Watching/Reading

Film: Genghis Blues

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:00:00 +0000

Film: Genghis Blues, the amazing story of how Paul Pena went to Tuva.

Well, I've been very derelict in posting to this blog with all the hectic craziness of back-to-school and finishing up my Barlow Aesop book manuscript... but what a great way to get back into posting here, in order to say something about a genius film, Genghis Blues. I saw this documentary by accident in San Francisco, back in 1999 when it first came out (I was still living in the Bay area then...) - I was absolutely captivated, by the sounds of the singing, and by the story of these people - Paul Pena, the blind American blues musician, Kongar-Ol, the Tuvan throat singer... and even the ghost of Richard Feynmann without whom it seems that it would never have been possible for all the pieces to fall into place.

This movie is unforgettable, and I was wondering very much what my husband would think of it. Would it be off the scale for his bizarrometer? Too weird for him to enjoy? Not so - he loved it. He kept saying during the movie every ten minutes or so, "This is so weird." And it is weird. But it's true. And you cannot help but love all of it!

The DVD we watched included a marvelous interview with the Belic brothers who made the film. In the interview they reported that Paul Pena had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I checked at Wikipedia, and learned that he passed away in 2005. I wish he were still with us, but he had a lot he could give thanks for.

When you watch this movie, you really think that music maybe could save the world.

Film: Conspiracy

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:19:00 +0000

Film: Conspiracy, a film about the Wannsee Conference, starring Kenneth Branagh.

What an EXCELLENT movie. It shows us the Wannsee Conference, that notorious meeting of Nazi leaders - military, civilian - who settled upon the extermination of the Jews in Europe. I became curious about this meeting after watching the miniseries War & Remembrance last summer, and also having watched the docudrama Nuremberg. So, I was excited when I found out that there was this docudrama about the Wannsee Conference itself - and the film is a masterful study of the event.

It opens with Eichmann nervously preparing for the conference - the servants are polishing the silver, the food is being set out, flowers in vases, and so on - and then the conference attendees begin to arrive: civilians and Nazi party officials like F.W. Kritzinger, Wilhelm Stuckart (brilliant performance by Colin Firth!) and Gerhard Klopfer, along with military commanders, like Otto Hofmann and Heinrich Müller. Finally, General Heydrich arrives - played to terrifying perfection by Branagh - and the meeting begins.

Then, what we see is the meeting itself. A highly edited transcript has actually survived, and that provides the basis for this reconstruction of the contentious argument about what to do with the millions of Jews not just in Germany but in the occupied territories (including Russia, which the Germans still believe they will occupy even though at that very moment the war in Russian is going disastrously for the Germans). It's not that anyone at the table has any love for the Jews. They despise the Jews. That still does not stop them from arguing intensely about what to do. Stuckart, who wrote the Nuremberg laws which laid the legal groundwork for Nazi persecution of the Jews, is outraged that the "rule of law" is going to be jettisoned in favor of putting the SS in charge of the Jewish problem. Erich Neumann, a bureaucrat in charge of the industrial "Four Year Plan," is distraught because valuable Jewish labor may be deported or sent to the gas chambers. The military men are worried about the negative effect on morale posed by asking soldiers to kill millions of Jews. It is blood-chilling to listen to all of this... a discussion which happened in the heart of Europe, just sixty years ago.

The script is brilliant - not a word wasted. I found the film completely gripping from start to finish, and even though I have read a lot of Holocaust literature, I had never really seen anything like this, the debate amongst the Nazis themselves - a debate which resulted directly in the establishment and the administration of the death camps.

Everyone involved in the production of this film deserves a round of applause. These surely cannot have been easy roles to play, but all of the performances were excellent, especially Branagh, Firth and Stanley Tucci, as Eichmann. At just 96 minutes, the film gives you the actual length of the meeting itself: 85 minutes, in which millions of people were condemned to death. Was there ever such a meeting like this in the history of the world? Let us hope there never will be again.

And here is YouTube video clip, which shows a crucial moment in the meeting, when the question of the actual murder of the Jews emerges into the open (I'm just now realizing what great film clips I can find at YouTube to add to these blog posts - thanks to the people who are finding such good clips to share).

Book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:29:00 +0000

Book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig.

I just finished reading this book for probably the 20th time or so... I've been reading the book every year since I first encountered it at the age of 16. I may have missed a few years - although in recent years, I have found even more and more of value here. That's a marvelous experience to have with a book. This book meant the world to me when I discovered the book as a teenager - and now it means even more to me as a very middle-aged adult. How many books work like that, eh? But this book is exceptional in every way.

With a book that has become this much a part of my own being and how I see the world, it's hard to even know what to say - so I'll just choose a quote here that expresses a nice good chunk of the books's meaning, and shows the wonderfully refreshing way in which Pirsig is able to tackle the big questions:

The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can’t escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exist only in the mind. I don’t get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. It’s that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it’s just that that doesn’t make it bad. Or ghosts either. Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It’s run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.

Ghosts, you can say - or Maya, illusion. Although I like the idea of ghosts. It's a word that still carries a punch, for all that most people might say they don't believe in ghosts. Even though, of course, as Pirsig points out here, we DO believe in ghosts. All of us do.

I poked around online to find a cover of the edition of Zen that is more or less the same as the cover of the first copy I owned and read, back in the summer of 1980. I've owned and given away so many copies of this book over the years that I've lost track. Another true sign of a good book! :-)

Film: Veronica Guerin

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:50:00 +0000

Film: Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett.

After Shattered Glass, I was really excited about seeing another film about journalism, but this time something very different - a true story once again, but about a journalist who is a real hero, a martyr (in the most literal and venerable sense of that word), assassinated as a result of her persistent investigation of drug-dealers and crime bosses in Dublin, Ireland back in the 1990s.

I had not heard of Veronica Guerin before seeing this film, and I found the story profoundly moving, especially because of how the film started with the end of the story, and then built up to that ending once again, so that Veronice Guerin's ride down the Naas Road felt completely different by the time you saw it again at the end of the movie. Yeah, I cried. Thumbs up to movies that make me cry even when I am telling myself, "No, you will not cry." But how can you not cry? It is an amazing story of a courage that I know I do not possess... and I respect anyone who is able to take that courage and dedicate to the public good, which is what Veronica Guerin did.

The song by Sinead O'Connor in the final credits is beautiful. Cate Blanchett is brilliant from start to finish, and kudos also to Ciarán Hinds (whom I recently saw in the excellent Mayor of Casterbridge). He is an actor I plan to investigate further!

This image comes from Veronica Guerin's page at the IPI Press Freedom Heroes website:

Here is Cate Blanchett, in a scene with Ciarán Hinds:

YouTube video with the Sinead O'Connor song, One More Day:

Film: Shattered Glass

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Film: Shattered Glass, the true story of the downfall of Stephen Glass, journalistic wunderkind at the New Republic magazine.

So, what happens when someone who is (apparently) a pathological liar chooses as his avocation to the profession of journalism? Answer: NOTHING GOOD. I really loved the way this story worked as a movie: the director is able to lure us in with what look like "real" stories but then as the movie progresses you have to doubt what you saw on the screen, just as Glass's colleagues have to doubt what they read in his articles, what he said to them in the meetings where he pitched the ideas for the stories he was working on. We do tend to believe what we see (even if what we are seeing is patently not real, something staged and filmed), just as we tend to believe what we read (even though those are just words on paper, not reality itself), and what we hear (I am not very good at mistrusting people who tell me that what they are saying is the truth). This movie shows us that we cannot simply believe any of those things.

Peter Sarsgaard is a stand-out (as usual!), perfectly cast, wonderful to watch. He is becoming one of my very favorite actors. Hank Azaria also does a great job, and the contrast between the two of them (who both play editors at the magazine) gives the movie a very nice structure. All good stuff, absolutely worth 90 minutes of your time!

Film: Last of His Tribe

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:52:00 +0000

Film: The Last of His Tribe, the story of Ishi (starring Graham Greene)

When I was a student at Berkeley, I spent a lot of time doing work in the Anthropology Library in Kroeber Hall, and I would sometimes visit the museum there, and attend events in the "Ishi Courtyard" of Dwinelle hall... but I never really knew the story of Ishi in any detail. This film was a really intense and moving introduction to that story. Graham Greene was absolutely fantastic as Ishi, and Jon Voight as Kroeber was really good, too - the film did not show away from Kroeber's own ambivalence and shortcomings, which made his grief at the end of the movie all the more moving.

There's a documentary about Ishi that I've ordered from Netflix now also - I'll post about that after I get a chance to watch it. I'm curious how much liberty the film took with history in order to create this story... but it's a great story in any case, absolutely worth watching, unforgettable.

Here is a photo of Ishi and Kroeber which I found at wikipedia:

Film: Bobby

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Film: Bobby, a film about the Ambassador Hotel on the day Kennedy was shot.

I was mesmerized by this film, absolutely mesmerized. So it was with much surprise that I read the reviews - very mixed - afterwards at Rotten Tomatoes. I'm guessing the film would rank as the best film I watched this summer. So, how to explain the ambivalence of the critics? Admittedly, I am a big fan of these "slice of life" films where you see the lives of many characters criss-crossing (for example, the genius Short Cuts). This film seemed the best example of that genre I have ever seen. That is partly because of the historical dimension (lots of great news footage cut into the film, reminding us about the times, about Kennedy's run for president), but even more so because of the formal constraint: the entire movie takes place on the day of the assassination, set entirely within the Ambassador Hotel (the hotel, its shops and restaurants, the tennis courts, the parking lot). I thought it was beautifully done in every way, with wonderful performances by all the actors - with Shia Lebouef, Freddy Rodríguez and Sharon Stone as real stand-outs (Sharon Stone was an especially delightful surprise). A truly excellent movie, I thought; it is one I will certainly watch again.

Thankfully, someone has put the stunning last scene of the movie up at YouTube, with Robert Kennedy's speech above the chaos of the actual shooting. How can someone not weep watching this and listening to Kennedy's words? And what have we learned in the past forty years, really learned? I am very sad to say that it seems like not much has been learned yet... we are still learning, still trying to learn.

Film: Mayor of Casterbridge

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Film: Mayor of Casterbridge, starring Ciaran Hinds and Jodhi May

I enjoyed this film adaptation of Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge far more than I would have expected. It's bleak and grim (after all, it's Thomas Hardy!), but the plot is full of surprises if you have not read the novel (I have not), and the acting is exceptional, especially the "Mayor," Ciaran Hinds and his would-be daughter, Elizabeth Jane, played by Jodhi May (I had seen her before only in Last of the Mohicans, where she played the younger sister).

What really struck me about the plot is the way that so much of it hinged on written communication gone awry - letters sent, letters saved - with intense drama as a result, rivaling any mishaps that could take place with email nowadays. So, on the one hand it is about a different day and a different time, where women in particular were in a position of terrible peril because of their social and economic dependence on men... but at the same time, the interpersonal dramas seemed very contemporary, and very moving, too. Just how much can be forgiven, eh? That is a question that comes back again and again over the course of this fine film.

Film: Recount

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Film: Recount, starring Kevin Spacey

What a great film to watch after having just read Farhad Manjoo's True Enough (which discusses both the 2000 and 2004 election debacles in some detail). This film provides a step by step, utterly damning indictment of what went on in Florida as the 2000 presidential election was being decided. Kevin Spacey was fantastic, as were other members of the cast. It took a little while for me to get used to Tom Wilkinson as James Baker - although all the main characters are public figures, James Baker is definitely the one whose looks and voice are most familiar to me, but as the movie developed, Tom Wilkinson was able to work his actor's magic so that by the end of the film I had settled into his version of Baker, too.

I was pleased to see in researching the film at wikipedia afterwards that Baker actually commented favorably on the film; I was worried that the Republican media machine might have dismissed the film as liberal propaganda. Admittedly, I finished watching the film thinking that what happened in Florida was an injustice up, down and sideways... but for the people who measure the election's success by the smooth transition of presidential power (in particular, George W.'s smooth transition into that power), the film does chronicle that success with considerable accuracy.

Laura Dern as Katherine Harris is, as you would expect, a real scene-stealer! :-)

Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian , by Sherman Alexie.

I just finished reading this WONDERFUL book in the audio version read aloud by the author, Sherman Alexie; here's an audio excerpt - and brace yourself: you might cry; here is the text. If you have never listened to an audio version of a book before, I would recommend this as a great way to experience just what a living voice can bring to the telling of the story, especially a story like this, narrated in the first person by Arnold Spirit, Jr., member of the Spokane Indian tribe of Washington, and the heroic adventures of his freshman year of high school when he attends a white school off the reservation. It's a book - an honest, funny, marvelous book - not just about being Indian, but about being poor... and when was the last time I read a really honest book about being poor? Much less one that was honest about that and funny at the same time, not afraid of the anger and pain, but able to really laugh about it, too.

I was so surprised when I went to Amazon.com to check on the reference for the book to find out it is considered "juvenile fiction." That really made me stop and think! Is it juvenile fiction because it is short and because it has a teenager as the protagonist? Well, if that is all it takes to be listed as juvenile fiction, I think I need to start reading a lot more juvenile fiction! This is an excellent book in every way; I hope that its being classed as juvenile fiction means it will find its way into the hands of many kids... but I cannot think of any adult reader who would not be enriched by this great story!

Film: Proof

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:10:00 +0000

Film: Proof, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

I could also list the film as starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anthony Hopkins... but Gwyneth Paltrow is so far and away the star of this movie, that I'll leave it at that! This is a marvelous film, and one of the few films which tries to do justice to the tragedy of schizophrenia. It is an infinitely more honest and moving account of schizophrenia than the much overrated film, A Beautiful Mind (mind you: the book on which A Beautiful Mind is based is excellent; I thought the film itself was a travesty of the book).

The film Proof is based not on a book, but on a play - and it continues to have all the virtues of a stage play: brilliant dialogue, subtle and beautifully developed characters, a tightly focused plot. I actually could have done with more actual mathematics in the film (it tells the story of a mathematics professor and his brilliant daughter)... but when I watching the "making of" featurette which accompanied the DVD, I had to laugh: Jake Gyllenhaal explained that the actors involved in the film were math phobic, and Anthony Hopkins was going around trying to get people to read "Math for Dummies" in order to gear themselves up for film! Ha!

Anyway, it is a wonderful film - it was recommended to me by the magic genie at Netflix that generates recommendations based on my film ratings, and this was definitely the right film to recommend to me! If you are interested in films that tell the story of mental illness with insight and sensitivity - or if you like films adapted from plays (think History Boys, for example), then I am sure you would like this film. It's also a must see if you are a Gwyneth Paltrow fan - I think this may be my favorite of all her films.

Film: Lone Star

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:54:00 +0000

Film: Lone Star, a John Sayles film starring Chris Cooper

This is a film I watch every year or so, and I like it more and more each time I watch it. The first time you watch it, it is full of surprises, so I won't say anything to spoil that sense of surprise here... but then when you watch it again, knowing the twists and turns of the plot, it offers a new and different kind of pleasure (it's very much like The Crying Game that way).

Especially given the raw prejudice that seems to account for so much of anti-immigrant sentiment in this country, I would guess that this film has a lot to offer us at the moment, as we gear up for a frenzy of election-inspired propaganda. The human lives documented in this film offer a lot of insight into a multicultural world which is not engineered by some P.C.-conspiracy, but which is simply the product of our country's own history. With its brilliant blending of past and present as the story unfolds, Lone Star makes the legacy of our history come alive on an intimate, very human scale.

Film: Paradise Road

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:36:00 +0000

Film: Paradise Road, starring Glenn Close, and many other wonderful actresses

Somehow I had missed this absolutely excellent film when it came out - I remember seeing Empire of the Sun, another movie that chronicles the fate of Europeans swept up in the Japanese occupation of Asia and south Asia, and the dire conditions in the prison camps, but I had not seen Paradise Road before.

It is a must-see film, even more so because it is based on a true story, documented in the memoirs of Helen Colijn, one of the Dutch women imprisoned in the camp, along with interviews with other survivors. It is a hard film to watch, admittedly - and it is no Hollywood happily-ever-after, as many of the ensemble cast of characters die, one after another (only half of the members of the vocal orchestra which is the film's main focus survived the camp). Yet I was really glad that I watched it - the film encompasses a sweeping range of human emotions and choices, with no easy ways out for anyone caught up in this dreadful wartime experience. The cast is really excellent - Cate Blanchett, in particular, is outstanding; it's her feature film debut!

Book: True Enough

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Book: True Enough, by Farhad Manjoo

I just finished reading one of the best books I have read so far this year, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Farhad Manjoo. I had approached the book with some doubt, thinking it might be fluff, but instead, it is hard-hitting, wide-ranging and very thought-provoking, with lots of summaries of fascinating social science research, along with "behind the scenes" accounts of recent media frenzies such as the shenanigans connected with the 2000 and 2004 elections. If nothing else, reading this book is great preparation for this November!

Over and over again, I was impressed by the ingenuity of the social scientists who are attempting to measure just what goes on when people interact with media materials - not just Internet-based materials, but media of all kinds. A few years ago I had read The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, by David Brock, which I also thought was an excellent book - but I liked True Enough even better. Two main reasons: True Enough covers a broader range of media experiences, rather than just political communication, and True Enough also covers incidents on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, as well as the evil public relations folks out just to make a buck for their clients, political leanings aside. I consider myself to be a fairly astute observer of the media already, but I learned a lot from this book that was new to me, and read it eagerly from start to finish, wishing only that there had been more to read by the time I was finished! First-rate!

Film: Americanization of Emily

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:48:00 +0000

Film: The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.

This is one of my favorite movies, and after watching a James Garner interview on TCM a few weeks ago, I was excited to find out that of all the movies he has made, this is his favorite, too! Although I guess that is no surprise: it is such a smart and funny movie, wonderfully written, and unexpectedly hard-hitting in its criticism of patriotic sloganeering, even during that "good" war, World War II (which was not so far removed in the past in 1964, when the film was made).

War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best; the highest morality he's capable of. It's not war that's insane, you see. It's the morality of it. It's not greed or ambition that makes war: it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It's not war that's unnatural to us, it's virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

If you haven't seen this movie, it's really a must-see. James Garner recommends it himself! :-)

Film: The Red Violin

laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:45:00 +0000

Film: The Red Violin, starring Samuel Jackson (but very much an ensemble cast)

I was surprised and delighted by this film which traces the history of mysterious "red violin" from its beginnings in Cremona, Italy, to Vienna, and then to Oxford, and finally to Shanghai, tracing an arc all the way from the European Baroque to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As I watched the film, I was eagerly contemplating reading the book on which it was based, since there were so many intriguing twists and turns and suggestions in the plot that made me want to experience it again, in more detail... and I was so surprised to find out that it was not based on a book at all but instead was an original screenplay (the idea vaguely based on a book by John Hersey, but the particular details all original to the film). Very highly recommended!