Review: Catching Fire

I'd forgotten how good this story is. And I think it's the mark of a good adaptation when the movie reminds you of how much you love a story and makes you want to go back and read the book over again. Catching Fire was pretty much everything I wanted it to be - although, that said, it's been a nice long year-and-a-half since I read the book, so I was in a perfect place to enjoy the movie without noticing any glaring omissions or glosses. I'll reserve judgement on those details until I re-read and re-watch. But this was a truly enjoyable film, well-paced, well-acted, well-directed, well-designed.

Middle movies are the best - this time around, we didn't need to be introduced to the characters or the world. There's no awkward exposition in this movie. A few elegant shots remind us of what's come before. One of the best is when, at the very beginning, Katniss aims to shoot a wild turkey in the woods back in District 12 and at the last moment sees herself shooting Marvel, the tribute she killed in the first games, instead. That one image was such a good reminder, early in the film, that there's no way Katniss (or we) can forget what happened in the previous movie. She and Peeta and all the other victors we meet later in the movie are seriously damaged and changed by what they did in the arena.

Portraying that psychological damage is one of the best, most unique things about Collins' books. Unlike most stories about heroes and heroines who endure incredible physical violence, the Hunger Games trilogy honestly shows how much that violence hurts people, physically and psychologically. When they're back in the arena, the characters also spend more of their time running in terror or lying on the ground, incapacitated by pain, than they do fighting or acting brave. I really appreciated that the movie lets its action heroes and heroines remain human even as they achieve superhuman things.

 

The actors really stepped up to the task of embodying both human fragility and human strength. I felt I knew what was going through Katniss's head at all times, which is important for an adaptation of a book that was told in the first person. And although there never seems to be enough time in movies for just watching the characters grow, Catching Fire did show a lot of character development. Peeta in particular undergoes a wonderful transformation in this part of the story (which makes part three even more heartbreaking). His strengths come to match Katniss's, although the two don't overlap. As I watched them struggle differently but bravely with the pressures and horrors of the victory tour and the arena, I was totally convinced that, together, they could actually change the society that was oppressing them.

 

Meanwhile, Gale starts to look worse and worse in comparison, as he consistently ignores everything Katniss is going through and just keeps asking her whether she's in love with him yet. He becomes, in some ways, the same as the spectators who so eagerly lap up Katniss and Peeta's staged romance. Peeta, on the other hand, accepts Katniss's feelings and gets on with the more important stuff, like helping her save her family or comforting her when she has nightmares about the arena. When Gale sees Katniss recoil in shock after her vision of shooting Marvel, by contrast, he has no idea what to do.

All of this points not only to how much better Peeta is than Gale, but also how much better Suzanne Collins is than most authors who focus on their heroines' love lives over everything else. One of these boys understands that Katniss is more than a sex object, and he's obviously the one she should ally herself with if she wants to save the world and wants to have a chance at happiness doing that. Collins also exposes how the society objectifies Katniss. The best way to keep her from starting a rebellion, as Plutarch Heavensbee suggests to President Snow, is to paint her as a classic feminine stereotype, more obsessed with her wedding dress than concerned about politics. That's why Cinna's transformation/destruction of that dress is such a good image. On the one hand, he literally burns up the dress to show that she's more than the barbie doll that the Capitol wants her to be. On the other hand, when she spreads her wings as the Mockingjay, she's still expressing her identity through a dress, a foreshadowing of the fact that she'll become as much a puppet of District 13's rebellion as she was of the Capitol.

This is also why I loved Joanna's undressing-in-the-elevator scene. She recognizes exactly what those fancy clothes mean, and she isn't having any of it. She'd rather go naked than conform to anyone's idea of who she is. It’s also a priceless scene, which the actors play for comedy very successfully. But, as is appropriate for the story, even this comedic moment is overlaid with the themes of the film. The Hunger Games trilogy is a critique of those who thoughtlessly create and consume entertainment, and it forces its own audience to really think about what they’re watching and to decide for themselves whether it’s entertainment or something else.

I loved all the new characters, Joanna included. The casting was right on the nail for everyone, and the movie succeeded in presenting clear, though necessarily brief, portraits of each of them. Haymitch also acquires a lot more depth in this movie simply by being presented alongside his friends, the other victors. One details I did miss from the books was the scene where Katniss watches the video of the games from the year Haymitch won. But I admire the directors for knowing when to cut scenes like that and achieving a coherent and lean movie in the end.

In addition to being well directed and acted, the movie was beautifully designed. The arena looked pretty spectacular, especially in the aerial shots. And once again, the movie fleshed out a more vivid, tangible world than the books presented (thin physical description and world-building is one of the main flaws of the books, in my opinion). I look forward to seeing how the filmmakers show us District 13. Only a year to wait, but the brilliant series of short scenes and spare shots at the end of the movie definitely whetted my appetite and are making that year seem very long indeed.

Review: Matched trilogy

It's been a while since I blogged, but in between starting a new job, gearing up for the holidays, and adjusting to life after school and back in the US, I have actually managed to keep reading. After a few random 'literary' novels, I was craving some easy, plot-driven books that wouldn't be total drivel.

YA dystopias fit those conditions perfectly. I love dystopia because it involves imagined worlds but still makes you think about the real world. And although Ally Condie does a little too much telling and uses quite a few too many symbols and metaphors, the Matched trilogy definitely made me think.

First, these books made me think about myself. The first book introduces us to the Society. It's important that it's written with a capital 'S' because a lot of things in this book are identified by normal nouns turned into proper nouns by a capital letter. That's because there are no multiples or options or choices in this world. There is one government, one country, and one right answer to every question. Each person is matched with their one perfect 'match' and one perfect job. They have one set of clothes. And they act as one, all obeying the same laws. (There is also, we learn, one rebellion trying to take down the Society, but even it is called the Rising, a foreshadowing of the fact that it turns out to be hard to distinguish from the system it's trying to replace.)

I found this world-concept especially interesting because one of the things I dislike most about contemporary society, especially in the US, is the excess of choice it offers its citizens. All you have to do is go to Bed, Bath & Beyond and try to pick a new set of bathroom towels to understand what I mean. There are so many variables and options for everything we buy - do you want organic or conventional, non-fat, low-fat, or whole milk? While shopping for apples this week, I must have been offered at least 20 varieties of just that fruit. Personally, this stresses me out, and as I read about Cassia Reyes, Condie's heroine, I had just a twinge of jealousy because she didn't have to make those ridiculous choices all throughout her daily life. Condie really succeeded in imagining a future world that seems to have solved a problem our society actually suffers from - only they took the solution too far.

It's not just Cassia's meals and clothes that are determined for her. She also gets no choice in the person she'll spend her life with, the job she'll spend her life doing, and the city she'll spend her life in. Luckily for her, she gets matched with her best friend, Xander. Unluckily, she is mistakenly matched with a second boy as well: her other friend, Ky. And so Condie has a perfect little set up to explore the concept of a character who has to learn what it means to choose between two options and, later, how to create her own ideas and her own future outside of the options presented to her.

The first book, Matched, starts out looking like a pretty conventional teen love triangle. But as the series develops, the initial set-up of Cassia being torn between Xander and Ky gets woven into a much bigger story about her relationship to society, not just to a couple of boys.

Again, this all felt so familiar. Beyond over-stuffed supermarket shelves, the US (foremost among rich nations) pretends to offer its citizens unlimited possibilities in what kind of life they can lead. Supposedly, anyone, myself included, could become president someday. That's not strictly true, of course - there's a lot of inequality and a lot of glass ceilings still around. But this book responds in interesting ways to that American Dream. In a lot of ways, Condie's message is very traditionally American: she celebrates the moments when Cassia breaks away from the Society by running away into untamed nature or expressing herself through her own poetry, music, and dance. There's even a refrain throughout the books, referring to the anonymity of the leader of the Rising: Anyone could be the Pilot. This sounds a lot like saying, Anyone could be president of the United States.

But in the end, Cassia returns to civilization to help build a better society having learned that there are no easy choices, and possibilities are not unlimited in any part of life. She can't choose both Xander and Ky, or both the Society and the Rising. She can't live in both her home town and the wild canyons she discovers in Crossed and comes to love. She can't divide herself when some of her friends choose to leave for unknown lands while some decide to stay and rebuild. Choice is good, but choice is also hard.

I don't recommend these books based on the writing style or the psychological depth of the characters, who are lovable and relatable but also fairly simple. This book adheres to the (I think absurd) rule in YA that psychological depth and elegant, show-not-tell writing be banished along with violence and sex.

But despite its flaws, this trilogy was a very good read. I wanted to find out what happened to the characters, and the books delivered the plot at a great pace, not too fast and not too slow, just enough to keep me desperately turning the pages. And when I stopped turning those pages and headed to work or went to make another cup of tea, I wasn't just thinking about who Cassia would end up with at the end of the third book. I also found myself thinking about my own life and my own choices - engaging in just the kind of reflection that dystopian fiction is supposed to inspire.

Review: Animal Dreams

I picked Animal Dreams up for 10 cents at my local library because I'd enjoyed another of Barbara Kingsolver's books, The Poisonwood Bible. Now that I think about it, I read that over five years ago, and I honestly don't remember much about it, except that I liked it but found the ending a little too drawn out. Animal Dreams, on the other hand, is paced really beautifully and wraps up in a series of shorter chapters that delicately tie up loose ends and even leave one scene to happen "off-stage" although Kingsolver spends a lot of the book building up to it. It's a very quick, but very satisfying read. The writing is so smooth, the first-person voice so accessible that if, like me, you get completely sucked into identifying with the protagonist, the book just flies by.


That protagonist is Codi Noline, who goes back to spend a year in her tiny desert home town after essentially running away from a difficult and estranged childhood there. The arc of the book is her attempts to reconcile with her family and other people in the town as well as with herself. What I loved about this book is that it shows the inaccurate and unhelpful habits in people's self-image that can keep them from living to their full potential. The quote singled out for the back of the book is about how our lives shape our dreams, just like how a dog who chases rabbits during the day dreams about chasing rabbits at night, but the book also shows the reverse: how if we don't dare to dream or hope for a certain kind of life, we don't end up living that life.

Codi's narration is interspersed with shorter sections told from the point of view of her father. In addition to these multiple voices, Kingsolver weaves together multiple strands of story. Codi's sister travels to Nicaragua to help solve an agricultural crisis while at the same time Codi is faced with an agricultural crisis in her own town. One of the central plot-lines is about Codi's relationship to the older women in the town, who turn out to be surrogate mothers she never realized she had. Another is her rekindling of a romance with Loyd, an Apache guy she dated in highschool.

It's possible Loyd fits into a stereotype of a 'wise Indian,' but I really liked his outlook on life as he describes it to Codi and enacts it throughout the book. A big theme of the book is people's relationship to nature and place, and he has a lot to say about that. I also really liked how Kingsolver handled Loyd and Codi's relationship. It's refreshing after reading and watching so many books and movies where the courtship is everything and the happily ever begins the moment the destined couple kiss. In this book, Loyd and Codi already went through all that in high school, so instead, Kingsolver allows them to pick up where they left off and describes both the challenges to their happiness and the simple, comfortable moments as they sit side-by-side on a porch or take a long drive together.

Finally, I really enjoyed the imagery of the Southwest - the tiny town Codi has such difficulty negotiating, and a Pueblo she visits midway through the book. I love the desert, and it was nice to read about it as described with such ease and vivid particularity. I will definitely be reading more of Kingsolver's books - I already picked up The Bean Trees, which I've heard is great - but I think I'll be thinking about this book for a long time to come.

Summer favorites

I fell off the bandwagon of these favorites posts over the summer, so I'm just going to do one post for the whole summer, which was a little blurred together anyway because of spending so much time on the one project of my dissertation. Which is now over, so I have time to blog again :)

Favorite music:

I needed plenty of good study music to keep me going through the end of my dissertation, and I really fell in love with a few artists. I knew of Kimbra from her collaboration with Gotye on 'Somebody That I Used to Know,' but I recently discovered her independent album, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, she only has one album out as of now.

I also rediscovered Emily Wells, who's a one-woman music magician, playing and mixing all the instruments and vocals herself. I saw her live at my college a couple of years ago and never got around to listening to her albums. The lyrics to her songs are almost onomatopoetic at times, which is interesting and very pleasing to listen to.

Favorite food:

Milkshakes. The ultimate summer treat. The best, most indulgent reward after finishing a big project or putting a grueling day of writing. I actually only discovered the joys of milkshakes a few years ago, so I'm making up for lost time! There were a couple of great places in England that put any kind of cookie or candybar into a milkshake form, a magical and delicious transformation. But I also experimented with making them at home with fresh fruit. Even better!

Favorite book:

This was a summer devoted to the oeuvre of David Mitchell. I love and worship all his writing, but my favorites are probably number9dream and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. They're also some of my favorite books of all time. Seriously, do not get me started on David Mitchell unless you want to be suddenly overwhelmed by a towering wave of admiration and specialized knowledge.

Favorite movie:

Definitely From up on Poppy Hill, the newest movie from Studio Ghibli. I am, in general, an adorer of Ghibli productions. I have many more to watch, much to my shame, but also secret delight because how delicious is it to know there are movies out there that you haven't seen yet but know you'll love? From up on Poppy Hill was wonderful. I loved the main character and her subtle evolution from selfless responsibility to falling in love and letting go both of her day-to-day tasks and her clinging to the past. The visuals, of course, were stunning, especially the interior of the old clubhouse that's at the center of the story. The best part: I got to see it in original Japanese with subtitles, which I love.

Favorite fashion:

To be honest, this was not a summer for being fashionable. I spent most of it sitting in bed or at my desk in my pyjamas, which is my go-to writing outfit. When you have to sit all day, all you care about is being comfy. I stopped wearing jewelry, just threw on jeans and a t-shirt whenever I went out to dinner with my friends, and generally lived in the same clothes for three months. What's strange is, I kind of loved it. Now I've been reunited with my full closet, I'm very excited to get back into creative fashion combinations, but I'm also a lot more stressed about clothes. As someone who has trouble with decisions and wants to get her clothes just right every time, I found the simplicity of a small closet incredibly freeing. So right now I'm trying to figure out a balance between satisfying my love of clothes and self-expression-through-clothes and my need not to obsess over clothes for an hour every morning.

Favorite experience:

The best thing about this summer is that, when I finally turned in my dissertation and left England, I was satisfied. I'm proud both of the work I put in and the final product I turned in. It may not earn a high mark, but I know that this project took me way beyond my previous academic work, in terms of thinking and writing. So I walked away from this year feeling good about it and satisfied as I move on to whatever my next projects will be.

Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This is the first book I picked up after finishing my master's and moving back to California (hence the long absence from this blog!). I've been wanting to read this for a while, especially since I saw Chabon talk about his new book last fall. He was very cool and funny in person, so I've been looking forward to picking up one of his books. And I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this book is pretty amazing (as the title suggests), as a historical novel, a story about storytelling, and an American epic, three genres that interest me a lot.

The book is about two young Jewish cousins (one American, one Czech) who are part of the invention and huge surge of superhero comic books in New York during WWII. That most of the creators of those comics were Jewish is historically accurate, and although the characters and their comic were invented by Chabon, he peppers the novel with footnotes and at times uses present-tense, retrospective narration to suggest that everything he describes actually happened. This effect is so well-done that I had to go online to make sure none of it was real! In the tradition of the best historical novels, Chabon weaves a compelling, personal, fictional story out of an equally compelling historical reality, drawing links between the comic books and the war as well as the society of WWII New York.

In addition to being a brilliant historical novel, this is also a wonderful tribute to the comic book form. Chabon is uncannily good at describing the visual effect of a comic book illustration. The passages describing panels of the books his characters are creating are just stunning. (Actually, in general, Chabon's prose is stunning, with long, long sentences dragging the reader along so that you're torn between stopping to appreciate the beautiful convolutions of his writing and racing ahead to find out the next reveal in the plot.)

Even as someone who doesn't read comics, though, I found the book's portrayal of difficult lives made meaningful by storytelling really compelling. The main characters are all artists and storytellers, and their relationship to their creativity changes over the course of the novel and over the course of the war in sometimes tragic, sometimes really uplifting ways. In college, I studied some post-war German poetry and read about the kind of creative numbness that followed the war. This book portrays the complexity of various characters' reactions to the traumas of the war, whether is inspires or destroys their creative impulses.

In doing so, it bridges the reactions of Europe and America. By having one of the characters arrive in New York from Prague at the beginning of the war, Chabon ensures that the threat of the war and especially the Holocaust are never far from our minds. He portrays the first superheros as a product of American and European Jewish communities and cultures meeting, and offers a more nuanced vision of some of America's strongest myths.

The book is a bit of an epic myth itself - although it only covers about ten or fifteen years, they are some of the most traumatic and important years of 20th century history, so it feels much longer. I started to get a bit nervous about the ending as the characters aged, separated, and reunited, because I tend not to like epilogue-type endings that close off the story a few years down the line. But Chabon succeeded in rounding off his story without closing it down. In the end, he leaves things open and fairly hopeful, but not unrealistically so...But no spoilers! You must go read it yourself, and I recommend you do. Personally, I'm looking forward to discovering more of Chabon's work.

Recipe: Yogurt cake with strawberry-nectarine compote

 Got a cup's worth of yogurt in the fridge? I did yesterday, and after a few hours of editing the first chapter of my dissertation, I definitely needed to bake a cake. The obvious solution is this yogurt cake recipe, which I got from the Whole Foods website. The only thing I adjusted is adding a few drops of milk at the end, because the batter looked alarmingly thick and sticky. I figured it might be because I used very thick greek yogurt, so I added the milk to lighten it up. I have no idea if that was the actual cause or if the milk had the desired effect. Anyway, it turned out deliciously.

After I popped it in my inconsistent and uneven student-housing oven, I cut up some overripe fruit I had and improvised a little compote. Half a lemon squeezed over the fruit, 1/8 cup water, a tsp of sugar. Boil until thick and delicious.

I've actually gotten a lot bolder with improvising in the kitchen this year. Possibly because I'm the only person eating it, so if I mess up, no one else will suffer. Possibly because, when sorting which food blog to use for a given recipe, I end up actually paying attention to what ingredients differentiate scones from bread and pancakes from crepes. Possibly because I've had to substitute quite a few ingredients that I couldn't easily find in this part of the world. In any case, I've learned a lot about cooking as well as literature this year.

Ta-da! The cake rose A LOT, so much that I had to rearrange the racks in the over to accommodate it. It stayed nice a fluffy when I took it out, too.

The end product was delicioso. Not too sweet, because (as I forgot to mention earlier) I only had half the amount of sugar they called for. The compote could have been sweeter, too, if I'd added more than a tsp of sugar, but actually it made a lovely tea-time snack. The best thing about this cake is that it tastes gooey and dense without being buttery or fatty-feeling. It's sort of like eating a bowl of yogurt and fresh fruit, except also a cake :)

Review: The Bling Ring

I wanted to see this movie for a few reasons. First, to see what Emma Watson's up to. Second, to finally see a Sophia Coppola movie. Third, for the chance to spend 90 minutes in the southern California sun.

And I definitely enjoyed it. There were some really interesting shots, great performances, and obviously, given the subject matter, killer costuming. I was especially happy to finally see Coppola's style - and it really is a style, which is wonderful. I love watching director's movies. Even when the directorial touches are light, like her use of obvious, jarring music or her choice of a few unconventional framings for key scenes in the movie, they give the film shape and a kind of consciousness - or maybe conscientiousness is a better word. It makes the film feel crafted.

This shot, for example, takes the point of view of one among many cameras directed at the characters' lives - news cameras, security cameras, phone cameras. It's not so much to make you feel alienated from the story, but enough to make you briefly remember your position as a viewer and briefly consider the angle from which the story is being told.

That angle is for the most part slanted toward Marc, the one guy in the group of five teens who decide to start stealing from celebrities. Except only one of them really decides. After Rebecca leads a puppy-dog Marc along on a few preliminary break-ins, the rest of the girls fall in without, it seems, a second thought. This is a bit difficult to believe, but then what these teens did in real life is also difficult to believe. I kind of expected Coppola to explore the motives behind the craziness, and she does to an extent.
Very subtly, she suggests the parallels between the teens and their famous victims - such as the way the victims carelessly leave the keys to their mansions under their doormats while the teens carelessly boast about their conquests to the friends who eventually turn them in. But I left the film with a lot of lingering questions about what was going on behind those beautifully made-up faces.

Again, very subtly, Coppola does convey the effect of the crime on the main characters. It comes through in the shift from lazy beach hangouts at the beginning of the film to a frantic cocaine montage near the end. It comes through in the different ways they break down upon arrest. Watson in particular did such a good job that I almost felt sorry for her, until I remembered how she'd wound up in that cop car.

The film doesn't excuse or explain what happens in it, which I liked. I just wish Coppola had trained her impartial and keen gaze a bit longer and looked a bit deeper at the characters. There was one scene I especially loved: Rebecca and Marc are driving in the dark, and the camera sits just behind them, in the middle of the back seat, so we can't really see their faces, just the partially-lit road ahead. Marc asks Rebecca if she would ever rob him if they weren't friends. Rebecca says something like, "I would never do that to you." And yet by the end, she betrays him. That one scene takes the characters fathoms deeper without even showing their faces and opens up new questions about the meaning of robbery, wealth, friendship - all the themes of the movie. I wanted more of that.