Dawn’s Thoughts

Who knew Southern Illnois was the home of rednecks?

I sure didn’t, but in about a two week period, I’ve picked up three different sources, a documentary, a movie, and a memoir that prove this is so. Things which would stereotypically be based in the south exist in these sources. Interesting. Some are better than others.
The first one, the documentary Stevie by Steve James, I first saw several years for a very good price. I made a note to watch it, since there are very few documentaries I can actually concentrate on. Luckily, this apparently disliked documentary is one i could not only concentrate on, but actually enjoyed, as difficult as the subject matter is.

More interesting than the documentary itself was reading reviews of it afterward. Since it occurred to me that I may be one of the few people with a particular perspective on this film, I decided to write about it.

Here’s the neat part: I would consider this a disabled film, though I swear to you I actually wasn’t looking for it to be one. The “main character” in it, the Stevie of the title, isn’t the filmmaker himself but his “little brother,” who he lost track of (with some obvious relief) when he went off to make movies.

Now I started watching this film and looking at Stevie, and I thought “special ed!” because he looks a little syndromey, the way he talks throughout the film (speech patterns (not that he says ain’t all the time), swearing, and apparent lack of editing (how many people would describe matter of factly trying to kill someone when they have to start a friendship over again and the friend’s children are in the room?). In fact, considering that Stevie has some obvious mental disabilities (and mental illness), anger control, and other problems, I can see why his family consistantly refer to him as about twelve years old. It greatly surprised me that the filmmaker brought his children at all. Most reviewers described the film as difficult to watch because Stevie is unlikeable.

Yes, but that’s what makes the film interesting. That, and the different things people took away from this than I did.

Steve James, who made the film, stresses in the commentary that Stevie is actually bright and able to build many things mechanically. Doesn’t suprise me — especially the ability to build things. What does interest me is that Steve James places himself in front of the camera in this documentary, so you can see the questions being raised. Reviews I read afterward criticized him for this, because at one point he has an anthropological ethical dilemma: do I continue observing and doing my job, or do I interfere and attempt to change the course of events?

In the commentary, Steve James also states that people were surprised at Stevie’s girlfriend, Tanya, a developmentally disabled adult, and that most classified her as the only girl he was likely to meet.

Hmm.

Possibly. After all, that kind of disability would leave you vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but isn’t this is a small rural town? (another fact that apparently bored reviewers to tears but that I enjoyed). How many disabled people are likely to be in such a town? (Although one of her comments does suggest a very trusting person). And there’s a kind of comeraderie among special ed students who have had similar experiences. Also, for the record, Tanya sounds mildly retarded, and folks, believe me, that is not a profound speech impediment…that’s actually really good speech. Reviewers appeared astonished that this woman could function at all — Stevie’s “guardian angel,” a woman who appears at the end of the documentary to have a good well-thought out answer.

Really? Yes, strangely enough, being developmentally disabled doesn’t automatically mean you don’t notice things. On another note, what reasons do “normal” women give for why they stay with their boyfriends or husbands?

Reviewers also seemed extremely surprised at the wisdom from Tanya’s friend, a woman I was pleased to see in the film. I started paying more attention. Stevie appeared to respect this woman as a person and didn’t mock her disability (the parts where he lost it and mocked both his girlfriend and her friend are largely cut out of the film. In fact, for someone that I sense could easily lose his temper, and who his family cautions like a child to get him to calm down, it’s actually remarkable that there aren’t more tantrums in the film). Stevie shows he can take a joke in this scene. Although Tanya’s friend’s disability is unnamed in the documentary, based on facial features, motions when excited, glasses, and speech patterns, I can make a pretty good guess…in fact, I did when the camera focused on her. The disability I assume she has does not in general have developmental disabilities associated with it, so ta-da…I perked up because a disabled person was going to have an opinion and it was going to be good.

Most reviewers apparently perked up because a disabled person had an opinion…and, oh my God, it actually was a wise, well-informed one.

Well, hell yes. Imagine that.

Where the Wild Things Are

I liked this film more than the recent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I love both books. The part I loved in the book — the trees growing in Max’s room is not shown here, but the illustrations of Max wearing a costume and chasing animals downstairs is certainly shown.

In this version, the reasons why Max meets the wild things is developed further. Max is a hyperactive, lonely child and the catalyst of the movie is something far enough away from standard that I wondered why his parents didn’t relinquish ownership of him.

Max thinks so too, because he flees immediately, The script in this movie is minimal. We learn little from this point on about the wild things other than their names; they function mainly as extensions of friends for Max. As when Max is making up stories for his mother or playing “what-if” with one of the wild things, the script seems remarkably similar to actual conversations children have. Just like an ethnographer recorded them.

In this concept, the story is not so much what happens as how it happens — Max and the wild things run about, play, build things and demolish them again — the sort of “doing nothing” that was done in Winnie the Pooh. That’s good. But although the scenery is beautiful, and everything in it has some basis in real life, the movie is also slow, in script, motion and setting. There are, however, things that I thought were clever because this is not a film that follows a standard format at all — too slow for the story-book audience, with darker areas, like an adult version.

Some of the time I was able to catch the lessons Max took away from his time with the wild things; at other times, it appeared it only provided him entertainment and friendship (which may or may not have been applied back at home). Like real life, some of the things Max encounters aren’t fixed entirely when he returns.

And if everything had its own basis in real life, when the turning point occurs and things grow worse for Max, who was that actually based on?

This was a slow, sometimes unrevealing, unusual movie which I would watch again just because I like how it’s made. Even if parts of it annoy me, it appears to have been created with someone’s viewpoint in mind because it is so far out of “Hollywood” style that i think for that alone it should be given a try.

The Sinking of Santa Isabel

Oh, what a good idea this was, and oh, how I have problems with the spin on it.

The idea is wonderful — the first part, even the promise, but the excution of it becomes boring quickly. The main character,Webster, decides that his life is at a standstill and becomes determined to spend the summer in the treehouse in the back of the house he lived in as a child.

This is a situation everyone in the town accepts with good humor, considering they already have a mailman, Peter, who rides around, periodically reading people’s mail and flinging it where it pleases him. Naturally, he befriends Webster, and the two of them, and 13-year-old Jester, all fall in love with neighbor Beth.

Now here’s the parts I thought were good. The part with the treehouse was clever, as was the promise that created it. The idea could have created a kind of return-to-childhood-joy movie, and to some extent it is, since the characters run about playing childish pranks on the nieghbors, building tin can telephones for communication etc.

But here’s the thing. Spending time in a treehouse is fine, even all summer. But Webster’s promise is much more than that, and there is the film’s restriction. It’s supposed to show three people who learn to love each other or something like that, and move on, or something, and it ends up showing them not doing all that much except bingo and sitting in a treehouse.

Each one has a secret, but I didn’t particularly feel by the end that I knew any of them well enough.Although the movie ends hopefully, because the characters are together, life has in fact gotten worse for them throughout — as it should in a story.

It just doesn’t leave you with the right kind of ending though. How will they take care of themselves?

Deliverance

Seen this movie parodied in so many different cartoons and movies that I finally had to sit down and watch it. I would have had more to say about it if I had writing earlier, but here goes.

Since it was done in 1970’s, the movie has a nice, easy beginning, where all the characters are set up in more depth than today. I knew the basics before I rented — men go on a canoe trip, there’s a banjo player, they’re deep in the hills out of their territory and local hillbillies are trying to kill them.

The only hillbillies really in here are at the very beginning and the middle. In the beginning we meet the family the main characters hire to drive their cars — inbred, mentally-retarded mountain people, every one of them. Oh, yeah, except the kid that picks the banjo — they think he’s just fine because he can play.

Here’s an interesting twist: didn’t realize that one of the banjos in “Dueling Banjos” here isn’t a banjo at all but a guitar.

The banjo picking kid in this has a very good prosthetic to make him look like he does –better than stuff I’ve seen in much later movies (Back to the Future II comes to mind).

So off our main characters go, drinking, carrying and harpooning fish galore. A small mention is made of men who go “buck crazy” and can’t shoot a gun at a living thing even if they’re crackshot, and then the film goes on. And just at the point when you get tired of all the quiet and beautiful scenery and want something to happen, there it is.

The men stumble on a still and run into some onery locals who are determined to make them pay.Here’s the problem. In desperation, they kill a man in self defense, and then, in good novel style, spend so long discussing how and why and in what way they should get rid of the body, that any remaining moonshiners could have picked them off easily.

By the time revenge occurs to them, they return quickly to the canoe and set off — trailed, naturally, by the same mean locals, determined to get even.

Here’s the other problem. I understand that the locals would be mad because strangers shot their kin. I understand that they might even be a little inbred and crazy, if you go by stereotypes and the fact that the mountains hemmed them in. But here’s the thing — the location provides them with the perfect location, an extremely out of the way area, far from their car, on the locals’ territory. It might have worked better had they gone deeper into the woods, but no, they go directly to the canoe, which the moonshiners have absolutely no trouble keeping up with.

Actually got bored with this and wasn’t particularly interested. Fast forwarded to find out how it ended. If that was me, I’d be gone from the county as quickly as humanly possible. Though what happens in the story could just as well have happened in the city.

I got this DVD because I knew it was a remake of a 1953 film, even though the DVD box doesn’t mention it…I never liked the catalyst in that film, but I did enjoy the child’s POV. That film is a very innocent film, something that would be very hard to duplicate today because our social context is so different.

For instance, in the original, Lennie, 12 years old, plays a practical joke on his 7 year old brother, Joey. I forget whether he’s playing war or target practice, but the point is this: Joey believes he shot Lennie and runs away to Coney Island, where he can earn money, ride the rides and be without supervision. Lennie regrets his joke and goes to find his brother.

Watching the original, I had a number of questions that the new filmmaker apparently has as well. First off, if you were 12 and playing war today on anything but a video game, people would look at you funny — but in 1953, target practice was likely different. I’m sure there were children mishandling firearms, but there were probably a lot more allowed to own them, without the concerns we hold looking at children and guns today.
The boys’ mother works long hours and apparently never notices her children are gone. Why? Well, if she did, the film wouldn’t a child’s anymore.

The people Lennie meets in the old version are kind if indifferent, in that they assume he’s a regular kid there — with one exception. The pony ride man suspects Joey is lost, calms him, “hires” him and gets him to tell his phone number, which he uses to alert Lennie. This is, I think, one of the best parts in the film, because an adult is trying to help Joey as a friend.
In this new version, the childlike quality of the film is gone, but a lot of the questions I had are also answered. The film isn’t a remake so much as an attempt to turn the original on its head. You can’t have children playing with guns anymore with the complete innocence the original film had, and taking this as its lead, the film updates the boys’ lives successfully. Their life isn’t entirely innocent — Mom drinks and works long hours and leaves them alone for days; Dad’s supportive and kind, and in jail.
More is made of Lennie’s friends — instead of being his age, they’re older, tougher and meaner, and a point in the film is that Lennie has to steal the gun from his house, where it is locked away in a toolbox, in order to play the “joke” on Joey.

The settings are great in this film even before we get to Coney Island. Old military forts, abandoned lots, and Lennie’s friend is an older man who allows him to repair merry go round horses…a nice touch. (In fact, this character kind of takes the place of the pony ride man in the original). The history of Coney Island is explored with B&W shorts, with Lennie as the narrator — though oddly his narrations are all about bad things that happened there — which is acknowledged later.

The mythology is in place before the catalyst. Here, if Lennie’s stories about Coney Island are bad, his Dad’s are wonderful mythical stories about Lilliputia, the land of dwarfs (made more appropriate by the fact that Dad is a dwarf)…but Lennie never hears them. Only Joey visits Dad in jail and still believes the stories…Lennie tells him that Lilliputia was a place built for freaks like him…thus giving him a good reason to go there. If Lennie becomes annoyed at taking care of Joey for one day in the original, here he is tired of it of doing it constantly.

From the original’s time period, Lennie is probably only worried about getting home on time, with Joey, and telling him he’s sorry. Watching it, though, I was thinking he’s all by himself. This new film spends a lot more time looking at Lennie’s guilt…he’s actively searching not because he’s sorry, though he is, but because he’s very concerned for Joey’s safety.

This film broadens the boys’ home life and the people he meets along the way. In the original, the only significant adult he met was the pony ride man…this version has him meet several other homeless people, including children, most of whom are kind. In the largest twist, the pony ride man is not at all the kind person in the first film.

That was a shame but makes sense. This film is darker than the first. It recognizes that if Joey runs away, the world is not necessarily a good place. (Although, at times with the shorts, it emphasizes this too much).

A number of twists at the end, some very appropriate that I wondered about in the first film, and some not, wrap up the story. Lennie is, by turns, more responsible for his actions in this film, and less so, as he makes more than one mistake along the way.

This was an interesting reimagining of this film…It worked for me.The ending…well, I had to think of it the way I thought of The Wooden Camera…they go off in the end for a fairy tale adventure. Considering Lennie’s stories of Coney Island, that may not be the case, but you can interpret it two ways, and that’s mine. This film answered my questions and fills in family life, and it does rather well I thought.

I had a very good night out last night. I went to see Josh Blue perform comedy. I haven’t been to a comedy show (and in most cases, I don’t care for a lot of the comedians I see on TV) but my friend told me about Josh Blue when he was on Last Comic Standing. “You have to see this guy,” she said, “He tells your kind of jokes.”

Well, I did a video search, and she’s right.

Good timed comedy for one thing, and disabled comedy after that! Need more disabled comedy.

So I went last night. Very nice theatre…from the marquee out front and the balcony stairs off to the sides, curtains and ceiling, I’d say it was an older theatre than I expected.

Before the show started, I explained to Courtney the things I liked about disabled films…by which I mean, the ones that actually have disabled people in the roles. I have problems with the film “The Keys to the House,” but it is also the only film where I could tell on sight that the actor in it had CP. His motions, eyes and head were familiar…and CP speech apparently sounds the same in Italian, too. Aside from Chris Burke or Christopher Burke, I’m not sure of many obviously disabled actors on television. It’s so good seeing people like people you know and like yourself on TV.

I have a copy of Look Who’s Laughing…a documentary of comedians with disabilities telling disabled comedy. It’s great, need more of it. My Thesaurus of Comedy does have a disabled section, but only about 3 jokes in it…one of these not even by a disabled person. Now I’m sure if you went around to the disabled folks I know and asked each one for funny stories, they’d have them.

In fact, I know so. People used to tell them to me. I used to tell them.

There wasn’t a very long line to get in, and a number of comedians before Josh Blue. One of the jokes I thought was good before this was the beginning of a joke with a kid in a pirate costume. The comedian complained that he was now too old to run around in a pirate costume.

I laughed a lot at the jokes Josh Blue told…but I think I came at them from a different perspective from some others in the audience. When he started talking to his bad arm, looking at it oddly as it crept about with a mind of its own, making jokes about benefits, how to make being taken for retarded work in your favor, and frustration at “helpful” disabled service (read “absolute panic at a disabled person in the room,” I cracked up.

Done that.

I guessed the joke about baby-proofing the house before he gave it. I just pictured the number of things my arm or leg has ran into of its own free will, and I could see where it was going.:)
The night wasn’t all disabled jokes though…plenty about marriage, raising children etc…and from the amount people laughed, they weren’t having a problem understanding his timing. He had very good delivery and pauses. I couldn’t clap often because I had the monocular, but half the time when people were laughing and I didn’t know why, I asked Courtney and she said, “Well, he has his arms crossed like this.”

I enjoyed the joke about Blue’s son…well, he said, when people asked if the child had CP, we’ve just discovered it’s not contagious.

:)

Waiting in the lobby later for CDs and DVDs, I told Josh Blue I liked the joke about benefits. He looked surprised and commented on that, I’m sure because the bit about benefits was a throwaway line. I was surprised too because the people in line were funny.

“He’s signing autographs.”

“How?”

Well, with a pretty well established method, seems to me. He had one hand to hold down the CD and the other to sign it. Makes perfect sense to me. The minor CP that he appears to have, it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be able to sign.

It did, however, occur to me as I was signing my receipt atop CDs, that if I didn’t get my signature fitting better, that I’d be autographing something.

That, and the required 2 item minimum required with seeing the show. Damn it, drinking should improve my writing. It improves everything else.

Walking out, Courtney said people she had overheard thought Blue’s motor skills etc. were a gimmick at first. I thought that was funny. I talked about the jokes I really enjoyed, among them the one about the contagious CP.

“These jokes came about because somebody had to say that,” I said. “Maybe not in that setting, but they said it.”

Yes, well, Courtney said, it’s not contagious, but isn’t it genetic?

No. I explained what causes CP, that it was kind of a luck of the draw; that people I know have worse CP based on smaller hemmorages, or with the same gestational periods. I’ve joked about many of these things with Courtney and others, and explained to a few people. I hadn’t thought to explain further, because I assumed everyone knew by now.
But this makes me wonder. I enjoyed the jokes that dealt with ordinary life, but I enjoyed the disabled jokes because they sounded similar to things I’ve said or that people have told me about their disabilities. Funny stories. I enjoyed them because I identified with them…just as a comedian talking about tools would work well with construction workers. Misunderstandings, benefits, discrimination, being taken for retarded etc. all make sense.

Based just on the small sample overheard in the lobby, people clearly enjoyed the show, but how many understood it? Comedy, I suppose, could bridge a gap in demonstrating that people with disabilities can actually exist in society as complete people. But there’s an anthropology project.

In short, it was a great show. I would definitely go to a Josh Blue show again or any other disabled comedians provided I run across any, and I will have to try another show at that theatre…food, tickets were reasonable, and some shows are much cheaper than that one.

This book is printed by Thorndike Books, and I picked up for two reasons: It had a cover that didn’t draw me in, but tag lines that did, and it is a large-print that is not a 1950’s mystery for adults…very unusual.

Hav’sing finished it, I can say it has a good idea — Varina, a 15 year old girl, meets a boy, Chase, who proceeds to inform her that she is really a clone, and that they must round up the other clone children. The story starts with an interesting flashback of Chase as a little kid, on a boat with 3 scientists, two of whom treat like a son, and a startling event that occurs.

Did I mention this book has cliffhangers all over? Not that that’s a bad thing, but some of them seem far-fetched. At times I could ignore the writing style, which I found had abrupt spots, with exclamation points here and there, or sentences that just didn’t read right to me. I was hoping for another The House of the Scorpion, which like this book, dealt with power struggles and human cloning, with a child narrator, and even though this is the first book in a series, I have no need to look at the others.

The main character, Varina, may be confused and disoriented with the news that she is a clone and scientists are out to get her, but she swings wildly between trusting whoever she meets completely one moment, and being suspicious of their intentions the next. While this makes sense under the conditions the book sets — for instance, that she’s just met this boy Chase when he starts telling her stories — it ends up tiresome and doesn’t serve any purpose.

I was interested with the initial trouble on the boat in the beginning, and I maintained my interest during Varina’s introduction to her life with her uncle Jim, despite some reading problems I had with the story, but as the story goes on, it lose momentum quickly. Each clone is revealed to have a particular kind of superpower (which, if they actually had them in real life would probably more a lot less controllable — like the kids who can hear people through walls but wear headphones to school).

And as each clone is selected into the group, the story of each character is repeated, so that by you get two or three characters introduced, this one story seems to take up most of the short book. That’s rather annoying.

In the meantime, guardians pop up out of the woodwork with regualarity to take care of Varina and the others — commonly people she has never seen before. Meanwhile, cliffhangers on all sides, Varina’s Uncle Jim lays in the hospital, and while Varina mentions every so often, that she wants to be at his side, that she trusts him absolutely, she goes on shopping trips with an aunt she has never met before, spents one day with the woman and concludes that with all the time spent with her aunt, she’d never learnt of her family.

Well, in a day, that might not always be something mentioned on the first day. Somehow I don’t consider a day much time.

Varina and the others manage to get cars and planes with ease and always escape just ahead of the scientists — which makes sense, as all good serials do. However, even if this is for younger readers, its cliffhangers and wording jarred me out of the story on several occasions.

It’s excellent that I found it in large print…something that should happen more with books. It’s also excellent to see a large family of adopted handicapped children in the story at one point.

It is however hilarious when Varina comments that her mouth dropped open when a child in a wheelchair stood and walked.

I laughed.

This is kind of a joke in the disabled community, you understand.

While it makes perfect sense that Varina would think that, it’s really old. To the author’s credit, the family does explain why the child walks — and it’s a reason I can believe. But here’s the thing, you can be in a wheelchair and still walk, or at least some people can. You may only be in the wheelchair for long distance walking, etc.

The story ends with a cliff hanging that’s been hinted at. But most of the book, unfortunately, instead of minor world building or charactors, is spent collecting children, running from scientists, and repeating, just so the reader doesn’t forget, that they are all clones, most with special powers and tattoos. when they’ve nearly escaped at the end, it makes me wish the characters had been developed, or had done something other than the very beginning of a story. It’s the first of a series, but there’s nothing for me to hang on to in it, nothing I can’t wait to read.

Maybe they have an adventure in the next book. But this one, I’m very sorry to say, can be summed up in a sentence: “There was once a story about clone children and they had to run from evil scientists.”

That’s the start of the story. It’s a great idea. But I needed more story here.

I haven’t watched this movie recently, so I hope I can do a good review of it. It reminds me a lot of Joe the King. Like Joe the King, A Home of Our Own is also supposed to based on a true story (in Joe the King, the main character is Joe Henry, the scriptwriter is Frank Joseph Whaley; in A Home of Our Own, where the narrator is Shayne Lacy, the scriptwriter is Patrick Sheane Duncan. Kinda neat, huh?).

Of course, everything that happens to a character in a film or book shouldn’t always be assumed to have happened in real life. For example, Patrick F. McManus, Robert Newton Peck, J.G. Ballard, etc. all have characters with their names — and not everything should be assumed to have happened.

That said, this movie’s tone is similar to Joe the King — not much happy happens here, great scenery, filming, good acting — and yet, so much bad happens that it is either true-to-life or badly edited.

Having commented on that, I should also say that due to the amount of time this film spends in its environment — a house being built, literally, by scrounging — you really get to know where the characters live. I wish I could say you get to know all the characters, but there are a lot of them — six children in the Lacey family, only two of which get any particular character development, and the mother, played by Kathy Bates. As usual, Kathy Bates looks and acts like a completely different person in this role than she did in, say, Fried Green Tomatoes, as she should. Like Joe the King, the movie also seems a lot longer than its actual length.
The main parts of the story deal with family warfare between Bates’ character, Frances Lacey a no-nonsense, hard-working, old-fashioned poverty-stricken widow, and her 15 year old son Shayne, the man-of-the-family. (Something she continually reminds him of throughout the film). (One of the repeated funny lines concerns Frances’ husband, referred to consistantly cheerfully as “that Irish son-of-a-bitch” by all concerned).
Like Joe the King, the pattern of A Home of Our Own is set within the first minutes of the film. Shayne is brought home by the police. Frances defends him, then calls for the belt to punish him for petty crimes. This is what makes her decide to move the family into the country.

In fact, in a 104 minute film, Frances calls for the belt about six or seven times if I remember correctly — until it is pretty much assumed that every time Shayne raises his voice, he’s going to get it. (But the film only shows one moment where Frances really physically loses it). Eventually, I began to understand this film in the context of a family study of the time period (the film is set in 1962).

It’s clear that Frances loves her children, though she never apologizes to them, and in fact the driving point of the movie is that she does everything for them, but it seems selfish because she thinks she can go out on dates but the children for example don’t need time to play or toys to play with. Frances wants to instill in them the self-respect to accept no charity — so that when Murray, the only other well-defined family member, barters in a wonderful salvage yard — you understand that she has made a positive impression.

In the context of, say, a working-class family of 1911, the film makes more sense. In that time period, you were expected to work as a general rule, to play as you worked — and people were not neccessarily going to praise you for that. All wages belonged to your family. All work was for the good of the family as a unit. What we think of today as becoming an adult may not have been true then. Doing the work of an adult did not neccesarily mean you were free of family discipline. For example, in one account of the Triangle Fire in 1911, a 16-year-old returned home from the fire, dirty, disheveled, etc. and got a beating from her family (I forget what the reason was, but of course, when they learned of the fire, they were sorry — I also forget which book this is from). In Little Britches by Ralph Moody, Ralph has vocational training at age 8, herding cows and being a cowboy at a ranch. His father says they are partners, and there is one scene in the book where Ralph steals a bit of chocolate, reasoning that it is his because his wages go in the pot. His father finds him, spanks him, and tells him that because they are partners, he could have had the chocolate due to his wages if he had asked and not snuck around.

Set in this type of context, A Home of Our Own makes more sense. Frances never apologizes because her children are children. She is the head of the family and if she wants to go out after working, she has earned that right. The children, meanwhile, are part of the unit of the family, and thus should work on buiding the house — and are shown to be in general remarkably willing to do so. (There is one well-done scene involving a construction accident and Murray). Shayne’s viewpoint is, I assume, that he is the man of the family, which he doesn’t particularly want to be, but if he is, he’s old enough to want to speak like an equal, to address things that he believes are unfair, such as Frances telling fairy tales of how life will be. Frances sees this not as a man-of-the-family trying to act in the role but a child acting in defiance to her.

Interestingly, despite the younger children shown doing destructive things like scribbing on Shayne’s homework or acting up in the car, Frances is seen being rather lenient toward them. There are other complications, too many almost, but there are good scenes as well– the nieghbor, Mr. Moon coming over for holiday dinner, Frances’ boss surprising her by his support, townspeople paying tips with power tools, a scene with the “family bathtub etc.)

I should also say that I have only seen one other film with a salvage yard (The War, 1993) and this film does a great job with that, and with the thrift store the Laceys frequent as well.

The other Lacey children in the film are basically there to complete the large impoverished family and are unfortunately underdefined. If they were poor, something good must have happened. Indeed, the good that happens in the end is somewhat manipulative, but makes sense — though I also feel that it comes too close behind the final show-down between Shayne and his mother to be as effective as it probably should. (For one thing, even if Frances loves her kids, and even if the family bands together as a “tribe,” you are geniunely afraid for what will happen to Murray — and no, it doens’t involve his accident). Also, much like Joe the King, and like real life, any change that happens in this movie is very small — there are no massive Scrooge-redemption moments here, and maybe that’s as it should be.
Having said all this, I would probably watch this again, simply because as much as I would have preferred parts of the film to do otherwise, they must have done something right or I would not be able to think of a character study to do on it. Most films would not show enough to build on.

Today I’ll be reviewing The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. (No, it’s not about pirates). I picked it up to read on the train the other day, and it’s a fantastic historical book about an 1800’s cholera epidemic. It sets up the neighborhood in London first by explaining the various scavengers — rag-pickers, bone collectors, scrap metal, as well as the people who worked specifically in the sewers (a job I only recently read about fictionally in The Quincunx by         ).

But this book is about an actual epidemic. This book has cliff-hangers like any good detective story. It explores what the inhabitants of the neighborhood did for a living, what they ate and drank, and also the common medical beliefs of the day  — humors, constitutions, miasmas — and the social class problem. I’m familiar with this terms and their medical meanings, but I haven’t seen a book explore them before by demonstrating how they were used in combination, and how this restricted the germ theory.

This actually makes sense because today we believe in the germ theory, that diseases can be transmitted by water, and that you must rehydrate yourself if you have a fever. I may have picked the wrong things to demonstrate, but the fact is that we don’t generally believe in these things are isolated from one another. Likewise, Johnson shows that the social bias of the time influenced how neighborhoods were built, which influenced where people got their water — which in their own minds reinforced the idea that the lower classes by their inferior constitutions (something like an immune system) and filthy habits which caused miasmas (bad smells which caused disease) — brought about their own deaths from cholera. It also explores how religion influenced medicine.

Like a detective story, this book shows how a doctor interpreted these events, how he set out to prove that cholera came from the water when folkloric medical beliefs suggested otherwise. He did two very important things — interviewing people about deaths and any details about their daily life, and making a map that showed not only where the cholera began and how it traveled but why. The maps adds sociology — and this I think is especially interesting, given that years later, in 1911, Popenoe’s eugenics textbook will still hold to the old ideas, that internal constitutions of poorer, schizophrenic patients make their deaths from consumption likely — not that the sociology and living conditions make the germs spread.

So this study of cholera was very much ahead of its time. The doctor in it sets out to prove cholera’s transmission through water against the commonly accepted disease theories of the time period. The author supports any theories mentioned by explaining thier history, but then goes back to the drama of the neighborhood’s inhabitants.

I liked this book and would highly recommend it, especially if you want to understand how people thought about disease transmission, about how Victorian cities were built, or what it was like to live and work in London. I’m surprised I have not heard of The Ghost Map before.

I thought I would review Emily of New Moon today, although it’s been a few months since I’ve read it.

I discovered the TV series at a store, and was immediately interested, if for no other reason than it was a historical children’s drama done in Canada. I love the way some of those TV shows are filmed and written (Pit Pony season 1 comes to mind, excellent illustration of family life and child labor and has well-defined characters). I rented Season One and was by turns impressed by some scenes (as when Emily confronts Aunt Elizabeth about her books, or when Emily damns a group of relatives to hell), and dismayed or irritated by their melodrama (Emily spends much of episode one screaming at various times as her cat is left behind, tossed from a wagon and thrown out of a window). Even though the novel was written by L.M. Montgomery, the author who wrote Anne of Green Gables, and this implies it is an early-20th-century book, (as it is), but I was inspired to read the series of books because I was certain some of the scenes had been stretched to fit modern tastes.

Would a child in 1915 really speak to a group of adults as Emily does? I thought it was pretty bold for a child of that time period.
Now other rude children like Mary in The Secret Garden spring to mind, but the answer is yes, in the first book she does speak rudely to the adults, and she does confront Aunt Elizabeth about her books in roughly the same way as in the movie.

There are extensive changes from the books, and in most cases, I think for the better. I slogged through the second and third books, uninterested by Emily’s various suitors, understanding why the book was so internal (Emily wants to be a writer and it is largely how she develops skills), but I felt that there were missed opportunities. You don’t learn very much about the inhabitants of the village in any way except through Emily’s diary at times, I didn’t feel attached to Teddy, Perry or Ilse, Emily’s friends, etc. Also, very little seems to actually be happening (more happens in the first book, in my opinion). This makes sense because the book is about observing things, and its said that the Murrays of New Moon keep to themselves, but wouldn’t observing townspeople at least or church or rare gathering places be useful? Granted, I suppose it’s more realistic than Anne of Green Gables, in that Emily is not off having adventures all the time, but I felt that was rather a shame. I’m not a large fan of Anne of Green Gables or L.M. Montgomery anyway.
The TV series keeps the best parts of scenes in the books, makes up several others so that something happens in each episode (sometimes melodramatic, sometimes not), and changes several incidents. For instance, the first book starts with Emily’s father dying of tuberucolis — a common theme in books like this, and one that would have been familiar in reality to people of the time. But this means that Emily’s father is too tired to do anything during the first chapter, except die. The TV series corrects this, by showing that he dislikes public school (which is amplified by a beating Emily gets at school) — causing her father to knock the teacher around. Well, at least he’s doing something. Then a sudden heart attack finishes him off, and Emily is made to draw lots as to which relative wants her.

I thought for certain the lots were created for the TV series, but there they are in the book too. Also, another scene (Lofty John and the apple), and a funny scene where chore boy Perry ends up naked before company are also in TV series and book. Other things I wish the TV series had developed further — they make good use of an unconventional teacher, and Perry’s aunt (who appears in a second season), but the episode that tries to show what happened to Cousin Jimmy to make him “not all there” is more confusing than the lines in the book that inspired it.

For instance, early on in the TV series, Emily is asked to take out the cows — and if writing and reading are forbidden in this new home (a device I thought was wonderful) — why is she not also making up stories while doing chores? In the book, if I remember correctly, she is rarely shown doing any chores at all, and you can’t tell me that a working farm during this time period, however poor, would not have children working. In the TV series, Perry the chore boy is hired, and the scene where he wants to go to school is expanded, but very little use is made of his character — even though he lives in the same house as Emily and she sees him every day. In the book, she’s friends with him as well, but I thought good use wasn’t made of her friends there either (though I did enjoy the “yo’ mama equivilant in the series and book between Emily and Ilse).

In the second season, cows, chickens and sheep are ordered slaughtered by Murray relatives (who did not exist in the book). Although you see the horse and occasionally cows, and the barn is Cousin Jimmy’s place, you rarely see any chores except sweeping up being done and I was not aware the family actually possesed sheep.

so I read all the books. I like the first one best, though I doubt I will check it out again. I had no use for the second and third, and I felt they dragged, and although I find the TV series has it’s high and low points, and is not as well-produced as Pit Pony, I am in the middle of the second season and plan to watch the third. I feel that they actually made improvements by changing what happens drastically. As far as production values, I should add that the scenery, props, lighting, costuming and general construction of the series are as well done as I would expect from a Canadian period piece. They are as well done as Pit Pony or Anne of Green Gables. That said, there are parts of this series that are over-acted or difficult for me to believe — almost never the case with the Pit Pony series, even though both that and this series contain ghosts.

So I am finishing season two, waiting for season three, and waiting for impatiently for season 2 (the final season) of Pit Pony on DVD. The first was released years and left an excellent cliff-hanger and I’ve been dying to find out what happens to the characters. I can’t say I have the same impatience for this series — but be that as it may, I now own the first season of Emily of New Moon on DVD.

Recently a friend of mine and I got to talking about the films of Christian Bale, and my friend said she wanted to see all of them. I asked if she had seen Empire of Sun and found she hadn’t. So of course, i brought out the DVD and we sat down and watched it straight through (over two days).

Now watching this film straight through is something I very rarely do — so much so that some years ago, when I began at the beginning, I barely remembered parts of it at all. There are also sections that it took me numerous viewings to understand — such as the fact that the doctor in the scene on the roof does not actually need help in the hospital or the fact that the Americans may not actually have been setting pheasent traps, but rather planning an escape. (Although I recently realized that John Malkovich flies forward in the end not because he jumped but because he tripped over the pheasent trap). That said, I always liked that the Americans bet on Jim’s survival, that he turns from a spoiled rich kid into a self-reliant scrounger — and I’ve always felt that the camera angle during the scene where the Japanese soldier nearly captures him is forced. If someone is patrolling above you, all they have to do is look down at their just once, and they would have seen you.

After the movie, I looked online for paperbacks of Empire of the Sun, which for some reason I’ve done more than once, even though I’ve owned a copy for years. I skip around in it, and almost never read it straight through, but like the movie, there are parts I really enjoy. Like the movie, the book does such a wonderful job of world-building, and by the time you reach the end, you know all the people in it and a very good idea of living conditions. Although sometimes, I want to yank the author out of the book and say “Enough already! Then what happened?”

The author is J.G. Ballard. In the past, I’ve found a few of his science-fiction novels, for which I had almost no interest, and in the last couple of years, searching for Empire of the Sun, found a sequel, The Kindness of Women. I was very interested, since the novel Empire of the Sun was semi-autobiographical, at what happened next when Jim is sent to England, after absorbing everything that happened in internment camp. So I eagerly went and got it from the library.

Big mistake.

I hated it. I have, in fact, never checked it out again, and remember little about it, except that bits of the internment camp are described, with strange conversations between characters that never seem to read right to me — in contrast to Empire of the Sun, which does. Descriptions and conversations are shorter, which is in some ways a relief. The first-person narrative was rather startling, even though I tend to read that more often, because EOTS was written in third person. There are gaps of time in between chapters, if I remember correctly — the author’s time training to be a doctor; the death of his wife from a sudden fall; and, if I remember correctly, numerous relations with women that I had absolutely no interest in at all.

The same material is covered in the new autobiography I found the other day — Miracles of Life: From Shanghai to Shepperton — but it’s handled better. I would actually read this one again, though I still don’t understand about modern art, Freud, or other things in it, it does explain “what happened next.” It also explains where and how the author came up with some of the events in stories and what influenced them. In the movie and book EOTS, I noticed that Jim changes from a spoiled kid to an optimistic but disillusioned child — what I hadn’t realized is that the adults changed as well. Ballard notes the same type of effect as the book Farewell to Manzanar does — that parents and children became estranged in camp because they were powerless. Ballard says that the adults seemed as if they were on vacation, in shirts and shorts, whereas before they were always dressed properly. In fact, I think in the movie, there are adults running about in shorts and I never noticed it, let alone as a social change.

This book is more a summary than one of the autobiographies where characters are formed — but it works. It leads you from one event to the next — Ballard as a young student boiling a rabbit skeleton in school was a highlight — and it explains a lot about what went on behind the scenes. Here, Ballard’s wife dies suddenly from pnemonia, and he mentions girlfriends he’s had, but thank God, just mentions, and then gets on with things. I still had little interest in Freud or modern art that he discusses, but I can understand how these would influence a science fiction writer, especially at a time before television, when things were becoming more modernized. Pictures, it seems, and old science fiction novels, might be a way to imagine new technology to put in a book.

There are also a number of references to people I believe I probably would know about, if I lived in England, but since I don’t, I had no clue.So this book is not as long, as detailed and does not have as many characters as Empire of the Sun. In some ways I think that’s good, because they are different kinds of stories — this one a record of personal history before terminal cancer — but at the same time, I wish, the reader could see the characters of Ballard’s children, wife, and friends, just as easily as it is to picture Mr. Maxted, Basie and Jim’s parents in Empire of the Sun. They are mentioned, and it is easy to read, but even though this autobiography and the other fiction, the other characters are more defined.

Which does make sense in a way…

Before I get back to my review of No Pity, I want to review the book Peter & Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham. I saw this book, along with The Child Thief: A Novel by Brom, at the local comic book store. Both had been written by comic book authors, and both were illustrated. I was interested, in part because the first comic book author novel I read there turned out to be one of the funniest books I’ve read, and the other a Niel Gaiman book with plenty of folklore in it. So I was willing to give them a try.

I read them, and having finished Peter and Max, have decided that I like it best. Both books did folkloric research, which is obvious when you read them — Brom’s fairies, and fairy land, like J.M. Barrie’s, is dark and somewhat frightening, certainly not the land created by Disney. This is all well and good, since there is a tradition with Grimm’s Fairy Tales et al., that a lot of violence happens in fairy tales. The Child Thief is clever in creating a Peter Pan who is a trickster, who only wants children to support warfare, and who doesn’t really care what happens to them — in fact, in this respect as a “new” Peter Pan novel, I like it better than others I’ve seen meant for children. The explanation of why and how the story was created is worth rereading. I enjoyed the idea that children would have to adjust to being kidnapped and brought to Neverland, that Captain Hook was a kind man with children of his own, and that he was plagued by reverends straight out of the Salem Witch Trials. That being said, like The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, this book is excessively violent. But I could, at times with difficulty, ignore the violence in The Book of Lost Things in favor of a clever story rooted in folklore, I found it much harder with The Child Thief. For one thing, this book is longer. For another, by the time I got near the end I was growing tired of it. The magic that happens makes sense, and is set up well, as is the ending, but even the people meant to be friendly turn angry and mean, even the Devils (Brom’s name for the Lost Boys). I loved the fact that Peter Pan is a changeling, and felt that his parent’s response was well done, and that he is adopted and trained by creatures in the forest. There are moments in Peter’s training that are quite good, before violence once again comes into the story. Although at times, the violence is appropriate and makes sense in the story — for instance that Peter needs to be without a family — and there are echoes of the original Peter Pan (”I’m a Peterbird,” says Peter, what the Lost Boys will call Wendy in Barrie’s version), I was glad when the story ended. The illustrations are good, if somewhat superhero/fantasy-like for my taste.