Dead Souls

While most people may remember Nikolai Gogol for his surreal short stories, this novel by him is just as laugh out loud funny as those stories.  Our hero, Chichikov (as the author often refers to him) is a stranger in town and on a mission to purchase dead muzhiks from Russian land owners.  They are of little use to the owners and only a tax liability, while he will be considered a rich man until the next census, as wealth in this time of Russia's history is based on number of acres and number of souls owned.

Gogol has an amazing writing ability, telling as much in one sentence as some authors need entire books to explain.  He often interrupts his own narration to compliment the reader, or apologize to his characters, in a very unintrusive way.

The award winning translating team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky permit the reader to believe they are enjoying what the author intended and not what they would have written instead of Gogol.  Sadly, Gogol did not complete the second part of this book.   The translators explain that Gogol burned two different endings and the manuscript they used for this translation has illegible words, made up words and complete chapters and pages missing. Because of this, the second part tends to jump around and while easy to follow and catch up in the life of our hero, it left this reader sometimes confused and looking for explanations - and the completion to the very last sentence!

If you are a fan of 19th century Russian literature written with humor and bite, add this book to your pile.  You won't be disappointed.

Nausea rating:  None!  Just wonderful!

A Prisoner No More

Let's take a moment in honor of the greatest Prisoner ever, Patrick McGoohan. While probably better known as Secret Agent Man, or for his award winning appearances on the old television series, Columbo, he will always be in our hearts as No. 6 and held against his will in The Village having his life dictated by the everchanging No. 2.

Who is No. 1? I don't think we'll ever know. In this spy/sci-fi short lived series created and produced by McGoohan, after quitting the British Secret Service he awakes in this village where he is interrogated by No. 2 for information. We never do find out whose side No. 2 works for or even what information they want, but this short lived 1960s cult television series will forever keep his name alive!

Coincidently, we had just starting watching the series again after finding a list of a different order to watch the episodes in, instead of their original television order and we are only about half way through the boxed DVD collection. McGoohan's death will make the other half more poignant for sure.

Rest easy. You are finally not a number but a free man!

Nausea rating: I'm sick. Just sick.

Snowed In

I can't think of a better way to spend a snowy weekend than to watch old movies on Turner Classic Movies!

On Saturday we watched Dinner at Eight where the upper class Manhattanites, the Jordans, attempt to plan a dinner party to honor friends from England. Both hysterical and sad, this was a fabulous movie starring two Barrymores - John and Lionel, the latter playing a part very sadly biographical of his own tragic life. It also stars Billie Burke as Mrs. Jordan and Marie Dressler as Carolotta Vance, an aging star of the cinema. It also stars Jean Harlow playing a smart sex-kitten. This star-studded cast did an excellent job talking about the Great Depression, growing older, being young or old and in love and especially, disappointments.

Based on a Broadway play with the same name, as the dinner party gets closer we learn that each invited guest has much going on in their lives and each is seamlessly connected with another member of the dinner party. We laughed and cried, but you must listen and process quickly or you will miss the humor!

Sunday's feature was Niagara, a drama featuring Joseph Cotton and Marilyn Monroe. While some scenes of Marilyn Monroe being serious are almost laughable as she pouts her lips and wiggles her behind, it was an interesting story of a couple on their honeymoon at Niagara Falls that gets involved with the un-trusting, interesting couple of Cotton and Monroe. The movie was really a simple story with predictable plot twists. The real star of the movie was the Niagara Falls! There were plenty of shots of the falls at all times of the day including them lit at night and daytime shots of the mists and people on boats wearing raincoats. You felt as wet as the vistors in the movie looked. By the end of the movie, you feel as if you had indeed visited the entire Canadian side of the Falls. Was the cheapest vacation I ever had!

Nausea rating: Dinner at Eight: 0
Niagara - 1 for seasickness

Slumdog Millionaire

This little advertised movie from India was one of the best movies I'd seen all year. Okay, you caught me - it was the first movie I had seen this year, but let's include the slew of movies coming out recently and this movie becomes one of the best!

At first I wasn't sure what it exactly was about. On all the year end "best of" lists I saw this movie listed on, it looked like a sappy version of boy loses girl, boy wins ten million rupees, boy finds girl - but oh - it was so much more than that!

Accused of cheating, Jamal is taken away by the police at the end of his first appearance on the popular game show and interrogated. Though uneducated, it is because of his life in the slums in an overcrowded, filthy poor area and his horrific experiences that he is able to answer the questions and become a hero to the poor all around him.

Based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup and adapted for the screen by Simon Beaufov, the directors Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan don't spare us from life inside Mumbai where dirty children sift through garbage to survive and Hindi and Muslims fight in the streets. After Jamal's mother is killed in one of these religious battles, he is forced to fend for himself along with his brother.

Dev Patel portrays the young adult version of Jamal and gives a spectacular performance of a disillusioned young man who trusts no one and can't believe himself that he's won. This movie is filled with wonderful Indian actors, including the original host of the Hindi version of Who Wants to Be an Millionaire.

This movie teaches us that sometimes being smart isn't based only on how many books you've read or the grades you got in school. We know what we know because of our life experiences and how we view the world around us. We choose whether to walk around aimlessly in life or to look around and observe what the world is offering us every minute of every day. To be truly wise, we must find the perfect blend of both being book smart and street smart.

Nausea rating: 2 out of 5 for scenes of torture and extreme poverty

Soylent Green

It's New York City in the not-too distant future (though it was way in the future when this 1973 film was made) and the population has reached 40,000,000 in that city alone. Food and shelter is scarce and most people survive on rations of water and soy-based wafers of food - except the very wealthy of course.

When a higher up is eliminated (Joseph Cotten), Police Officer Thorn (Charlton Heston) tries to find out who did it while he loots the wealthy deceased things and sleeps with the man's live "furniture" girlfriend. His "book", played wonderfully by Edward J. Robinson, finds out what soylent green is really made from - but I can't tell you that here. That would spoil the surprise!

This was Edward J. Robinson's last movie, but he plays his role as Charlton Heston's knowledge base as well as any other role he ever played with emotion and perfect timing. It really was a pleasure to watch him here. His character, Sol, reminds Thorn over and over how life was once greener and food abundant and he longs to return to those days. Legendary Joseph Cotten only has a small part, but an important one, so be sure to look out for his performance. Charlton Heston? Well, it was Charlton Heston who usually turns out campy and dramatic in anything I've ever seen him in (though I loved him in Touch of Evil).

Based on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison and directed by Richard Fleisher, this movie really is a warning about our future if we don't take care of the Earth. If we do not learn to live sustainably, we too could be fighting over soylent green wafers for our dinners.

Why do all portrayals of Earth's future always include overpopulation and shortages - and usually food and fuel? Are we that pessimistic about our own futures that we image future generations will only suffer looking to higher ranked officials to tell us how to live and eat and breathe? This story, as well as many other of the stories that show our future in this dismal light, should be taken as warnings that we need to change things now. Maybe by showing that we can change, movies about our future will become more hopeful and optimistic and remind us that our future and our children's future can be something to look forward to, instead of something to dread.

Nausea rating: 2.5 out of 5 for sad vision of future.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Wao! Or should I say wow! Without giving too much away, I will say that the main character, Oscar, is called Wao as a joke. In fact, Oscar is picked on a lot growing up, but this book is not really about that after all.

Junot Diaz has written a book about family and how, even though we try to deny it, we are tied and bound to family through their past and our future. Okay, sounds corny, but that is what the book is really about.

It follows the brief, maybe not so wondrous life of Oscar, but we also follow his mother, sister and family friend. All these people are intertwined, yet each person's story is very separate and personal and when I was done reading this book, I too felt connected to all these people in my own separate way.

Be ready to brush up on your Spanish as well. As Dominicans, these characters use a lot of it. Some I knew, some not - and how it was used in context didn't always help either. But don't let that discourage you. It was still very readable and the Spanish only helped to make me feel as if I was part of this family.

This book also has lots of footnotes, and not to translate any of the language throughout the book. Diaz uses footnotes to share historical facts about characters and locations, but as if the author has interrupted himself in telling a story to get a fact across. Since they are all written in the same tone and style of the narrator, they could have easily been made just part of the story itself instead of the sometime two page long interruption of narration.

Diaz won the the Pulitzer Prize for this novel, and it was well deserved. He writes with feeling and emotion, but not cliched or stagnant and when it's all down and over, and you find out why Oscar's life was so brief and wondrous, you want to just hold the book close to you and tell Oscar it's all going to be alright.

Nausea rating: Mildly - for violence and sense of pain and loss

Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Curious indeed.  How did a sappy movie about a troublesome dog beat out this beautifully told story is what I am very curious about.

Brad Pitt only improves with age in both his acting and his looks, as he gets younger and younger in this movie.  Cate Blanchett improves with age as well, but I wonder if her looking like she had too much makeup on was done on purpose to show how vain women really are about getting older?  With Brad de-aging thanks to CGI, couldn't they have aged Cate the same way? Either way, beautifully told and beautifully done.

Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who loses his son in WWI designs a clock for a local train station that runs backwards - and in sync to Benjamin's life.  Much like the seats at the theater, I think.  They re-did our local theater at the mall, including stadium seating.  Long overdue in my opinion, but what happened to those well worn seats with protruding springs?  They were at the smaller theater we saw this almost three hour movie in, and I had that seat that was trying to de-age too.  My bad seat made the movie seem longer than it really was, but like a really good novel that follows a person's life from beginning to end, I almost didn't mind.  I was as lost in this movie as I am in a good book.

Verdict?  Not nauseous at all.  In fact, I felt pretty good when it was done.