Intangible Asset Number 82

This documentary is Australian jazz giant Simon Barker’s journey to discover the influences of a Korean drummer/Shaman named Kim Seok-Chul. Director Emma Franz takes us, sensitively, along. Simon is not allowed by his contact, Kim Dong-Won, to see Seok-Chul right away. There is a lot of resistance there although Simon doesn’t know, at first, why. Is the master drummer, who is regarded as such a national treasure by his country that he is Intangible Asset Number 82, being protected from the foreigner? Is he not worthy?
The truth was that Kim Seok-Chul was very ill and in hospital but also that Dong-Won wasn’t sure it would be right to present Simon to him. Would the Australian drummer actually understand the honour? Would he be worthy? So, as a process, Dong-Won goes on a trip with Simon to visit other musical Shamen. The singer Bae Il-Dong is one. This is a singer who lived in the wilderness in a hut he built beside a waterfall for seven years, singing up to 18 hours a day. Learning to out-sing the noise of the falls. Il-Dong considers the mountain as yin and the valley as yang with the waterfall the holy place where yin and yang meet. His is a powerful, raw voice that seems too big and too much noise for the Western ear. But he sings pure nature and without fear or ego. I would love to hear him in concert.
Simon also learns about drumming with his entire body. To begin throwing himself down on the ground as if in mourning to learn to let go and relax into the music. And to listen to his own heart for true rhythm.
Near the end, Seok-Chul has left the hospital and Simon does get the chance to visit with the master three days before he dies. We, as voyeuristic companions, get a rare glimpse into some of the final hours of a man revered by his family and society. It is impressive and touching.
I learned, in the end, a great deal about South Korea and music in this wonderful and powerful documentary. I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone!
This was the first of the five documentaries I saw during the 2009 Guelph Festival of Moving Media.

Ender’s Game

I have finally read Orson Scott Card’s brilliant novel Ender’s Game which is the first book in the Ender’s series.  This was originally a shorter novelette but was reworked into a full length novel by Card.  It is about a young boy named Ender who is a long hoped for military genius on a future Earth.  He is force trained to become the tool that will save mankind from an alien menace.  But Ender is, in the end, his own man or boy.  A product of his handlers but not them; the book has an incredibly surprising finish. 
I enjoyed it very much. It is intensely psychological and, like many of the best examples of fiction writers, Card dwells strongly in the territory of human relationships. That’s what makes Ender so interesting. In the end, Ender is more important than even Earth leaders think. The fate of more than just human’s is involved.
I definitely want to read more in the series.
Highly recommended.

The Outlander

This film starring Jim Kaviezel (Kainan) was a pleasant surprise. Although it involves Earth’s past, Vikings, an alien, his space craft, and a pissed off alien dragon it isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds.  The writer explains these so well that they didn’t remind me overly much of the rash of Beowulf movies lately. The back story (that humans had been seeded on Earth by Kainan’s people) and that Kainan crash landed with an imprisoned alien dragon was an explanation for his human appearance. It certainly seemed reasonable as I watched, anyway.  I liked the special effects for the Moorwen or dragon. It is a good adventure film and, I think, worth a couple of hours of precious time if you like good action sci-fi films.

The Night Wanderer

Drew Hayden Taylor’s 2007 novel, The night wanderer (Annick Press Ltd.), is about a 350 year old Anishinaabeg (Ojibway) Vampire meeting a modern Ojibway (Anishinaabeg) teenage girl.
It has the subtitle ‘A Native Gothic Novel’ but I beg to differ with that categorization, ‘gothic’ implies something else to me. A dictionary defines it as:

A novel in a style emphasizing the grotesque, mysterious, and desolate.

To me, a better and less limiting summation would be ‘A Native Vampire Story’. While one of the two main characters, Pierre L’Errant, is certainly mysterious and has been, at times, desolate, he is never grotesque to me. Definitely not a typical vampire. And although Tiffany, the 16-year-old other main character, is frightened and helpless at times she has untapped inner strength. I see her as neither a gothic heroine nor could she afford to look like or be a goth. Taylor has created two very unique characters who inevitably clash with interesting and, IMHO, satisfying results. What I found most fascinating was Pierre’s view of the contrasts between his former culture and the current native culture found in Tiffany. I wanted more of that actually. Tiffany’s grandmother provides a sympathetic bridge between the old and the new as someone who yearns to hear Anishinabe language being spoken but lives patiently in the here and now.
All in all, a quick and highly recommended read!

Gene Luen Yang

I found two graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang at my local library and thoroughly enjoyed them both. They were:

• American Born Chinese, 2006 First Second, New York, NY
• The Eternal Smile by Yang and Derek Kirk Kim, 2009 First Second, New York, NY

American Born Chinese is really two stories intertwined in a coming of age tale. The first is that of adolescent Jin Wang growing up in America and, the second, the cultural story of Monkey King and Wong Lai-Tsao. As the title indicates, there is a meeting of America and China in these pages.

The Eternal Smile is three stories assembled together:

1. Duncan’s Kingdom is about Duncan and his struggle to extricate himself from fantasy.
2. Elias McFadden’s Gran’Pa Greenbax and The Eternal Smile is an intriguing moral and ecological tale. It reminded me of Scrooge McDuck stories. It was sad what happened to poor Filbert and the twins Polly and Molly were interesting characters.
3. Urgent Request is quite a different tale involving Nigerian Prince Henry and the resilient Janet. I just wish I could have seen something bad happen to Mr. Hoffman.

Both books are quick reads and recommended, especially the first!

The Final Cut

As I’ve indicated before I’m a big fan of Robin Williams so it’s no surprise that when Karen brought home The Final Cut, a 2004 sci-fi movie, I was very interested. Like One Hour Photo, this is a serious Robin performance. He plays a Cutter (Alan Hakman), a man who cuts people’s life memory implant footage to create a flattering portrayal of their lives.
This Zoe implant may sound like a gimmick but the ideal is well fleshed out and then dissected as the plot progresses. There is a group who actively oppose the implant and the ex-Cutter Fletcher (Jim Caviezel) re-enters Alan’s life trying to get the implant of an Eye-Tech lawyer (the producers of the Zoe implant) to try to discredit the company.
It’s an unusual science fiction film as there are so few special effects running the show.  They’re there but only to subtly provide authenticity. I have to give Omar Naim full marks as writer and Director for bravely letting the story sit in the driver’s seat to allow such an interesting film. Such a different tack for an American sci-fi movie. This is thrilling and psychological and feels realistic. The plot is complicated (like a good science fiction book) but worth it. It is extremely well acted, too.
The last scene (which I won’t describe as it would be a spoiler) is beautifully done.  So Brecht!
Very highly recommended.

Benjamin Button

The F. Scott Fitzgerald short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has apparently little to do with the Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett movie of the same name. I’ve only seen the film (Eric Roth wrote the screenplay with help from Robin Swicord on the screen story) so I can’t say yet but it does look as though the only things preserved from the original Benjamin Button story were the name and the fact that Benjamin grows young. The Wikipedia article seems to indicate that he wasn’t as much of the saint Brad Pitt portrays.
Still, it’s an enjoyable film with good acting by Pitt and Cate Blanchett as Daisy. A historical fantasy much like Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump.
My favourite acting is done by Taraji P. Henson as Queenie of the large heart and Jared Harris as the larger than life Captain Mike.
I really want to read Fitzgerald’s story now but will recommend the movie until then.

W

Josh Brolin stars as George W. Bush in this Oliver Stone film (written by Stanley Weiser) about the life and times of the 43rd President of the US.
I think it’s an honest and realistic portrayal of a very political man, his family and entourage. There is some brilliant acting here especially from Brolin, Jeffrey Wright
as Colin Powell, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, James Cromwell (one of my all time favourite actors) as George Bush Sr., and a truly outstanding performance by Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney.
One of the things that struck me was the interesting comparison between the two Iraq conflicts with both Bush’s and with Cheney and Powell at different stages in their lives. Fascinating to see the similarities and differences depicted. Another was the conversion between the aimless playboy to the born again, Texan man of pure politics. It’s also fascinating to see the American political system with its famous checks and balances being eroded slowly by political megalomaniacs peaking in George W. Bush (we can hope in pray). Those checks and balances were meant by the US Constitutional fathers to prevent tyranny. Nothing’s perfect.
Highly recommended viewing.

Flash of Genius

Greg Kinnear plays Bob Kearns and Lauren Graham (Phyllis Kearns) in this 2008 movie about an inventor whose idea was stolen by the Ford Motor Company. This is a true David vs. the Big Company story which shows the mental pain and hardship of the 12 year struggle of the David. It is admittedly hard to watch near the middle where Kearns is driven to a mental breakdown but it is worth waiting to see him defend himself in the court battle at the end.
Kinnear pulls off an outstanding performance as do all the members of his family, including Graham as his wife.
Highly Recommended.

Son of a Witch

Finished reading “Son of a Witch” by Gregory Maguire today. This is, of course, the sequel to “Wicked” and starts up where it left off. I found it even more awesome than the first. Wow… some of his sentences and paragraphs have the density of a black hole. Just so inspiring and impressive. Take this introduction to the beginning of Liir’s downfall:

A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives. They woke up, were they lucky enough to have consciousness, in the act of doing something they already knew how to do: feeding themselves with currants. Walking the dog. Knotting up a broken bootlace. Singing antiphonally in the choir. Suddenly: This is I, I am the girl singing this alto line off-key, I am the boy loping after the dog, and I can see myself doing it as, presumably, the dog cannot see itself. How peculiar! I lift on my toes at the end of the dock, to dive into the lake because I am hot, and while isolated like a specimen in the glassy slide of summer, the notions of hot and lake and I converge into a consciousness of consciousness–in an instant, in between launch and landing, even before I cannonball into the lake, shattering both my reflection and my old notion of myself.
That was what was once believed. Now, it seems hardly to matter when and how we become ourselves–or even what we become. Theory chases theory about how we are composed. The only constant: the abjuration of personal responsibility.

Such breadth and beauty. And flow. Wow again. I wish I had written that. I know exactly what he’s saying but I doubt I could reproduce it a million years of tapping at keys.
And how about this concise and expressive description of a trunk in an attic in 6 words:

The thing was felted with dust.

You can feel that!  And… I can look forward to the third Oz historical fiction by Maguire: A Lion among Men.