Where the Wild Things Are

A review on IMDB claims

"You will never see boyhood captured as truthfully on film as it is in the film's first 20 minutes."

  Maybe this is the idea that disturbed me most about the film.  Max is all over the place!  I've often said I don't think I'd be up for the challenge of raising boys.  I can think of a handful of my friends who all have little boys (who of course are all doing a wonderful job), so I think it's fair for me to plan for girls to help even out the ratio...  Genetics seem to be in my favor - there are only 2 boys among my 13 cousins.  I'll take gossip and pouting over fights and destruction any day.

The actor who plays Max is adorable and I think they did a decent job of making the monsters.  It was the desctruction and violence and angst they added that I didn't like.  It's no longer a fanciful journey to a place where it's always party time, now it's a story about an angry young boy surrounded by unpredictable, immature, emotionally volatile creatures who will hug you one minute and rip another's arm off the next.  I didn't leave the theater wanting to frolic and play, I left disturbed by the many ways people can hurt each other (physically and emotionally).  Reading articles about the film you come across the statement that this isn't a children's film, it's a film about children.  As another review on IMDB explains,

"These beasts are the manifestations of our sorrow, our frustration, and our demons; they are the voices living within us, kept down by self-control and overcome by happiness and love. However, when those emotions are brought to life, unchecked, the end result can be nothing short of war, retribution, and malice."

  How is this a recipe for anything but a rather dark movie?

In short, I'd have to agree with the following reviewer:

"It's an interesting concept, turning a children's book into Freud 101, but is seems dark and oppressive. I realize Sendak's book was visually dark, but emotionally is was vibrant and happy, much like the melody to "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire that was used in the trailer. Unfortunately, this film desperately fails to be vibrant and happy, and for a movie based on a children's book that many parents will take their children to see, it's a major flaw. "

Literature

Picked up Catcher in the Rye a few weeks ago. I had been tagged on a Facebook note about the top 100 novels and thought I'd try and check a few more off the list. Man is that guy a whiner! The entire 200+ pages were this 17 year-old kid whining about how he can't focus in school and has been expelled again and hates everyone (except for his little sister, which I have to admit was sweet), and he keeps latching on to ideas obsessively and then discarding them. Teenage angst has a lot of potential for readability, but this was just sad. The beginning of the book refers to the similarities with David Copperfield (a young man writing about his life and all) in a dismissive way, but I have to say I'm enjoying D.C. a good deal more than mister Salinger.

I take it as a sign of maturity that I'm now able to start a book and then decide not to read it. In the past I'd be too stubborn to quit once I'd started. Or if it was a book I'd heard a lot about I'd feel obligated to read it. Atonement was on the Top 100 list, but once I picked it up from the library I remembered I indeed had watched the movie and didn't relish the idea of reliving such a bitter story. My Jim I had heard about, but decided I wasn't up for wading through the dialect. Another book I have was written retrospectively(? - starts at the present and each chapter takes a step back into the past) and frankly I'm starting to feel like since I know how it all turns out there really isn't much to keep me interested in finishing it.

With fall coming on, I need to find a reading nook. Somewhere cozy with a window to let the sunlight in. My apartment windows are unfortunately not faced appropriately and I'm still looking for a coffee shop that has both comfy chairs and sunny windows.

Suggestions?

Summer Reads

Summer is upon us. Walked out the door yesterday and was embraced by a strong warm wind whirling by. I LOVE wind. Feels like a caress and a big breath of fresh air in one.

Need to stock up on some books to take with me on trips and to read out in the sunshine on some soft green grass.

Here are a couple I put on hold at the library.



Seems like a good assortment. I also tossed in some David Sedaris, Robert Fulghum, and the odd memoir of first-year residency in med school. Not as odd as some of the books I was reading a year ago (you'll never look at rice crispies the same way again after reading Stiff):



Or as long as others:



East of Eden was great. I was not a fan of some of the "classics" foisted upon us in english classes (Invisible Man? what was the point? really?). But this is good stuff. Wally Lamb's book was rather dark, but I was determined to finish all 901 pages. It definitely wasn't as enjoyable as the 759 pages of book 7 in the Harry Potter series!

In general, the human body fascinates me. One of my very favorite books is Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Paul Brand and Philip Yancey.

I started The Gift of Pain, and set it aside only because of the more pressing need to finish library books reaching their due date. I look forward to getting back to it.

Any others I should add to my holds list at the library?

A love of words

Can I share something with you? Below are two excerpts from In the Woods by Tana French, a book that was gifted to me this Christmas by a cousin who is serious about her book-o-philia (I'm sure there's a latin term for that, but I'm too lazy to look it up). Take a minute and tell me what you think:

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

...The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion. Its silence is a pointillist conspiracy of a million tiny noises-rustles, flurries, nameless truncated shrieks; its emptiness teems with secret life, scurrying just beyond the corner of your eye. Careful: bees zip in and out of cracks in the leaning oak; stop to turn any stone and strange larvae will wriggle irritably, while an earnest thread of ants twines up your ankle.

Are you hooked yet? I love how descriptive and vibrant her writing is - covering all the senses. The sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and feel of summer. And how she uses descriptive words in new ways - summer "exploding," the "fountain" of bird calls, the "irritable" larvae and an "earnest" trail of ants. But what I love most about Tana French's books (she wrote a sequel - The Likeness), are the relationships. The easy camaraderie between characters.

So if you're in need of something to read on a warm sunny day at the park, this might be just what you're looking for.