Month: June 2009

Carlos Ruiz Zafón at the Seattle Public Library

~ bythefirelight

Carlo Ruiz Zafon the Spanish author of the Shadow of the Wind and the Angel’s Game was at the Seattle Public Library on Friday June 26th. Zafón, for those who don’t know, is the largest selling author in Spanish history after Cervantes. He is a world wide phenomenon and auditorium was packed and the line for the book signing was huge. As with best sellers in literary circles there is always a little stand-offishness. During the moderated talk you got the sense that Zafón has heard the criticisms, but isn’t that concerned about them. He writes what he writes and it works for him. Having read Shadow of the Wind, I wouldn’t call him high literature, but he writes well and the first 350 pages are really good. And the idea of a library of forgotten books, where the last remaining copy of a book goes to reside is magical.It is just too bad he couldn’t quite finish it convincingly. Of course, having his sales must help.

He talked of the books he likes, which is a wide range of 19th century novelists such as Dickens and Tolstoy, but also modern books, and histories and anything else that he is interested in. His approach to translation in English is interesting and sounds like a lot of work. Since he is fluent in English he has the luxury of working with the translator and almost rewriting the book in English, which makes, not some much for an authentic translation, but one that is true to the author’s wishes.

He is interesting talker and given a question can go on for five minutes without stopping. And I think what sets him apart from the really pointless beach reads that hit the best seller lists is that he is genuinely interested in literature and even if his works are not the best works in Spanish, they do help install an interest in reading in the reader.

Pakistan at Words Without Borders

~ bythefirelight

Words Without Borders is featuring writing from Pakistan this soon to be finished month. Always worth a look.

New Story By Hanan al-Shaykh

~ bythefirelight

Hanan al-Shaykh has a new story available in English. I’m a big fan of hers and it is nice to see something new available. I think the last book available was Only in London. You can read a little about her newest endeavor at the Saudi Gazette. (via Words Without Borders)


Black Jack Vol 1 – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

I continue to read graphic novels because I think I’ll find some gold in them, and occasionally I do as with the work of Joe Sacco. Lately I’ve been trying Manga, and except for the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi in Good Bye I have been disappointed. Black Jack, Vol. 1was not an exception. Although Osamu Tezuka is a pioneer and master of the form, I found his work, or perhaps it is just the form, lacking much depth.For those who don’t know, Black Jack is a mysterious doctor who doesn’t have a license but is the greatest doctor on earth and can save patients in complicated surgeries all by himself. While the concept itself is not bad, in execution the mysterious doctor flies in for the life saving surgery just at the right moment not only to save a life, but to give someone his due. The stories are formulaic: someone is ill or injured; they deny they need help or denied help; Black Jack shows up and offers to save the ill person and against everyone’s wishes he succeeds to everyone’s amazement. Black Jack pretends to be a selfish man, but in reality he has a heart of gold. While Black Jack does play with themes of health and the power of science, the stories are not particullarly long lasting and are emphemoral like so much pulp. I hold out hope that Manga will truely be interesting, and will in the words of Yani Mentzas will “stay within the framework [of Manga]to analyze and foreground its themes, especially the controlling one, that which exceeds man.”

WPA Plaque – Queen Ann Seattle

~ bythefirelight

I found this plaque walking up a long flight of stairs on Queen Ann in Seattle. You never know where you are going to find such bits of history.

Built By the Works Progress Administration, 1939-1940
Built By the Works Progress Administration, 1939-1940

Part of my new series History Amongst Us where I post interesting photos and the like of everyday things I find.

Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

I finished reading Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue a week ago and have sometime to think about the quality of the stories. Before I start, though, I must say it was a pleasant surprise to have the text both in English and Spanish, which gave me a chance to read the stories in the original.

On the whole I wasn’t impressed with the stories. Many of them just weren’t that interesting to me. I’m not sure exactly why. Some of it was the writing style, which didn’t interest me too much, but mostly it was the choice of subjects. The worst was the story about the porn actor. I stopped reading it after a page and a half.

There were several stories, though, that did stand out. Tuesday Meetings by Slavko Zupcic was probably the best. The writing was fresh and the story about inmates in an asylum waiting for the pope’s visit was interesting and funny. Insular Menu by Ronaldo Menéndez from Cuba talk of the privations in Castro’s Cuba with a humor that didn’t dwell on the politics but human survival, although, cat lovers shouldn’t read the story. An Open Secret by the late Aura Estrada had some nice touches, although I think the story had more to do with Juan Rulfo than Borges. And, finally, Family by Rodrigo Hasbún was had some nice shifting perspective.

Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue isn’t the best of Latin America, but a sampling of young writers. Some of these writers are very good and are worth a further look. Considering it can take years before young writers can make it into English, this is a good collection even if it is a little uneven.

The General (El General) – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The General is a documentary about Plutarco Elías Calles, the former President and revolutionary general. But in watching it you will not learn much about the man. Instead, what you learn is fleeting, brief, like the memories of his daughter whose voice describe what he and Mexico were like after the Revolution. The daughter’s memories and the bits of history that fill out his story are fragments of a larger story: the failure of the Revolution to live up to its promises.

The General is Calles’ great grand daughter’s attempt to discover who Calles was and what his legacy was. She looks not only at the historical sources, newspapers, her grandmother’s recorded memoirs, but the lives of the Mexicans in Mexico City. Did the brutality of his regime change anything? Did the Revolution itself change anything? The verdict is no. With 500,000 street vendors in Mexico City 80 years after his presidency, it is obvious what ever he left Mexico it didn’t work. The interviews with the people of Mexico City all come to one conclusion: nothing has changed and the rich still get away with everything while the poor still suffer.

The General is a must for anyone who is interested in Mexico. Although it isn’t a traditional history of Calles, the interweaving of history, memory and documentary makes for a good film.

Lovely Loneliness (Amorosa Soledad) – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Lovely Loneliness is a sweet film of broken romance and the loneliness that follows. Following the Soledad (Inés Efron) as she slowly gets over her boy friend who dumped her, the movie isn’t concerned with plot, but the interior life of Soledad. Soledad isn’t morose, though. Far from it. She goes about her life with a certain style that lets her survive. She is also a little strange. She is probably a hypochondriac. There are many scenes of her going to the doctor’s office or checking her blood pressure with her home blood pressure machine. Between the scenes of her loneliness in her apartment and those of her medical preoccupations, Soledad is a captivating mix of the lost and the eccentric. Efron’s portrayal is excellent and she is quite captivating. The film is funny, too, but jokes are not the point. Instead, it is the slight melancholy that seems to be just off screen as if Soledad was just barely surviving, that makes the movie enjoyable. For a first film, it is a solid movie and one worth watching.

Kanchivaram – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Kanchivaram (A Communist Confession) is a beautiful and sad film, but not an oppressive film of endless sorrow. And despite the foreshadowing of doom that the frame story creates there is humor and a resolution, that dark, is in the end hopeful.

The SIFF guide describes the film quite well:

Every Indian bride dreams of wearing a delicate Kanchivaram sari on her wedding day, no matter her caste. On the day of his daughter’s “first feeding,” Vengadam (Prakash Raj) promises her one of the same expensive saris that he weaves daily for the highest caste in India. Despite resistance from the village community and fears that an unfulfilled promise will lead to a curse, Vengadam risks his livelihood to steal individual vivid silk threads from his workplace. Every night, he secretly and patiently weaves his daughter’s sari. As his daughter’s wedding day approaches, a communist activist initiates strikes against the mill owners, preventing Vengadam from completing the sari and from keeping his promise.

Ultimately, Vengadam, who is the leader of the strikers, ends the strike so he can finish the sari before his daughter’s wedding day. In doing so he breaks the bond between the two families and when the father of the groom attacks him for his cowardice in ending the strike, the mill owners discover he is stealing thread. He is sent to prison and only release for two days to see his daughter who has fallen down a well and is paralyzed. Seeing she has no future in a land that neither respects the poor, nor women, he poisons her. Although, he could not provide her the sari on her wedding day, he can provide it for her funeral. The last we see Vengadam he has sunk into madness and is pulling the silk sari that is to short to cover her whole body from her head to her feet over and over, unable to realize he came close to giving her a silk silk.

What makes the film intriguing besides its will written story is the politics of the film. Although they live in misery and poverty, Vengadam has a bicycle and they make enough to eat. They do not live in the starkest of poverty, yet they do earn much from their highly skilled labor. While the organizer is a communist and has pictures of Lenin the workers only are interested in forming a union or a cooperative. The workers suffer for months during the strike, some even die. Yet they are all committed to the strike. Vengadam suffers the least because he had a little money saved up. In a film with such political leanings, the locus of the film is in the personal and for Vengadam the personal is where one suffers. At the end of the film after Vengadam has gone mad, the film makers note that just a few years latter after independence, the state voted communists in and the workers formed cooperatives that exist today and pay the workers well.

Kanchivaram is part history and part political work. It borders on the misery of the poor, yet it is a film that is also of those who should not be poor, those have skills. So in this sense the film is tragic and hopeful at the same time. Sad for one family, but hopeful for the weavers as a whole. This mix distances the viewer some what from the brutality that comes from poverty and makes the film seem lighter than it should. Adding to this is the framing narrative of the bus ride which adds comedy. So after watching it you don’t have so much a sense of injustice exists, but it is too bad for that one family. That shift in focus makes the politics more subtle and ultimately the film more interesting.

Kanchivaram (A Communist Confession) is a beautiful and sad film, but not an oppressive film of endless sorrow. And despite the foreshadowing of doom that the frame story creates there is humor and a resolution, that dark, is in the end hopeful.

The SIFF guide describes the film quite well:

Every Indian bride dreams of wearing a delicate Kanchivaram sari on her wedding day, no matter her caste. On the day of his daughter’s “first feeding,” Vengadam (Prakash Raj) promises her one of the same expensive saris that he weaves daily for the highest caste in India. Despite resistance from the village community and fears that an unfulfilled promise will lead to a curse, Vengadam risks his livelihood to steal individual vivid silk threads from his workplace. Every night, he secretly and patiently weaves his daughter’s sari. As his daughter’s wedding day approaches, a communist activist initiates strikes against the mill owners, preventing Vengadam from completing the sari and from keeping his promise.

Ultimately, Vengadam, who is the leader of the strikers, ends the strike so he can finish the sari before his daughter’s wedding day. In doing so he breaks the bond between the two families and when the father of the groom attacks him for his cowerdice in ending the strike, the mill owners descover he is stealing thread. He is sent to prison and only release for two days to see his daughter who has fallen down a well and is paralized. Seeing she has no future in a land that neither respects the poor, nor women, he poisons her. Th

Stunning colors punctuate this strong Tamil-language narrative, where the setting acts as another character in the well-woven script. Though history contextualizes Kanchivaram it’s Vengadam’s strong desire that drives the film’s mystical tone and sensitive approach to the social realities of India’s caste structure.

Four Chapters – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Four Chapters is one of those films where you have the feeling that you might have gotten just a bit more if you were from the country of origin. While meditative, well shot, and having a slow beauty, the spiritual search seems distant and troubled, as if something is missing. And perhaps that is the point—spiritual journeys are never easy.

Based on Rabindranath Tagore’s Four Chapters, Sachish is a young man who breaks with his father’s Hindu religious beliefs to follow his reformist uncle who is willing to feed poor Muslims, which scandalizes the family. When his brother’s young mistress becomes pregnant and is abandoned by him, Sachish offers to marry her to save her from the street. Again, it creates a scandal and the mistress kills herself before the wedding can occur. His uncle then begings a hospital, but soon sucumbs to a fever and dies, leaving Sachish grief stricken. He joins an ashram where he has given up all worldly attachment and follows a guru. Sachish’s friend comes to the ashram seeking to convince Sachish that the guru is a fraud, but, instead, he stays with Sachish to see if faith could be better than the skepticism of his uncle. While they are with the guru they meet Damini who is a widow and a ward of the guru. She sees Sachish and wants to break him free from his allegence to the guru and marry her. Although she tries, he is unwilling. Eventually, they leave the guru so Sachish can find an even deeper faith. Damini who has no other options marries Sachish’s friend who has grown attached to her. Damini and her husband return to the world of work while the last we see of Sachish he is staring at the sea watching singing Sufis walk by.

Four Chapters is even handed in the way it looks at faith. At first it seems as if the guru is going to be a corrupt man, more interested in the physical world than the spiritual. He does need money to run his ashram, but he doesn’t seem to spend it on himself. He is a patriarchal man who thinks women need to be taken care of and supervised. Instead, the criticism is aimed more at the rich families who invite in the gurus, pay them for personal advice, then continue their profligate lives. The gurus are just answering a call. This is why Sachish has to leave the ashram and find something even more spiritual, something that leaves the work of the guru behind. At the beginning of the movie it is Sachish’s father who is spiritual but also doesn’t want to have anything to do with poor Muslims. Sachish who first takes on the asceticism of social reform is natural upset by this and distances himself from his family. It this initial conflict that frames the search for spiritual meaning against the use of spiritualism as something to make you feel better about yourself.

Four Chapters is also interested in looking at how women are treated. Damini has no freedom. As a widow she is dependent of the guru who received her husbands estate, an estate which Damini’s father gave her. She becomes a prisoner in her own estate. To find freedom she must marry again. This is why she trys to attach herself to Sachish. Damini is in a similar position to the woman that Sachish was going to marry at the beginning of the film. She, too, didn’t have any options for life without a man.

Four Chapters is a good film that blends the search for spiritual faith with that of social criticism. It is interested in the subtleties of hypocrisy rather than out and out castigation. That stance makes it a subtle and, at times, slow. Nevertheless, it is worth seeing.

Inland – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The mistake I made in selecting this film was not paying attention to the last line of the review which said the film ” compared to Antonioni.” Oh, the tedium for this loose (which is kind) and boring film. When you read the description below you might think it has potential but only when you get one hour into it do you even know why Malek is in the country side. But what was worse were all the long scenes of almost nothing, just the country side going by. Perhaps there was 20 minutes of dialog in over 130 minutes. Definitely not worth seeing. The only saving grace was the five minute Raï party, which gave you some idea how a traditional party might go. Otherwise not worth the time. If only someone had written a better movie to go along with the synopsis.

Malek is a reclusive topographer who accepts a commission to survey a remote part of western Algeria in order to extend the electrical grid. He arrives to find the area has been decimated by religious fundamentalists who have only recently cleared out. Malek meets the local police, the shepherds who are beginning to return, and villagers who invite him to a makeshift party. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by the sound of explosions. Not to worry, explains a local man. When the cicadas land in the sand, it’s enough to trigger off the buried booby-traps. But as Malek soon realizes, it isn’t cicadas setting off the mines, but refugees trying to reach the coast and a boat for Spain. The next day he finds a young woman, exhausted and terrified, hiding in a corner of his shack. Malek decides to drive her to the border, and together they set out toward some indeterminate vanishing point on the horizon. These present-day realities are interspersed with flashbacks to the idealistic political debates of his youth, and set against a soundtrack that mixes alternative rock, Nigerian Afrobeat, and Algerian Rai. With his minimalist approach to plot and dialogue, and mesmerizing cinematography, director Tariq Teguia has been compared to Antonioni. (from the SIFF site)

The Admiral – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Picking a movie because it was the most expensive Russian film ever made may not be the best way to go. While the Admiral is full of epic battles, the mixing of the love story which seemed wooden and more foreordained than an element of discovery made the movie an epic cliché.

The Admiral is about Admiral Alexander Kolchak who was a Russian Admiral during World War I and after the revolution the supreme leader of the White army. Kolchak is a brave man and an expert naval officer whose prowess leads him to command the Baltic Fleet in the last days of World War I. He is a tough religious man who doesn’t hesitate to put himself in harm’s way. He is also a ladies man and the movie also follows his love affair with the wife of one of his junior officers. The mercurial romance is interspersed throughout the battle scenes and in time they can’t live without each other and she follows him to his eventual execution in 1920.

While the combat scenes were put together well and the opening naval battle is impressive, the film is more concerned with the epic than the characters. It seemed as if the film makers had a series of known historical moments they needed to show but didn’t understand how to create characters to make those moments flow together. History didn’t move the characters against a back drop of action; instead, history moved action against a backdrop of characters. If there were less battles and more scenes between the characters, the story might have held together better. Considering how much time the film makers spent following a Cossack army that was going to save the Admiral, it is obvious that the epic was more important. It is even more obvious when they had his lover read letters out loud while showing combat scenes, making a perverse and clichéd mix of love and war.

Looking at the film as a product of Russia and not just an epic, it becomes obvious that there is a certain amount of hagiography at work in the film. Kolchak is a fervent nationalist and a man who believes in a strong hand on government. When offered the command of navy from Kerensky he says only if he can have strict discipline. In combat he fearlessly leads his men putting himself where he could be killed and leading them in prayer before each battle. He is the perfect mix of the ideal non Soviet Russian: brave, religious, and strict. What is even more interesting is what is missing from the movie: his insistence on exterminating rebellious groups; his execution of 25,000 Russians who rebelled against him; his inability to keep his allies, the Checs and the Poles on his side. Instead of a complicated picture of yet another Russian dictator, the film makers have created a hero of the lost cause. In Putin’s Russia, perhaps this is the model of the new Russian hero.

While the Admiral is steeped in clichés, it is certainly put together well and is an interesting look into what Russia thinks of its past.

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Jorge Volpi Wins the Debate-Casa de América Prize

~ bythefirelight

El País reports that Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize for his work El insomnio de Bolívar. From the description it sounds very interesting, a little like News From the Empire. All I need to do now is find a copy.

The history of Latin America from its mythic past to an imagined future is what El insomnio de Bolívar touches. With this work the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize yesterday. This book, acording to the jury, is “well documented, avoids an academic tone and contributes with humor, irony and great literary skill, to the understanding of the American continent.” The winning work was selected by the jury from among 42 works.

The writer was in the US when he received the news of the award. “I imagine an American future with enormous problems and challenges and with the dream that all of America, including the English speaking, will form something like the European Union.” Volpi has written an essay divided into four parts about the identity, democracy, narrative, and the future of Latin America. “The las part I have added some bits of fiction,” said the writer.

La historia de América Latina desde su pasado mítico hasta un futuro imaginado es lo que aborda El insomnio de Bolívar. Con esta obra, el escritor mexicano Jorge Volpi (México, 1968) se hizo ayer con el Premio Debate-Casa de América. Este libro, según el jurado, está “ampliamente documentado, escapa al tono académico y contribuye, con humor, ironía y gran oficio literario, a la comprensión del continente americano”. La obra ganadora fue seleccionada por el jurado entre un total de 42 trabajos presentados.

El escritor se encontraba en EE UU cuando recibió la noticia del premio. “Imagino un futuro de América con enormes problemas y desafíos y con el sueño de que toda América, incluida la anglosajona, formase algo parecido a la Unión Europea”. Volpi ha escrito un ensayo divido en cuatro partes en el que se acerca a la identidad, la democracia, la narrativa y el futuro de América Latina. “A la última parte le he podido añadir algunos tintes de ficción”, señaló el escritor.

A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature – A Review

~ bythefirelight

A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature truly is a brief introduction, but for anyone who is unacquainted with modern Arabic Literature, this book is a good introduction. The book covers literature from the 20th century and primarily from the eastern part of the Arabic speaking world. The book focuses heavily on Egypt followed by Lebanon and Palestine, while other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria rate an occasional mention.

The book traces the development of modern Arabic literature from the early 20th century, finding its first exemplar in Taha Hussein in Egypt. What makes the literature modern is its break from Arabic poetry, which was the primary form of literature, towards prose based, in part, on western models. The early works, especially in Egypt, were concerned with defining what the new Arab states would be like and what is the role of tradition and western influence. Usually these works were written in a realistic manner. Illustrating that point, the book focuses on the works of Mahfouz and shows how his earlier works fit that model.

Latter as disappointment and dissolution came to the Arab world, it too was reflected in the literature. Authors like Al-ghitani began to use more post modern (although in his case he goes to much earlier times for source material) approaches to describe the problems besetting the countries of the authors, such as the the power of the west, the despotism of Arab regimes, and an uncertainty about the future.

Each author he covers, with the exception of Mahfouz, receives about a page or two of coverage. A Brief Introduction sticks to works, primarily novels and short fiction, available in English and originally written in Arabic. This approach leaves out authors such as Assia Djebar, who writes in French, and doesn’t examine the breath of a writers work which would be useful to non Arabic speakers. However, in reading the book a reader will find a great list of books to read, if the reader can find them.

While A Brief Introduction is a useful introduction its brevity makes for some choppy sections and the inclusion of poetry, a subject in itself, seems forced and might have been left for a different book. That said, his descriptions of the books he does write about make for a good guide and should arouse one’s curiosity.

Animated Enemies with James Forsher

~ bythefirelight

This could have been better if the technical problems that kept the films from playing hadn’t happened. Instead, only 4 or so American propaganda cartoons were shown, most of which I could have seen on the Internet. Forsher knows his stuff and has some interesting things to say, but it wasn’t really worth the price and I would have liked more cartoons. We did get the chance to see two Private SNAFU cartoons that used racist imagery, and one Warner Brothers called Tokyo Jokio which is full of terrible caricatures. He also show the first animated short ever filmed and the ending that is seldom seen which features Jewish and African American caricatures. I think I would have preferred more from WWII and a little less talking, but so goes the SIFF.

The Maid – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The Maid is one of those claustrophobic movies that seldom roams into varied locations and keeps to one character almost all the time, yet feels open and finds in the littlest of actions an expansive interior world. The interior world for the viewer, though, is a mystery, because it is unverbalized. The Maid is a visual movie, almost seeming like a narratorless documentary. It is in the subtle scenes and excellent acting of the actor who plays Raquel that makes the anything but dry.

As the movie opens that employs Raquel is trying to celebrate her 40th birthday.  She is unwilling to celebrate it with them, though. Is she shy, or afraid? It is not clear. What is obvious is she is a quiet, pensive character. She goes about her work quickly and efficiently, but also disturbs the older daughter while sleeping in a fit of vindictiveness. She protests to the mother of the family about bringing in another maid to helper, saying she has always taken care of the family for 20 years. When a maid is brought in anyway, she locks her out of the house. When another maid is brought in she locks her out of the house too. Through all this strange behavior, though, the family keeps her. Finally, though, what ever was bothering her leads to her collapse and she ends up in the hospital driven in a panic by the family as if she was their own child. While she is in the hospital the family brings in a new maid, Lucy. Lucy is unlike the other maids and when Raquel returns to work and tries to lock her out of the house instead of trying to get back in the house, begins to nude sunbathe. It breaks the ice between them and they soon become friends and Raquel goes with her to her family’s farm for Christmas, something it is implied she hadn’t done since she’d lived with the family. When Lucy leaves, Raquel is disappointed, but instead of retreating into her old shell, takes up one of Lucy’s hobbies, jogging. As the movie ends Raquel is running down a street in listening to music and dressed just like Lucy when she went jogging.

Raquel is a mystery. What is bothering her and why is she taking it out on the family? What is apparent is her need for a wider experience, not so much in adventures in the world, but among friends. She has lived with a very paternal family that appreciates her, but does constrain her. She has lived with them for 20 years and has known almost nothing else. She is cut off from her family for a reason that  is never explained but obviously bothers her. She is part child that has never grown moving into the family at 20 and a perfectionist who can no longer stand the exactitude. When she goes to Lucy’s she goes to bed with Lucy’s uncle but is unable to consummate the night probably because it is outside her experience. Moreover, the family she lives with is very religious with crucifixes in every room and prayers every night. Between her youth, her inexperience and the family she lives with, she is struggling to grow up. When Lucy comes, she presents a new avenue, not just another maid just like her. The final scene of the film is of Raquel taking on not only the persona of Lucy, but a new persona that is free of the house and her past.

The even handedness of the film as it finds Raquel and Raquel finds herself is what makes the film so good. It is a search without the conventions of search; a movie of self discovery without the clichés of self discovery. It is a movie where the questions you are left with will begin the search and extend the film beyond the theater—the mark of a good film.

Apron Strings – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Apron Strings is a family and identity drama from New Zealand that tells the story of two families, one of British origin and the other Indian. Mixing food and the questions of identity, Apron Strings is a nice, if some what light, film that explores broader topics of identity through the familiar.

The British family has worked in the same neighborhood for years and watched it change and become more multi-ethnic. The proprietor of the shop, a woman of 62 years, is frustrated by the changes, particularly the garlic that comes from the shop next door. The proprietor’s son is a gambling addict who is in hock to the owner of a Vietnamese bakery who wants to buy his mother’s shop. At the same time, her daughter has just become a single mother, giving birth to a black baby, which does not please her. Eventually, the mother realizes that her son has to be kicked out of the house because he is only taking advantage of her. Despite the problems with her son she is able to reconcile with her daughter.

The Indian family is composed of two sisters, one who has a curry shop and is part of the Sikh community, but still single at 40, and the other who is a famous TV chef who has not seen her sister in 20 years. The son of the TV chef takes a job in the curry shop without telling his aunt who he is. The son begins to learn about his past and begins to turn against his mother some. When his aunt, though, finds out he is gay, she shuns him. His mother comes to see her sister and they reconcile and she convinces her sister to accept her son.

The strength of the movie is its even handedness. There are no monsters, just the little slights that life has: TV producers that want to make the chef into the sterotype of an Indian goddess; the familly that shuns the gay son; the mother unable at first to accept a mixed race grandson. In this sense the film veres away from long arguments and fights about identity and chooses a quieter, more meditative path. There are a few moments of violence and shouting, but in all the film tries to show identity affects the family. Every family member brings a different identity and each family member must deal with those as best they can.

In Apron Strings, though, the strength becomes a bit of a weakness in that all the problems within the families are resolved at the end of the movie. The resolution lightens the questions it did have, because in resolving an issue in a film, the audience is left with nothing to take away: resolution leads to niceness. Nothing ever resolves that easily.

Apron Strings spends quite a bit of time contrasting of food cultures: the curry shop, the macrobiotic diet of the daughter, the proprietor’s great cakes and bland British style cooking. I wish this had been a little bit more in the forefront. It might have made the movie just a bit more memorable.

Apron Strings is a good film with a nice story and worth watching if it ever comes your way.

Star Trek – A Review

~ bythefirelight

You have a few options when thinking about a movie like Star Trek. You can either lambaste it for the silliness of the action genre, or try to think about it on its own terms, within its own genre. Certainly the former can only lead to disappointment, because this is a pure action movie filled with explosions and malevolent characters that create a black and white element. As an action movie, Star Trek is typical: characters without depth, or are action standards such as the troubled hot head. Granted Star Trek relies on a back story with forty years of history that fills in the gaps, but take that away and the movie is easily summed up: bad guys come to town, brave hot head saves everyone.

Thinking about the movie in its own terms as sci-fi or part of the Star Trek family the movie does improve, but not really that much. Sure, a fan of Star Trek has to see it to know what is being done with the story, but it doesn’t have much more to offer. What made it weak wasn’t so much the rewriting of the Star Trek time line, but the silliness of it. How can a bunch of cadets become captains, etc. so quickly? For good or bad, Star Trek had the logic of a different world where there were rules that lead one to where they are. In this movie, to get Kirk to be the captain, the film makers had to jump him from cadet to captain in five minutes. It seems like a quibble, but it was the kind of shortcut that is typical of an action movie: a nobody saves the day.

I will skip tiresome introductions and pet phrases of the supporting cast, something that seemed to be required, but was usually tedious and seemed to be more about pleasing the old Trek fans, than creating a more plausible story. I suppose Wrath of Khan was probably the best of the films, most likely because they were able to balance the characters so much better. Besides possibly the Borg Queen, is there a memorable villain from another Star Trek movie?

The movie is two hours of time spent, nothing more, even if you are a fan of Star Trek.

New Los Noveles Is Available

~ bythefirelight

Edition number 34 of Los Noveles is now on-line. I haven’t had much time to read it, but it does look promising with a mix of fiction and essays.