Category Archives: Books and movies

The single worst example of bad teaching I have ever come across

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A fascinating post by Scott Johnson at Powerline which he titles, Notes on Middlemarch and in which he discusses what a trial it had been for him to read the book which he has just finished. I therefore wrote him the following:

Dear Scott

I enjoyed your reflections on Middlemarch which is one of my favourite novels of all time, but I think I had a particular reason for the pleasure it gave me, since I identified, sadly, with Dorothea’s first husband, William Casaubon. I think of myself almost perfectly portrayed as that ponderous pedant, writing some weighty but unreadable exegesis into various historical episodes of interest to no one else. I wasn’t actually depressed by his fate, but I did find it instructive. We are what we are, and the book did help me embrace my own nature.

As it happens, I was reading the book at the same time as I was driving our year-seven son to school of a morning, and each day I would tell him where I was up to and what was going on in the plot. You can thus see how like Casaubon I must be, if that is the nature of my conversation with a twelve year old. But the reason I mention it is because he told his English teacher that he had read Middlemarch to which she replied, to this twelve year old, that she could not understand why he had read it, and that she had been forced to read it at university and she had hated it, the most awful book she had ever read. I have always thought of that as the single worst example of bad teaching I have ever come across.

Kind regards

BTW it is ranked as the seventh greatest novel written in English and I completely agree. Unlike Scott, I was just driven along by the plot, but then again, I find John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy more intrinsically interesting than any economics book I come across today.

Who’s in charge and what do they want?

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If ever there was a book designed to make you appreciate how little one even knows of the times in which they live, it was Diana West’s epic American Betrayal. And in spite of the efforts to kill this book by people on what you would normally think of as on the conservative side of politics – the left has never had to lift so much as a finger to do the dirty work – it continues to make its way in the world. West has now put up a post of further reflections on her own book as she prepares the audio tape version: Rereading American Betrayal: Why Did Uncle Sam Keep Soviet Secret Agents a Secret?

The book is about the Roosevelt White House, but it is also about our own times right now. Maybe fifty years from now, if we are still as free then as we are today, some future Diana West may write the actual story of who Obama really is and what he was up to. In the meantime, you should read the book. There is nothing its equal anywhere in our political literature. But the real reason to read the book is so you can then follow the argument about the forces that have tried to destroy this book’s credibility on our side of the fence. When you have finally come to terms with all of that, you can wonder about what those political forces there are and where we are being led.

Grey’s anatomy at the cinema

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I confess to having gone to the movie, all in the interests of a sociological analysis of my fellow man and woman. It’s a book that has sold 100,000,000 copies since it was published in 2011, in comparison with the paltry 30,000,000 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in all its years of publication.

There are some things I am happy to comment on, and other things I would never say a word about. This is of that second type. However, I came across this at Drudge, Fifty Shades of Grey: Rowdy women glass man at Valentine’s Day screening of sexy film which apparently occurred in Glasgow and was published in the Daily Mirror in the UK. And to my amazement, in the middle of this online British newspaper story, there was a video of the above review by our own Lisa Wilkinson at Channel 9, with the heading, “Is this the best review of Fifty Shades of Grey ever?”. Whether this is merely for us in Oz, or they saw this in the UK as well, I cannot tell. Tempted though I am to say what I thought, there would be no possible good that could come of it, although I will say that the sociologist in you might consider seeing what attracts 100 million readers in this day and age.

Rotten Tomatoes:
– Critics 26%
– Audiences 50%

IMDb: 4.0 (out of 10)

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has a sequel!

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Like “Gone with the Wind”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was, until now, the only book by the writer of one of the great books of the century. And now, fifty years later, there is to be a sequel.

[There has been] the surprise announcement that To Kill a Mockingbird will have its long-awaited sequel: Go Set a Watchman, about the adventures of a grown-up Scout as she returns to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit Atticus. That a novel more than 60 years in the making would finally be published was the result, Lee said in a statement delivered through her publisher, HarperCollins, of some crazy serendipity: The book’s long-lost manuscript was discovered by her lawyer, the statement says, “in a secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.”

What, me suspicious? But I hope it’s true. The only other remarkable part in the article for me was that Harper Lee did not think of herself as Scout, but as Bo. Don’t get much time for fiction nowadays, but this one I will read.

TURNS OUT I’M NOT ALONE: And since the announcement:

Author Harper Lee’s latest novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” is the No. 1 bestselling book on Amazon Wednesday after publisher HarperCollins announced on Tuesday its July 14 release date. . . .

HarperCollins, the world’s second-largest book publisher, plans to print 2 million copies, according to The Washington Post.

Iraqi sniper

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We went to see American Sniper when it first came out and I would have written on it right at the time but there was something about it that remained suspended in mid-air that I couldn’t quite pull down. Today I discovered that Clint Eastwood had opposed both the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan (which I found out here in a really excellent take on the film). I now see the movie more clearly, and also see why it did not blow me away as I had been by Unbroken.

The movie is the Iraqi war without the politics. There are two sets of soldiers, each side fighting for the values it believes in. Chris Kyle, the American sniper, is matched by an Iraqi sniper who is equally committed to his own side, and is as patriotic as Kyle. There is no difference in bravery on the two sides. If anything separates them, it is technology. It is a patriotic film in the tradition of “my country, right or wrong”.

Except that it is Chris Kyle’s country that is right and not wrong, although that would not be the view of the soldiers on the other side, nor of the thousands of young Muslims going off from their homes to fight in the Middle East.

It is welcoming to see a film in which the bravery and honour of the American soldier is shown so clearly. And I have to assume that Kyle is more or less as he is portrayed, which is brave beyond any possibility of my ever understanding how someone can do what he did. And he is no more brave than the others who fight along side of him. But then he is no braver, either, than the Iraqis who attack him in numbers even though the American army is armed with technologies, such as armoured cars and helicopters, unavailable to their side.

What the film surprisingly did not do was dwell on why we are fighting this war, but perhaps that wasn’t its purpose. It did show 911, and it identified some barbarities by the Iraqis. But without the purpose, without an explanation about why the fighting is and was necessary, there was little in the film to make it clear why Chris Kyle and the others had been putting their lives on the line, and what difference it would make if we lost and pulled out. I, of course, bring this understanding along to the film on my own. I only wish there were more of it in the storyline. It seems that most Americans already understand the point which is why the film has broken box office records. But since the reason why this war is necessary never seems to get explained anywhere else, it’s a shame it was not more fully explained here. It is not a film designed to change anyone’s mind. The only marker for me is how much the left hates the film. It may therefore be a better film than I have been able to understand for myself.

The trailer, by the way, shows the opening sequence of the film. You will have to go yourself to see what happens next. As for the ratings, as per usual in a film like this, the audiences have liked it more than the critics.

Rotten Tomatoes: Critics 72% and Audiences 88%
IMDb: 7.6

Not as wild as you might think

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Some background on Cheryl Strayed, the woman who wrote the book that has been turned into the film, Wild, starring Reece Witherspoon:

Strayed married Marco Littig on August 20, 1988. They were married for six years. In 1999, Strayed married filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. They have two children and live in Portland, Oregon. Her daughter, Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom, played the younger version of Strayed in the film adaptation of Wild. A long-time feminist activist, Strayed served on the first board of directors for Vida: Women in Literary Arts.

Conventional as her life may seem, I take it then that the film is intended to portray a feminist icon, although I must confess to having been quite shocked by the way the story went. I am a first-stage feminist going back to the 1960s. The moment the word “zipless” appeared, I knew exactly where I was. Indeed, I am a nineteenth century feminist, in that probably the greatest influence on my thinking has come through John Stuart Mill and his The Subjection of Women.

Still, what astonished me about the story was the role that men played in saving her at each of the main turning points in her life, at least as portrayed in the film. I won’t say where, but you can watch for it. The final moments, when a group of chaps tell her the trail name others have given her – something like Queen of the PCT (that is, Queen of the Pacific Crest Trail where she was hiking) – was due to the way everyone had bent over backwards to help her out as if she were royalty, made me think this was supposed to be a parody of the self-contained, independent woman. But it’s not.

One final point. Her mother dies of some unspecified form of cancer, but in the actual account she dies of lung cancer, and had presumably been a smoker. Not mentioned, nor do I recall seeing her mother with a cigarette. In Hollywood, positive characters are not permitted to have negative characteristics.

Unbroken – an absolute triumph

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Don’t watch the video until you’ve seen the movie. But then you should watch it to see how true to his story the film really is. Or, you can watch the video anyway, and then decide for yourself. But I went just because we wanted to see a movie tonight and we’d seen everything else. I went with no expectations – actually I was somewhat reluctant – and it turned out to be a film I would not have wanted to miss had I known what it was about.

As for the film, I won’t tell you much, but I will say this. Not nominating Angelina Jolie for best direction is a scandal, and is only because this is one of the most conservative movies you are ever likely to see. It also has one of the best war sequences I have also ever seen, absolutely harrowing. You are in the plane, and you are asking yourself (a) how will they survive and (b) how does anyone ever go into battle in the first place, never mind get back in the plane the next day, and then the day after that?

My last point, which is not a spoiler. The left will not tolerate a positive story about religion, where a believer in God is treated as a normal human being with genuine virtues that come from that belief. You don’t find it in films very often, but you do find it here. “Based on a true story” comes with all the usual caveats. But it is also an amazing film, and if you want some idea of how true or not it is, you can watch the video, either now or when you come back.

Rotten Tomatoes: critics 50% / audience 73%
IMDb: 7.2.

Finally note this: Joel Coen (screenplay), Ethan Coen (screenplay). As far as storylines go, it doesn’t get better than that.

Groucho and me

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An email from my cousin, having sent him an email about Woody Allen about his days as a stand-up comedian, this was part of his reply:

If I¹m not very much mistaken, I spotted you in a Youtube clip, in the audience of a 1971 concert by Grand Funk Railroad. Check out the guy, 4 minutes and 15 seconds into the song. That is you. Digging the groove and slightly affected by mind-altering substances. Am I right or am I right?

 

He might well have been right, although the chap in the video was much too clean-cut for me in those days. I would also have been doing my final exams in my Masters year just as the concert was being held, although at this stretch, who can be sure. But what I do know for sure was that I was never able to listen to the kind of whatever it is that the band is playing. So I wrote back:

That was amazing. We both watched it and while it couldn’t have been me, it was uncanny. I actually had to look up where it was filmed, since 1971 was about right for when I might, just possibly, but only very very remotely, have gone to hear The Grand Funk Railroad. But at Shea Stadium in New York, even as far gone as I am, I was not there, not then. But if I told you I was, who might have doubted it. I can only say, you have more fortitude than I do for getting all the way to 4:15.

But appropriately, given what began this correspondence, I have had another Zelig-like moment. You can see me over Groucho’s left shoulder in Horsefeathers (1932) at the beginning of the clip below, but then from 15 seconds in. It is ridiculous how close I now look to that chap, mortar board and all, unlike that extraordinarily good looking chap sitting in the bleachers watching the concert in 1971.

I sent an actual photo of myself to a number of people that I found on the Camp White Pine website taken when I was 17 and no one recognises me. In fact, almost everyone refuses to believe I once looked like that. A kind of reverse-Zelig.

This is me when I was a mere cherub. I’m the one on the left:

me in 1965

The only certainty I can tell you is that no one who knew me in 1971, or when this picture was taken in the early 1960s, would ever have foretold how I would end up or who I would be today, I least of all.

Yet another eccentric English genius

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Another film about an English eccentric, this one about a hundred years after William Turner. I must confess that I haven’t yet come across a single person I know who liked Mr. Turner. It seems to me there are an awful lot of people who go to the cinema, who seem to think that the central character must be of noble character, stirling virtue, and personally likeable. Or perhaps they are looking for a simple plot, along the lines of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy meets girl again just before the credits but immediately after a fifteen minute car chase. I will only say that if you have seen St. Vincent and you liked it, you should ignore any advice I might give you about going to the movies.

The film under review this time is The Imitation Game (Rotten Tomatoes, critics 89% and the audience 95%; IMDb 8.4). Based on a true story, and therefore, of course, almost certainly false at every moment of drama in the plot, it was still fun and engaging. And although filled with many modern pieties, put on display to flatter the moral vanity of the audience, I nevertheless found none of it cloying or in the way of the plot. The story is based around the life of Alan Turing, about whom I knew about as much as I knew about Turner. It provided interesting detail and a rounded human story, embedded in the drama surrounding the winning of the war against the Nazis. Like Turner, Turing was a genius, driven by his obsessions. Unlike Turner, it seems, it is a film that is likely to generate more sympathy for the central character.

The background of most of the film is the effort required to break the Enigma code. Fascinating to see the effort up on screen. I don’t know how much of the drama shown was particularly accurate, but it didn’t worry me all that much either. It drove the story along, neatly structured around flashbacks and flash forwards. I have been to Bletchley Park and spent a very full day there a couple of years ago. If you are ever in the vicinity, it is well worth your time. In the meantime until you do get there yourself, this is a film likely to keep you satisfied, although I am a bit sore given all the flak I have been getting from people to whom I have recommended Mr. Turner, which, by the way, is a recommendation I completely stand by still.

A vile and disgusting film

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To actually know the Biblical account of The Exodus in the modern world of the once-Christian West requires someone to have actually had a religious upbringing of some sort. But we made it through Noah all right, and survived the endless battle scenes of The Hobbit with only a mild case of ennui, so why not go see Exodus as well. How bad could it really be. Turns out, really, really bad. And you get nothing of the true flavour of this film by merely knowing that the critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave it 29% and the audience 39%. Bad films are common, although this went beyond bad, about which no review I read warned me even in the slightest.

There is a Book from which the story is taken. And when the Ten Commandments was made in 1956, which I still remember vividly, along with where I was and who I was with, they began with Moses in the bullrushes, put there by his mother because Pharaoh had decreed the death of every Jewish baby. Instead, we start with Moses as a co-leader of the Egyptian army against the Hittites, leaving out this small detail. And why was that. Just so that after the tenth plague struck down the first-born children of the Egyptians, Pharaoh can deliver this line without recognition that this is the work of a just G-d, who has tried using every means possible, to persuade Pharaoh to let his people go:

Is this your god, killer of children?

Someone who was a killer of children, and a slave owner and oppressor, really isn’t in much of a moral position to say that line. There is more like it in the film. But when I see that Ridley Scott and his backers have spent tens of millions to produce such a vile political statement, not about Egypt in 1400 BCE, but about the Middle East today, I am filled for the first time with a genuine fear for the future.