Kat’s Film and Book Reviews

This montage was aired on CBS a few years ago, and someone set it to music.  Merry Christmas!

The House of the Scorpion

Nancy Farmer

Scholastic 2002: 380 pages

Image courtesy of BYU English Department

Some things are just glimmers in the imagination…today. But tomorrow they could form the basis of a brave new world where people of the future pay for the hubris and bad judgment of an earlier generation—usually the generation living at the time of the writing. The best speculative fiction rests on this premise, and an author must have a thorough and intuitive knowledge not of what will happen, but of what is happening now. If someone really understands what’s happening in the labs, boardrooms, and voting chambers of a society, it doesn’t take much more work to envision how things soon will be.

Nancy Farmer, a three-time Newberry Honor author, has created the world of our great-grandchildren with just such deep understanding. Her 2002 National Book Award winning novel, The House of the Scorpion, takes several scientific, political, and social issues of the early 21^st century and weaves them around one boy…or perhaps it is more accurate to say “boy.” His name is Matteo Alacràn, and the status of his humanity is not resolved until the end, at least in his own mind. His story incorporates the all-too-familiar themes of cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, terrorism, illegal immigration, encroaching socialism, government corruption, drug trafficking, human enslavement, religion, poverty and privilege, dysfunctional families, and child-rearing.

This may sound like too many too-big themes for one young adult novel, but it’s not. In real life, people and issues touch each other, and this is the case in the life of young Matt. At the beginning of the novel, which takes place at some unspecified time in the future, Matt is six years old and living alone in an isolated house on an opium plantation. His only companion is Celia, the cook up at the Big House. The Big House is home to El Patròn, the drug lord who owns this plantation and is one of the most powerful men in the country of Opium. El Patròn, whose name is also Matteo Alacràn, is rich and powerful enough to have anything he wants, including clones of himself to use as he chooses.

Young Matt learns that he is one such clone.

In the world of the novel, clones are treated not as humans, but as pets at best. But El Patròn’s clone is a cherished piece of property, so Matt is simultaneously spoiled and abhorred by those around him. The result is a character who is deeply flawed but also entirely sympathetic, and the reader turns page after page in the hopes that the little bit of love Matt does receive, from the cook and a body guard and a young girl, will help him become the person he will need to be. If he is to be a person, that is.

About two-thirds of the way through, the novel takes an unexpected turn. It is a plot development reminiscent of the hobbits’ return to the ravaged Shire in Tolkien’s Return of the King, and sometimes leaves the reader wondering if this part was necessary to the resolution of Matt’s story. But like Tolkien, Farmer needed to show that the consequences of choices reach far beyond our own lives, and therefore so must the solutions. Since El Patron’s choices affected people far beyond the borders of Opium, so would Matt’s.

If Nancy Farmer’s vision of the consequences of our actions is in any way accurate, future generations will have a great struggle ahead of them. In The House of the Scorpion, Farmer shows how those battles might be won. Power, greed, and corruption may win some of them, but love, courage and hope win the war.

Brittany Murphy, best known for her roles in Clueless and 8 Mile, died this morning at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.  She was 32.

Image Courtesy of the Insider.com

Details are still sketchy, but at this point the official word is that Murphy died of cardiac arrest.  And, really, it’s not unheard of for a young woman to have a heart attack; I know a 17-year-old woman who had a heart attack a few months ago.  But when a person dies of  heart troubles so young, the unspoken implication is that drugs are involved (as was the case with my 17-year-old acquaintance).  Nobody is saying that about Murphy at this point.  I haven’t exactly been following her career closely (though 8 Mile is one of my favorite movies), so I can’t be sure about that.

Murphy herself has denied any drug use.  This is from an article in Entertainment Weekly:

Murphy had been plagued by tabloid rumors of drug abuse in recent years. After appearing as a speed addict in the 2002 film Spun, Murphy was dogged by speculation that her extreme weight loss was due to a cocaine dependency. She denied the rumors in Jane Magazine in 2005. “No, just for the record I have never tried it in my entire life, I’ve never even seen it, and I don’t leave the house too much, except to go to work.”

Still, she has been interviewed recently and sounded excited, happy, and looking forward to the future.  She married in 2007, and was quoted just a few weeks ago as saying she’d like to have a child.  “As far as having a New Year’s resolution, I’d love to have a child next year,” she said at the time. “But that’s kind of a large one!”

Here is an article from EW, profiling Murphy’s 10 Best Film Roles.  We just watched Clueless the other night; it’s one of my daughters’ favorites.  She was great, and critically acclaimed, in her role in 8 Mile, too.  She was also an accomplished musician, and I just found out she played Luanne in “King of the Hill!”  What a multi-talented person!

Image Courtesy of AceShowbiz.com

I’ll try to keep updated if any more news comes out.  Right now our condolences go to her husband, her mother, and all of her family and friends.  Rest in peace, Brittany.

Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Jones died Thursday at her home in Malibu.

Jones in Duel in the Sun, courtesy of movieactors.com

My first exposure to Jones came through my love for Fred Astaire.  Some trivia game I was playing asked, “Who was Fred Astaire’s last on-screen dance partner?”  The answer was Jennifer Jones, with whom he danced in her very last role in the 1974 movie The Towering Inferno. I saw the scene sometime later, and it’s just a sweet slow dance between an older couple.  Very nice.

Jones won her Oscar for her first major movie role, playing St. Bernadette in the 1943 the movie The Song of Bernadette (not “The Son of Bernadette,” as some sources have erroneously reported it.  C’mon, people!).  She was nominated for the Oscar four more times after that, and quit working in films after making A Farewell to Arms in 1957.  She did, however, return for that last dance with Astaire in 1974.

Courrtesy of Youimobile.com

She married 3rd husband Norton Simon in 1971, and they lived chiefly in India and SouthEast Asia.  Jones fell in love with the art of the region and began an extensive collection that soon became the core of the Norton Simon Museum’s collection of art.  She ran the museum from the time of his death in 1993 until 2003, but remained on the board and active in museum affairs.

Jones’  life was not all perfect, however.  She had one daughter with producer David O. Selznik, Mary, who committed suicide at age 22 by jumping out of a window.  Jones’ grief at this event caused her to attempt suicide herself.  After her recovery, and keeping in mind all the struggles Mary had faced with her mental illnesses, Jones began to direct her considerable wealth toward supporting mental health causes and research.  She was also a strong supporter of cancer research and the arts.

Jones with Astaire in The Towering Inferno, courtesy of movieactors.com

Her grace, class, and inner and outer beauty will be missed.  Rest in peace.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Directed by Chris Weitz

Rated PG-13

2009

Image courtesy of The Twilight Guide

When the first Twilight movie came out a year ago, and was such a hit that the sequels were immediately greenlighted, there was one big question on everyone’s mind.

Who would play Jacob Black?

Jacob is, of course, the male protagonist in New Moon, and his character appeared briefly in Twilight. Taylor Lautner, wearing a long dark wig, played the role of Bella’s Native American friend…fine. He was good. I liked him, and I thought he did the part justice. He certainly looks a lot like I’d imagined Jacob.

But in New Moon, Jacob is a lot more than a dark-skinned buddy. He has far more face time than Bella’s vampire boyfriend, Edward, who leaves Bella in a misguided attempt to protect her from himself and his kind. When Bella falls apart, Jacob is there for her. He’s best friend, lifeline, and the one who helps Bella in her ill-advised escapades. The relationship between these two is deep, warm, loving, and compelling.

Plus also, Jacob has gotten huge. He’s developed serious muscles and grown several inches. That was the kicker…could baby-faced Lautner pull off that? Not just the appearance, not just the acting, but the sheer physical requirements of the role?

Lautner set out to prove that he could do it. He worked out tirelessly, taking his body from a slender 16-year-old’s to a Mr. Teen Universe 17-year old’s. He isn’t extremely tall, but he matches Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, and that’s all that matters. Besides, since Jacob isn’t the only buff Quileute, it must be a casting director’s nightmare to try to find a half-dozen 7-foot-tall muscle bound Native American actors. Six feet tall seems to have sufficed.

That wasn’t all that Lautner did. He read the books. He studied Jacob’s character, his feelings, his motivations. He worked with an acting coach to get deep inside Jacob, to understand him, and to make that understanding show on the screen.

Obviously, Taylor Lautner really, really wanted to play Jacob. So director Chris Weitz took the chance, and re-cast him in the role.

Thank you, Mr. Weitz! Something happened to Lautner between Twilight and New Moon. He attained new depths of his craft—and managed to communicate humor, angst, fear, rage, violence and tenderness vividly, all without a shirt on.

In short, 17-year-old Taylor Lautner carries this movie on his muscular shoulders.

Sure, there are other good performances. Kristen Stewart finally has some emotion to work with, so her portrayal of Bella is deeper and more evocative than before. Robert Pattinson isn’t on screen much, and the parts that he does have are cut by the screen play, but he does a good job of portraying the terror, temptation and heartbreak Edward goes through—at least as much as he’s allowed to.

I think that Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg give the Cullens short shrift for the most part, so they can spend more time on Jacob and his relationship with Bella. That’s too bad, because the scenes with the vampires set up the whole rest of the movie—and are vital to understanding the sequel, Eclipse.

There was one scene with the Cullens that stands out, however. After Bella is injured at her birthday party, Carlisle, the vampire dad and doc played by Peter Facinelli, takes her away from the other vamps to stitch her up. They have a quiet and gentle conversation, in which Carlisle explains to Bella why Edward is so reluctant to change her into a vampire. The common understanding is that vampires are damned, that they no longer have souls, and Edward refuses to rob Bella of hers. The scene cut some important stuff from the book, but the connection between Bella and Carlisle is very moving.

But when it comes to the Quileutes (and I’m just gonna give the secret away here—the young Quileute men are werewolves, okay?), the whole pack, led by Jacob (performance-wise, I mean—Jacob isn’t actually the Alpha) simply shines. This is where Weitz did his best work. The wolfpack actors make the most out of small supporting roles, they look hot shirtless, they’re both funny and menacing, and they photograph extremely well. Both the drive to protect and the incipient violence are offered in equally believable measures.

The heart of the movie is, of course, this love-triangle of sorts. Bella pines for Edward, and while we don’t see much of it on screen, Edward is also falling apart without Bella. But Bella, at least, has Jacob, while Edward is utterly alone. It’s no wonder, then, that when Edward thinks Bella has killed herself, he wants to follow her into oblivion.

In the meantime, while Edward is Bella’s one true love, she comes to lean on Jacob more and more, and his feelings for her develop and strengthen. He knows she’s wounded, but he falls in love with her, anyway. And she loves him, too, in her own damaged way. But Edward is always first in her heart, and when he needs her, she leaves Jacob and goes to him. That scene beautifully parallels the scene in the beginning of the film where Edward leaves Bella. Jacob begs Bella not to go, just as Bella begged Edward not to go. Bella leaves Jacob, anyway, just as Edward left her. And the result is heartbreak for everyone.

Besides the Quileute werewolves, another exciting group of characters enters the picture in this installment. The Volturi are a group of powerful vampires who administer the laws in the vampire world. They also mete out the punishments, and Edward goes to them to ask them to kill him.

The most prominent and notable of the Volturi is the character Aro, the head of the group, played by Michael Sheen. He was wonderful, and somehow managed to convey delight, interest, and bloodthirst in the same expressions. For a minute I really thought he was going to eat Bella!

Dakota Fanning, as the young sadistic vampire Jane, did justice to the role. There are only so many ways an actor can convey something that’s entirely mental, but her pain-inflicting red-eyed death glare did a pretty good job. She portrayed the authority and confidence of someone who knows she holds all the cards and always will.

There are weaknesses in the film, of course. I wanted Edward and Bella both to suffer more. In the book, they are wrecks, though we see more of Bella’s wreckage. But we didn’t see the depths of her devastation like we should have. I don’t think that it was Stewart’s fault; I think that Rosenberg was in too much of a rush to get to the werewolves and shirtless Jacob (and I guess I can’t blame her…).

The makeup was much better than last time, but gorgeous Nikki Reed, playing ultra-gorgeous Rosalie, looked odd in her blonde wig—why not just dye her hair blonde? And there was not nearly enough Emmett! His line about Bella being an older woman was awesome, but he should have had more. His part, like most of the Cullens’ was rushed through by the writer.

But kudos to the makeup people for how Edward appeared in the Volturi scene—except for the fact that he had gold eyes (a flat-out error—he wasn’t eating. His eyes should have been black), he looked wretched. That was good…he should look wretched there. And I wanted more from the reunion scene and the voting scene—again, they were rushed. Rosenberg needs to learn to slow down the emotional parts. We don’t read these books or watch these movies for the action or the special effects—we love them for the emotion. Let us experience it for a few minutes before you move on!

So, the final judgment on The Twilight Saga: New Moon is: Pretty Darn Good. The character and role of Jacob was the make-or-break element for this movie, and Taylor Lautner rose to the occasion beautifully. He really made the movie work.

The movie wasn’t without its problems, but what would we talk about on the discussion boards if it was perfect? I mean, beside Taylor’s abs…