Wednesday night, we saw Juno. Small, funny, brief and worth every minute. Metacritic score of 81. Teenage pregnancy doesn’t stand out as a laugh-out-loud topic, but…they make it work here.
Like Youth Without Youth, we saw Juno at Sundance Kabuki. I’ll say more about this new theater chain separately (pros and cons).
Youth Without Youth is Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in a decade. All the press attention shines on Coppola himself, and that’s revealing. I saw the film last Sunday, on the opening weekend. Why the rush for a film in limited release from an acknowledged master? Because even here in San Francisco, the center of Coppola’s work world, this movie won’t stay in theaters long. It’s hard work to watch this film, and I walked out thinking “what?” It’s intelligent, but goes too deep without leaving you a trail to get back.
While I duck reviews of movies I’m going to see, I did read the brief mention by the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern:
Mr. Coppola is one of the cinema’s peerless masters, and I would have enjoyed nothing more than a chance to celebrate his new film. I’m truly sorry to say, then, that I found it impenetrable.
Impenetrable is a good word. Metacritic score of a 43 reinforces my impression. (Sorry, Sean.)
Sarah Andrews’s Bone Hunter has a dinosaur skeleton on the cover, and drags “forensic geologist” Em Hansen into the Utah desert to solve a mystery. Yes, this was one of the lighter reads. If you need the elevator pitch, it’s “CSI meets paleontology meets the Mormons, with an edge of romance to tease.” (OK, that’s a twisted elevator, but I’m not one for plot summaries.) The author tries a bit too hard to dig (ahem) into the way religion and science clash, but it’s not a bad mystery all the same.
I’ve spent a weekend in Salt Lake City, near the University of Utah, and we visited the museum described in the book — pretty good place to view those old bones!
Patton lingered on the shelf for months, but three hours last weekend finally appeared. I know nothing, historically, about the General, so my knowledge is now based on this fictionalized account. The film is compelling enough, though.
Metacritic wasn’t around in 1970, but for Oscar winners, they’ve gone back in time: 91 is the score. One more fact I didn’t know: Francis Ford Coppola was one of the screenwriters. I’m going to see Coppola’s new film Youth Without Youth on Sunday night. Reviews have not been stellar, but I’ll bet the editing is spectacular. 😉
It took longer than expected, but secure bike storage at work is once again a reality. (Thanks, Laura!)
I biked to work and home again today for the first time in 6 months. Just in time, too, as I’m signed up for the San Bruno Hill Climb on New Year’s Day.
Jonathan Gash is the pen name of a doctor, John Grant. But he’s not known for his medicine. I’ve read all (I think) of the 23 Lovejoy crime novels, and The Ten Word Game from 2003 was a re-read.
I’m trying to avoid returning to old favorites, but sometimes a comfortable read is worth it.
Margot at the Wedding may have Nicole Kidman, but it’s not a movie I’d recommend. I don’t think a 70 at Metacritic is deserved. But it is short.
I didn’t have any excitement about moving to Mac OS X 10.4.11, especially since Safari 3 was a required part of the update. I’m happy to say that Safari 3 has improved cookie management, nearly catching up with Firefox and Opera. I can finally search within the thousands of cookies and easily remove just the one or more I need to delete.
Hey, it’s the simple things.
I didn’t enjoy Night Train from Martin Amis. The author is famous for many things, including being famous as a contrarian public intellectual. (English authors pull that off even better than the late Norman Mailer did in this country.) He’s not famous for this book, and he shouldn’t be. It’s brief, and the female policewoman (notably, “I am police”) actually raises our interest in the suicide which gives the book its jumping-off point. (Re-reading that…sort of unfortunate phrasing on my part. But the suicide was by gun, not plunge. Anyway…) But we’re left unsatisfied on purpose, and whatever art that took, it just annoyed me as a reader.
The 1998 NYTimes book review is more positive. I can see the points made by the reviewer, but he’s clearly a fan (or at least a consumer) of the entire Amis bibliography. I won’t rush to the next one.
The library “books you should read” table got me again. No complaints about this one, though.
John Le Carre is a known entity, but not to me. Smiley’s People is my first Le Carré read, though I did catch a recent movie.
Despite missing the first two books of the trilogy, I fell in with Smiley’s return to old territory and previous fights. For such an inward-looking book, Smiley keeps his distance. While we’re privy to his thoughts, Smiley is always “he” not “I’ — we just happened to be privileged to secret information. Not all, and not enough, but closer to the veil than others. The action picks up throughout the story, and Smiley does move about notably for an old spy (supposedly retired by this time). Still, it’s Smiley’s memories which slow him down the most.
I didn’t lean in at first, but I was eager to finish the book over the Thanksgiving break, so the tale clearly grew on me. I’ll have to decide whether to delve in at the beginning.