Everything I had ever heard about Cormac MacCarthy’s The Road: “Prepare to be depressed.” That’s it.  Though it feels like dozens of people gave me that warning. The Road tells the story of a man who is traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape with a single but very explicit goal - to protect his young son from the dangers of this barren and cruel world.  

Exactly what has put the land we know in this horrible state is a mystery to us.  What wars occurred?  What natural disasters took place?  These things we don’t know.  Things have taken place that have ravaged civilization and turned one man against another.  We are given no background on how this place got to this state. And we don’t need it. Because there’s one thing that we do know.  And it’s that, more than anything else, this man loves his son, and will do anything to ensure his safety.  

The story isn’t about disasters or the destruction of civilization, it’s about the lengths this man will go to in order to protect his boy. In between the action of their quests and series of escapes, there is a very effective dialogue between the father and son.  There’s something very real about the boy’s thoughts and ideas.  MacCarthy never falls into the trap of writing the kid as kids are normally written, either so sweet and cutesy, or so wise for their years that they’re no longer believable.  When the boy is scared, he says so.  When the father makes a decision that the boy doesn’t understand, he doesn’t yell out in dramatic defiance.  Instead, he becomes quiet.  Often, it takes a bit of time before feelings come to the surface and can work toward resolution.  It’s moments like this that make this relationship work so well in the story.

When I finished the book, I was almost surprised that I wasn’t depressed.  The story is indeed bleak and dark.  But the characters of the father and the son, and their drive to survive, protect, and live was actually kind of uplifting to me.

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While the classics The Shining and Salem's Lot are two of my favorites, much of Stephen King's more recent output has left me a little underwhelmed.  King's latest release, Under the Dome, doesn't really do much to reverse this trend for me.

The novel tells the story of a small town that becomes quite suddenly encased beneath a giant invisible dome.  Of course, it's a mystery as to exactly what the dome is and how it got there.  The sudden appearance (installation? dropping?) of the dome is quite gruesome, as many animals, vehicles, and even people find their collective parts on different sides of the walls.

The tension of the story builds as the inhabitants of the town realize that they're on their own.  While government agents are working on breaking through the dome, they have no control over what's going on inside.  This leaves room for someone to step up to a leadership role, and in this case, naturally the corrupt and power hungry are perfectly happy to assume the position. Big Jim Rennie, the town's Second Selectman, is a used car salesman/politician with a very strong agenda: have every one do every thing his way.  

Big Jim thinks himself righteous, and considers all of his actions to be God's work.  The problem with his philosophy is that his actions include running the largest meth lab on the East Coast, among other crimes.  Rennie is arrogant, holier-than-thou, and delusional, and I'm not sure I have ever despised a character in a book more than Big Jim Rennie.  If that was King's goal, then I'll have to toast his success here.

The novel is very long (1000+ pages), and much of it is spent describing many, many citizens of the town.  It's great to feel like a town in a book is established and has a history, where the various people have lives that matter, but King's ongoing descriptions and histories become excessive.  It gets to the point where reading more and more about how someone used to drive a tractor or has a pointy head feels like a chore.  There were times where I felt I had read chapters and chapters of words without the story moving forward. The book isn't altogether unenjoyable, but is far too long for the story being told.  I'll definitely be looking for something that can manage a good story in a shorter length for my next read.

Today's update is a little overdue, but I managed to see some great films over the past couple of weeks.  Here are my thoughts: The Hurt Locker - I really enjoyed this movie and hate that I had to wait so long to see it.  I'd love for Kathryn Bigelow to win the Best Direction Oscar for this.  The way she builds and uses tension in the story is amazing.

It's a little late, but here is my latest round-up of recently seen movies. Youth In Revolt - Michael Cera builds on his teenage virgin persona with a slightly darker turn.  It's not exactly a giant leap forward for him, but you can see some maturity here.  It's got a nice cast and does a good job of expressing the feeling of being young and wanting more out of your life. 500 Days of Summer - I'm so late to the game on this one, but I really enjoyed it.  Zooey Deschanel is so freaking lovable here, despite her flaws.  It's a good story (especially for people who get bored with a typical love story), and the leads have a lot of charm. Terminator Salvation - After months of hearing bad things about this movie, I had to give it a chance myself.  I didn't love it.  While the dark, apocolyptic tone was fitting, all of the characters were a bunch of super soldiers who lost their humanity and were difficult to care about.  In addition to this, the rapid paced MTV style editing was distracting and took me out of the story. The Fire Within - Another classic by Louis Malle.  The film tells the story of a recovering alcoholic who spends a day visiting various old friends in Paris in an attempt to find a reason to continue living.  Not one of my favorites by Malle, but it's strong and engaging. More film reviews

I've received many recommendations on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, so I finally picked it up and met the challenge of finishing it before Peter Jackson's film adaptation comes out this week. The novel tells the story of 15 year old Susie Salmon.  She's the oldest of 3 children and is an average teenager in 1973 Pennsylvania.  That is, until her murder.  There's no mystery to the reader regarding who the killer is.  It's addressed directly from the moment the act begins.  Instead, the mysteries in the story revolve around the actions of her family and friends in their grief, the police investigation, and the experiences Susie has in her afterlife. Much is written to describe the relationships between Susie, her mother and father, and her younger sister and brother, both before her death and after.  Susie watches over her family from her heaven, realizing that her mother gave up many dreams when she had a family, that her sister would struggle to be seen in her own identity, and that her father's grief and anger would not allow him to rest until Susie's murder was solved. As the police investigation begins, Sebold paints colorful descriptions of the neighbors in the town.  Ruana Singh, wife and mother of an Indian family on the Salmon's street, is exotic and mysterious.  The traits follow in her son, Ray, who becomes a suspect before a solid alibi clears him.  Classmate Ruth Connors, an outcast due to her intelligence and lack of social skills,  is touched by Susie's spirit and becomes fascinated with her experience. This brings me to George Harvey.  Harvey is the villain in the story who robs the town of Susie.  Harvey is described in creepy detail, and from the moment you start reading about him, you can't help but picture an amalgamation of every creepy weirdo you've ever known.  It's appalling when you discover the things Harvey has gotten away with.  It's painful when Susie's father knows Harvey is the murderer and is unable to prove it. Sebold does a great job of delivering the story.  She never tiptoes around painful, dark, or awkward moments, and the murder and investigation is described in grisly detail. It's interesting to see the trials the Salmon family faces as they grieve for the child they lost.  No one in the family is perfect, and as expected, everyone has moments where they nearly go off the deep end.  It's admirable when sister Lindsay manages to stop being the sister of the girl who died, and grows into a strong woman determined to support herself and her family.  It's disappointing when mother Abigail goes to drastic measures to escape her suffering.  Young brother Buckley grows up knowing the pain of losing his sister better than he ever knew her living.  All of this is told through Susie's eyes, and she watches them from Heaven. While I'm not wild about some of the casting, I'm anxious to see the movie adaptation.  Peter Jackson has done some amazing work (Lord of the Rings, Beautiful Creatures) and it will be interesting to see how he translates the novel. See more book reviews

Over New Years (and its requisite recovery time) I didn't make time to watch as many movies as I normally do in a given week.  Hopefully things will pick back up as life gets back to normal now that the holidays are over. Sherlock Holmes - As a 'Sherlock Holmes' movie, this worked much better than I thought it would.  As a 'Robert Downy, Jr' movie, it also works great.  RDJ is a fine actor and puts in a great performance here.  As a 'Guy Ritchie' movie, it's good; not great.  You can see shadows of Ritchie's gritty style, particularly in fight and action scenes, but it doesn't have quite the personality of some of his earlier work.  However, I applaud Ritchie for stretching out of his comfort zone and trying a film with a grander scale.  The lowlight of this film is Rachel McAdams.  I have nothing against her, but she could have been swapped out with any equivalent Hollywood actress and would have had the same affect.  An actress with stronger acting chops could have really added something here.

It was a busy week with Christmas, but here's a rundown of the movies I've seen recently: Up In the Air - Easily Jason Reitman's best film yet.  After seeing it, it's no surprise that so many critics have called this their favorite movie of 2009.  It's a very original story with fully-dimensional characters that never feel overwritten or overplayed.  It's timely, sincere and perfectly-cast, and it's one of my favorites of the year.  I'd recommend this film to everyone.

First of all, I'm aware that Dan Brown is often regarded with a high degree of snobbery from many readers.  As a writer, he doesn't really have a discernible style, and he's often chided for being unoriginal.  However, each of his previous books in his Robert Langdon series have flown off the shelves and been wildly successful. In Angels and Demons, as well as The Da Vinci Code, Brown takes an established conspiracy theory (and by established, I mean established by someone else), and creates a fast-paced adventure story to bring this theory to mainstream audiences.  Papal elections are mysterious, and have always fascinated people everywhere.  Brown uses this to his advantage in Angels and Demons.  In The Da Vinci Code, his exploration of the true holy grail gained the notice of  Christian groups, which only increased his exposure.  What makes these books entertaining isn't the writing, it's the ideas that Brown has borrowed. Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol, once again borrows some ideas as a basis for its story.  This time, Freemasons finally get center stage after mentions in both previous books.  The story sticks to Brown's formula of running from location to location, this time in Washington, D.C., running across various puzzles, solving each one before progressing to the next level.  The lines between science and religion team with the secrecy of the Freemasons to serve as a foundation for Robert Langdon's adventure. In the first two books of the Robert Langdon series, there was a pretty obvious formula to the layout of the stories.  In The Lost Symbol, this same formula is back, and is painfully obvious.  It's almost as if Brown has a standard outline, and just changes the names of the locations and characters in order to suit his latest conspiracy theory. Perhaps the most annoying thing about The Lost Symbol is Robert Langdon himself.  In the earlier books, Langdon is non-judgemental and encourages everyone he comes across to view every new idea or puzzle with an open mind.  In the latest installment, Langdon seems to regard the Freemasons as old kooks and is resistant to every new idea presented to him.  He's the exact opposite of his incarnation in the previous books.  There is no explanation for this in the story. Finally, where The Lost Symbol fails, is that the idea that provides the basis for the story just isn't all that interesting or groundbreaking.  Each revelation that is offered left me disappointed, and hoping that the next revelation would be better.  Unfortunately, that never happened, and once everything was revealed, it just wasn't satisfying.

With the cold, wet weather last week, I spent a lot of time indoors and managed to catch several movies. I did venture out over the weekend, however, to catch what was probably the most anticipated movie of the year. See my thoughts below:

Avatar - Along with pretty much everyone in the world, I saw this over the weekend. Caught it in 3D, and have to say that it is absolutely beautiful. This really moves how science fiction/fantasy movies are made forward. Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington are both great. The story is engaging, but much of it is predictable. It's not perfect, but the pros easily outweigh the cons.

Amarcord - Fellini's 1974 film tells the story of a small Italian town in the thirties. The characters are loud and colorful and fun to watch.

Grace - After a woman loses her unborn child, she continues to carry full-term. She's surprised to find out after delivering that the child survived, but has a taste for human blood. The film is beautifully shot with great use of color, but I would have liked a little more story.

Friday the 13th (2009) - This remake was pure crap and I don't have much else to say about it.

Black Christmas - The Christmas horror classic where sorority girls are terrorized by a prank-calling killer. It's hard to believe this is from the same director who brought us A Christmas Story, Bob Clark.

Image courtesy of Sci Fi Scoop.

Super Quick Movie Reviews #2

Super Quick Movie Reviews #1

After a recent second viewing of the film adaptation of Michal Chabon's novel Wonder Boys, I was inspired to read the novel itself.  I tend to do this often; while many people read the book first, then see the movie once it's adapted, on several occasions I've found myself reading the source material after checking out the movie.  Maybe it's a product of not reading enough when I was younger. The novel (and subsequently, the film) tells the story of Grady Tripp, a quickly aging writer who has worked as a professor for a Pittsburgh university for the past 7 years.  This is also the amount of time he has spent writing his book (also called Wonder Boys, thus the title of the novel).  While Tripp has taught student writers of varying degrees of skill and output, his own novel has ballooned to a 2,000 plus page behemoth.  As the story opens, Tripp's editor Terry Crabtree (portrayed vividly in the film by Robert Downey, Jr.) pays a visit for the university's annual WordFest, and expects an update on the state of Tripp's latest masterwork.  Tripp also discovers that his mistress (the university's chancellor) is pregnant with his child.  All of this takes place on the very day that Tripp's wife, Emily, leaves him. To complicate matters further for our hero, he experiences a string of misadventures with an alienated but talented student, James Leer.  James is a bit of an outcast.  Instead of bonding with fellow students or other writers, he identifies with 40's era cinema in order to escape from his sheltered upbringing.  The comic escapades begin when Leer crashes a party at the chancellor's house, and in an attempt to rescue an assaulted Tripp, he shoots the chancellor's husband's blind dog.  Tripp assumes responsibility and the two of them escape before the dog's murder is detected.  Ultimately, Tripp decides to allow Leer to accompany him on a quest to have a discussion with his estranged wife on their future, while discovered that shooting the dog is not Leer's only crime. Once I began reading, I was surprised to discover just how closely the film follows the novel.  The timeline, many of the character descriptions, even a good amount of the dialogue are taken directly from the source.  This has been a rarity in many of the film adaptations I've seen.  The story sticks very close, until branching out when Tripp and Leer travel to the home of Emily's parents to celebrate Passover.  This makes a large portion of the story arc in the novel.  It's altered and greatly condensed in the film, and while the film doesn't suffer from the changes, it makes for wonderful reading in the novel.  These chapters tell you much more about Tripp's relationship with his wife and her family, and inject Leer into a family atmosphere that, while still dysfunctional, is much warmer than the oppressive family dynamic he's known. Ultimately, it's a story of life, love, loss, drugs, treasured memorabilia, and even transvestitism.  Each character is likable, even when it's revealed that most of them have committed some despicable actions.  Chabon's writing style is fairly straight forward, but he also adds a bit of flavor with injections of colorful descriptions and wit that doesn't become pretentious.  Whether or not you've seen the film, I'd definitely recommend the novel for a fun and interesting read. See more book reviews. Image courtesy of Access Hollywood