Movie: Milk (2008)

After watching Milk, last night and again today after getting home from work, I felt a profound sense of oddness on how the film sort of paralleled the Prop 8 issue here in California. And whether it got made and released before the historic vote here this past November 4 and some how effected its course, one will never know. Thirty years ago, when then Prop 6 was on the ballot -one said to protect the children from homosexual teachers and their supporters - it failed to pass because (with help from Harvey Milk no doubt) even the people who were straight and maybe Republican (such as former Governor Ronald Reagan) felt there was plenty of laws to protect the children already on the books.

When the conservatives toted out the same reason for passing Prop 8 in 2008, it now seems that it’s the only weapon they have, some meaningless talking point about protecting the children.

Anyways, Gus Van Sant’s biographical film on the life of Harvey Milk is exceptional film, and I say that with extreme prejudice, as it effects me personally. While Sean Penn has run hot and cold with since Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his work here will surely grab him an Oscar nod for best actor. But what surprises me more, is how the film treats Dan White (played by an extraordinary Josh Brolin, who deserves a best supporting nod), the man who murdered Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. He could’ve been portrayed as some wild-eyed conservative who believed he was doing God’s work, but his fall from grace is told in a very humanized way.

The location work and the archival footage -much taken from the 1984 Academy Award winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk - add to films message that -as Harvey often said - “you’ve got to give them hope.”

Van Sant’s usual fanciful direction is more linear (as it should, of course) here and the camera work and style almost makes the film look more a real documentary. Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay lights up the screen, and is another part of the film that should score with the Oscar voters.

Beyond Penn and Brolin, there is some more good performances from Emile Hirsch as Milk protégée Cleve Jones and the extraordinary handsome James Franco as Milk’s boyfriend Scott Smith. Equally handsome Diego Luna plays the unstable love interest Jack Lira later in the film, if I want to complain, after he was gone, the film petered a bit -but that’s a small quibble, really. Rounding out the cast is some up and coming actors such as Walt Disney mainstay (the High School Musical franchise) Lucas Grabeel (who perhaps can now finally come out the closet himself?), Running with Scissors actor Joseph Cross and Alison Pill (from the short-lived NBC series The Book of Daniel).

I cannot say this is the film of the year, but it certainly deserves to up there with the top five of 2008. It’s a moving, often thought provoking film that shows that the gay movement of today needs a leader such as Harvey Milk to end this destructive schism between us all so we can give hope to all.

Books read in 2008

01. Next -Michael Crichton
02. Duma Key -Stephen King
03. V -The Second Generation -Kenneth Johnson
04. Blaze -Richard Bachman (AKA Stephen King)
05. Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris
06. Company -Max Barry
07. Heart-Shaped Box -Joe Hill
08. New Wilderness -Brian S. Matthews
09. City on the Currents -Brian S. Matthews
10. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union -Michael Chabon
11. How I Paid for College -Marc Acito
12. Attack of the Theater People -Marc Acito
13. Darkmans -Nicole Barker
14. Bad Monkeys - Matt Ruff
15. An Arsonists Guide to Writers' Homes in New England -Brock Clarke
16. The Accidental Time Machine -Joe Haldeman
17. Playing for Pizza -John Grisham
18. The Ghost -Robert Harris
19. Dead Until Dark -Charliane Harris
20. Living Dead in Dallas -Charliane Harris

Not one nonfiction book on this list, though I gave the college try to The World is Flat. I'll finish it, but probably not until 2009. Pop fiction took over the list this year, though there was a few attempts at some literary titles. Still, I have bunch more pop fiction sitting besides me, along with a bunch of nonfiction history books.

I'm wondering if 2009 will be more of a reading year, as I spend less and less time in front of the TV (though I spend way too much time on the internet), because it sucks so much.

Books: Playing For Pizza

Leaving the courtroom for the football field, John Grisham gives us Playing for Pizza, where we meet Cleveland Browns third-string quarterback Rick Dockery, who is lying in his hospital bed unconscious from a severe concussion. Rick, it seems, took the field at the end of an all-but-sewn-up game that would have propelled the long-suffering Browns into the Super Bowl. With Cleveland about to go bonkers, Rick throws three interceptions in the final quarter – the last resulting in the massive hit that sends him to the hospital and gives the game-winning touchdown to the Denver Broncos.

With his career at the crossroads, his agent decides a year out of the country may help Dockery. He sets him up in Italy, as the quarterback for the Parma Panthers -thus the novel already a football story, becomes a fish-out-of-water tale as well.

I had some huge problems with this book, as the many hallmarks of his - the tightly written, page turning scenes - where dropped for an almost parody take on those a Silhouette romance novels. It's that light and airy.

Plus, while this is suppose to be a football book, it resembles more part Tuscan Under the Sun style look at Italy, plus a culinary dictionary from the Food Network, and Frommer's travel guide to the country.

I'm unsure what Grisham was trying to do here, after all, I did enjoy is non-thriller novel The Painted House. I finished because I had too, but find it lacking in every regard.

poop.

Books: The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman

Since H.G. Well's The Time Machine, we've been fascinated by the idea of being able to travel into our past or even our own future. And for decades, science fiction authors have speculated on how this could be done, despite having Einstein throw a wet blanket over the whole theory.

One of the biggest hurdles of time travel is The Paradox. That traveling, especially to your past, would cause too many paradox's, thus causing a possible unwinding of the universe, ala Back to the Future.

One theory is that if time travel was feasible, we could only go forwards, never back.

That's the premise of Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine, a whimsical comic tale of Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller, who while toiling as a lowly MIT assistant researcher, accidentally creates, through no fault of his own, a time machine while studying the quantum relationship between gravity and light. When he hits its reset button, the box disappears, only to reappear a second later. Soon Matt discovers every time he hits the reset buttom, the machince goes missing twelve times longer.

After a few expeirments, he discovers he can attach a metal box to it and then send objects -like a store bought turtle - into the future. This leads to the idea of taking himself into the future. Borrowing an old car from a friend, Matt sends himself into the near future, only to discover he is a wanted man in the murder of the friend he borrowed the car from (he dropped dead of a heart attack when he saw Matt vanish before his eyes). Bailed out by a man -apparently - who could pass for an older version of himself, Matt decides to beat the rap by traveling further into the future, in hope of finding a safe haven.

The Accidental Time Machine is a swift read, a hallmark of Haldeman's sf style. He can create such a vivid world full of bright and wonderful ideas, yet present them in prose that need not go on forever. However, at times, you would've hoped he stayed in some the future worlds of Earth, like a society ruled by religion, with a strange blend of high and low technology, or the one where bartering is an artform and AI commonplace.

There is a deus ex machina towards the end which could be off putting, but its a small issue. Plus, while sort of saw the ending, you always knew that the time travel was one way -despite the broadly suggested idea that somewhere in the future, Matt did travel back.

Book: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

In this dark satire on literary fiction, Sam Pulsifer is man who, at the age of 18, accidentally burns down the home of Emily Dickinson, in the process killing a couple who were making love in her bed. After serving ten years, he returns home where his parents show him all the letters -fan mail - from people who want him burn down other famous literary homes, such as those of Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ten years after that, now living with his wife and two children, Sam’s past begins to catch up with him, when the son of the couple killed shows up wanting something, but Sam is unsure what. And then, someone begins burning the homes of other famous writers.

Clarke lampoons literature, taking on women's book clubs, literary critics, Harry Potter fans, bookstores, English professors, memoir writers and librarians. It’s a delightfully funny, often dark in tone, but never really mean. Sam Pulsifer is a sad sack, who through no fault of his own, discovers just what happens when your life spins out of control.

The real mystery for Sam, beyond clearing his name, is what happened to his parents during the last 30 years of their lives.

A brilliant novel.

Book: Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

There is a saying one should not judge a book by its cover.

But I have to admit, I was drawn to Matt Ruff’s novel Bad Monkeys by its bright yellow cover and its images of four monkeys looking like some bizarre Rorschach test.

The novel opens with a certain Jane Charlotte, who has been arrested for murder. After telling the police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil it earns her a trip to the jail’s psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy—or playing a different game altogether.

Like all secret organizations, there is nothing to substantiate her claims because, of course, there is no records of such a company, especially one that works outside of any government. She tells Dr. Vale that her division is called The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons or Bad Monkeys for short.

So, you can see the doctor’s dilemma.

Bad Monkeys is a well paced thriller/science fiction-ish novel with a huge dash of wicked humor. The verbal sparring between Jane and Vale is delightful, and the action never falls. It’s slim volume means and easy to read prose means you can read it fast, as Ruff never lets up. You are almost forced to continue to read if only to find out whether Jane is crazy, or really telling the truth.

Book: Darkmans by Nicola Barker

Darkmans appears to be about damaged or eccentric people who are thrown into everyday, mundane situations. Its bleak, yet funny even though I don’t understand what the book was really about -beyond what I described in that first sentence.

The cast of characters comprise of Daniel Beede, his drug dealing son Kane, his endlessly profane ex-girlfriend Kelly and Gaffar, a Kurdish repairman who, after a fight with Kane over the seriousness of Kelly's injuries (she broke her leg falling off a wall), comes to work for him as a courier and also befriends Beede who, of course, shares a house with the son he barely talks to.

Beede’s life is one shaped by things of the past -as most lives are, but seems to be haunted by the theft of some antique tiles, and has also embarked on a mysterious project with the forger named Peta Borough that seems to involve strange duplications and research into John Scogin, jester in the court of Edward IV.

Then there is the matter of Fleet, son of Elen and Dory, an eerily gifted and strangely prescient boy who builds a model of the Cathedral of Saint-Cecile with matchsticks. To the growing alarm of Elen and Dory (who seems to suffer from a mental illness somewhere between narcolepsy and schizophrenia), Fleet knows impossible amounts of information about the same John Scogin that Beede is researching. And during Dory's hazy episodes, Fleet calls his father "John".

There isn't much plot, but it does feature an incentive style prose, underlined with some very funny elements -like the fact that everyone appears to know a crap load of miscellaneous information on a wide variety of subjects.

Its an unusual novel to say the least, yet one that I could not put down.

Book: Next by Michael Crichton

As I read Next, I was of one mind: what the hell is this book about?

Michael Crichton has spent decades combining fact and fiction together, and with Next he takes on genetics and the slippery slope that comes with it. The book has way too many characters and seemly jumps to them with little narrative ideas. His chapters are short, much like the pattern developed by the craptacular James Patterson. The novel also sort of concludes with little or no plot resoultions for most of the characters -like the brother who accidentally made that drug that cured people of their addictions, and then administered it to his brother and his mom's friend's son, only to find out that ended up turning them old?

This abrupt ending is Cricthton's style, and the next seven or eight pages is the authors real feelings on the future of genetic research. And not surprising, the same as he did with his anti-global warning novel State of Fear, he's against it.

Still, I gues the point of the novel is to get people to think, and offer information that most people -given the effort - can find themselves. However, it is way to cluttered with stereotype characters and unbelievable and downright wacky scenarios -the talking African grey and the halfhuman monkey named Dave.

But that being said, Crichton offers his own personal views on what could happen if we let genetics run the course its going. While it may offer humans hope for a better, richer life, one free of many diseases, in the hands of people who put profit before anything else, it has a potential to become a nightmare.