Book Review: The Railway Man by Eric Lomax

As a book recommended by some publication (don't remember which one) that covered something to the effect of "books about WWII that you should read" or similar this work should have been better.

Not that it isn't interesting or contain a remarkable series of events...its just not that compelling a read.

By that I mean the author does not have his own voice.  Anyone subjected to the awful series of events he was--captured by the Japanese, put to work near (not on) the Burma-Siam railway (of Bridge on the River Kwai infamy), tortured by the Japanese secret police, imprisoned in some of the worst hell holes of POW note, and years later reconnecting with one of his interrogators (not torturors as the book often erroneously states and is put forth to be as this interrogator was just that...an inquisitor and translator, never putting a hand on the author)--could have retold this work.  Again, not that it isn't a remarkable retelling, but its simply that, not a "work".

Little analysis nor much "art" here.  Placing a tape recorder in front of the author and having him simply give his biography would largely result in the same.  Further, his interest in railways and trains as a youth and then his tangential "work" on the Burma-Siam railway does not come off as an effective thread by which the work can be connected from beginning to end.  It comes off forced and not valuable to the tale...distracting more than anything.

None of this is to take away from Eric Lomax's internal fortitude in the face of awful conditions, brutal torture, absence of hope, etc.  He deserves all the credit he received for having the courage to persevere as well as to forgive his former captor.  His retelling of these events just does not amount to an engaging read or shed light on heretofore unknown events.

Book Review: Tenth of December by George Saunders

I can't help but feeling this collection comes off better in short doses...as in the magazines it was originally printed in--The New Yorker and Harper's primarily.  I can easily see reading these in a magazine during a transitory visit to an airport or in a 20 minute trip to a library.  A sort of brief distraction if you will, that makes you pause ever so briefly to wonder if your own existence aligns with those of his characters but ultimately concluding that while I agree with his view of the modern world, his characters are not those with whom I can find enough of myself in, nor are significantly attached to in the time I spend with them to care about their plights.

While I enjoyed the stories, all of which are modern in topic and some of which border on science fiction, I found none of them particularly resonant with the exception of the titular work in which a disaffected young boy saves the life of a suicidal older man and vice versa.  Never did I imagine myself buying a dog from a meth-head trailer trash family or a lower-middle class father trying to keep up with the Jonses by hanging poor immigrants from my trees as a decoration.

The rest of the collection touches on returning soldiers, manipulation of mental states, modern suburbia, etc. which are all typically in my wheelhouse for interest...I just never found an emotional connection to any of the characters outside of the aforementioned two.

Saunders is by all accounts an awarded novelist and short story writer so maybe it was I who didn't bring something to the table that would allow the connection with his works, but for whatever reason, it wasn't there beyond the time it takes to consume the media.

Film Review: Wind River

Wind River ends up being the weakest of Taylor Sheridan's recent trilogy of films the was preceded by Sicario and Hell or High Water.  This is the only one of the three that he both wrote and directed while the prior two he only wrote.

Its not the that Wind River is bad...its not.  Its actually darn good compared to most films, its just weak in comparison.

Jeremy Renner does a solid job as the US Fish and Wildlife officer with a backstory that gives him just the right motivation to be connected to the rest of the unfolding plot and is just damaged enough (divorced but loving husband and father who feels guilt over the death of his teen daughter) to have him brooding all film long.  Elizabeth Olsen is adequate as the fish out of water, urban FBI agent now investigating a crime in very rural Wyoming but doesn't carry enough weight to think that she would ever make it through the necessary training.

Overall the story can be seen as an allegory to the overall white man's raping of Indian culture, lands and people with here it being the oil company taking their resources and women.  The connection between the two though isn't heavy handed and the film is far more of a criminal procedural than it is a lecturing session.

My problems with it?  Just some odd items that get brought up and dropped or just plain don't make sense.  Olson's character, Jane, walks in on the mother of the murdered daughter cutting up her arms in grief and just closes the door and walks away--the poor woman is on the verge of bleeding to death and continuing to add to the score of cuts to her arms and you just quietly exit stage left without a comment?  Then there are some of the snowmobile scenes...Renner's character parks the snowmobile and says "we have to walk from here as the trees are too tight"....yet what are they following?  The tracks of another snowmobile the that somehow didn't have any issue with the trees...

So its just little things here.  Is it enjoyable?  Sure.  Is it great?  No.  Does it continue Sheridan's string of quality work?  Sure...just keep him at the pen and away from the camera.

Book Review: The 39 Steps by John Buchan

In reading order, this was the latest of the classic "man on the run" or "thriller" series of novels from the early 1900's that I've consumed.  Alongside this one has been Rogue Male, Dance of the Dwarfs and Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household and The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers.

All have a great English sensibility about them that I keenly identify with due to my WASPish upbringing which ads to my enjoyment.  Its easy to slip into the role of the protagonist when they are so similar to yourself or those you know.

That said, The 39 Steps, in my mind was the weakest of the group with the exception of Dance of the Dwarfs.  Not that it wasn't enjoyable, it was.  Buchan asks too much suspension of disbelief however for the story to have a great effect on the reader.

Richard Hannay, the protagonist is ID'd incorrectly as the murderer of a man holding critical information as to an impending German invasion of England.  His response to this is to go on the run across Scotland.  Bouncing from cottage to cottage, hotel to house, forest to river, Hannay is always one half step quicker than his pursuers.  Unfortunately it comes off more that his trackers are stupid and bumbling than Hannay is skilled and capable.  Again and again it is by the merest stroke of luck that Hannay isn't killed or captured while one should never fear as always at the most opportune moment shall a key item or piece of information fall into his hands.

Yes, I know this is a piece of fiction and that you have to have some "coincidences" to push the action along at times but you cannot fill a novel with deus ex machinas or else your reader will lose their sense of impending danger and wonder, knowing that no matter what happens, the author will always provide a convenient way out for the protagonist--and that's what happens here.

The novel has been heavily modified into both plays and films multiple times over the past 100 years, beefing up the storyline with love interests and female characters and a complete redo of the key plot elements so that the novel does not resemble the film or plays in much beyond some of the character names.  Given that 39 Steps is one of Hitchcock's early films, I will need to go back and watch it as it is claimed to be the start of all action, chase and thriller films to come.

Overall the novel is worth reading for its content and thematic core that falls into place with the other books mentioned above to form a common thread of works defining the British pre-war and interwar periods as well as portraying a very English version of what a heroic male is to be in this period--smart, self sufficient, honorable, loyal to country, able to withstand harsh conditions...almost a cross between a Boy Scout and a member of MI6...Not such a bad thing to aspire to...

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 7 -- A Giant Dumpster Fire

So its been a LOOOONG time since I've written anything here...and I guess its kind of sad that this drove me to it...but...it did.

I like the Netflix series Stranger Things a lot.  I was an early watcher of Season 1 and just finished watching season two.  It has enough cultural references that are relevant to me that it feels like a part of my youth.  Its also smart enough to make it interesting without being pretentious, keeping its humor and awareness that it is an entertainment product.

Up until episode 7 of Season 2 the show had also kept away from making the mistakes that shows like Lost and The Walking Dead fell quickly into which is the wasting of time and action in plot elements that don't advance the overall story or that don't specifically speak to the development of its characters.

That ended here.

This should go down as THE textbook definition of a "throwaway episode".  The primary character of the entire series completes a full circle--leaving her "home" town of Hawkins, visiting the big city, meeting her lost sister (who we were only previously introduced to in a 2 minute sequence at the very beginning of Season 2), committing a few crimes, realizing she isn't as morally bankrupt as this sister, and then returning to Hawkins.

Not only does the entire episode feel out of place--sorry but the city, punks, petty crime, and even colors, tones, clothing, hair styles, etc. all are antithetical to the Stranger Things story.  Stranger Things is at its core, a return to a simpler time...one which we look back on fondly and with rose colored glasses with the "Upside Down" and evil government providing the dark side balance to the story...Here in this episode?  Its all on the dark side with Eleven even sporting black eyeliner, dyed hair and clothes and the story feels out of whack and completely out of sorts.  She doesn't belong here and neither does the story or the viewer.  You can almost hear the writers and creators saying to themselves "Oooo...you know what would be cool?  If we could pull Eleven out of her small town environment and place her in an urban area and create that sort of juxtaposition with city dwelling cliches of that time period vs. the rural ones we seen her with to date!  How can we do that?!?!"

Its the old "You spent so much time thinking about if you COULD that you didn't bother to consider if you SHOULD..."

How do you really know that the episode is a throwaway?  Because if you just happened to skip over it from 6 to 8 you wouldn't blink an eye or think that you've missed a thing...and the characters have not learned, developed, changed in any way.  The plot and its development is completely independent of this episode.  I just wish I could forget it and its events as much as the characters seem to have...

Film Review: Hell or High Water

Crafted by the same writer as the movie Sicario this film has a similar location in the American Southwest though involves a different set of troubles.

Instead of the grey areas created by the drug trade washing over the Mexican/American boarder, here we have the grey areas created by the banking industry and those white Americans who have been left behind by the progress of time and innovation.

These are Trump's voters as the main characters on both sides of your traditional good guy/bad guy divide don't care for authority or they way they've been told things should be.  Both the police and the Texas men trying to steal their way to the saving of their mother's home from foreclosure are relics of a bygone era and overlooked by their government and society--but not their families, friends and communities whose bonds remain those that bind.

The film itself ends up feeling like one of those cowboy films where the first cars show up and appear so jarring compared to the more manual world they invade.  You can just sense things are going to end badly for the cowboy as his time has come and gone.  Its the same way here.  The protagonists are doomed from the start as leftovers from another time.

Jeff Bridges is great as a crass, vulgar and extremely un-politically correct police officer chasing down the bank robbing brothers portrayed by Chris Pine and Ben Foster.  Foster is again brilliant.  I don't know if I've seen him in a role yet that I haven't loved.  Chris Pine of course plays the handsome, "better" of the two brothers and puts in a fine performance, with his best work present when he doesn't have to share the screen with Foster who seems to suck the air out of every scene for his own.

I don't know if it "revitalizes" the Western as much of the story could be considered familiar but its the dialogue, performances and attacks on modern rural America that make it worth seeing.  It won't win much if anything at the upcoming Oscars, but that doesn't matter, you will remember it long after the glitzier, shallower works that will win the awards.

Scale of 1-10?  A solid 8

Book Review: Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household

Having read two previous Household books it is clear to me now that Household is a master of the "chase" or "hunt" genre.  All three involve a mystery of some kind whereby a protagonist is hunted down or haunted by an unknown or at least undetailed outside force.

In the two prior novels I had consumed, Rogue Male and Watcher in the Shadows, these outside forces had manifested themselves as other men, with both works selecting England as their location.  Dance of the Dwarfs trades man for a large otter (yes...an otter...) and England for South America, spinning its tale in the format of a diary in which Dr. Owen Dawnay recounts his time spent in the backwater of Brazil.

You may laugh at the idea of a suspense novel where an otter plays the foil to the human protagonist (an English, government sponsored scientist exploring the use of various terrain for farming) but the strength of the work is such that by the time our human storyteller meets his fate you don't view the opposing mustelids as a joke.

This work is not likely one that would remain in its current form if produced today given the protagonist is "gifted" an Indian girl of 15 (20 years his junior) who has already been passed amongst a few prior owners and who is immediately bedded by our narrator.  Sort of like how Hendrix's "Hey Joe" would never get made today.  Many of the narrator's expressed viewpoints would not be allowed today and never get past an editor who I can hear saying to Household "You just can't write that these days!!"  Perhaps Household is attempting to tell us something of his view of the white man's possession and use of the wild places the story inhabits as the more his main character falls in love with this Indian girl, the more endangered and closer to death he becomes.

There are also angles of criticism here regarding communism, science, religion, and feminist perspectives.  That the work has such depth despite being "only" a horror novel of sorts is impressive.  While not quite the work in terms of the suspense or detailed environment it creates compared to the earlier Household tales mentioned above it is still a solid addition to his library.

As a side note, I guess there was a "loosely based" movie made of this novel back in 1983 "starring" Peter Fonda and John Amos...it was decidedly a B movie affair, transformed the mustelids of Household's imagination into "lizard-men" and has not yet been deemed worthy of being offered on DVD though

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

Haven't posted anything here in a while but wanted to for this book.

This work recounts the author's time in the German army during WWII.  Involved in the initial stages of Germany's retreat in the East all the way to the end of the war, the author experienced the worst of what the conflict had to offer and describes it in full detail.

The blood, the cold, the depravity, the cowardice, the heroism, the anger, hatred, frustration, disillusionment, starvation, mutilation...its all here.  Sajer doesn't shy away from his own failings and the work comes across as a beautifully honest recount of his service.  Which isn't to say the book should be taken as a pure academic recap of the German effort of WWII in the East.  It isn't.  It has inaccuracies as others have pointed out.  That's not the overall point and Sajer has been one to say so.

Its more of an emotional synopsis of his experience and the reader comes away with the feeling that no one should have survived what he went through and certainly no one sane could have.

This work is not one to delve into the issues behind Germany's efforts, there is really little mention of Hitler and zero mention of the Holocaust or other well known events of the war and its evils.  If you are looking for that or for Sajer to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness for having fought on the losing side, this is not your book.

If you are looking for an epically honest depiction of the German grunt's viewpoint of how it felt to be driven backwards by the unstoppable masses of Russian soldiers over a period of years through the worst of living conditions, then this is more appropriate.

I have not read a more vivid description of the obscene nature of ground warfare anywhere.  Nowhere else have I felt it better shown the indifferent nature of combatants as to their superiors motives or overarching goals, rather these are purely men fighting for the man next to them and merely in the hope of living to see another day.  Politics and preaching are absent here...as you come to realize, they are in all trenches.

Movie Review: Bone Tomahawk

I was EXTREMELY reticent to watch this movie.  I am not a fan of "torture porn" or movies that seek to go to extremes in order to try and out-gross or out-offend its audience.  While knowing the details of such infamous films as "The Human Centipede", "A Serbian Film", "Cannibal Holocaust", "Salo" "The Green Inferno" and others of their ilk I have little desire to see them and find the idea of them to be nauseating--which I suppose might be part of their point though you'd never know it from how stupid the plots, craftsmanship, dialogue, and acting typically are.  Still, I prefer my films to have at least a bit of thought beyond--"How can I most profoundly disgust my audience and degrade the human race?"

I was afraid Bone Tomahawk might fall into this category given the notoriety a particularly violent scene within the movie had gotten.  While this one scene involving the violent, manual, nude, dismemberment of a male character is extremely graphic and crosses the line of what I will normally watch, the rest of the film is smart, funny and thoughtful enough to make up for it.

A mashup of both horror and western genres the film contains some excellent actors--Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Patrick Wilson and others who do a fantastic job of creating nuanced characters, each distinctly different from one another with their own motives, charms and perceptions.  Russell in particular is great here.  Always a fantastic anti-hero, he is the moral compass of this film, leading his small band of men in the attempt to track down the troglodyte Indians living in the "Valley of the Starving Men" and rescue their kidnapped friends.

The horror comes into play with the capture of one character's wife and another's employee by cannibal Indians.  While the film tries to separate these cannibals from "true" Indians, its pretty clear that these are meant to only a different branch of the same tree.  I'm honestly a bit shocked that the film hasn't received a great deal more politically correct criticism given all the "good" characters are white and all but one, male, while the cannibal Indians are dirty, primitive, dark skinned, unable to use language, etc.  In fact, one major characteristic of them is that we never really see their faces, making them truly faceless, persona-less, evil.

The real violence doesn't take place until the film's third and final act (the first two acts staying firmly in the Western genre with all its tropes present and accounted for, with the last transitioning into the realm of Horror) and if you didn't know it was coming it would be a major shock as first hour and 45 of the film did not contain anything worse than your average Tarantino film (to whom Zahler and his dialogue is drawing comparisons) and in fact is far LESS violent than most of those.  While hard to watch, at least the 30 seconds or so of horrific bloodletting carried the proper emotional weight, was properly placed in the film and wasn't overly focused on for the sake trying to sicken the audience.  The violence was simply part of the story--not indulged in, heightened, glamorized, or pushed at the viewer or wallowed in by the director like I feel even something a film like "Straw Dogs" does.

The director here, S. Craig Zahler is one to watch.  He comes out of a literary background having crafted a number of very well received Western and Sci-Fi novels, is a NYU film school grad and has a number of film scripts that have been snatched up for production by both Martin Scorsese's company and by Leonardo DiCaprio.  One would do well to watch this man's career as early returns indicate a very bright future in both the filming and writing of genre fiction.  Seeing this film now, I am sure I will be looking back in five to eight years when he has some blockbuster of a film and is being paid tens of millions of dollars to direct more mainstream fare that I will say to myself, "Yup, saw that coming" much like I did with Peter Jackson and "Heavenly Creatures" (which too had its controversy with violence and bloodletting).  Take a dramamine, don't eat a big dinner and you should be fine to enjoy what is going to be an extremely well known cult film and director until he hits it big time which should be in short order.

Aldi's Failed Experiment in the Northeast US

For those of you who don't have one near you (you might soon), Aldi is discount grocery chain from Germany and is one of the world's largest private companies with 10,000 stores in 18 countries.  In the US Aldi has over 1400 stores in 32 states.  In the UK and Germany and elsewhere in Europe Aldi is a near institution.

Aldi has recently begun pushing into the Northeastern US.  I see no reason why this won't be an unmitigated disaster with their stores shuttered within a handful of years at best.  Now perhaps I am too affluent and am not the target audience.  Their stores do appear to be urban and poor rural centered.  That said... I am hardly one to drive out of my way to try and go to a Wegman's or Whole Foods.  Hell, I don't even shop at a Stop&Shop or a Shaw's or a Hanford's...I'm a big time discount grocery store shopper--Market Basket to be specific...

But I do have to draw the line somewhere and Aldi is where I draw that line.  Since they opened a couple stores near me recentlyI decided to drag my family to it this weekend to see if it represented a cheaper alternative to where I usually shop.  It was an unmitigated disaster.

I had hopes for the trip given some of the innovative ideas they use (I'm all for trying something different and innovation).  Charging a quarter that is returned to you if you return your cart to the storefront is a great idea as it eliminates the wasteful need to pay someone(s) $8+ an hour to go collect carts that shoppers are too lazy to bring back.  CHARGING you for shopping bags or having you use your own is a great idea.  Having you bag your own groceries is a good idea.  Not offering the ability to pay for your groceries on a credit card and instead having you use a debit card, cash or check and thereby saving the company several percentages of profit on every purchase is a cool idea. Limiting the variety of products you offer so that you don't have to pay so many suppliers, track skus, maintain relationships with brands, etc. is interesting.  No trashy magazines inviting your generally obese housewife to find out about the love life of their favorite transexual (no, not that transexual, the other one...) is great...

But what do all these "innovations" add up to?  A miserable and if I might say, wholly un-American grocery store experience.  This is the land of the plenty is it not?  Well, instead of America, being in an Aldi store feels being in a Russian produktovyy magazin circa 1984.  There are few shelves...aisles are made up of stacking goods head high one after another.  The walls and floor are an undecorated grey concrete.  There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the placement or organization of products.  There are no signs of store staff to ask questions of...

And that's before we GET to the actual product...There is no bakery, no butcher, no deli...everything is prepackaged and flash frozen from timezones away. As the father of a four year old who will scarf down cheese sliced off the block like there is no end but won't sniff the same cheese purchased pre-sliced earlier that day as it "tastes yucky" this is a problem.  There are no personal sized frozen pizza...hell, there isn't a plain cheese pizza to be found--other than the huge size that puts BJ's and CostCo pizza to shame and won't fit inside anything less than a walkin.  There are no black olives, no cottage cheese besides plain and low fat (sorry my wife likes cottage cheese with chives), no white cheddar popcorn, no popcorn of any kind in the kid friendly lunchbag size.  The bananas?  Hey, I get it...bananas go bad quick so you tend to buy them a little on the green side but your ENTIRE STOCK BEING LIME GREEN?!?!?!  What am I supposed to do if I want to eat a banana??  Take a week long nap?  No sliced turkey at all. No cat litter other than the clumping kind.

The products that they do have?? All "generic". OK, not ALL but as even their website says....like 80%+ generic. You won't find Coke and Pepsi and Kraft here...Its Millville, Millville, Millville...Aldi presses upon you that all these generic brands are made in the same factories, with the same ingredients and to the same standards as the well known brands, and I'm sure they are...but they don't taste the same...not even close. Maybe its the American pallet of mine. Maybe my kids are picky. Maybe we're spoiled...so be it. Plop my kids down with a bowl of Kraft Mac&Cheese and its smiles all around...place a bowl of Millville Mac&Cheese and it will get spit out faster than you can say "cost savings!" But don't worry...due to the limited number of products, you won't have to spend time making a choice between brands because typically there is only a single brand. You want pasta sauce?? Great! We have some. You can have it in any flavor you want as long as its plain...and its Millville...

I can't do this. Neither can my wife. Neither can my kids or my cats. We're Americans...not Danes.

We're Americans...not Swiss. We're Americans...not English. We demand choice. We want variety, flavors, sizes. We want brands that our parents introduced us to and theirs to them. I want to see fish on ice. I want my cheese and meats cut off the block in front of me. I want to see the butcher grinding up the beef into hamburg. I want free coffee offered to me at the bakery, freshly baked bread. I want 1,000 different beers to pick from.

I don't think my feelings and preferences are that different than most Americans, or at least those not on foodstamps. I wasn't raised on a commune. I'm not insane, poor or Bernie Sanders...and you aren't either. From the completely empty store aisles and tumbleweed blowing parking lot, neither is New Hampshire and I suspect New England in general. If you value in even the smallest way the ability to make flavorful food, choose ingredients, not eat the same gulag worthy gruel day after day after day, make Aldi grocery stores your enemy. In five years these Aldi stores will be empty husks, likely replaced by Amazon delivery centers or drone warehouses...the sooner the better.

Book Review: The Water Knife

This is the second novel I've read by Paolo Bacigalupi I've read with the first being "The Windup Girl".  Unfortunately I should have taken my feelings from that first novel and remembered them more clearly before picking up this one.

We are once again in the near future, though this time it is the very near future instead of a hundred or more years away.  While in "The Windup Girl" we were concerned with rising oceans and the absence of oil, here we are concerned with a lack of water, competing water cartels in the desert Southwest and the breakup of the United States

In both cases Bacigalupi writes in a style more attuned with his young adult novels where he got his start.  The language and rhythm of the writing is juvenile and simple.  Cormac McCarthy this is not.

Nor is this William Gibson.  The novel is almost "cute" in its portrayal of its dystopian future.  We have all the queues we see in our daily life just drawn a bit farther out--shiny Teslas, Chinese investment in American real estate, Google Glass like devices, drought ridden California and the Southwest in general, mentions of well known brands like Camelback, REI, Aquafina, etc.  Its like Bacigalupi just threw a bunch of New York Times articles in a blender and put the resulting mush on the page.  He isn't creating much or providing much insight here, he's merely regurgitating what we already know.  And that's the difference between someone like Gibson and himself.

Gibson will create things out of his own mind that do not exist yet and show you a vision of the future you hadn't thought could exist.  Bacigalupi shows you a future that's already been predicted and that you know won't happen because the world just isn't that easy to forecast.

"The Water Knife" is a good novel if you don't want to think and just want to say "Yeah!  Right on!  I think we're going to hell too!"  Sorry but I need an author to show me something I don't already know.

Rubber O-Rings for A Watch Band Holder

I have a relatively cheap Timex Ironman digital watch that I use as my bang around watch and spare clock for rally racing.  It has treated me well though is an obvious tell to others that I am not exactly a fashion plate.

Unfortunately its one flaw is its watch band keeper.  Made out of a thin rubber and exposed to salt, sand, dirt, sun, sunscreen, solvents, oil, etc. it seems to breakdown pretty quickly and after a year or so had split and left my watch band flopping around and the watch unusable.  Timex doesn't seem to sell just the watch band loop and I didn't want to buy replacement straps for near $20 just to get the little loop.  So what is one to do.

Well, Home Depot solved the problem with their plumbing isle.  A little box of 10 rubber O-rings about 9/16 in diameter, in black for less than $3 is perfect.  The O-rings might even be better than the original as they are likely made to stand up to all kinds of chemicals and substances given their plumbing application.  The O-ring is comfortable and its matte black finish fits perfectly with the Timex rubber.  Perfect and problem solved.

Film Review: Chef

Streaming Netflix is both a blessing and a curse.  On one hand it makes it easy to watch an endless amount of media.  On the other because of its limited menu (covering only a limited number of top flight films vs. the mail version of Netflix) you end up scouring the internet for "Best .... on Netflix".  Best horror films, best scifi, just "best films", best "new" films, and on and on and on in an attempt to try and find something worth watching...

So when something like Chef ends up on a number of "best of new films on streaming Netflix" you end up trying it.

While Chef isn't a bad film, it doesn't live up to its billing and certainly not its casting.  Here you have Jon Favreau, Dustin Hoffman, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr.  With a cast like that you would expect a great film with great performances.  Not so.  What you get is a film that will likely show up on TNT or TBS or the like and be run several hundreds of times due to its positive and completely inoffensive nature.  Seriously, this is like a movie you show to kids in fifth grade to put them to sleep on days when you have a substitute teacher.

Its not completely boring--I could watch Sofia Vergara dust a single mantlepiece for two hours and find it entertaining but, the film tries so hard to be positive and carry a "things will be a all right if you just try hard enough and are a good person" that it is sickenly saccharine.  Take that and the fact that the film ties itself in to so many current "trends" like food trucks, cooking being a metaphor for life, etc. that it plays like a hipster's mishmash of ideas--something Favreau who wrote, directed and starred in this film, should be too old for.

A completely forgettable film, if you're on an airplane feel free to take it in.  It won't offend your neighbor and it might put you both to sleep.

First World Gadget...

In a world where probably a billion or two people light and heat their hovels by burning yak butter candles and ox dung bricks it says a lot about me that I get such glee at such a simple gadget...but there it is....

The SnapPower SnapRays Guidelight is a brilliantly simple device.  Consisting of little more than your standard plastic outlet cover a couple tabs on the back to contact with the positive and negative terminals on your standard outlet connected to three small, white, LEDs, and a light-sensor the Guidelight replaces your standard outlet cover providing you a built in nightlight that allows you to ditch either the plugin incandescent bulb you likely have in your children's bedrooms and get that outlet back for use or the more expensive and time intensive to install versions that leave no outlets in their place.  Maybe its the Dad/Father/homeowner in me that thinks this is really neat but it just seems so natural an invention and one that screams "cool".

I know...kinda silly to get excited for this...but it is such an elegant and simple design and seems just...well...cool that I grabbed up a bunch and put them in my kids' rooms and elsewhere around the house and now my house is nicely lit with a dim little, comforting, white light in the kitchen, living room, kids bedrooms and upstairs bathroom...Oh, and they're energy efficient too!!!  Spending $12 a piece to replace a .50 cent outlet cover...ahhh...America...

SnapPower Website...

Book Review: Zero to One by Peter Thiel

This book was one I had to hunt down on Amazon as it was not popular enough to show up in my local Barnes&Noble stores.  I knew of Peter Thiel from his involvement in the formation of PayPal and his continued private equity investments.  His membership in the "PayPal Mafia" is well known as are his libertarian-ish views and personal causes such as paying smart kids to NOT go to college and instead focus on a singular idea or product of their own development.

The book is written in a lecturing style which is fitting as the work is essentially a collection of his lectures to students at Stanford within a course on startups.

Within this collection are his thoughts on people like Malcolm Gladwell and John Rawls (who he thinks are pretty much boobs who focus on chance and "fairness" in their explanations for success and economics), the reason why current education and college produce a bunch of people studying everything but knowing nothing, why planning matters, how monopolies are a good thing, why successful startups contain people who are of a like mind/personality, etc.  Its all quite good and I must admit, my own particular political, social and economic leanings tend to make me a fan of Thiel's ideas.

What is most important about the book is its call to arms for people to think big, to plan, to try new things, and be contrarian (though you then get the "if everyone is being contrarian, is it contrarian anymore" argument, similar to the 1990's "Alternative" music argument).  Calling for a return to what he calls "definite optimism", a trait he finds in the world from the 1600's through the 1960's quoting Marx and Engels who stated that society had "created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together.  Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground--what earlier century had even a presentiment that such produced forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?"

Thiel likely sees and cites herein, man's placement of 12 men on the moon as the ultimate example of planning, creation and optimism.  Mentioning the plans of a 1940s schoolteacher by the name of John Reber who was a self-taught engineer and proposed a series of dams in San Francisco Bay designed to reclaim land, provide freshwater, etc. Thiel states that such a plan would never be taken seriously today but at the time the plan ended up being endorsed by newspapers across California, congressional hearings were held and the Army Corps of Engineers built a 1.5 acre scale model of the plan.  The fact that such an idea from such an individual would be dismissed outright in today's society is a major failing of our current culture he feels.  No longer do we welcome big plans and ask merely if they would work and instead we have turned into a society ruled by the Baby Boom generation, like Gladwell, who see little to no value in planning or individual effort but instead see only luck, happenstance, and social context.

We need more people who believe in individual exceptionalism, the ability to make one-self into whatever we wish and to dream big ideas.  We need more people like Thiel and less people like Gladwell (who's book Outliers I reviewed positively here in the past) if we hope to move the human race forward.  If you are developing a product or company or even just fantasize about carving your own path rather than being told what your path will be, then Zero to One is worth the read.

Film Review: House of the Devil

Looking for an anti-Valentine's day film last night this horror film was picked due to its good reviews and its director, Ti West, being viewed by many as a up and coming director to watch.

Certainly the film is not your traditional modern horror film.  There's no torture-porn, a relatively minimal amount of blood and gore, no "found footage", no "paranormal activities", etc.  It was stated from the get go to be a homage to 70's and 80's horror films and it definitely looks and feels like it.  The clothes, cars, hair, Sony Walkman, grainy film stock, music, corded telephones, payphones, etc. all give the appearance of events and filming that took place in the late 70's or 80's.  I had to go and check the release date of House of the Devil a number of times to ensure that it was made just a few years ago...there is nothing really here to give away that it wasn't made some 30-40 years ago.

The pacing of the film is also decidedly un-modern.  The edits are far apart and virtually NOTHING happens in the first 45 minutes of the film which merely sets up your standard horror trope--a young girl is hired as a babysitter for a baby that doesn't exist in a big scary house in the deep woods by a very weird couple on the night of a lunar eclipse.  If that doesn't give you an idea of where this story is going you haven't been paying much attention.

While the story is typical it is still well put together and once you are in the major set piece of the film (the house), Ti West does an excellent job or ratcheting up the tension.  Its here that the film shines with lots of odd camera angle shots and still frames where the female lead goes in and out of the shot and your SURE something bad is going to befall her--but doesn't.  When things begin to go badly for our heroine the tension West has been building over the last hour or so is released and it returns to some fairly typical "girl covered with blood being chased through a scary house by a tall creepy guy" action.  The film ends with what I guess is supposed to be a "twist" or "surprise" much like say Nightmare on Elm Street or the like but really it doesn't fit with the events of the story and seems just tacked on so that the viewer has something to wonder about after turning the film off.

There are certainly elements here that deserve watching and Ti West's development as a director has potential--particularly since he is branching out into other genres with a Western (always a favorite style of mine) with Ethan Hawke (himself a recent star of a number of horror films), John Travolta and Taissa Farmiga (younger sister of Vera Farmiga) watch" but any stretch of the imagination.

Film Review: Out of the Furnace

This was a film I had been interested in when it was in the theater due to its intense trailer and laundry list of good actors and producers.  With Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio as producers and Casey Affleck, Willem DeFoe, Forest Whitaker, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Woody Harrelson and Christian Bale as actors, Out of the Furnance may have been one of the most star laden vehicles in recent memory.

One of the greatest things about the film is how each actor subverts their fame in service of the story.  The story itself is what stands as the backbone of the film.  Out of the Furnace is a fairly straightforward tale of one good brother and one questionable brother wherein the questionable brother falls afoul of some bad people thus necessitating the good brother to take revenge and cross over into a grey area of morality.  What makes it more interesting that your standard fair are the interracial triangle between Bale, Whitaker and Saldana's characters, the dark side given to the "good" brother present in his vehicular homicide displayed on screen and the depiction of white poverty present in the Northeastern US.

Directed by Scott Cooper who has studied under Robert Duval and was the filmmaker behind Crazy Heart and the upcoming Whitey Bulger bio Black Mass, the film is easily viewed as a modern Western, with meth, underground fighting, the Iraq War and ruined mill towns taking the place of cattle rustling, card playing, the Civil War and the far West.  Cooper also seems to have taken on producer Scott's penchant for dark  scenes and sharply shot scenery.  Additionally, Cooper paces the film as Scott might, taking the time to tell the story with fleshed out characters and not pushing the action.

With the truly bad characters in the film based upon the "Ramapo Indians" (more white trash than Indians and not a recognized "tribe" by the Feds at this point) living in and around the Ramapough Mountains in Northeastern New Jersey it merely confirms my view of NJ as a thoroughly detestable state--my in-laws not withstanding.

The film itself opened the same weekend as juggernauts Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and was almost entirely ignored at that time, it doesn't deserve to be.  Those looking for shootouts and John Woo style action will not care for Out of the Furnace but those enjoying quality work and film noir will.

Book Review: Annihilation

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer is the first of three novels that make up the Southern Reach trilogy.  I have only read this initial volume and so I don't yet know if the series comes to a satisfactory resolution or if it trails off into boring drivel.

I do know that this first work is an excellent piece of "weird fiction".  There is certainly a Lovecraftian feel to the entire novel both in its use of language, style and content, though its differences are more than significant enough to stand on its own.

The story surrounds an ill fated expedition that is following in the footsteps of previous ill fated expeditions to an location dubbed "Area X".  The first person speaker relaying the novel is the biologist assigned to this four woman expedition and she recounts her travels around this Area X and all the strange things we encounter.  There are dolphins with human eyes, large lizard creatures waiting in the weeds, nefarious team members, microscopic parasites, strange lighthouse keepers, indescribably beautiful/horrifying/powerful creatures from seemingly another world, etc.  No real explanation to many of these observations is given leaving the reader with the disquiet feeling that they only have a small insight into what is going on.

The locale of the tale is within a Southern "transition-land" between the swamps, grasses, forest and dunes bordering the ocean.  The author's favorite Southern hikes taking place in the St. Marks National Wildlife reserve in Florida is the inspiration for much of the book's geography and gives the tale a great feeling of "being there" as the voice coming out of the novel has a great tone of authenticity.  There is a bit of lengthy Lovecraft-like wordiness to the work which sometimes gets in the way of the story as you can be lulled into lethargy by paragraph length sentences at times, though luckily these are relatively rare.

I'm very interested in seeing where the groundwork put down in this work leads in the next two and hope the author didn't use up all his great ideas, mythmaking and mood creation on this one novel as he's certainly composed a world worth exploring further.  I'll label it as my favorite fiction work of '14.

NISMOStuff TV Review: Black Mirror

I think this may be only my second TV review that I've done on my site out of the near 1500 posts I've put up on here.

Black Mirror is and was broadcast in the UK but has made its way over here to the States on Netflix.  The series is only two seasons long and each season is only three episodes long.  I am only through the first "season" but I have no problem recommending it as highly as anything I've seen on TV, perhaps ever.  The show is completely episodic in nature with each one a wholly contained world and story that is wrapped up within that single edition.  Each episode is fully formed and rich in detail and characters feeling like each one lasts much longer than its less than an hour length and much more like a feature film than a TV show.  Every show changes its cast, storyline, world, characters, etc.  There is nothing connecting one to another besides the artists behind the camera and the quality in front of it.

In fact this is where I would quibble with other critics of the show.  Others have compared it to things like The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents or similar while I find it much grander in its scale.  I find it more comparable to something like a Fincher or Ridley Scott film with a healthy dose of social satire thrown in.  The show focuses neatly on the intersection of near term technological developments (media, internet, consumerism, entertainment, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) and how they change our place in such a rapidly changing world.  How our modern world impacts our romantic relationships, our governments, media, etc. are all covered here and in ways that will make you laugh and cringe (say the forcing of the UK's Prime Minister to have sex with a pig on live TV/Internet?) in ways I didn't think possible.

The satire, dark humor, insigh,t and skewering of ourselves is at a level I've rarely seen or felt.  Watching a future of ours that is only seconds ahead of where we stand today, unfold and twist our conceptions of what is right and wrong, good and bad is some of the most perverse fun I've had with TV in a long time.  This isn't necessarily "light" fair...I'm as much for some gratuitous violence and nudity as the next guy and blowing away endless hordes of zombies is always a good time but this won't fit in those parameters...it requires a bit more thought, attention and emotional investment but in terms of intellectual and emotional rewards, I have seen little like it.  If you have Netflix or the ability to watch this series, I could not recommend it more highly.

Flim Review: Snowpiercer

During my time in my youth as a clerk at the Canyon Ranch Resort in Lennox, MA I had the unfortunate pleasure of bumping into one of the Weinstein brothers of film and TV fame.  Whether it was Harvey or Bob matters not.  They (he) was a fat dink then and he's a fat dink now.  Only now they own The Weinstein Company vs. Miramax which they founded and sold to Disney.  In either case the Weinstein slobs have a habit of requiring major edits to Asian films they acquire the rights to or drastically curtailing their distribution in the West.

So it was with Snowpiercer.  Though an English language film staring Chris Evans, it was directed by a Korean and was based off of an early 80's French comic.  For whatever reason the Weinstein's chose to play games with this most excellent movie.  They demanded major edits of the film with additional voiceovers at the beginning and end of the film likely in an attempt to make it more suitable for American tastes...which is odd given the number of decidedly independent and quirky films the Weinsteins have backed in their career (Clerks, Pulp Fiction, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Kids, Heavenly Creatures, etc.)  Fortunately the Korean director, Bong Joon-ho, refused their demands and kept the film as is--which is likely why the Weinsteins then refused to give the film the wide release it deserved, limiting it to some 150 very small, obscure theaters in its initial release and then sending it on to the Home audience via NetFlix and DVDs.

Thankfully a few people in the sci-fi world saw the film and have been singing its praises since.

It took me about the first half hour of the film to warm (pun intended) up to Snowpiercer.  It begins slowly and the special effects are initially not the best that money can buy.  That said, the premise of the film is what drew me in.  Not to say that its realistic, but it sure is interesting.  Virtually the entire population of the Earth has died out due to man's attempt to reverse global warming that has lead to a ice encased planet that is now too cold to live on.  All that remains is a few hundred or thousand individuals aboard an ever moving train that circles the earth once every 365 days.

Aboard this train the population is stratified by class.  The wealthy and powerful live in the front cars of the train and exist in comfort and ease.  The poor and unwanted live at the rear, existing on jello "protein bars" made from well, its not people but its supposed to be just as revolting.  The plot then revolves around an uprising lead by Chris Evans' character "Curtis" who along with his fellow rear train inhabitants have tired of being told what and how to exist.  Watching the progression from the rear to the front of the train as conditions improve and both the rear-trainers and the audience learn just what comforts those in the front have been partaking of is great theater.  The action scenes are excellent and you don't get the "claustrophobic" feeling you might get expect from a film that takes place in such a tight environment (just the opposite in fact, you end up forgetting the action takes place entirely within a train at times).  The story also has a few nice twists to keep it from being a straightforward thriller and makes you reassess the motivations of a number of characters.

There are traces here of your classic futuristic dystopian films and books--1984, Brazil, etc. but the material is definitely fresh and does not feel derivative.   Tilda Swinton is nearly unrecognizable and will get a good deal of Best Supporting Actress buzz for her role as "Mason" the train's second in command and will be the most memorable part of the film for most, I spent much time wishing that she had MORE screentime despite the "evil" of her character.

No self respective fan of Sci-Fi should miss this film.  Its worth nearly every moment.