intellectual properties

recently read

i mentioned that i’d read several great books lately, and so here’s a little about them:

i already discussed A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius but i’m still going to recommend it one more time. while i’m not sure about the genius part, it was heartbreaking as well as thoroughly entertaining in both form and content for me as a Gen Xer in SF, CA.

then i read The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis, mostly because the film was coming out and I wanted to read the book first.  i was a little bored with the content and style, as both the disaffection and ennui of the rich and bourgeois and graphic physical violence have been aspects of his previous work (Less Than Zero, American Psycho), but it’s still well-written (and short) enough to have kept me reading.  i’m interested in seeing hollywood’s treatment of the subplot revealed in the end, given the actors cast in the film as well as current trends in the genre.

then i read Jose Saramago’s new book, Death With Interruptions.  two of his previous books rank in my top 10:  Blindness was one of the most intense novels i’ve ever read (and i’ve yet to see the film because i loved the book so much), and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was just truly beautiful and amazing and i wish i could buy everyone i know a copy.  I also read The Double, but for some reason didn’t enjoy the content of that as much as these other three.  his style of writing and storytelling is enthralling and unique, and i think that Death with Interruptions showcases his talent as a wordsmith the best yet.  i was dogearring pages left and right and stopping to savor his wry use of words.  while the topic is mildly political in the current context of “death panels” in amercia, i read it as nothing other than a fast and furious fictional treatment of one of life’s most enigmatic human questions:  would life be better if we were immortal? is death a curse, or a blessing?

having run out of books to read on the trip then, i bought one of the few english language novels at the airport in Amsterdam before the flight back:  Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father (the one that unabashedly details his younger years, with ancecdotes that some chose to use as ammunition during the election, like his occasional use of drugs as a student, incidents involving racial dynamics, and the use of language like the Fword, none of which, for me, affect your ability to be President.)  i’m sort of ashamed that i probably would never have purchased this book if it weren’t because it was one of the few in English (limited choice), and then once i started reading it, even more ashamed that i knew so little about a president i voted for. i’ve been pleasantly surprised at, first of all, how incredibly well-written it is, and then secondly, how much i relate to his story and worldview.  i didn’t think i had a lot in common with a black christian ivy league politician, but apparently i do, and i have to say i’m enjoying it very much and would recommend it to anyone, especially people like me who may not know as much about Obama as we should. whether you voted for him or not, and whether you like him now or not, it’s a well written autobiographical novel and hey, he is the President.

finally, we saw Where the Wild Things Are yesterday, and i was pleasantly surprised there also with how much different the film was than i somehow expected it to be. with Dave Eggers as a writer (and if you’ve read his books, like the one mentioned above, then you quickly hear his voice in the script) and Spike Jonze as director i knew it was going to be different, but it wasn’t what i expected.  the original story is only 10 sentences, so to make a feature length film you have to make up a lot about character and plot, but unlike children’s stories like Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or The Wizard of Oz or Brothers Grimm tales that have obvious dark sides to the original written works that were carefully reframed or edited out in the filmmaking for young audiences (Disneyfication), WTWTA goes the other way and takes a rather innocuous children’s tale and turns it into something much deeper, much weirder, and much darker than the original to the point that i don’t think it is even a children’s movie anymore. i think i expected something more like when they’ve taken short Dr. Seuss books and turned them into feature length films, adding silly adventures and subplots to the existing look and feel.  i love it when children’s movies center on adult themes (and Pixar has been a leader in that, with Wall-E and UP), but i think this goes beyond even that, which was surprising and interesting.  we went to an early show, and so the theatre was largely full of families with children, and i don’t think many of the smaller children got the movie at all, although the 10/11 year old boy next to me was crying, so for older kids it might mean a lot.   and, definitely a movie to see in the theatre, as visually it is stunning.

Filed in tv, books and movies | Tagged with eggers, saramago | Comment (1)