What I Watched -- Joyeux Noel

This is an amazing story, because it's true!  I actually have a book about it: Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, but as with most of the books I own, I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.  This movie came out in 2005 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, though it lost the award to Tsotsi, which I also saw some years ago.

Joyeux Noel is the story of how a few brave people can make a difference.  Every once in a while, humanity wins.

It's sentimental and a bit sappy, but in this case it's forgivable because it's real.  They really did sing, they really did exchange food and drink, they really did have joint Christmas services, they really did play soccer, they really did share stories about their families, they really did take shelter in each others' trenches when the artillery shelling started up again.  Incredible.

Bottom line: a great story, especially on a really hot or cold night.  It's either wishful thinking or immersion therapy.

Goal #18

Goal #18: Do something physical every day.

This coaching business has made me pretty lazy, because I spend the time I would normally work out watching other people work out instead.  This week I'm going to try to get my butt back in gear, at least a little bit.  A low gear.

Recap of Goal #17: success on all counts.  Contacts have been merged, information edited, notes made.

What I Watched -- 96 Minutes

[SPOILER ALERT: Don't follow any of the links with info on the real events if you don't want to find out some of the details of the end of the movie!]

T and I went to another screening a few days ago, this time for a film called 96 Minutes.  It was written and directed by WashU alum Aimee Lagos, and it was really good.

The story was inspired by real events to which Lagos was connected.  While she was at WashU studying Social Thought and Analysis (yes, apparently that was a major), she worked tutoring city kids, some of whom were involved in the carjacking incident.  The victims were WashU students.  The Post-Dispatch briefs the actual events here; I found this article in a neurology journal online, and it appears to be by the father of one of the kids involved.

Without giving too much away, the film starts two pairs of kids, each in their own worlds.  Carley and Lena are college students with promising futures, though they're both a little lacking in terms of direction and parental support.  Dre and Kevin have lived a tough urban life, also with largely absent parents.  Dre is days from his high school graduation and wants to leave his childhood behind him; his cousin Kevin will do anything he needs to in order to be accepted into the local gang.  The film progresses non-linearly - in the present, the carjacking has already happened and you're on the edge of your seat waiting to see how things end; the flashback scenes march inevitably towards the carjacking itself.

The film stars Brittney Snow as Carley and Evan Ross as Dre; both are fantastic.  David Oyelowo acts well as the only real adult character in the film, and the one who brings some hope to the whole depressing story.

Bottom line: a frustratingly well-told tale which manages to at least open a discussion about class and urban issues.

Salvage the Bones -- Take 2

It took me a while to get started on it, but once I did it didn't take me long to finish Salvage the Bones.  It's an unfortunate tale, the story of a pregnant 15-year-old and her family who live in the poverty-stricken coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi.

Normally this wouldn't really be my type of story, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.  While it still isn't my favorite general topic, I did enjoy this book.  It's compelling.  The chapters count the days, and we know that what's coming is Hurricane Katrina, like a countdown to disaster.  We saw the news footage and we know what kind of destruction the storm will bring, but our characters do not.

There's one passage of the book that I thought was particularly well-written, even though it's not the most affecting.  In it, Esch and her brother Skeetah are tending to Skeetah's dog and her puppies in the shed while another brother Randall and their dad use their tractor to tear down a chicken coop in the yard outside.  I love how the two settings play off each other, with repeated language and images:

"
There is a crack of wood and then a metal whine as Randall presses the gas again and the tractor jerks forward.  'Hold it! You got chicken wire stuck in the grille.'

Daddy tugs at the wire, pulls at the grille and the hood.  He yanks, leans forward so far he almost puts his face in the grille, detangles, and then he begins pulling at the wire again.  Randall is still.

'Do it,' Skeetah commands China.

China's ears are flat as plastic knives laid on her head and her mouth is wet and pink as uncooked chicken, except where the bone shows.  She is quivering, her muscles beset by a multitude of tics.  She is shaking all over, now eye to eye with Skeetah, seemingly ignoring the dirt-red puppy rounding her bowl, waddling for milk.  He is the one that is a model of the father, of Kilo; he is the fattest, the most well fed, the bully.  Turgid with the promise of living.  When their eyes eventually open, I think that he will be the first.

The tractor idles and the engine turns, sounds as if it going to move.

'Don't do it!' Daddy yells against his tugging, but his grunts eat the Don't, and I don't know what Randall hears, but he lets up on the brake and slips it in gear, and the tractor eases forward.  'Stop!' Daddy yells.  He is pulling back, his hand clenched in the wire, and he twists so hard his arm looks long and ropy.

The red puppy creeps forward, rounds China's bowl, noses her tit.  China is rolling, rising.  The rumble of the tractor is her growl.  Her toes are pointed, her head is raised.  Skeetah falls back.  The red puppy undulates toward her; a fat mite.  China snaps forward, closes her jaw around the puppy's neck as she does when she carries him, but there is no gentleness in it.  She is all white eyes.  She is chewing.  She is whipping him through the air like a tire eaten too short for Skeetah to grab.

'Stop!' Skeetah yells.  'Stop!'

Randall puts the tractor in gear, switches it to park, but the small hillock the coop is on pulls the tractor back as the engine idles.

'No!' Daddy calls.

Daddy flings his hand free.  There is oil on it.  He holds to his chest.  His shirt is covered in oil.  Daddy's jaw is slack.  He is walking toward the light of the shed.  The oil on his T-shirt turns red.  The sound coming out his open mouth is like growling.

'No!' Skeetah calls.

The blood on Daddy's shirt is the same color as the pulpy puppy in China's mouth.
"

Gruesome, but very well done.  Also, consider yourself warned that there is some other gruesome stuff here, notably a dog fight.  Reading this book is like watching the proverbial train wreck: you just can't look away, even though you want to.

Fahrenheit 451 -- Take 2

I finished Fahrenheit 451 in time for my book club, and I have to say, it was shorter than I remembered it being.  I remembered odd things about the plot as well: a river near the end, and about the mechanical dog.

But I forgot a lot of the details, including the finer points of the social commentary.  I especially like the portion near the middle where Guy Montag meets with  Faber, the old man who loves books and has a number of them secreted away.

You know what?  I actually don't really have a review for this book.  I liked it.  It has lots of social commentary about oppressive regimes and people as sheep.  And it's a suspenseful story.  Thumbs up.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Complete Persepolis

I know I still owe you a couple of reviews of books I've already read, and I'll get to those.  But for now, I have a new book for book club: The Complete Persepolis.  Pesepolis is a graphic novel, and it originally came out as two books.

Persepolis was also made into a film a few years ago.  It got impressive reveiws and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.

What I Watched -- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is certainly...something.  It's another Joss Whedon production (yes, the same Joss Whedon of Buffy, Firefly, and Dollhouse fame).  Dr. Horrible stars Neil Patrick Harris as the title character, but it is not with Whedon's fave actor (and perennial cutie) Nathan Fillion, who plays Dr. Horrible's nemesis.  (As an aside, he has a more recent movie out called The Cabin in the Woods which I know nothing about, but I've heard you should keep it that way because pretty much anything you hear would be a spoiler.  So it exists, and from what I can tell, it's super weird.  That's all.)

Back to Dr. Horrible.  It's a short series, only three episodes, each about 15 minutes long.  They're all on YouTube for your viewing pleasure: Act 1; Act 2; Act 3.  There's also a full version, but somehow the punctuated acts seem more appropriate to the "sing-along blog" format.

And that's exactly what it is: an online, tongue-in-cheek sing-along!  It's wacky and fabulous and dumb.  And hilarious.

Random Links

I'm a dynamo.  How about you?

Prank call.

Dog.

Ever since investigating Lambert Wilson's music after seeing him in Of Gods and Men, I have been obsessed with this song!  I have no idea what they're singing about (okay, that's not true; I have an idea), but it's so catchy anyway!

Surprisingly addicting geography game.

Radio drama is a medium rarely used anymore.  A new APM podcast called The Truth is bringing it back.  You can listen to their pilot episode, "Moon Graffiti," here.

International Photography Hall of Fame comes to St. Louis.

Since I already posted a cat video, I might as well go whole hog with some cat-and-dog pics.

Goal #17

Goal #17: clean up Gmail contacts.

I'm giving myself an easy one this week.  This is the digital version of going through your address book, erasing old addresses, checking for duplicates, etc.  My contacts have gotten kind of messy, there are a lot of people who need to be tagged or deleted, etc.  This week I'll fix that!

Recap of Goal #16: I polished my necklaces.  I didn't get to the bracelets yet.  But still, that's progress!

What I Watched -- Three Days (of Hamlet)

Wednesday night, T and I went to see what was basically a test screening of the movie Three Days (of Hamlet) (Facebook) at the Tivoli.

As the website says, it's "a film about a documentary about a play."  Alex Hyde-White (son of the famous comedic British actor Wilfred Hyde-White, better known as Colonel Pickering) decided to get a group of actors together, and give them three days to rehearse and perform Hamlet.  The coming-together of the cast (which included Richard Chamberlain) was a focus of the movie, as well each of the actor's individual take on the focus or purpose of the project.

Cut in with that, though, is footage of Alex's father and children overlaid by Alex's commentary about their relationship. Those scenes plays off the father themes in Hamlet, and that's the link that holds it all together

In his Q&A after the movie, Alex Hyde-White, whose manner of speaking is precise and measured and flows in a very British rhythm probably learned from his father (his mother was American actress Ethel Drew) greeted the crowd and patiently listened as people regaled him with stories of their days as Shakespearean actors.  And he answered a few questions too, mostly about the process of getting the movie made.

Frankly, he was such a pleasure to listen to, I have to say that if not for the scenes from Hamlet, the Q&A would have been as entertaining as the movie.  But, as with any Shakespeare, it steals the show.

Bottom line: Hamlet was great, and the three day limitation was an interesting idea.  I understand why Alex used that story as a parallel to his relationship with his father, but I missed some of the import of that personal perspective.  Possibly it isn't quite universal enough.