Orlando

I wasn’t expecting to like this; it’s an extremely political film, to the point of bordering on manifesto, and centres on a supremely obnoxious character. And yet, I did like it. I really did. Reality and film blends, person and character blends, and it’s such an intelligent, but delightful romp, that I really couldn’t help enjoying it.

3/5

I am Curious (Yellow)

I wasn’t expecting to like this; it’s an extremely political film, to the point of bordering on manifesto, and centres on a supremely obnoxious character. And yet, I did like it. I really did. Reality and film blends, person and character blends, and it’s such an intelligent, but delightful romp, that I really couldn’t help enjoying it.

4/5

Past Imperfect

I picked this up at random, mostly because I liked the cover. And this is a case where judging a book by its cover was absolutely the right decision. This is one of the greatest collections of poetry I’ve ever come across, and certainly the best in the past year or two. I can’t pinpoint what I like about it so much, so I’m just going to buy it and then read it again and again until I can properly enunciate what is so amazing about this. But it is amazing.

5/5

The Picture of Dorian Gray

This was my second time reading Wilde’s magnum opus, and it stands up well to a second reading. Wilde writes fiction in a lush, heady manner, immersing the reader in the aesthetics he espouses via his characters. There is so much talent put into this it is insane. However, despite all this, I still can’t entirely fall into this book; I always remain at the edges, far too alert for my own good.

3.5/5

A Precocious Autobiography

I’ve never read Yevtushenko’s work, so I can’t comment on his poetry; however, his autobiography is very, very good. I admit to crying multiple times, particularly in his depiction of Stalin’s funeral, however, it collapses toward the end, wherein Yevtushenko spends twenty pages being very smug, very self-congratulatory, and very, very arrogant. When he writes about the Russian people, he is incredibly moving; when he writes about himself, he just comes off like a pompous ass.

3.5/5

Surviving Desire

I’m unsure if this was adapted from a play, because if it wasn’t, it should certainly be revised and performed theatrically. The entire thing smacked of theatre, down to overblown gestures that would have been much more acceptable on a stage. While I understand that this was a purposeful move by the director, it was still jarring, and the slim amount of plot was not enough to carry the hour long short film. There were inspired moments, but that too was not enough to sustain this.

2.5/5

Home of Sudden Service

I had to write an essay on two of the poems contained within this slim little volume, and I was so excited by them that I picked up Bachinsky's book. All I can say is that my professor has good taste, because those were the best poems in the collection. While her poetry is certainly not bad, the collection runs unevenly, and I was generally underwhelmed. Mediocre, though I don’t mean that in a bad sense, just a bland one.

3/5

Barometer Rising

Oh lord, this is awful. A historical romance set around the Halifax explosion sounds like a terrible concept, and the execution is equally bad. The setting feels forced; McLennan is very focused on making it authentic, at the expense of the storyline and general readability. The characters are, on the whole, extremely unlikeable, especially the "hero". And McLenna's prose is unbelievably melodramatic; he adores his adjectives, which is, honestly, an awful way to write. When the description of a tragedy as powerful as the Halifax explosion has me rolling my eyes at how even a tragedy is overwrought, that is an awful sign.

1/5

Death at a Funeral

If this was a Hollywood film, it would be awful. The script is certainly not the strong point. What is, is the British sensibility that permeates the film. There are some very strong performances, Alan Tudyk's springing to mind, but really, at its heart, this is just a slightly dark, very British comedy.

3/5

Waking Life

Apparently, Waking Life was very well received. I really don't understand it. Waking Life is a mess of extremely pretentious monologues, seemingly only held together by the filmmaker's desire to show off. Obstensibly, it's held together by rhetoric involving dreams, but really, it only hangs together in the loosest sense, and bores the shit out of the audience before finally reaching its point. Masturbatory cinema at its worst.

1/5

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

Within the first twenty pages I was going to give this collection up. It got better, and I'm glad it did, but the writing style certainly leaves something to be desired. Luckily, Lam has some very interesting ideas, so the stories did keep me immersed, however, I am unsure why this got so much praise from literary circles. These are interesting stories, but this is not literature.

3/5

Pygmy

I am officially finished with Chuck Palahniuk. I loved him at fourteen, liked him at seventeen, but at nineteen, I'm finished. Snuff was absolutely awful, but I still picked up Pygmy, hoping I could return to loving Palahniuk, a trait that I'm increasingly starting to believe was a sign of immaturity in my reading habits. Instead, I gave up after twenty pages of broken English, anti-American litanies that could horrify a Canadian (and that is saying something), and one graphic rape scene. Goodbye, Chuck. Goodbye forever.

1/5

Birds of America

I have a special place in my heart for short story collections, and Moore's brilliant collection epitomizes why. Each story deals with different sorts of helplessness and unhappiness in gently different ways, and the tenuous threads of other themes--feminism in particular--are exposed over the course of the collection. I'm very, very excited to read more of Moore's works (no pun intended).

4/5

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien brilliantly brings the Vietnam war to life with a book that blurs the line between novel, collection of short stories, and memoir. I have read a great deal of war novels, and watched a great deal of war films, and O'Brien's work is one of the best, if not the best, lenses into the unimaginable horrors, comedy, tragedy, and boredom of the front. Each note is struck with the particular skill of a man who has lived through a war, and who inserts reality into fiction in a way that carefully blurs the realities of war in a very interesting way.

4/5

Green Grass Running Water

This is the rare case where studying a text has made me like it less. On original reading, King's novel made me ecstatic, with hilarious renderings of biblical texts through a native lens, and a fast-paced, humourous story.

However, the sheer anger that permeates the text has dimmed my enjoyment; I will admit this is because his anger is directed at me, a descendent of a Colonial nation (England in particular), but I was made uncomfortable. I'm sure that was King's intention, however, I cannot help my reaction to the cutting remarks he makes regarding people he likely identifies me as close kin to.

5/5 pre-lecture, 4/5 post-lecture.

Die Welle

German films tend to be hit or miss for me; that is to say, I cannot think of a single German film I have been ambivalent or apathetic about. I love them or hate them, with little room between. I am lucky, then, that this would be one of the films to love.

Die Welle (or, in English, The Wave), explores autocracy (and not necessarily Third Reich autocracy, though that is certainly a shadow over the film) in a high school context, which works marvellously, without simplifying the issue. Instead, the subject is handled deftly, with loaded dialogue, and even more so loaded concepts.

Die Welle doesn't buckle under the pressure of the concepts it explores, and while occasionally the film seems a little obvious, a little heavy-handed, that is likely because we, as a society, have spent so much time discussing these issues. That doesn't make Die Welle less important; in fact, its fresh take on the issue is perhaps even more important in light of the ham-fisted efforts that precede it.

4/5

Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever...

Swish is a delightful little romp, advertised as a man's quest to become the gayest person ever, and packaged as such, with chapters on knitting, aerobics instruction, and go-go dancing. But instead of being a shallow, if funny, look into sterotypical homosexuality, it is a much more nuanced memoir, tackling issues like the early death of Derfner's mother and his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. That isn't to say it isn't funny, because it is very, very funny. But instead of being a waste of time, if an enjoyable time-waster, it is an intelligent little memoir, packaged as something much less substantial.

4/5

As You Like It

I'm rarely enamoured with Shakespeare's comedies, and As You Like It is no exception. It retreads concepts Shakespeare has examined in other plays (Twelth Night as a more enjoyable example), and with the exception of the famous speech on the phases of man, offers nothing Shakespeare hasn't done, and better.

I was reading this for a queer literature course, but the concepts in relationship to queerness have been tread and retread, and it appears the only reason we read this text in particular was in order to offer a familiar author in a queer context (which his sonnets would have achieved, and in a munch more interesting way).

2.5/5

Symposium

I feel guilty; I don't particularly like Plato. There are some interesting aspects to Symposium, such as the nature of oral storytelling, and Aristophanes' origin of love story (which I have a soft spot for from repeat viewings of Hedwig and the Angry Inch), however, the prose is basic, and the concepts not particularly interesting to me. They're also just about beaten to death, which I cannot blame Plato for, but that fact did seriously affect my enjoyment of the book.

2/5

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God

Another from Keret; I read three of his collections in short order, and this was the second I read. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God is every bit as good as The Nimrod Flipout, if a little bit more serious, more sad. Each of these stories is funny, mostly, but the laughter leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth. Which is the perfect palate cleanser for me, and these stories are startling in their poignancy.

4.5/5

Third Class Superhero

There's a problem here. On the one hand, I'm utterly infatuated with Yu's ability to toy with style, to create meaning in so many ways within one short story collection. On the other hand, Yu focuses so much on the style of his stories, how to make them creative, unique, that the actual story, the important part, gets lost in his experiments.

Ironically, the story for which this collection is titled is both the strongest and the most straight-forward. I do like Yu's experiments, I just wish he had them under control.

2.5/5

Death & Fame

I, like so many others, adore Howl. It's not a very difficult poem to like. So I was excited that my boyfriend bought me a book of Allen Ginsberg's poetry for Christmas. Unfortunately, this was a collection of last poems before death, which often have a ragged, disorderly feeling to them. More than the organization of the poetry, however, it was the poetry itself that was so difficult for me to enjoy.

Ginsberg is a man who understands death is coming. It's threaded throughout his works. However, he is also a man whose poetry has regressed; the vast majority of the poetry contained within this collection is of a scatological or political nature. I certainly have no issue with the latter, but his stance on politics is so shallowly stated that it feels like they were written more by a political teenager than a seventy year old man. Lines such as "Native gooks work cheaper, rich get richer..." hardly enlighten.

I'm not sure what happened to Ginsberg's poetry. It's lost its edge, and, much more distressingly, the talent contained within his earlier works. Mostly, it feels like a lot of scribbled words anyone could write during their spare time, more than the final work of one of the great poets of the beat generation.

1/5

9 Songs

While 9 Songs works more as a work of eroticism than say, Salo, as a film, it consistently falls short. The few mentions of a world outside of the relationship of the leads, specifically, the sexual relationship, is rarely mentioned, and when it is, it feels out of place, added for no discernable reason. There is supposed to be some relevance that one lead studies Antarctic ice; if there is, it is out of my grip. Such analogous moments only make the film appear pretentious, not fleshed out.

The nine songs the film is named for have no bearing on the events. If the songs connected thematically, there would be a reason for their appearance, but instead it is concert footage for, again, no discernable reason. If this film had shucked its pretensions and merely existed as an erotic work, it would certainly more easily succeed, as the material is far more erotic than the standard porn film. However, as an actual film in general, it falls very much short of the mark.

2/5

Salo

Let me just break any composure right here and now. Holy fucking god.

Salo was banned in pretty much every country it could have seeked release in when it came out in 1975, and while that should have tipped me off, I've loved a great many films that were initially banned or scorned by the public. And for the first hour or so, I still didn't understand the utter disgust the public reacted to this film with.

And then I did.

I've done readings on and of Marquis de Sade, and while he isn't exactly my favourite writer, the occasionally disgusting moments of his prose cannot be matched by a visual representation. I managed to continue until the final scene of the film, which contains incredibly graphic torture. This I couldn't stomach. My hands were over my face within the first minute of the scene, and after several minutes, I literally begged my boyfriend to turn it off. It was very difficult to go to bed last night.

I rarely consider myself a majority opinion when it comes to the worth of a film, particularly one that does get to be banned, but in this case, I am in utter agreement with its critics. You need a strong stomach and a weak amount of empathy in order to actually enjoy this travesty brought to screen.

1/5

The Nimrod Flipout

This was a really pleasant surprise. Keret's stories are hilarious and full of the fantastic, but they're grounded it something that makes them more than just quick larks. Keret has the talent to pack a lot of meaning and a lot of craft into these short stories, some of which are only three or four pages long, all of which are immensely readable and almost addictive.

What fascinates me, though, is the sheer prevalence of Germans. Keret's stories generally involve outsiders, but none so many as Germans, Germans who finance Israel, Germans who boyfriends cheat on girlfriends with, with whom characters will have a fling. Within that is an exterminator who calls himself "The Eichmann of Termites", an unsettling image in modern Israel. Here, the balance to peaceful, understanding relationships are constantly undercut, and that is a thread that continually pops up.

Keret's stories are quick and breezy, but the undertones regarding the Germans is one thread of many. Keret deftly juggles the funny, the absurd, with more grounding images, and it's his skill in this that makes these stories such a pleasure to read.

4.5/5

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

If you know the basics of punctuation and are looking for something that offers more complex usage, this isn't it. What Eats, Shoots & Leaves does is blithly, humorously take the reader into the mind of the punctuation obsessed. I'm a bit of a grammar and punctuation freak, so I can totally attest to a lot of what Truss is saying, however, at the same time, most of the information she conveys is really only for those who slept through their English classes, and really, those aren't going to be the people who pick this up.

No, what Truss is doing is preaching to the converted, and unfortunately, her very basic guide to punctuation doesn't exactly fit into a book that is really for those people who are well versed in the basics. Yes, I know where a comma goes. Yes, I understand that ownership must be denoted, and that you're and your are different creatures. If I didn't, I doubt this book would have much appealed to me.

This works more as an extremely funny rant than the guide it proposes to be, but as a rant, it succeeds. It's only when Truss decides to be teacher instead of writer that the work falls down.

3/5

Mean

Ken Babstock has been hailed as the new face of Canadian poetry, nay, poetry in general! And while some of his poetry practically comes right off the page, those poems are littered among lesser, run of the mill works that makes it difficult to see why this praise is so lavishly heaped upon him.

There doesn't seem to be much of an editing process to Mean. Why else would absolute gems be heaped alongside poems that should have never made it past the editor's pen? While Babstock is clearly talented, Mean is a rough, uneven work that takes patience to work through.

2.5/5

The World Doesn't End

Simic's The World Doesn't End won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1990. He writes densely packed little poems, sometimes two lines long, usually a paragraph or two, in which the world is fantastical, where you spend your holiday in a snowglobe or remark bitterly about the author who created you.

Each poem inhabits its own little world, as large as the poems are small, and you see only tiny glimpses of these worlds in his poetry. Some of his poems strike you hard in the chest, but most do not. While each world is worth viewing, only a few are worth visiting again and again.

3/5

History Laid Bare

This is a fascinating read. It's a collection of source material, with few interjections from the author, of love and sex, from ancient times to the early 20th century. That may sound a little dry, right until you are staring at laws from thousands of years ago, accounts of Cleopatra's plainness, Catherine the Great's young male lovers, Edgar Allan Poe's propensity for obsessive courtship, and not just one woman at a time.

You discover that Mozart was a little scatological, Casanova lost his virginity in a threesome with sisters, and a lot of adventurers had a little too much fun with the natives. While long, each of the sources are short and informative, and the only times Zacks jumps in is for clarification and background. It's great to just pick up and read about Marx's softer side before putting it down and continuing on with your day.

3/5

Watchmen

I haven't been to theatres in awhile, but I sort of figured that Watchmen wouldn't exactly be a laptop or DVD experience. I was right. I'm not sure how enveloped I would have been if I had been squinting at a tiny screen, but in theatres, I spent the entire experience with my mouth open.

I must admit this: I knew nothing about the backstory. Less than nothing. I didn't want to know, since the buzz was so insane that knowing anything pretty much implied being let down. And I really, really wasn't let down. I was engrossed every minute of its (almost three hour) timespan, completely invested in this story, these characters, that I'd previously known nothing about.

I'm generally biased against comic book movies. The Batman revamps I find extremely interesting, but most of those movies tend to be complete cheese (Spiderman series), or, if not, then simple action. There is the rare exception, but Watchmen is that exception. It's more a dystopian science-fiction film than a superhero film, and maybe that's why I loved it so much.

I do have a caveat. I have a strong stomach, and if I didn't, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle the graphic violence within, some of it more graphic due to the implications (strong violence against women). When I raved about it to my mother today, I told her in the same breath not to watch it. If you can't handle violence, or can't handle a superhero film where the good guys aren't actually good, but human, then this is not the film for you. If you're looking for an intricate treatise on morality, or lack thereof, set in a compelling, horrifying world, well, then, go forth! Go forth at once!

4/5

The Piano

This week is feminist theory week in my film class, and, never the feminist, I was a little leery of what we might end up seeing. Something to divide the audience, appeal only to the certain female? While the two males I was sitting with didn't exactly enjoy the experience, I loved it.

The Piano isn't exactly what you'd expect if you wanted a radical feminist text. For one, it's a little too mainstream. But it is feminist. The protagonist is a strong female, the shots are from her point of view, the viewpoint exceedingly subjective and interior. The men are more helpless than films generally allow them to be. But it wasn't those aspects that entranced me.

In the crudest sense, it's just a good story. There are so many lovingly crafted details, so many perfect shots, perfect lines of dialogue, so many wonderful actors. It's an experience to spend with your eyes peeking through your fingers, with your hand over your mouth, leaning forward in your seat. It's very difficult not to get caught up, and I didn't avoid that.

As an complete aside, I think I'm a little bit in love with Harvey Keitel.

4.5/5