Somusing

Based on a book by Thornton Wilder (author of Our Town ), this film is about five people who die when a bridge collapses, and a Franciscan monk who investigates their deaths for evidence of God's design, uncovering their secrets and connections with each other along the way. It takes place in Peru in the early 1700s. It's weird to see European culture in Peru--I mean, of course the Catholic church was everywhere and has been for a long time, but the huge, ornate European-style buildings and carriages and clothes and wigs--did they have to bring those? But I guess I can't blame the Church for that, or not exclusively. Of course this was Spain in Peru, so it was probably an unholy marriage of Church and State, and in that case, I can blame the Church. Anyway, it was pretty interesting, although it took a while for me to figure out what was happening. A lot of great actors (Gabriel Byrne, Robert de Niro, Kathy Bates, F. Murray Abraham), but some of them seemed like they ...

I've read Candide before, but I thought I might get more out of it this time around. I don't know if I did, though. Voltaire is brilliantly funny, of course. And I think I understood the historical context a little better this time. From what I've read recently about Candide , it wasn't so much Leibniz's philosophy ("this is the best of all possible worlds") he was making fun of as it was the general understanding of that philosophy. And one follower of Leibniz in particular, Christian Wolff, simplified his philosophy excessively, and this is what Voltaire was responding to. That's just what I've read recently. So I got more of the historical stuff this time, but not that much more. I wish I had an annotated edition that would just tell me what he's referring to. Like the part where he said someone committed a murder, not like the murder of May of 1610, but like that of December 1594. What is he talking about? I don't know, and my five...

I liked this movie quite a bit. The main character, Damian, is a little boy who reads and knows everything about Catholic saints, and sometimes he converses with them, always greeting them with their name and dates of birth and death. It made me want to read more about the saints. The story is good, too. Damian finds a huge duffle bag full of money, and he and his brother hide it and have very different ideas about how to spend the money. There is a very interesting but strange portrayal of LDS people in the movie. I wonder if they were included just because of the Saints thing, and if it's based on someone's brief contact with missionaries or something. There are three youngish men who live together in a house in the new development the boys live in. They're dressed like missionaries and one of them carries what looks like a Book of Mormon in one scene. No nametags, though, and one of the men explains at one point that they live in a special "community" wi...

I read a Lorna Landvik novel every now and then just for fun. It's fun while the book lasts, and then I pretty much forget it. This one I read in just over 24 hours. I don't know what's wrong with me. Why do I think I can spend so much time reading while the house falls apart around me? Well, at least everyone got fed. At first I wondered if I was going to finish this one, since the characters are fairly mean to each other. But I liked the 11-year-old daughter character (the story is told by five different narrators, which I enjoyed), so I kept going. And it did get better. I guess it was okay. I think Reading Group Discussion Guides, found at the end of many books these days, are pretentious and annoying, though, and this one had one. I can't quite keep myself from reading them, though. Jon thinks the cover is one of the worst he's ever seen (although the cover of Orson Scott Card's new one, Magic Street , is much worse, in my opinion. And the book is ho...

This is a psychological thriller about a mall security guy (John Turturro) whose wife was murdered in the mall parking lot, and now he's obsessed with watching security tapes and trying to figure out who did it and why. The cinematography is very good, and I liked the music. It's pretty slow-moving, but it managed to scare me. But I'm a wimp when it comes to scary movies, so that probably doesn't mean much. The movie does not have a definitive ending, and while there are some interesting possibilities about what really happened, I was discouraged to read later that the director (a Danish guy who also co-wrote it) admitted that there's no ending. I'd like there to be a right answer, so that after Jon and I discuss it, we can check to see if we were right. Apparently that can't happen with this movie. (And actually, while I'd like to have right answers to things, there often aren't, if there's any ambiguity at all. Jon and some fellow Mam...

This was mildly amusing and pleasant enough to watch. Wanda Sykes was surprisingly funny. The character of the guy was sort of invisible, but I think that was intentional, since it's about J-Lo and Jane Fonda. Well, about the characters they played, anyway. Though it does seem that J-Lo movies are made for us to look at J-Lo and all her pretty clothes. We can never resist the special features, and they were good on this 2 DVD set (is two DVDs really necessary for such an inconsequential movie?). Even the section called "Documentaries," which confused us at first, (because what is there to make a documentary about?), had some great stuff in it. The various actors are funnier in their interviews than they were in the film.

I finished it! All 980 pages of it. And I enjoyed it. I guess I've been out of escape fiction mode for a while now, so it took me some time to get into it. Over 200 pages, I think. Originally I thought that her most recent books just needed better editing, and maybe they do, but now I think the problem is also that I've forgotten how to read that kind of immersive, detailed writing. It can be a really fun way to read, if you want to escape into another time and/or place. I guess that's why I call it escape fiction. But these days it seems cumbersome and sometimes cliched to me. Don't get me wrong! I still want to escape sometimes, but I guess I've learned that it doesn't really work: after reading for 8 hours, all the kids and housework are still there and in worse shape than before. So instead of doing the marathon reading thing I used to do, I took my time finishing this one. One thing I thought was odd: a couple of scenes that were like The Three Stoog...