Eight Months of Misc Reviews*

* - Sort of a grab-bag of reviews from 2007-ish. Documented!

Wow. Clearly, I've been remiss in the whole "review-writing" game. The whole "have well-articulated, profound thoguhts about the media I encounter" game. Sigh. These things happen. Backtracking and writing compelte reviews of the past eight months of movies and lit would be an unendurable chore, so instead, I'm going to throw a laundry list of reviews in here and update all of the appropriate pages and links. So a big fat caveat: these are pathetic reviews. One to two sentences max (unless, of course, I feel like going beyond that). I'm also going to just use a 1-10 scale (really, it's 10, 20, 30, etc. scale) so I don't have to overthink the ratings on these things I haven't seen in a few months. Maybe I'll tweak the ratings at some later date. But the point is to throw in, make sure I get my Art Garfunkel on and maintain a list of the books I've read / movies I've seen in these exciting years. So here goes.

Books
What's Your Dangerous Idea?
Rating: NR
A bevy of interesting entries from your friends at Edge on controversial topics. Several are way out there, and it's a little heavy on the materialist/detereministic side, but a good chance to view things from multiple perspectives.
The Keep
Rating: 50
Meta / pomo narrative about a castle and a prison tutor. Fantasy part: good, jail part: meh.
The Emperor's Children
Rating: 55
Verbosely written and well-constructed plot about spoiled new yorkers about whom you don't care about. Booty was a tool; 9/11 was a surprisingly cliche twist.
Betting Baseball
Rating: 30
Anecdotal account of a bettor's baseball season. Some interesting tidbits, but his "system" is pretty ear-y.
Collapse
Rating: NR
Excellently researched tome by Jared Diamond of Guns Germs & Steel fame. Surprisingly boring, though the theory was great.
Underworld
Rating: 90
See my Lenny Bruce paper. Postmodern masterpiece.
Harry Potter 7
Rating: 50
Pretty tired story by this point - definitely got bogged down by being away from Hogwarts. Still good to see thigns come to their fruition.
Falling Man
Rating: 60
More cosmopolitis-y fiction from Delillo. Best for its "from inside the tower" scenes which are spectacular, but the detached dialog detracted from the humanity.
Primer on Postmodernism
Rating: NR
Good intro to pomo concepts, oddly written by something of a conservative christian. The conclusion - "we must reject this" - was profoundly absurd.
Beloved
Rating: 90
Fantastic work, dreamy and passionate, though I will always question how much of its impact is indebted to its topic. An American classic, no doubt.
Rabbit, Run
Rating: 90
Speaking of American classics - the cold reality of 1950s suburbia and the familial pain rendered by personal freedom. Brilliant work.
American Pastoral
Rating: 80
Another great one, though this book's genius is somewhat curtailed by its simplistic order / choas dichotomy. The stoic pain endured by the swede is rendered beautifully.
Genre & Television
Rating: NR
Briallint account of the fleeting yet narrative-connected nature of genre definitions in television. Fabulous account of the the "Golden Age" of cartoons in particular.
The Brief & Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Rating: 75
Pomo fiction intertwining the historical DR with the life of an overweight, nerdy hero. The ending was not good - a little too manipulative and convenient - but the trip was fantastic.
Drown
Rating: 70
Seemingly autobiographical accoutns from Junot Diaz who wrote Oscar as well. Startlingly bleak portrayal of the fallacious American dream.
Miles Davis
Rating: NR
Biography of the Jazz legend. Great read, though puzzling at times for the excuses it made for Davis. Especially odd - the half page "he was bisexual" toss off. EH???
Atonement
Rating: 75
A much better than saturday entry from Mckewan about a horrific misidentity in the time of WWII. The meta-ending was predictable.
The Corrections
Rating: 80
Deeply felt, painful rendition of familial dysfunction, miscommunication and incompatibility. The east coast v. Midwestern mindset protrayal was haunting.
Rabbit Redux
Rating: 75
The sex-infused sequel captures the time well at the expense of a compeltely absurd set of circumstances and actions by the protagonist. Rich, vivid, but kind of cheap.
Bob Dylan and Philosophy
Rating: NR
A sometimes-highlighted collection of essays that delves into way too much "hey look at this lyric" comparisons to philosophers.
Musicophilia
Rating: 30
Painfully anecdotal text with a few interesting tidbits but that for the most part just highlights Sacks' own love of classical music and the neuroscience tendency to play the correspondance map game with the brain. Very repetitive and boring for the entire second half.
Beware of God
Rating: 70
Shalom Auslander's colection of humorous short stories which are quite obviously disguised anecdotes from his orthodox jewish upbringing.
Foreskin's Lament
Rating: 75
Obvious because they overlap a lot with this memoir of his - this deeply felt remembrance wanes a little toward the end, but overall gives a very honest accoutn with a nice now and then framework.
2007 Non-Req'd Reading
Rating: NR
Oy. The usual great collection of miscellany from the past year. highlights include a Conan O'Brien graduation speech, a chilling account of soldier life in baghdad... and many others.
Movies
Eastern Promises
Rating: 65
Good movie about russian mob in England that has one particularly intense and famous scene. Worth it just for that.
Michael Clayton
Rating: 65
Lawyer / corporation piece featuring some nice work from conflicted gofer George Clooney.
Gone Baby Gone
Rating: 35
Stupid period/place piece featuring "authentic boston" and an idiotic central story line. Really disappointing.
No Country for Old Men
Rating: 85
A GOOD period/place piece from the Coens. It's a remake of a McCarthy novel and carries all the moral ambiguity - or at least alternate definitions - he writes. Its elegance is its strength.
Juno
Rating: 60
Super-actress driven indie flick with some questionable dialog choices, an underdeveloped relationship, but overall some feel-good and feel-bad dynamics that make it worth-while.
Grindhouse: Planet Terror
Rating: 80
Hot damn! It's Dawn til Dusk without the annoying buildup - just pure overthetop nihilistic insanity. Exceptionally well done grindhouse homage.
Grindhouse: Death Proof
Rating: 75
Ditto - I didn't enjoy this one quite as much - but the car chase for car chase sake's aspect was brilliant in its own right.
Monkeybone
Rating: 75
A classic psych farce if you ask me. Beck begs to differ.
Children of Men
Rating: 60
An excellently filmed, interesting piece that fell alittle flat for me (particularly in the end scenes).
Reign On Me
Rating: 55
Surprisingly well done Adam Sandler / Cheadle vehicle that unfortunately contained some of the stupidest court scenes in recent memory. The 9/11 exploitation adds an intersting element.
Ocean's Thirteen
Rating: 55
Better than 2, not as good as 1. Exactly what you'd expect, but the charm has worn off for use.
Next
Rating: 0
Ladies and Gents - I now present the "Worse than Premonition" Award. Nic Cage and Jessica Biel vomit on your brain. Wow bad. So bad it's so good that it just becomes bad again. We're talking WOW BAD.
Cars
Rating: 65
Cute little Pixar ditty. Not their best, but not bad.
Hoodwinked
Rating: 55
Cute little mixed fairy tale animated work.
Harlem Nights
Rating: 55
Better than you would have thought. Eddie Murphy and Pryor make a great team.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Rating: 50
The structure is interesting, and ubernaked Marisa Tomei was a clear presence, but Beck nails this when she says that PSH's "ACTING" gets annoying after awhile. There was a lot that was unbuyable about this movie, though it should be noted that my man Ethan Hawke was FANTASTIC.
This concludes the brief, pointless review part of the show. Hope you enjoyed.