Trilling These Songs by Kathleen Rooney

A trio of good essay/memoir works. Rooney was more serious than I anticipated, and came across as very much the former English professor (for better or for worse), though I will likely make copies of her excellent professor's lament on plagiarism, "I Will Catch You" for my student-teaching friends. Crosley was somewhat less funny in this work than her first, but also more thoughtful. Bee's candor, perspective and humor regarding her past made her book a standout.

July 11: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

July 24: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I may revisit this one after I see the movie, if only because I'm curious to know how the disparate endings compare. I like the closure that O'Malley gives to Knives and Kim, and the return of Envy, but the Gideon/Ramona arc gets too muddled to me in the path from Volume 5 to Volume 6. Gideon comes across as flat when compared with many of the preceding exes, and I'm not sure that Ramona is any less enigmatic upon the story's conclusion.

July 24: The Baby-Sitters Club: The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin

A lovely little bit of nostalgia. Martin's new prequel recaptures the characters of the initial four babysitters in all their tween glory. It reminded me of youthful summers and hours whiled away absorbed in the world of Stoneybrook. If I'd been home when I read it, I'd probably have gone rummaging through the attic looking for the old books for a lost weekend of reminiscing.

Screened: July 2010

Working my way through the backlog!

July 2: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Screened: In the theater

As I'm sure is fairly obvious, a lot of my enthusiasm for the Twilight phenomenon has waned, but I can still recognize that this was by far the best film overall and the best adaptation of the three released so far. There's a lot going on in Eclipse, but David Slade and Melissa Rosenberg did a great job of condensing the book, especially the flashbacks focused on Rosalie, Jasper and the Quileutes. It was also Taylor Lautner's best outing so far as Jacob; I'm still skeptical about his chances as far as successfully communicating the whole teenager-in-non-pedophiliac-love-with-a-baby deal, but he does seem to be growing as an actor.

July 6: Remember Me

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

I was spoiled on the "big twist" of Remember Me back when it was out in theaters, so I was anticipating the film's dramatic trump card. I think there's probably a good film to be made around everyday lives interrupted by tragedy, but Remember Me piled so much moody drama on its protagonists prior to the climax that it was hard to appreciate the things that it did well.

July 10: When in Rome

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

There has to be a resurgence on the horizon for romantic comedies, right? Where the powers that be decide to trust the chemistry between a given pair of actors rather than strained contrivances? It would just be too grim if this was a portent of things to come.

July 15: Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Screened: At home, on TCM

July 18: Inception

Screened: In the theater

There's no question that Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors working today at executing intricately designed set pieces. At its best, watching Inception was like watching a complex puzzle putting itself together. It was a nail-biter - I literally chewed off one of my fingernails while the film made its way through the tense segment of layered dreaming. I can't help but wonder whether Inception might have been even better as a second film - I keep wishing that we could have seen more of "extraction" before we got to "inception." A film focused solely on extraction could have established all the exposition that Inception's universe needed and given more depth to the characters, while the themes that shape the idea of inception could have more room to breathe, and the ultimate ending to Inception wouldn't need to be different. This is all purely speculative, of course, just sort of thinking "aloud."

July 22: The Runaways

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

A good movie, but trying to do too much with too little time kept it from being great. The film had a sense of not knowing which of its interesting subjects to follow, which wouldn't have happened if whoever was in charge had decided to focus the film specifically on Cherie Currie rather than "The Runaways." Still, solid performances from Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon, and probably the one role in her filmography that's best-suited to Kristen Stewart's particular persona.

July 22: The Prestige

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

July 24: I Capture the Castle

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

I started watching Memento, but found myself dozing off about 45 minutes in, and that's really not the kind of movie that forgives a brief nap in the middle. So I switched to that old reliable standby of drowsy weekend nights, the Brit-lit adaptation. A lovely little movie that shows economy in adaptive storytelling and gets at the heart of Dodie Smith's wonderful novel.

July 27: Good News, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Big Chill

Screened: At home, personal collection

A trio of rewatches perfect for puttering around the apartment, crossing items off my to-do list and knitting gauge swatches. Good News is climbing up my list of favorite musicals - the "jock falls for smart girl" story is one of Hollywood's favorite tropes, but I love that Good News gets resolved without the heroine having to change anything about herself. It's probably as feminist as 1940s MGM musicals ever got.

July 29: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Screened: At home, on HBO

My thoughts haven't changed much since my initial impression, but I will say that Emma Watson's performance improves upon repeat viewing. Hopefully, the degree to which she's tapped into the emotional core of Hermione's relationships with both Ron and Harry will enhance the Deathly Hallows detour into Melodrama In The Woods.