California Literary Review

Directions: John Gerrard at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

Alix McKenna — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:59:59 +0000

So what are today’s landscape artists telling us? In his eponymous show at the Hirshhorn, John Gerrard presents us with scenery that reflects a very different view of America. Rather than inspire us, the Irish artist constructs images that fill us with anxiety, hopelessness and a sense of imminent disaster. And we can’t look away.

Movie Review: Pirate Radio

Julia Rhodes — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:22:50 +0000

Aside from the lack of a true protagonist, a number of small story arcs fall a bit flat, and the film may be a bit long at over two hours. However, a hilarious cast, a few genuinely poignant moments, and a slightly silly but ultimately uplifting end save the plot from disaster. The brilliant cast and funny script make for a fine film that probably won’t enjoy the sort of release it deserves in America—which is unfortunate, since it’s exactly the kind of movie whose heart and ingenuity should trump trashy big budget disaster movies at the box office.

My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran by Haleh Esfandiari

David Lida — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:54:28 +0000

Her jail term of one hundred and five days was the culmination of an eight-month ordeal. In December of 2006, she returned to Tehran to visit her ailing mother. On her way to the airport for her trip back, a staged robbery, perpetrated by state secret police, detained her passage. She was not allowed to leave Iran. In the subsequent months, repeated interrogations by a secret policeman did not produce the information that he was seeking, so ultimately she was sent to prison.

Messenger: The Legacy of Mattie J.T. Stepanek and Heartsongs by Jeni Stepanek

Ryan Van Cleave — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:53:45 +0000

He explains it in his journals as “Whatever it is that a person needs or wants, they understand why that matters, and that is the unfolding of their Heartsong . . . And as we learn in almost every religion or philosophy of goodness, it is in giving that we receive. In sharing our Heartsong with others, it goes out into the world, and somehow, circles back to us.”

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Katherine Tomlinson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:46:01 +0000

Still, despite the ending, this is King’s best work in years, a richly textured novel of people under pressure that will move readers and provoke them and make them want to tell their friends. Forget Blaze and Duma Key, the King is back. Long live the King.

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Ed Voves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:20:22 +0000

The people of that ancient nation had been decimated in the opening genocide of modern times, victims of Turkish aggression during the First World War. "Who now remembers the Armenians?" Adolf Hitler exclaimed, as he and his Nazi lieutenants planned the Final Solution. The answer can be found lining the walls of the masterful exhibition in Philadelphia. Arshile Gorky remembered. "I shall resurrect Armenia with my brush," Gorky declared in 1944, "for all the world to see."

Movie Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Julia Rhodes — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:16:37 +0000

Imagine a world in which the military trains soldiers not to kill enemies of the state, but to infiltrate their minds with the Jedi mind trick. A different political and military climate in which soldiers in camo sport long hair, have dance parties, and hold daisies in their hands. A military unit in which recreational drugs enhance the training, where drills include psychic exercises and the Privates’ chakras are open to the world. Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats plops the audience into this seemingly alternate universe with the admonition that “more of this is true than you would believe.”

In My Father’s Shadow by Chris Welles Feder

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:29:57 +0000

Orson had become so famous for his villainous role as Harry Lime in The Third Man that the moment he appeared in public, somebody whipped out an instrument and began playing the theme song. When an organ-grinder began playing the theme while Chris and Orson were crossing Piccadilly Circus, Orson had had it with London. His driver took them way out in the country to picnic in an isolated spot surrounded by hedges. A man on a bicycle saw them, stopped short, and suddenly whipped out his harmonica to play The Third Man theme song.

The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell

Jem Bloomfeld — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:58:45 +0000

She’s developed an enjoyable way of beginning novels in the middle of a story, letting her audience watch the characters carry out conversations and actions which they don’t yet understand, but which will be unravelled as the book continues. This must be an even harder trick than it looks, and The Scarpetta Factor is driven by the reader’s need to find out what the heroes know, as well as what the villains have done.

Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort at The National Museum of the American Indian

Alix McKenna — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:44:38 +0000

The first piece you see upon entering is Shapeshifter (2000), an enormous, abstracted whale skeleton built entirely out of white plastic chairs. Jungen’s leviathan is hung in front of a simple black wall and the contrast of colors intensifies its extraordinary power. Shapeshifter has the pristine, flawless texture of a mass produced object, yet somehow feels organic. You can easily imagine the enormous tale with its graceful, individually-carved vertebrae swinging to life.

Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey

David Loftus — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:50:37 +0000

The 19th century science known as phrenology — which posited that the human skull conforms to the shape of the brain within, which in turn expresses in physical form one’s innate moral and intellectual faculties (crudely, that by feeling the shape of a person’s head you could tell whether he or she had great intellectual or creative powers, or was more likely a criminal) — had a brief but rich heyday. It influenced the thought and writings of the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and especially Walt Whitman, as well as scientists and physicians of the time.

Movie Review: The Maid

Germein Linares — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:19:29 +0000

It’s in this last third of the film that Catalina Saavedra’s performance as Raquel carries the film to excellence. Raquel’s character could easily have devolved into caricature. Instead, Saavedra allows her to experience these newly discovered truths with equal measures of joy and regret. Often, it’s just a face – a momentary expression of the eyes and mouth – that say so much about Raquel’s life in the shadows, the years lost to servitude.

Empire of Liberty A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood

Ed Voves — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:20:41 +0000

The “Era of Good Feeling” that followed 1815, however, was of short duration. The issue of slavery could not be banished, as the crisis that erupted in 1819 over admitting Missouri as a slave state showed. Even Jefferson, the “Sage of Monticello,” began to have doubts about the future, fearing that the “Empire of Liberty” that he and the other “Founding Fathers” had created might not survive “the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons.”

Nicole Atkins: Femme Noir

Elinor Teele — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:52:37 +0000

She’s been called the female Roy Orbison, a psychedelic metalhead who grew up listening to Elvis and Patsy Cline. She adores Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, does covers of Patti Smith and reminds listeners of Dusty Springfield. She has a voice like gray autumn skies and a fondness for nightmares. Classify Nicole Atkins at your peril.

The Child Thief by Brom

Katherine Tomlinson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:23:08 +0000

There are moments of genuine mystery and magic, scenes where we are bedazzled and terrified simultaneously. The walk through the mist, crunching on the bones of those who strayed from the path has a Tolkienian resonance. The bloody battles that Peter leads in the real world echo those in the enchanted world. And the myth of the Horned One, who is Peter’s father, overshadows everything. For Peter is an immortal wild child who may look mostly human but who is decidedly something … other.

Movie Review: Paranormal Activity

Julia Rhodes — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:02:36 +0000

The film falls short by arranging a regrettably thin layer of spooky occurrences beneath a thicker deposit of badly acted exposition and obnoxious characters. The couple and all secondary characters are total unknowns, which fits with the idea that audiences are privy to the lives of everyday citizens. The problem lies in the movie’s inability to create believable tension.

Movie Review: Amelia

Zorianna Kit — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:59:05 +0000

Furthermore, Nair chooses to play it safe by directing an uninspiring paint-by-numbers biopic complete with voice-overs from the now dead Amelia (“We all have ocean’s to fly…”), montages to speed up time, black-white newsreel footage to add authenticity, and the flashing of newspaper headlines to show historical significance. One would think that Nair’s beautiful Bollywood films would have brought some magic touch to this very American story.

Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series by Mark Frost

Elinor Teele — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:48:20 +0000

Baseball’s World Series. 1975. The Cincinnati Reds, manager Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine, are up 3 games to 2 against Darrell Johnson’s scrappy Red Sox. After a three-day rain delay that has drowned any hope of an inning, the sun rises on the oldest Major League stadium still in use. It’s Tuesday, October 21, at Fenway Park.

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers

Katie Cappello — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:49:10 +0000

As a cultural, literary, and historical icon, Virginia Woolf was celebrated by contemporaries and has continued to fascinate audiences long after her death. And why not? Her strong individualistic streak, perhaps anachronistic during her lifetime, fits in well with our post-feminist culture, and her ability to render life in intimate, almost cinematic detail has inspired writers for ages.

The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

John R. Guthrie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:48:09 +0000

The unit of measure is a “Darwin,” so named by famed geneticist J. B. S. Haldane. One of the architects of modern Darwinism, he served with great courage in the Scottish Blackwatch Regiment during World War I, then continued his research. At that time, there were some 350,000 known species of beetles. When Haldane was asked by a theologian what he learned of the nature of God from his study of science, he replied, “That He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Movie Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Julia Rhodes — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:38:45 +0000

Although studios balked at the film’s maturity, believing it might be too scary for children, it will appeal to kids and adults alike. Inside all of us there’s a child who yearns to break free, and the film’s beauty lies in its ability to portray unrefined human emotion and the vastness of the imagination. Expect Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are to ignite the minds of generations to come; spending 90 minutes inside a child’s mind has never felt so cathartic and enchanting.

Abraham Lincoln: A Life by Michael Burlingame

Peter Bridges — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:06:12 +0000

Never perhaps has there been such a masterful account of the man’s failures—and successes—in this country’s most taxing job. Look what Burlingame says he did in just his first hundred days in office: “…he raised and supplied an army, sent it into battle, held the Border States in the Union, helped thwart Confederate attempts to win European diplomatic recognition, declared a blockade, asserted leadership over his cabinet, dealt effectively with Congress, averted a potential crisis with Great Britain, and eloquently articulated the nature and purpose of the war.”

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex

John R. Guthrie — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:24:43 +0000

And those names: JenniferBlowdryer, Sinnamon Love. Sebastian Horsely, a male prostitute, of course. Horsely advocates the trade as follows; “The difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex money always costs less.”

The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund

Elinor Teele — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:35:30 +0000

The Bigness of the World, Ostlund's first collection of short stories, was good enough for the judges of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She won the prize in 2008. Deservedly so, for Ostlund has an ear, an appendage often ignored by writers in favor of the flashier eye. Alive to the subtext of the everyday, she uses flat conversations as a front for complicated back-stories...

The Barnes Foundation: Beauty Surrounded by Controversy

Ed Voves — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:18:46 +0000

And what a treasure trove! By the time of his death in 1951, Barnes had purchased 181 works by Renoir, 69 by Cezanne, 7 Van Gogh paintings, 59 works by Matisse, 11 by Degas, 16 by Modigliani, 46 Picasso’s, with 4 apiece by Manet and Monet. He also collected modern American works by William Glackens, Charles Demuth and Maurice and Charles Prendergast. His eclectic tastes extended to African sculptures, European decorative art, American folk art and quirky curiosities like an American Civil War surgeon’s saw.

Movie Review: Zombieland

Julia Rhodes — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:29:07 +0000

Zombieland elicits comparison to both the Brit “romzomcom” (romantic zombie comedy) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). But though it’s alternately a comedy, a romance, a gorefest, and a buddy road-trip movie, Zombieland unravels many of the threads that make up the zombie genre. A good ensemble cast (three up-and-comers and the always-humorous Harrelson), great makeup effects, and fantastic writing create a lighthearted, fun homage to the classic undead movies of yore.

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

Judith Harris — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:39:49 +0000

Mawer’s The Glass Room is a genuine intellectual achievement—a breath-taking story of love and its loss, of art and lost art, of wars lost and then won and lost again, of rich gentleman Jews and Jews lost to Nazi madness. His broad canvas covers the decades of Mittel-European horrors that began in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. The themes are familiar, but treated in a fresh and stimulating, not to say disturbing, way.

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein

Ed Voves — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:46:39 +0000

It was on the level of popular culture that the vital "center" of life in the United States held firm during the Great Depression. Weekly trips to the neighborhood movie house, looking at photos of a revitalized nation in Life Magazine, listening to President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats on the radio, following the home team in the still vigorous daily newspapers, these rituals of daily life were the principal means of keeping faith in America's future, of believing that the only thing to fear was fear itself.

With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler’s Valet by Heinz Linge

John Holt — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:08:28 +0000

Unfortunately the book, while delivering a few marginal insights into Hitler’s character, motivations and global strategies, seems largely a one-dimensional narrative that more resembles a loss of contact with reality than a recounting of anything worthy of notice.

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid

John R. Guthrie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:12:28 +0000

In this great country, for all its goodness, and for all the excellence of the medical care available to the more fortunate, Reid states that 20,000 American citizens die each year due to lack of health insurance and health care. (A more recently released Harvard study indicates more than twice that many.) The notion we have something to learn from other industrialized, wealthy societies often meets with considerable resistance, not because of the oft touted bugaboo of “socialized medicine,“ but simply because the ideas involved are foreign.