Baby Got Books

I was looking forward to the movie version of No Country for Old Men. Okay, I’ve been obsessed with the movie version of No Country for Old Men ever since I heard it was in the works and couldn’t wait to see it. I don’t get to the theaters much anymore, but any time my favorite filmmakers adapt a novel by my favorite novelist, they’ll get my $9.50.

I’m on record as saying that this wasn’t Cormac’s finest book. I wouldn’t rate No Country in Cormac McCarthy’s top five, or even eight, novels, but it lent itself exceptionally well to adaptation for the big screen and the character Anton Chigurh was one for the ages. That much was obvious going in.

I couldn’t wait to see how the Coens would do three things:

1) Depict what is really the main character in the story (at least the first half of it): the bleak West Texas landscape;
2) Depict Chigurh, truly one of the most original fictional characters I’ve ever come across; and
3) Be faithful to the tension-building atmosphere Cormac created in the novel. I thought that if they could remain true to the long stretches in the novel without any dialogue, they’d create a masterpiece.

The verdict: the cinematography was austerely gorgeous. Javier Bardem as Chigurh was treeeee-mendous. And the Coens created a masterpiece. (Compare it to Billy Bob Thornton’s adaptation of All the Pretty Horses. It’s not a fair fight.)

When I saw the movie last week it had been more than two years since I read the book, so I couldn’t place every single scene and compare it to how Cormac had written it, but I didn’t much care. By the end of the movie I honestly couldn’t tell where Cormac’s vision ended and the Coens’ began. I mean that as the highest compliment. I thought the ending, which has been criticized elsewhere, was perfect.

So I was thinking about what I wanted to say about this movie and wondering if I could recommend it to someone who hasn’t read the novel or formed a — well, obsession with McCarthy’s fiction, when I read Nora Ephron’s parody in the New Yorker. I think that pretty well answered my question.

Special bonus: If you’re a Coen bros. fan, you may have an experience like I did during the most chilling scene of the movie, the one where Chigurh makes a convenience store clerk call heads-or-tails for his mortal soul. (It’s in the trailer.) I kept having flashbacks to the “No, unless’n round is funny” scene from Raising Arizona. The people sitting around me in the theater couldn’t figure out why I was laughing.

Double-special bonus: my local newspaper reports that John Turturro is working with the Coens on a spin-off of The Big Lebowski, which will explore the character The Jesus.

Dana Stevens reviews the movie Beowulf in verse.

Sorta.  Maud links to the latest word on the byzantine path of Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History to the big screen.  It looks like a movie will happen later than sooner.  In the mean time, Maud found an homage put together by some kids in Belgium.  The cynical among you may complain that it just looks like a bunch of kids running around in the woods.  Philistines!  This is a dramatization of the end of the novel, although I  think that it is safe to say that there are no spoilers.  Also: Sufjan Stevens provides the sound track.

The trailer for the Coen Brothers adaption of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men is giving me the willies.

During commercial breaks in last night’s Tour coverage, I was goofing around with the Simpson’s Movie avatar generator.  You can create a character that approximates your appearance by selecting various parts and they are magically lumped together to create what you would look like on the Simpsons.  Here’s what I came up with for myself:

If you are up for it, e-mail your creation to - admin at babygotbooks.com. All are welcome. I’ll take all of the submitted characters and Photoshop them into a BGB group photo at some point down the road.  I totally stole this idea from Bill Walsh’s Blogslot.

The graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi have finally made it to the big screen.  The Persepolis movie debuted at Cannes.  See the trailer below, which does not have English subtitles:

Wow.  My French is rusty.  The animation looks fantastic.  Additional excerpts: 1, 2, and 3.

Check out the punk rock band in excerpt 2.  Awesome.
BGB previously reviewed Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

Perhaps my recent coverage of the hype around the new Chabon has been a little - um - overly enthusiastic. For that, all I can say is… you aint seen nothin’ yet. Behold! I have taken two BGB inside jokes and run them as far into the ground as possible. I blame Herman for planting this idea in my head.

Man, that’s bad.

Because we just can’t help ourselves, here’s more:

There is a real trailer for The Yiddish Policemen’s Union that I stumbled across last night while making the video above. Unlike my efforts, they appear to have some style, a little class, and possibly even a budget.

Alert reader Nicole sent this link to a Seattle Times interview with Chabon (thanks!).

Today’s Panel: Writers on Writing

Tomorrow’s Panel: Janitors on Janiting

See more goodness at BookLust.

I’ve been waiting for today to roll around for a few long years. Today Arcade Fire’s new CD is finally released into the wild. I’m heading out at lunch with friend and driver, Shaft, to get my own copy. We may have to eat in the car. I mention it here because the album has been tastefully named after the John Kennedy Toole novel, The Neon Bible. Their last album made a 2004 best books list (you can read about it in this post where I also bust out a Holden Caufield reference). I have also managed to work the band into a post about 9/11 that featured a video of the band singing with David Bowie. I’m a little shameless in my enthusiasm is what it comes down to. Additional reading: The NYT Sunday Magazine fawns over the band and TTT’s Frank says (paraphrasing) - believe the hype.

In other media: I had no idea that Jhumpa Lahari’s The Namesake was being made into a movie until I saw this on Very Short List. VSL handily provides this Venn diagram so that you’ll get the gist:

The post also mentions that the movie is kind of a big deal because it stars several huge Bollywood actors that you’ve never heard of. Skeptical? I ask only so I can then link to Bollywood for the Skeptical site (see what I did there?). If you do nothing else, listen to the beginning of Song 1 - the horns, the Superfly guitar riffs, and especially the song’s only lyrics “makow!” - are amazing. I guarantee you’ll be grooving to it all day long, yelling “makow!” at everyone you see, making it your official song for when you come up to bat in the major leagues, and figuring out how to make it your cellular ring tone.

Which isn’t to suggest that The Namesake is a Bollywood musical with great music - it’s not. However, it is based on a great book. I’m just continuing to be shameless in my enthusiasm. Makow!

A Washington State school board has imposed restrictions on showing the movie An Inconvenient Truth in science classrooms, unless a creditable opposing viewpoint is also aired.  Good luck finding one of those.  Here’s the thought process that ruled the day:

The school board imposed the restrictions on viewing the film after Frosty Hardison, a parent who said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old, sent an e-mail to the school board complaining about the film. “Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” Hardison said. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

“From what I’ve seen [of the movie] and what my husband has expressed to me, if [the movie] is going to take the approach of ‘bad America, bad America,’ I don’t think it should be shown at all,” Hardison’s wife, Gayle Hardison, said. “If you’re going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don’t think the video should be shown.”

The NYT’s A.O. Scott enthusiastically endorses the movie Little Children, based upon the book that I hated by Tom Perrotta.  His review includes such “truisms” as:

For the playground really is a scene of primordial brutality, in which a few agreed-upon rules — play nice, share your toys, no hitting — barely suppress the essential savagery of the human species.  and  It can be observed that the chorus of viciously competitive moms, who reappear now and then throughout the movie to pass judgment and enforce social norms, amounts to a caricature, tinged with snobbery and misogyny.

Govern yourself accordingly.

Yet, everyone is in agreement that the movie version of All The King’s Men (a book I loved) sucks royally (heh, a pun!).   It was rated lower by the local rag than Jackass 2.  Ouch.  No justice in this world.
What the two movies have in common, and I think is too cool, is that both feature Jackie Earl Haley.  You may remember JEH as Kelly in The Bad News Bears.  I’ll always remember him as Moocher in the greatest film of all time, Breaking Away (which starred Dennis Quaid and the dad from 16 Candles).  Don’t take my word for it, the NYT includes the movie in its list of the top 1000 movies of all time (see the original trailer).

I went to see Little Miss Sunshine this weekend, which was fantastic.

However, I was surprised to see that two of the three previews were for movies based on recent books. Both movies looked terrible.

The first apparent stinker, was Little Children based on the book by Tom Perrotta. I picked up Little Children when it came out based solely upon the idea, “hey this is the guy who wrote Election, this is going to be awesome.” It wasn’t. It’s possible that I read this book at the wrong time in my life. I picked up the book within a few months of the birth of my daughter, so maybe I wasn’t ready to settle down with a book that is largely about how morally bankrupt parenting is for our generation. Weirdly, the trailer for the movie was ominously paced as though the movie was a horror film. Can’t tell you what that’s all about.

The second preview was for Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. The book was a very disturbing memoir, as told by a witty author (according to BGB’s Nitro). The movie trailer, however, appears to be for some other story that is a mad cap romp full of wacky hi-jinks. I kept waiting for the Walking on Sunshine intro music to start.

While I haven’t seen any previews yet, the movie adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis looks like it will at least be in keeping with the graphic novels (based upon these stills). The movie will apparently be in French (Satrapi lives in Paris) with English subtitles, which should ensure that the people who need to see the movie most will stay far, far away.

I finally got around to watching the film version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. I enjoyed the movie OK. I thought that Elijah Wood played Jonathan a little too autistic. I loved Ukrainian singer Eugene Hutz as the Ukrainian guide, Alex. He played the character even better than written. Hutz’s band, Gogol Bordello also contributed several songs to the soundtrack, which were perfect. Like Cirque de Soleil on a week-long vodka bender, the Band Gogol Bordello is lively, fun, a little foreign/cosmopolitan, and has the potential for drunken anarchy. The band takes their name (in part) from Russian author Nikolai Gogol (as did the protagonist in Jhumpa Lahari’s Namesake). The video below is for the song GB song “Start Wearing Purple”. I would not be surprised to learn that after the video was over everyone involved spent a day or two in jail. They remind me of The Pogues in that regard. “Start Wearing Purple” played over the final credits of Illuminated, if I remember correctly (and there is no guarantee of that). I love this song. I’m definitely going to grow a mustache like Eugene’s.

The DaVinci Code movie opens today and it appears to be taking a beating by the critics: Exhibit A, Exhibit B. Some of the grief heaped on the movie seems to be carried over from how much the reviewer hated the book. For example, A.O. Scott reviews the movie by heckling a piece of Dan Brown’s writing. My review of the book was that it was the worst book that I couldn’t put down. A (minor, but increasingly annoying) problem that I had with the book is the idea that Robert Langdon is a “professor of religious symbology” at Harvard, a phrase that you will see repeated in every description of the book and movie. Is there such a thing? The Harvard listing of academic programs isn’t aware of it. Wouldn’t Dr. Langdon be a professor of religion who, maybe, specializes in religious symbolism? How about semiotics? Harvard doesn’t have a semiotics program either. Brown does, but Brown is decidedly less sexy than Harvard. Anyway, I am saving my movie dollars for the other controversial religious movie of the summer, 10 Things I Hate About Commandments.

With exams coming up around the corner, I thought we could all use a much needed break.  I have a few short films that I thought might be interesting for you all to check out.  If you don’t want to watch the films, you can put your heads down on your desk or work on something for another class, but no talking.

The first film is a “trailer” for King Dork.  I’ve just finished the book, and it is pretty amazing.  I’m working on a full post for the book, but this little reminder of what high school is all about should whet your appetite.

Our second movie today is a little snippet from the Daily Show featuring resident expert, John Hodgman.  Hodgman, is (was?) a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s, and is the author of the sure-to-be-awesome The Areas of My Expertise.  In this clip, Mr. Hodgman reviews some of the entries of a military-sponsored essay contest for grammar and style.  Here’s a sample:

“We should literally force the Shiite militants to pay the piper.”  Literally? …Listen professor…before you start writing policy, brush up on your Strunk & White.

Grammar comedy on the TV. And there’s a lesson there for all you kids.  OK, enjoy the films. Your collages are still due on Friday.

* with apologies to Frank Portman

I’m not sure how they’re doing it in your land, but at my Starbucks they’re pushing the soon to be released feel-good orthographic movie Akeelah and the Bee.  For the last week or so my caffeinated beverages have come with a spelling bee-winning word on the little cup sleeve thing-y.  Here’s my collection of words so far:

• succedaneum (got that one twice)
• elucubrate
• argillaceous
• brunneous
• appoggiatura
• cambist

Here at BGB, Dr J is our in-house spelling savant.  And I’m pretty sure he knows what a musical robot might sound like (run to rent the documentary Spellbound if you didn’t catch that last reference - it is so worth it).

The E. Annie Proulx story that became the inspiration for the movie Brokeback Mountain just keeps on inspiring.  Singer Jill Sobule has written a song that explains what the Cheney shooting was all about (free download).  Willie Nelson, ever the outlaw, has released a gay cowboy song (available for pay on iTunes). No, really.  Lastly, a new video Brokeback to the Future removes the subtext and gets into the real relationship between Marty McFly and Doc.

Hollywood players are stepping up to get an Encyclopedia Brown movie off the ground, and the word “franchise” is being thrown around (Ridley Scott would be a producer). This news is like Belinda Carlisle’s appearance in Playboy; appreciated - but a little late in the game. When I was a young reader, I was an Encyclopedia Brown junky (i.e. giant dork). Whenever the Scholastic book order forms came around, I was loading up on more E.B.

I was such a huge fan, that I still remember the details of how my enthusiasm came to an end. E.B. was big on the kind of mysteries that were solved when the culprit tipped his/her hand by saying something that only the person responsible for the “crime” would know. So in this last story I read, E.B. says, “the answer is only an arrow flight away”. So the guilty party says something like,”well let’s go outside and see”. To which E.B.’s aha! response was, “since we were standing next to these skinny stairs you would have thought I said a ‘narrow flight’ away and headed upstairs - only the guilty person would know that the real answer would be outside”. What kind of bullshit is that? And so a cynic was born.

I never read another page of E.B. Which isn’ty to say that I haven’t enjoyed the numerous parodies that find their way around the internet. These GaTech guys have a good example of the art form. However, the Modern Humorist’s Encyclopedia Brown: The Complete Case Book is the best way to kill time on a Friday afternoon.

Since everyone else seems to post about non-reading items - I felt compelled to give my critique on a movie I saw last night - Everything is Illuminated. Now I believe that many of us read this book by Jonathan Safran Foer and thought it was brilliant. What made the book brilliant was the writing style, and the sequencing back and forth between life in a small Ukranian shetl and the modern day search for a woman who saved Safran Foer’s grandfather. The characters on this search are Alex, the hilarious Ukranian translator who loves everything American, Alex’s grandfather, his seeing eye dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr and Safran Foer. Unfortunately - I didn’t think any of this translated well on film. The entire film centers around the search through the Ukraine for this woman and there are no flashbacks to life in the shetl. Safran Foer is played by Elijah Wood who just seems stiff and lifeless and wears this weird black suit throughout the entire movie. The pacing of the movie is extremely slow; there are many scenes of them driving through the countryside which was such a contrast compared to the fast, almost manic, pace of the book. The best part of the film were the two Ukranian characters, Alex and his grandfather, who are great actors and made the movie. And Liev Schrieber (who apparently bought the rights to the book before it was even published), the director, did do a good job of the hilarious broken English spoken by Alex. Other than that - a disappointment. I would love to get someone’s opinion of the movie who had not read the book - anyone?