Book Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (48 in 2012? #21)

     Something about this novel just didn't sit right with me.  It was well written, easy to read and quite compelling, but something about the characters just didn't sit right.  For this story to really hit home I think you need so find some relation with or sympathy for the main character, Charlie, and I just found him to unbelievable a character for that to happen.  Charlie felt very much like an older version of Nick Twisp from the book Youth in Revolt, but part of what made that novel so appealing was its absurdity.  This novel doesn't feel absurd, so you're forced to take Charlie much more serious then Nick and that sets up a huge gap of believability.
     We are told Charlie is a genius and I can only assume, from his emotional detachment and lack of social skills, that he falls somewhere on the autism spectrum.  The whole story is told from his off kilter perspective which might answer the question of why no one else seems to find Charlie so odd.  But at the same time, Charlie doesn't seem like a person who should be left to his own devises.  He obviously has problems and mental illness, yet no one in the story seems to pay attention to those facts.  They treat him like he's a normal kid, one that just isn't understood and that just didn't ring true to me.
     The charm of this book should be how it captures life on the fringes of high school life, but I just feel like it missed the mark.  Chbosky created a character that is so much on the fringe that it's hard to believe he would be allowed to function the way he does in the novel.  This story may ring true to others, but my experiences tell me things are a little off and that hurt my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

Movie Review: Rock Of Ages

     New movie rule:  if a bunch of actors are cast to sing in a musical made up of all ready recorded rock songs stay away!  I couldn't help but think of Mama Mia and Pierce Brosnan's cringe inducing performance as Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russel Brand and others labored through this collection of 80's hair metal classics.  Why put people in musicals that can't sing?  Rock of Ages even went one step worse then Mama Mia by casting Mary J. Blige in a small part.  Her professional chops made the amateurs sound that much worse.  Is there a better way to highlight how poor Tom Cruise's singing voice is then to have him trade off verses with a brilliant soul songstress?  Would the movie have been as marketable without Cruise and Baldwin?  Probably not, but it would have been more entertaining and enjoyable with people who could actually sing.
     It doesn't seem that counter intuitive to me when making a musical to cast singers and not actors, but one of the things this movie seemed to suffer from the most was a creative team that didn't understand how to manage talent.  The lead female role was played by Julianne Hough.  Now, I never watched Dancing With the Stars, but from everything I've been told she is an amazing dancer so you would think she would be featured in a number of great dance numbers but that just isn't the case.  Hough is left to be just window dressing in many of the dance numbers never once showing that she had anymore of a dance background or was anymore agile then Alec Baldwin. 
     The movie was filled with "what the heck" moments as it plot-lessly plodded through it's 80's soundtrack.  It could never decided exactly what tone it wanted to convey.  Was it supposed to be a cheeky send up of 80's opulence or a serious investigation of the trappings of fame?  In one scene they went from a wonderfully acted dialogue between Cruise and Malin Akerman about the isolation fame brings right into a cooky "sex" scene that would have fit right into a Naked Gun movie and shift that left the audience with whiplash.  Another horrible scene was the number with Baldwin and Brand when out of the blue we find out that the two club workers have actually been in love with each other for years.  I'm pretty sure we were supposed to find it funny, but the joke was that two men are in love.  I realize that the movie was set in the 80's, but it's playing to a 2012 audience, just the fact that two men are gay isn't funny anymore.
     I wanted to like this movie.  I wanted to come into the theater and have a good time watching a light fun movie.  The horrible singing, the non-existent plot, the schizophrenic tone, the mismanagement of talent was just too much to get over.  I know that musicals are never meant to be world altering fare.  They don't give us deep insight or earth shaking revelations and very rarely do they have anything other movies would call a plot, but this movie was excruciatingly bad.  The one thing the movie can hold it's hat on is the nostalgic soundtrack, which is wonderful when not being sung by actors, but if that's what you're going to see this movie for, just pull out your old albums or cds or IPOD playlist and listen to the real thing.

Movie Review: Prometheus

     The summer blockbuster has grown from a highly entertaining trip through a fantastic world into a mindless collection of huge explosions and implausible stunts.  Men like Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer have taken the craft of big budget movie making and removed everything that made it compelling.  Long gone are the ideas of strong characters and tight storytelling when it comes to the biggest movies of the summer season.  It has become more important to cause a dozen huge explosions then develop a quality character for the audience to fall for.  I held up The Avengers earlier in the year on this blog as an example of a solid summer movie and even it left a ton to be desired in its character development and plot points.  The Avengers was certainly 100 times better then Transformers or any of the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but does it really hold a candle to Jaws or Raiders of the Lost Ark?  We have strayed so far from what the summer blockbuster once was that we hold up sub par movies as beacons of what the genre should be.  I'd like to say that the creators of the big budget summer movie, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, etc.,  must be rolling over in their couches witnessing what their legacies have spawned, but those pioneers' efforts to right the blockbuster in recent years hasn't been much better then the crap Michael Bay produces.
     So, as excited as the trailer for Prometheus made me, I went into the movie a little leery.  Chances were high that another filmmaker from dawn of the summer blockbuster, another pioneer of well made big budget movies, would release just another collection of explosions that left character and plot behind.  We've all been taken down the road of much ballyhooed prequels of beloved science fiction franchises and it hadn't ended well.  That is until now.  Ridley Scott has created yet another masterpiece and finally done justice to a franchise that has been waiting years to be done right.  Scott avoided all the pitfalls his contemporaries fell victim too and put out a movie that puts Bay and company to shame.  Prometheus is everything a summer blockbuster should be.  It has its big explosions, it has its moments that make you jump from your seat, but never at the cost of character and story.  It throws us into a world and pulls us through it by making us care about that world and the characters that do more then just take up space in it, the explosions are just sprinkles on the sundae.
     Part of the appeal of the characters is the wonderful acting Scott was able to capture.  Although none are big draw actors, except maybe Charlize Theron, this is a collection of some of the best in the craft.  Noomi Rapace, the original Lisbeth Salander, Idris Elba, of The Wire fame, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pierce, Logan Marshall-Green, even Patrick Wilson shows up for a brief cameo.  Each is able to make their characters pop off the screen.
     This movie isn't anything revolutionary.  This isn't James Cameron attempting to reinvent movie making with Avatar.  It's Ridley Scott bringing back the conventions he and his contemporaries established years ago and showing filmmakers of today what a well made movie looks like.  Prometheus is very much a classic science fiction story.  If you're a fan of the Alien franchise you will be rewarded with a wonderful story filled with nods to the movies you love.  If you've never seen an Alien movie you won't be lost at all, the movie never really mentions anything about its predecessors.  This is very much a movie that can be enjoyed on its own as well as a part of the Alien universe.  It's a throwback to an era of great movie making and hopefully  a movie Hollywood and current movie makers can learn a few lessons from.  The Avengers may go down as the biggest movie of all time but Prometheus is the summer blockbuster at its absolute best.

Book Review: Spunk And Bite: A Writer's Guide To Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style by Arthur Plotnik (48 in 2012? #20)

     Spunk and Bite is a book about writing.  If you have no interest in the subject or improving you're own technique then there is really no reason for you to even bother picking this book up.  That's not to say it's dry reading, it's actually a quite humorous and fun read, it's just probably not for everyone.  The book is written as a response to the classic The Elements of Style, widely know as Strunk & White and considered the writing bible.  Plotnik does an entertaining job pointing out where it's OK to break the rules to spice up one's writing.  I'd like to think that my writing will show some noticeable improvement after reading Spunk and Bite, but chances are there won't be much difference.  This is not a commentary on Plotnik's effectiveness, I walked away with plenty of ideas and places to focus on to improve, it has a lot more to do with my lack of attention to detail.  I highly recommend Spunk and Bite to any writers out there, if for no other reason then it's a funny book that uses language as its source of entertainment, a source only us writers seem to really find humor in.

Movie Review: The Dictator

     I've heard a lot of people comment on how they were glad Sacha Baron Cohen was finally doing a scripted movie, that they had grown tired of his act, catching real people doing and saying stupid things just by staying in his own insane character.  There are many reasons for Cohen to distance himself from this style of comedy, a style that he perfected, a style that only true genius can pull off effectivley time and time again, but let's not pretend one of them is because it wasn't funny anymore.  It has to be getting harder for him to surprise people, we're all in on the act now and know what to look for, so the chances of getting one up on people must shrink with every big project he does.  Also, there were a bunch a law suits that came out of Borat and Bruno, the studios must be more then a little nervous each time he heads out making a movie in their name, and nothing stops movies from being made quicker then a nervous studio.  But I don't care what anyone says, Borat is one of the funniest movies ever made and Da Ali G Show was television at its absolute best.  In an era where we remake every money making idea Hollywood has ever stumbbled into, where we beat every mediocre mass appealing concept to death, aren't there worse things that could be made then another Borat style Sacha Baron Cohen movie?
     The Dictator was far from the best comedy I've ever seen.  The lack of laughs has very little to do with the fact that it was scripted and everything to do with the fact that it felt only half realized.  They had a funny premise and a few jokes that went along with the premise and then... nothing.  They tried to turn what might have been a funny segment on Da Ali G Show into an hour and a half movie and there just wasn't enough funny to make it work.  And really, having a script had very little to do with the success of failure of the premise.  Many of the faults the movie had would have been present script or not, like the character feeling a lot like Borat, like all the jokes about extreme prejudice that we've heard Cohen do a million times, like the wafer thin storyline that really just functioned to get us from punchline to punchline.
     Even with it's faults, the movie did have moments of genius.  Fans of Cohen will not be disappointed, he delivers many of the moments they have come to love from his movies; moments of totally inappropriate humor that makes you feel guilty for laughing, moments of completely uncomfortable humor and makes you wince and groan while you laugh at the same time.  His scene helping a customer give birth is as hilarious and uncomfortable as the nude wrestling scene from Borat.  The movie also has a few great performances.  Jason Mantzoukas pulled off another great comedic turn.  The best scenes in the movie showcase Mantzoukas' character Nadal arguing with Cohen's Aladeen.  The two play off each other wonderfully.  Mantzoukas is easily the most underrated funny man in Hollywood.
     If you're a fan of Cohen, even though this movie falls well short of Borat or Bruno, The Dictator is a must see.  It's not going to be the funniest movie you see all year (or at least I hope it won't be the funniest movie I see all year) but it has enough laughs to make it worth the watch.  And for nothing else, you get to see what is hopefully the beginning of Jason Mantozoukas rise to comedy fame.

Book Review: The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant (48 in 2008 #19)

     Hank Aaron seems to be a man lost in time.  He was never as flashy as Mays, as historic as Robinson, or as white as Mantle and because of all that he gets forgotten when it comes to discussions of the greatest of all time.  Aaron was a blue collar ballplayer who treated the game as a job;  no basket catches, no stolen home plates, no drunken evenings in the outfield, he just showed up, put in his time and went home.  There are no crazy Aaron quotes or outrageous Aaron stories, there is just the work he displayed on the field every game he played.  So even though he has a series of stats that even the "greatest" can't hold a candle to, Aaron never seems to climb much higher then 5 or 6 on anyone's greatest baseball player list.  I'm sure there is a group of sabermetric nerds somewhere that would love to even take the importance of those stats away from him.  He is currently 4th in career runs, 3rd in hits, 10th in doubles, 2nd in home runs (with a huge asterisk next to the guy at number one), and 1st in RBI, all numbers bigger then the men listed above him.  The thing is, there is more to the story of Hank Aaron then a list of numbers compiled on a baseball diamond and because he never gets the attention the big names get the rest of the story seems to get lost as well.  Which is why Howard Bryant's The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron is an important book for baseball history.
     Bryant isn't able to capture the style and grace of Aaron on the field and does very little to argue Aaron was better then his contemporaries other then to say he played with a workman's attitude and to list the numbers I've listed above.  Aaron fans must have come to realization by this point that their hero is never going to get attention he deserves.  But what Bryant does a wonderful job of doing is paint a detailed picture of the Aaron we never saw on the field and the struggles he faced through out his life.  He was a man constantly put between a rock and a hard place, who never seemed to be in a situation where there was a right thing to say or a proper way to act, yet looking back he was always able to handle things with a grace few important American figures could.  Bryant talks about Aaron breaking the color barrier in the Florida minor leagues, about him being the key to Atlanta being seen as a progressive Southern city, about conceding his most prized record to a man who went against everything Henry professed as a ball player.  These are all stories that will be lost to tales of Jackie Robinson opening the door for black players, pictures of Willy Mays slowing down so he could catch a ball over his shoulder in the World Series, and arguments about the legality of Barry Bonds drug use.  Yet, Bryant has done what he could to keep them in perpetuity by elegantly putting them into print.
      If you're looking for a wonderfully written book about baseball, this isn't it.  Bryant's description of the on-field happenings in Aaron's career is lacking and uninspired.  But what Bryant does accomplish is drawing a fair and encompassing portrait of a man history has not been kind to.  It isn't all praise, he uncovers the warts along with the awards making it the complete story of arguably the games greatest player.