Book Review: Divergent Trilogy Review

Divergent Trilogy

Divergent:  Four Stars out of Five

Insurgent: Three and Half Stars out of Five

Allegiant: Three Stars out of Five

Author: Virginia Roth

I recently reviewed Divergent the book and compared it to Divergent the movie. In this review, I continue the Divergent trilogy series book review. Divergent was published in 2011, with Insurgent following one year later in 2012, and the concluding book Allegiant in 2013. The three books describe a post-apocalyptic world that is centered on Chicago some seven or more generations after a catastrophic war. The primary protagonists are sixteen year old Beatrice/Tris and her eighteen year old boyfriend, Four/Tobias. They live in a society that has been split into five factions that emphasize a single personality trait: Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (kindness), Candor (honesty), Dauntless (bravery), and Erudite (intelligence).

In book one, we are introduced to the world Beatrice and Four live in. At sixteen, each member of a faction must choose the faction in which they will live out their lives. Beatrice and her brother Caleb separated by less than a year in age make a choice that takes them away from their birth faction of Abnegation. This very clever plot point by author Virginia Roth creates a situation where Beatrice’s and Caleb’s parents must demonstrate their love and understanding as regards their children’s choices; it is particularly astute writing as Roth later brings the Four character into the story and discusses his choice to move to a new faction wherein his choice was based on a stark contrast, his desire to flee an abusive father. Such clever uses of plot and character points are used by Roth throughout the three books to discuss behavioral traits that she appears to believe are important aspects of any society.

Divergent continues in a clever (if somewhat formulaic) manner by following Beatrice’s (now renamed Tris) initiation into the Dauntless faction. Here she learns firsthand their primary focus on bravery and meets her initiation instructor and boyfriend-to-be, Four (aka Tobias). Book one describes a pending plot by Erudite’s leader Jeanine against Abnegation that Four and Tris confound, but do not completely defeat. In book two, Insurgent, the plot by Jeanine continues and is ultimately thoroughly defeated by Tris, Four and their new colleagues, the Factionless; a group that is led by Four’s mother, Evelyn. Book three, Allegiant describes a rising resistance movement against the now oppressive Evelyn and the Factionless. The rebel army (the Allegiant) is led in part by Four’s other parent, his abusive father Marcus. Tris and Four leave Chicago as their part in the resistance movement requires them to seek information from those outside of Chicago. In their interactions with those outside of the city (The Bureau), they learn the true history of Chicago and its inhabitants. This history includes revelations that convince Tris and Four that further revolution is needed, this time against the Bureau and their concept of who is “genetically pure” and who is “gene-damaged”.

All three books are well crafted from several technical points of view. In particular, the plot pacing is great in book one, while the characters are so well described in books one and two that it is easy to become captivated or repulsed by several of the central characters. However, while the plot is well paced and logical in Divergent, the first book in the trilogy, it starts to suffer in books two and three. In book two, Insurgent, the plot becomes repetitious and the story-telling is damaged on several occasions with scene segues that seem like editorial miscues. However, my biggest complaint with the trilogy is with an absence of character development.

Consider the case of Tobias. The story alludes in the first book to his abuse as a child and then better defines his backstory in book three. Roth goes so far in book three to use the first person narrative with both Tris and Tobias (after using it only for Tris in books one and two); presumably to better focus on Tobias. I do not find this textual technique to be useful and, in fact, the use of Tobias as the narrator suffered from a poor delineation of his voice from that of Tris’ voice. I often had to re-read some sentences to verify who was speaking, their voices were so similar. But complaints about narrative voice aside, Tobias’ character could have provided a great opportunity for Roth to show Tobias’ evolution as he came to know himself in his new faction of Dauntless (after leaving his father in Abnegation): how his competition and differentiation from the rival Dauntless leader Eric drove him deeper into the Dauntless mindset,  and then again as his relationship with Tris and her driven personality began to interact. Instead, Four’s true personality, one developed in a household ruled by fear, is not even very well defined until very late in book three. Instead, his Dauntless-defined personality of fearless bravery is solely on display throughout books one, two and most of three. There is virtually no change observable in his character, merely a recitation of the events that would have defined a real person. A similar case could be made for Tris. She advances the plot throughout all three books, but her character remains virtually untouched by all the events she lives through. With the potential exception of Tobias' mother Evelyn, none of the characters ever seem affected by their circumstances such they seem to grow or change in any manner.

That a novel designed for the Young Adult audience follows many of the YA genre themes and plot conventions, and lacks characters that resemble actual people by having those characters growing with the plot’s influence on them, does not come as a great surprise. But in a novel series that showed such promise in the first book, it does come as a disappointment.

Footnote:  It seems like Roth recognized her missed opportunity with Tobias late in book three and started to better show the forces that shaped the youthful Tobias. In addition, Roth has since the publication of Allegiant published a fourth book that consists of short stories revolving around Tobias/Four.  I wonder if she too began to see him as a character with greater potential and an additional opportunity to better tell the Divergent tale.

Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Three and half Stars out of Five

PG13

Bilbo Baggins: Martin Freeman

Gandalf: Ian McKellen

Thorin: Richard Armitrage

Director: Peter Jackson

Writer: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro

Cinematography Director:  Andrew Lesnie

When J.R.R. Tolkien published “The Hobbit” in 1937 it was aimed at an audience made up children. Since “The Hobbit” was critically and commercially well received, one might presume Tolkien felt sufficiently confident in his craft to publish the much (much) longer trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings”.  The books, long and short share a number of things in common, but the one I want to focus on is corruption. In “The Hobbit” it was the corrupting influence of wealth, while in “The Lord of the Rings” it was the corrupting power of Power. These stories are highly entertaining, but with the exception of length or the inclusion of a flying dragon, are they really that much different? Having written “The Hobbit” first, it makes some sense for Tolkien to expand his stories into the long form employed in “The Lord of the Rings”. But can director/writer Peter Jackson devise some reason for filming “The Hobbit” after “Lord of the Rings”? Well maybe if you want to see a flying dragon, or make some money, but was there any compelling artistic reason?

From a technical or artistic (set design-wise) point of view The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies is truly amazing. As in his previous movies from the Hobbit genre, Jackson displays a beautiful cinematographic vision. His use of the New Zealand landscape as a stand-in for Middle Earth coupled with aerial photography creates a fantastic vision for the land of Orcs and Elves. And as in his earlier movies, Jackson and his art and set design teams create a world where no piece of architecture, weapon design, or costume is overlooked or done in slipshod fashion. The story though, left me expecting more; especially when so much went into designing the stage that the story is to be told upon.

Perhaps Jackson’s reason for filming The Hobbit was to create a cinematic prequel to the Lord of the Rings. (I can suggest a far more mundane reason that aligns well with Tolkien’s “Hobbit” theme referred to above). But why break a short story into a cinematic trilogy; a trilogy that takes longer to view than the book to read? One seems at least somewhat justified in wondering about the wisdom of creating a seven hour plus film version of The Hobbit; most especially when something is lost in such an endeavor; and something indeed was lost. What was lost was the quaintness of the original story, its sense of wonder, the camaraderie of the dwarf/hobbit/wizard team, and most importantly the simple honesty and honor of the central character, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). The primary themes of good versus evil and of wealth’s corrupting influence are retained in the movie, but the loyalty and the incorruptibility of the title character are swamped beneath a sea of violent warfare in this, the third part of Jackson’ Hobbit trilogy. By stretching the story into such a prolonged and multi-year affair, the use of the hobbit Bilbo as an exemplar of “humanity” at its best is badly diluted. What we are left with is an extraordinary exercise in CGI ingenuity; there is really almost no story to talk about in part three.

In the initial scenes of part three Jackson uses the fire-breathing Smaug’s attack on Lake Town to set the tone for the movie. I found these opening scenes the most useful for the story as it had its own mini-story arc plus it helped introduce the impetus for the ensuing war over the possession of Smaug’s lair and his cache of gold. The concept of the dragon’s hoard corrupting the dwarf king, Thorin (Richard Armitrage) is also believable and a good goad for the potential war between dwarves, Men and elves. The irony of this misbegotten war is clever as an example of the pettiness of Man (whether he be dwarf, elf or Man). It is also a clever plot point as it brings sufficient amounts of the forces of Good (for the wrong reason, of course) such that when the forces for evil arrive, Good is ready for them; almost ready, anyway. Of course, such a story requires a few setbacks for the good guys and at least one arrival of the “cavalry” from over the hill in order to turn the tide in favor of our heroes. The CGI used in these early scenes was done remarkably well. I especially liked the technical artistry of the flying dragon and the elvish ranks of archers.

But the story then descends into a confused collection of bad armies (orcs and goblins) fighting relentlessly and without any clarity to the viewer with the good armies of dwarves/Men/elves. Our hobbit hero is largely pushed to the side, and the wax and wane of the warring parties cannot be followed; indeed it does not seem to really be necessary to follow the battles. The viewer is treated to examples of the good guys acting heroically and of the bad guys being felled endlessly by opponents impossibly small and clearly incapable of felling such large evil doers. How many giants does Bilbo kill with his stones (really, with a stone?)? And while I’m on this topic, it quite frankly seemed easier to demolish any one of the giants or ogres or whatever monster than it is to cross a street. I can let these objections go, but for me, I cannot let go the lack of any coherent story message in this movie. It was largely a technical success, but by stretching the movie into such a long affair, the heart and soul of this story was ripped out.

Ultimately, I was disappointed in part three. So much time, brilliance and technical genius went into this movie, but rather than adding to the story, it suffered for it. Of the three parts to Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, I do recommend part 2, but remain unhappy with parts one and three.

Book and Movie Review: Divergent

Divergent (Book: 2011; Movie: 2014)

Book: Four Stars out of Five

Author: Virginia Roth

Movie: Three Stars out of Five

             Director: Neil Burger

             Screenplay: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor

It is always a pleasure for me to compare an author’s vision for her book to that of the director’s and screenwriters’ version in a movie. The easiest comparison is a case such as Cloud Atlas where both the movie and the book were brilliant. Even more enjoyable are those few cases where a dreadful book is turned into a work of genius; my favorite example of this is The Bridges of Madison County. Unfortunately the most common transition is from a very good book being turned into something quite mediocre. This is what has happened in the case of Virginia Roth’s Divergent.

Roth has created in her 2011 book, “Divergent” a compelling story that is well crafted technically and thematically. Following a current trend in Young Adult fiction, Roth has placed her story of sixteen year old Beatrice Prior in a post-apocalyptic vision of the future. By means only vaguely described, humanity has separated into five factions; the five factions represent five strengths found in Human nature: kindness (Amity faction), truthfulness (Candor), selflessness (Abnegation), intelligence (Erudite), and bravery (Dauntless). The unlikelihood that Humanity could so separate by either sociological or biological means following a devastating  war is somewhat beside the point in this novel as the separation provides Roth with opportunities to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each behavioral trait. One point she makes via a good use of foreshadowing is that each faction felt that the cause of the war was an insufficiency of their particular’s faction’s strength in those that waged the war. The seeds of factional distrust are there to be readily seen; so much so, one wonders how the separation into factions was ever thought to be a good idea.

The story follows Beatrice, now renamed Tris after she has left her childhood faction of Abnegation to join and train with Dauntless. That she finds and falls in love with a young man (known as Four) should come as no surprise to the reader; or that while she is initially the lowest ranked of the new initiates into the Dauntless ranks, that by training’s end, she is the highest ranked. Like so many YA stories, the familiar traits of bravery, intelligence, and selflessness help Tris to stand out in the face of her physical limitations and a small coterie of bullies. Another frequent theme in YA fiction is the value of a loving family or the corrosive effects of a dysfunctional one. While Tris finds special strengths in the memories of her family, Four’s upbringing provides a stark contrast as his memories of a controlling and abusive father always loom in his thoughts and actions.

Four’s problems from his childhood are cleverly revealed to Tris and the reader via a plot device. This device or McGuffin is a chemically induced simulation of one’s deepest fears.  McGuffin or no, I actually enjoyed its use in both the book and the movie (its use was actually the technical highlight of an otherwise flawed movie). The simulations allow the reader to much better understand who Four is and how he came to be; it also allows Tris an opportunity to grow as a person as she experiences Four’s fears and to help him overcome them. It is a plot device, but it really helps to propel the story along in terms of both the story’s primary arc as well as to also help describe the budding romance between the main characters.

Having developed into a highly capable new member of Dauntless and to have publicly displayed her affection for Four, the story starts what will presumably be the initial stages of the concluding parts to Roth’s Divergent trilogy. On the morning following her graduation into the member ranks of Dauntless, Tris discovers that her new comrades are all behaving in a highly robotic manner. She blends in with them as she searches for Four. They do indeed find one another as well as the destination and intent of their robotic mates. As they further search for an explanation of the other Dauntless members behavior they learn of the secret plot and methods now being employed by one of the rival factions against Tris’ childhood faction. She seeks out her parents and brother in an attempt to warn them and by the book’s end, we find Tris, Four and the various survivors on their way into the hinterlands and book two of the trilogy.

For a debut effort, Roth has in her first year out of college constructed a very good novel. It is aimed at the YA readership but adults can certainly read it with enjoyment as well. Roth has invented an unlikely scenario with the five faction idea and then employed an equally unlikely plot device in the form of the serum used to induce what are essentially controlled and monitored hallucinations. However, I think that such scene settings and plot devices can be acceptable if they are used to good effect. In the case of the book Divergent, Roth has indeed used them to good effect. She explores very effectively the idea of personality strengths and deficits, but also how some personality traits though named and presumed different can in fact be very similar. Her primary example of how bravery in defense of another is really just another name for selflessness is one such example; presumably there will be more such examples in the succeeding books. Roth has shown how such discussions on behavior and their sociological outcomes can be both entertaining and enlightening.

Having praised the book, I turn now to the movie. It was, in short, a disappointment. One could compare it to its cinematic cousin, Mockingjay, Part 1 or to its literary antecedent, the book just discussed. In either comparison, the movie Divergent fails to deliver. The book’s strengths lie in the exploration of human strengths, primarily bravery and selflessness. To illustrate these themes the books delves deeply into the characters, their fears, their strengths, and their weaknesses. The book is able to demonstrate how and what Tris took from her childhood experiences with her mom and dad. Both the movie and the book show the fears that Tris carries as a young adult, but in the movie unlike the book, there is virtually no character definition made. The reader has a clear and firm grasp on where Tris is strong, where she is weak and to whom she must turn for help. But movie viewer is exposed to these fears more as hurdles for Tris to face and conquer; their relationship to her actual nature or to how they have shaped her is completely non-existent.

The movie does utilize the simulations of Tris’ fears very well from a cinematic/technical view. The fear simulations are well executed and create a great set of visual images. But like so many CGI images, they just don’t provide much more than eye candy. The performances of Tris by Shailene Woodley and of Four by Theo James are quite frankly of the same nature; both actors are very attractive, and reasonably proficient in their roles, but there just doesn't seem to be much more than their surface appearance. The director’s control and construction of each scene is perfectly fine, but somewhere between the translation from the book or from the screenplay to the screen, too much of the heart and soul from the book is lost. What’s left is little more than an outline of the ideas that the book presents, and the movie fails to follow up on.

Book Review: The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman

The Accidental Universe (2014)

Four Stars out of Five

Alan Lightman

159 pages

Alan Lightman is a theoretical physicist that has taught at Harvard and is the first professor to be hired by MIT with posts in both Physics and Humanities. He has six books to his credit, one other of which is a collection of essays. In The Accidental Universe, Lightman discusses over the course of six essays topics as varied as whether a belief in God is incompatible with science to whether or not the pervasive presence of cell phones and the modern connection to the internet is changing the nature of Man.

 In the first essay, “The Accidental Universe”, Lightman discusses the concept of the multi-verse; that is to say the idea that the totality of reality consists of an infinity of parallel universes. The concept derives in part over the vexing problem of whether our universe with its set of physical laws must be of such exact values or life (or indeed the universe itself) would not have formed. Are these values then the only values possible for an as yet undetermined physical reason, or are there other values out there in other unreachable universes? A sizable portion of modern physicists would greatly prefer the former scenario where there are fundamental reasons for Planck’s constant or the weak atomic force to have the values they have. They spend their lives searching for such a fundamental set of laws to explain these values and to prove why they are unique.

Another group growing in size and influence, the parallel universe group prefers (or has in frustration settled on) the anthropocentric view as first proposed by Brandon Carter in 1968. They state that had the universe we inhabit not have the values for these fundamental laws that it does indeed have; we would not be here to ask the question. Had there been a single universe with a single set of fundamental laws where the values were inconsistent with a stable universe or one where molecules such as water were not possible due to incompatible values for the weak atomic force, then the question would be beyond moot. Adding fuel to this point of view are some of the theoretical implications of the String theory and of the inflationary acceleration now confirmed to be the case for the expansion of the universe.

Now of course, the two contending groups of scientists outlined above are also joined by a third group; the group that sees the hand of God behind these fundamental laws and their life-giving values. This group ably represented by NIH director Francis Collins feels that the fine tuning needed for these laws can only be explained by some variation of the Intelligent Design proposition. Such a reach for a metaphysical explanation does not appeal to Lightman, or indeed to most scientists. But this currently unsolvable conundrum provides an interesting example of how highly intelligent and educated people have reached a point in the debate where there are insufficient facts/experiments/calculations to resolve the issue. So, what is the next step in this type of discussion? Should the discussion’s participants fall back to their religious convictions for answers to such questions, or should they continue to gather facts, ponder new hypotheses, plan new experiments?

This kind of dichotomy of belief systems is addressed from a different direction by Lightman in his third essay: “The Spiritual Universe”. Following his second essay on “The Temporary Universe”, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and whether a truly immortal being would have to be defined as God/Creating Force, Lightman begins a discussion in “The Spiritual Universe” where he tries to define what a scientist is and how he thinks by elucidating a central thesis to scientific thought. This point of view is one I share: “All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe”. Such a thesis does not mean that we currently know all these laws or that as we gather more data and experimental results that we won’t revise some or even all of these laws. It means that given sufficient time and energy, these laws are knowable. An implication from this thesis is a question; a question based not so much on whether God exists or not, but one on whether He plays a role in our Universe (the question of his existence is of course a sub-set of the latter question).

To be sure, the world and the world views on how God interacts with the Universe exist on a spectrum that ranges from Atheism to Deism to Immanentism to Interventionism. This spectrum describes whether God ever existed or acted to one where He acted in the beginning of time to one where He continues to act/intervene up to this day. The difference between deism and immanentism is a very interesting philosophical point and really germane the following discussion: deists believe that God acted originally but no longer, while immanentists believe he acts still, but uses the Universe’s laws to do so. Where do most scientists fall on this spectrum is question raised obliquely by Lightman but not really resolved. And while some scientists (see Francis Collins below) on occasion will essentially reject the central theme of the scientists’ belief system outlined in the previous paragraph by maintaining a belief that God does act in an interventionist manner occasionally, most scientists would seem to fall into one of the other categories.

Lightman moves onto the part of the book that I found the most enlightening: are all questions answerable? This question might on the surface seem the same as the previously central theses to a scientific point of view regarding the laws of the universe; but there is an important distinction. That distinction is whether or not in Lightman’s words, the problem can be stated as a “well-pose problem:  can the question be stated with sufficient enough clarity and precision that it is guaranteed an answer?”. For example, can the rate of a falling apple be measured; can the question of its acceleration rate be posed as a clear and repeatedly measurable answer? That it can be so, is pretty clear. But what about (say) the motivation of a fictional character in a movie or book: did Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn in 2008’s “Doubt” have an illicit relationship with an altar boy or not? A brilliant movie and performance by Hoffman, but can this question be phrased in such a manner that science can answer it? The answer is as clearly a “no”, as the answer to the apple’s acceleration rate question is an equally clear “yes”.

And so we come back to the actions of God. Until He acts in a manner that breaks the Laws of the Universe, He and his existence fall into a category of topics that cannot be addressed by science. Per Lightman, one can falsify the arguments based on Intelligent Design or morality for God’s existence, but this is not the same as falsifying the proposition of God’s existence. Lightman goes on to assert his atheism, his disappointment in some of the arguments made by one today’s most vocal atheists, Richard Dawkins. But he concludes by re-stating the whole point of the well-posed question. That is to say, that some questions are best addressed by scientists because they can be answered, and other questions best left to the artists, the poets, and the religious as they are best fit to explore such regions of thought.

In any event, in these essays and the three that follow, Lightman brings his expertise in physics and science to bear on topics of interest to both scientist and non-scientist alike. In all probability, his views will not align well with some members of both of these groups, but the strength of this book is that he brings an open mind to the question; that is, the hall mark of the scientist, an open mind. Despite some jarring segues in his writing, I enjoyed this book for the topics raised (the first three essays are the strongest) and I encourage any with an interest in the topic of the knowable, the unknowable, and how they can coexist in the mind of a scientist to read this book.

Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay (2008, 2009, 2010)

Four Stars out of Five

Suzanne Collins

The Young Adult (YA) fiction genre has a long history, stretching from the 19^th Century (e.g. Swiss Family Robinson, Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) through the mid-20^th century (e.g. The Outsiders) to the influential and occasionally profound 70’s (The Bell Jar, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), and up to the present day (e.g. The Harry Potter Series). YA fiction has through the years been primarily written by adults aimed for readers somewhere between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five. Their themes range over a wide variety of topics, but are generally thought to be topics of concern to this age group: romance, identity, family, and depression to name but a few. One of the key elements is that these stories are generally told from the first person point of view of the protagonist about whom the story is concerned. They are told in (usually) a spare textual style that helps propel the plot without much character definition or evolution. The Hunger Games trilogy written by Suzanne Collins and published in 2008 through 2010 captures many of these elements, but explores some of Man’s darkest traits in a largely believable and highly relatable manner.

The first novel, The Hunger Games introduces Katniss Everdeen. She lives in a post-apocalyptic North American country, Panem. Panem is comprised of twelve districts living and working in thrall to the Rocky Mountain-based “Capitol”. The districts had rebelled against the Capitol roughly seventy-four years in the past and had lost. As part of the armistice, the districts paid a heavy price: The Hunger Games. These games are held annually and require each district to send two adolescent tributes, one male and one female to the Capitol to compete in a contest that will result in one victor and twenty-three dead losers. The games clearly hearken to the Roman Empire and their gladiatorial contests, but they also allude in a sense to Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. The theme of sacrificed children for the safety of society is one I had not expected to see in YA fiction.

Katniss’ story follows a predictable path but includes some features that might catch some readers by surprise and might also reveal some room for growth for author, Collins. Katniss hunts with her bow and arrow and a quasi-boyfriend, Gale in the nearby woods. As expected, her hunting trips help prepare Katniss for her inevitable entry into the games; she is, of course a superb archer capable of living on her own in the forest. By telling of her experiences in the forest, Collins informs the reader of Katniss’ family and of their influences (especially the father) on her character’s strengths and weaknesses. Here though is where I found fault with the textual style of these books. Katniss and the other characters are revealed solely through their actions. As noted, the writing is a very spare style, plot is everything. It is to my mind a style well suited to the young reader but frustrating in gaining a more intuitive understanding of the various characters. I found myself in the end disappointed that my understanding of the characters was as superficial as their “definition” in the book. Additionally, Collins utilizes another textual style that drives me to distraction: fragmentary sentences (e.g. Katniss is very good with bow and arrow. Very good.). Collins employs these techniques to keep the text simple and the plot moving; perhaps perfect for the adolescent YA reader, but maybe too simple for mature readers.

Move, the plot does. These three books capture the reader’s attention as the plot moves briskly along. Katniss does go into the arena several times and due to her successes finds herself the symbol for a nascent insurrection against the capitol. By the time of the third book, Collins has very cleverly introduced the reader to the cruelties of the Capitol, the entrenched cynicism of both the Capitol and the rebels via their use of propaganda, and most critically the willingness of both sides to use any means to attain their ends, no matter how depraved those means are.  In 1971, “The Who” released a song, Won’t Get Fooled Again, whose lyrics included the following lines: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. As I read the book or watched the movie, I kept hearing these words in my head. At first blush, this is not a new topic, but Collins uses it well. The tragedy of the massacre near the end of third book had me in tears, but also amazed.

Collins uses her trilogy to indeed discuss and examine many of the YA themes mentioned above, such as family and love. She uses science fiction as the sub-genre to convey her message. What I find amazing is her use of an over-arching theme I did not expect in a YA novel:  the corrupting influence of power. The desire to gain it and hold it, and the amorality of too many of those that seek such power are powerful story lines. They are easily understood and felt by those that have studied history, or even watch the evening news. That adolescents can read and learn from those lessons as depicted in this book is a good thing. I just hope they do learn from it, and somehow despite the centuries of failure before them, someday a new generation will come along that makes the changes needed for mankind to finally leave the violent and self-centered moral caves we still live in.

TV Review: Sons of Anarchy, Series Ending (Papa's Goods) Episode Review

Sons of Anarchy (2008 - 2014), Series Ending Episode (Papa’s Goods)

Three and half Stars out of Five

TV MA LSV (Language, Sexual situations, Violence)

Crime/Drama

Jackson Teller: Charlie Hunnam

Gemma Teller: Katey Sagal

Creator/Writer: Kurt Sutter

Most of the best stories being written and broadcast on television have for the past decade been violent, often to an extreme. In some cases such as Breaking Bad, Deadwood or The Walking Dead, the violence is as essential to the story line as the lead character. In other equally good stories (such as Homeland or The Wire), violence plays a role but is generally pushed into the background being used only when essential. The prominence with which violence is used in the recently concluded Sons of Anarchy series is as astonishing as its literal or metaphorical purpose is mysterious. To be sure, the outlaw biker life depicted in the program is likely a violent one, but the extreme level of it that is used by program creator Kurt Sutter begs to be explained. Is it merely seven seasons of gratuitous violence, or is Sutter seeking a deeper, more nuanced meaning? In the early seasons, I had hoped for subtlety, but with the concluding episode shown on FX this past Tuesday (9Dec2014), I have to conclude a gratuitous use of violence would have been preferable to the cloudy thinking that went into the frankly sacrilegious comparison of lead character Jackson Teller’s actions to those of Jesus Christ.

Season seven was cleverly (if with extreme and brutal violence) set up with the murder of Teller’s wife, Tara (Maggie Siff) by his mom Gemma (Katey Sagal). Gemma is saved from prosecution by Teller’s biker teammate, Juice (Theo Rossi). Throughout season seven, Gemma and Juice maintain their charade even as Jax starts multiple gangland wars based on his mother’s and Juice’s lies as to who was responsible for Tara’s murder. When the truth is finally revealed to Jax, he starts a program to wrap up various loose ends with his motorcycle club, friends and family. The audience is given an opportunity to witness just how ruthless and morally decrepit Jax has become. As in the previous six seasons, Jax employs his sociopathic genius to reach his goals; all but one that is. And that one is his own fate. He comes to the conclusion he is a danger to his two boys. He deposits them with the mother of the elder boy, Wendy (Drea de Matteo), and then he sets off to end his own life. Is this intended to be Jax’s redemption?

Sutter attempts to excuse Jax' depredations over the previous seven seasons in a less than artful manner via his suicide/self-sacrifice. Near the story’s end, Jax encounters a homeless woman that had been shown in previous episodes mystically appearing and disappearing without explanation. She leaves her bread and wine to give Jax her blanket and tells him it is time to end it. Having received this permission/guidance from this Mary-like character, Jax collects the lives (and presumably the souls) of the two thieves that will accompany him to the hereafter; one August Marks (Billy Brown) nods his acceptance of Jax, while the second thief, Charles Barosky (Peter Weller) is gunned down without comment. Jax fleeing the police he himself has set on his tail decides suicide-by-cop is taking too much time and as such, stretches his arms out crucifixion-style to run his motorcycle headlong into a truck, whose driver’s only words are “Jesus”. The final scene is a close up on two crows picking at a piece of wine-stained bread – just in case anyone missed the first allusion to bread and wine.

Has there ever been a weaker, more offensive attempt to excuse homicidal behavior than this awful attempt to write off a killer’s countless murders with a comparison of his suicide to the sacrifice made on the cross by Jesus? Consider also his mother’s self-delusional excuse for her murder of Tara: she was looking out for her family. Later, she tells Jax that she actually really loved Tara and gives him permission to kill/execute her; which, of course, he does. It would appear there is  never any other course of action in life; is murder the only path forward. One might presume Jax has inherited his mother’s flawed view of life (especially the lives of others) and her unbelievably feeble excuse, “it’s what we do”. Are these characters humans or animals, incapable of thought and reason? Seven seasons of endless and pointless death describe this series. If it had been merely the pointless, car chase with bad music kind of violence (featured so prominently in season four), one could write the series off as just another TV version of a b-movie or even more to the point, a video game. But really, Sutter clearly aspires to something higher; he tries to give some meaning to the endless death and violence in his series. To my mind, he tries but falls short. His violence has become in the end nothing more than an addictive drug; there is no meaning, only a seven year failed effort. And just like some desperate junkie with an outstretched arm begging for more of their drug of choice, and then dies in some nameless alley, this series will just fade away, forgotten, leaving not a trace of meaning.

Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014)

Three and half Stars out of Five

PG-13

Katniss Everdeen: Jennifer Lawrence

Peeta Mellark: Josh Hutcherson

Gale Hawthorne: Liam Hemsworth

Haymitch Abernathy: Woody Harrelson

President Snow: Donald Sutherland

Plutach Heavensbee: Philip Seymour Hoffman

President Alma Coin: Julianne Moore

Effie Trinket: Elizabeth Banks

Director: Francis Lawrence

Screenplay:  Peter Craig and Danny Strong

Adaptation: Suzanne Collins from the novel Mockingjay

“Mockingjay” was the concluding novel in a trilogy of Young Adult fiction by author Suzanne Collins published in 2010 (the first two novels, “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire” were published in 2008 and 2009, respectively). The owners of the movie franchise created from the Hunger Games trilogy have split Mockingjay into two parts in the same manner as “The Hobbit” or “Harry Potter” franchises. While it is easy to criticize the apparent greed that may well have motivated such a decision, I was very pleased with this Part 1 version of the Mockingjay. I have not read the novel and as such my view is based solely on the movie’s merits; and of those, it was a pleasing afternoon’s entertainment.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 picks up right where The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) left off. Our heroine, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has been plucked from certain death by members of the resistance. She is flown to the supposedly destroyed District 13 where she is met by the leaders of the resistance: President Coin (Julianne Moore), Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and her boyfriend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth). The resistance wants to use her as a propaganda tool to encourage the other districts to rise up against the Capitol and its President (Donald Sutherland). Initially repulsed by the falseness of the play acting required of her for this role, Katniss is drawn in after she visits one of the recently attacked districts and sees for herself the devastation wrought by Snow and his army of masked soldiers. To be sure, Katniss has opportunities to display her courage and moral rectitude in the face of her opponents’ violence and the distracting requirements of her propaganda duties. She is as well distraught over the Capitol’s use of her former Hunger Games partner, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) as the Capitol’s propaganda tool. She worries for his safety and parlays his rescue into a deal with President Coin that bears for her some un-welcomed results.

The story line is generally one not uncommon in Young Adult fiction; that is to say, an adolescent is set against a morally bankrupt enemy and through their pluck and conviction, they win the day. This movie version has taken the opportunity to play with certain motifs from current events: the use of propaganda to recruit volunteers, the fight by guerrillas against a bigger, far more powerful foe, bombing to suppress the opposition, etc. The lighting and color choices used by director Francis Lawrence serve well to set a grim and dark tone to the film. Filming the bombers from ground level helps to emphasize the inequality of the power distribution between the two sets of combatants in this story.  The aftermath of a “fire bombing” paints in too vivid colors the grisly costs of war. These techniques help to push this movie into much darker regions that those usually inhabited by YA fiction; to give the movie a gritty feel of reality. Indeed, director Lawrence tries and to some extent succeeds in making this story fairly realistic in terms of the hellishness of war; while there is a fantasy element to Katniss’ successes, there is a stark reality to the misery and actual costs of war.

The acting by Jennifer Lawrence is per her usual standards set to a high mark. As noted, her character succeeds where most would fail, and this pulls the story out of a more reality-based genre and back into the Young Adult genre it originally inhabited. But on several occasions, the Katniss character is placed in situations (e.g. Peeta's imprisonment and her confused love for him vs. her faltering love for Gale) wherein Lawrence’s ability to emote can settle the story back into a realm to which anyone can relate. Some notable acting is brought forth by the ensemble of Moore as the rebel’s determined and emotionally wounded president, Hutcherson as the tortured Peeta, or even the de-wigged/jumpsuit-wearing Banks as Effie bringing a comic element to the movie. Additionally, how the scenes by Hoffman as Plutach complicated by his far too untimely death in the real world affected the production of this movie (dedicated to his memory) were accomplished is really impressive.

Bottom-line, this movie brings a young adult’s novel to life for adults of all ages. It touches at times too lightly and at other times with some effect on subjects that are of concern and germane to today’s world, and primarily with the deft acting skills of Jennifer Lawrence, it brings to life the emotional scars such a story might well lay on anyone, even a young adult heroine.

Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Two and Half Stars out of Five

PG13

Cage: Tom Cruise

Rita: Emily Blunt

Director: Doug Limon

Writer: Christopher McQuarrie

Cinematography Director:  Dion Beebe

Editing: James Herbert and Laura Jennings

If you think a combination of Groundhog Day (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997) starring Tom Cruise is a good idea, then Edge of Tomorrow may be your movie. Using the implicit permission that every science fiction movie gets, Edge of Tomorrow pushes reality and logic to the limit by reliving a particular day during a losing conflict between Earth’s army and bunch of murderous aliens. The Earth having been invaded by the asteroid-borne aliens is then subjected to time manipulation during the ensuing warfare. As could be imagined, Tom Cruise as Cage and Emily Blunt as Rita, members of Earth’s defense force, the UDF, fight the aliens for a while, suffer a few setbacks and then (spoiler alert) win the day – who could have predicted it?

In a mildly comic manner, Cage is initially a cowardly, marketing professional conscripted to the war effort. When he declines a front line assignment, he finds himself via the actions of a vengeful general instead in the thick of battle as a trooper fighting the invaders. Through luck and plot demands, he survives on the field of battle longer than his more-experienced comrades. Cage eventually has a life-changing encounter with one of the aliens, but loses his life in the process; this is when the Groundhog Dog day allusion takes over. Cage re-awakes at the beginning of the day on which he has been killed. This plot line is repeated multiple times with Cage learning more about the aliens and how to fight them with each cycle. He attracts the attention of a heroine from a previous battle, Rita. She and a disgraced scientist, Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor) explain their theories about the aliens, her previous experience with the “Groundhog Effect” and how they need Cage with his active Groundhog abilities to defeat the aliens.

The movie is full of logical and scientific impossibilities, but it does have a few story-telling techniques that I thought were noteworthy. The most difficult aspect of such a story is keeping the audience engaged as the movie-makers repeat the battle day in question endlessly to emphasize the Groundhog effect, to indicate the maturation effects it has on Cage, and to do so without boring the audience to death with too much repetition. It goes without saying that the cowardly Cage, the Marketing executive evolves into an incredible killing machine. However, it is interesting to watch how Cruise handles what are essentially two different personalities; it requires good acting, writing, and editing skills to make this transition believable in an otherwise unbelievable story. There is little other character definition, let alone development.

The editing in such a movie is a considerable challenge, and the team of James Herbert and Laura Jennings have done a good job stitching the story together in a (semi-)plausible, but more to the point, understandable manner. Another technical aspect of this movie that is noteworthy is sound and sound editing. In a movie where the amount of bullets and rockets fired (btw where did the aliens get their weaponry?) must have set a tonnage record, getting the sound effects and the editing to work would also be a considerable challenge. The last big technical part of this movie is special effects; they were frankly disappointing in my opinion. The CGI aliens moved so fast to emphasize their fighting potency, they are virtually nothing more than blurs; the frequent use of dark lighting does not help.

In any event, in the mode of the aforementioned Starship Troopers, or Battleship (2012), or hundreds of pulp fiction movies from the 50’s to the present, Edge of Tomorrow offers very little more entertainment than your standard afternoon B movie matinee. Given so many intelligently written, directed and acted action movies available in 2014, I would skip Edge of Tomorrow.

Book Review: Les Miserables

Les Misérables (1862)

Four Stars out of Five

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is surely one of the longest novels yet written, and yet quite possibly one of the most compassionate ever as well. It is regarded by many as one of the best novels ever written, and is often assigned in advanced high school literature classes.  It has been done by Hollywood as a dramatic movie and as a musical adaption from the stage. Indeed, the musical is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

It is hard for me to believe that almost any adolescent with their limited experience to the cruelties perpetrated by Man on his fellow would take the same message away from this novel that a more aged (and perhaps more cynical) reader would take. The novel takes the form of five “volumes” each with multiple “books” and “chapters” to tell the story of Jean Val Jean. His story is a tragic rag to riches story on the surface, but more importantly is a story of his redemption. Redemption not so much from the crimes he has committed, but rather from the self-centered, self-pitying world view he carries in his early life to a more compassionate, Christian view at the end of his life.

This book is about the plagues visited upon Val Jean by society, by his personal tormentor, Javert, and by his own personal demons. In moving the plot forward (at let’s say, a very sedate pace), Hugo introduces the reader to slices of French history in the early 19^th century, to that era’s customs with respect to dress and manners, to its criminal justice system and its effects on the convicted, and in painstaking detail to the practices of a particular catholic order of nuns, to the French sewer system, the battle of Waterloo and likely several other areas of French life that my mind has blanked out. To say these digressions slowed the novel without adding much to it would be something of an understatement. Some fraction of these digressions would have been useful, but M. Hugo really needed an editor.

What the book does well is describe how the nature of French society (and Hugo goes to great pains elsewhere to say all societies, not just French) has created systems to work to enrich and empower the already rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. Not a new thought for the early 21^st century, but one that earned Hugo considerable disapprobation from many of his contemporaries when the book was published; perhaps more so in France than in other countries. It is enlightening and depressing both to see how unjustly the poor were treated in that early 19^th century setting, and then to realize how the same forces in play then are still in play now. Perhaps, those in power these days use different tools to suppress, but their end goals remain bitterly the same: Me first.

The plot of the story tells of Val Jean’s incarceration for nearly twenty years for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister’s family (and for his various attempts to escape). After being released, Val Jean still in the grip of his felonious nature (one surely created and added to while incarcerated) has a life changing meeting with a local bishop of unusually high empathy. He is forced to confront his demons, his set of values, and his relationship to God and Man. It takes him while to make this step from miscreant to saint. He commits at least one more pointless act of thievery, and this time at the expense of another member of the Les Misérables. Indeed, this last act of brutish venality seems in some ways to be the needed final life lesson of those started by the bishop that propels Val Jean onto his road to salvation. He starts to use both his mind and heart to help others. He becomes wealthy and influential under the first of several assumed names. During this phase, Val Jean (now M. Madeline) meets another member of the Les Misérables that has been grievously mistreated, Fantine. He himself has even played a small unconscious role in her descent into misery. Realizing this plus employing his newfound compassion, he attempts to help Fantine and later her equally unfortunate daughter, Cosette. Following Fantine’s death, Val Jean raises Cosette to adulthood in Paris. During these phases, Val Jean is pursued by the dogged Inspector Javert. The Javert scenes help to establish Javert’s goals and narrow vision for society; he is a better model for one of society’s well trained dogs. He thinks he thinks, but in reality, he only reacts in a manner taught to him by his masters. There is precious little humanity left in Javert. However, it should be noted, he too is one of the Les Misérables; just a well-trained and well fed one.

In time, Val Jean must make a decision for Cosette’s happiness that comes at the cost of his own. In fact, Val Jean had to some degree been living a problem-free life since his days as M. Madeline. Yes, he had several narrow scrapes with Javert and some periods of near poverty (e.g. his time in the nunnery as a groundskeeper). But until he had to choose to let Cosette go to her lover, Marius, he really never had any real personal investment in his new life as caring and loving man; one devoted to others rather than himself. His new-found transformation to a compassionate Christian was never really tested. The testing and Marius’ own limitations lead to Val Jean’s ultimate salvation; he is truly redeemed by the book’s end. Marius and Cosette achieve a kind of new understanding and love for the finally revealed, true Jean Val Jean. Even poor Javert once forced to admit his world view was fatally flawed by the actions of Val Jean achieved a kind of cleansing transformation.  Not only is Val Jean finally and truly redeemed, but by his actions he has led to much growth in the characters of many of those near him.

However, as compelling a story as Val Jean’s story is, the real story, the real felon in this book is Society. Who will help it achieve and how will society ever achieve its redemption? When will Society or better yet Man really learn to place his neighbor’s welfare before his own? Is such a transformation, such a societal redemption even possible? Can Man and his Society at least get better if not, in fact transform? Such a question has long been asked by writers and philosophers. I sure hope so, but based on current life in the 21^st Century, I can only worry for my grandchildren.

Movie Review: Interstellar Review Number Two

Interstellar (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

Cooper: Matthew McConaughey

Brand: Anne Hathaway

Murph: Jessica Chastain

Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan

Cinematography Director:  Hoyte Van Hoytema

Music: Hans Zimmer

Even though I found Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar compelling enough to be on my short list for Best Movie of 2014, and even though this is science fiction with inevitable logic and science gaps, there were several technical questions and couple of logic questions that bothered me enough to prevent me from giving this movie five stars. I thought I would follow up my first review with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek review of these gaps.

Starting with the sound editing, it is nearly impossible to hear the dialog on multiple occasions due to the soaring musical score by Hans Zimmer. Nolan has stated this was intentional, but it seems very counter-intuitive to me to write a dialog, have your actors act it, and then drown the sound out with music.

From a logic standpoint there are several gaps in the story: first up is the unlikelihood of Murph’s room remaining untouched for thirty years while she is off working for NASA (at site only a few driving hours away); convenient to propel the story, but pretty unlikely. Even more unlikely is that after Coop finds the secret NASA site, is subjected to a pointless interrogation regarding how he found the site, he is then lauded within minutes of his interrogation as the only one that can lead the mission. Really? If that is true, why on Earth wasn’t NASA searching for him? And by the way, why is an Indian drone flying around American corn fields and why is Coop so easily able to take control of it, and why is this series of scenes even in the movie; to prove to us Coop is an engineer? If so, why does he spend the rest of the movie acting like Captain Kirk and not Mr. Spock?

Now, onto my real gripes: the technical missteps. Why does it take the Endurance two years to fly from Earth to Saturn, but (apparently) a far shorter time frame to fly from Planet 1 in the new galaxy to Planet 2? And while we’re on the new planets, are there supposed to be twelve of them in a single stellar system orbiting a single sun and all in orbit about Gargantua, the black hole? I get that maybe only three are good enough to check out, but are we to believe that NASA thought originally there were twelve potential Earth-like planets in a single stellar system, and that they did not know there was a nearby black hole there, but they did know there were potentially twelve good planets? This really begs the imagination. And by the way, didn’t Endurance use all of its fuel escaping the black hole; how does it brake to enter into orbit around Planet 3 so that young Brand can land and hook up finally with her old boyfriend?

With respect to the physics, I will admit I am a chemist, not a physicist and that this movie had a renowned physicist, Kip Thorne advising them. That being said, why does Coop’s ranger spaceship disintegrate as he crosses or nears the event horizon of the black hole, but his suit and his body remain remarkably intact? If the gravity well that Planet 1 has is so high as to have a seven year to one hour time dilation effect, why is the gravity only 1.3X that of Earth?

But the two killer problems, the two that wipe all the above small complaints out are the following: the blight would suffer its own growth rate control from negative feedback as its host plants disappear and as it converts the oxygen into nitrogen (that’s a new metabolic pathway, btw); and two, how do the super, multi-dimensional beings of the far future who only exist because of the events involving Murp and Coop manage to create their tesseract used by Coop to bring about their future without creating an unbridgeable time paradox? That is to say, Coop could not have communicated with Murp without the tesseract, having the tesseract allowed Murp to save humanity, having saved humanity the multi-dimensional beings are allowed to evolve from humanity, and thus create a tesseract for Coop; this is a paradox. Unless….

Okay, now I feel better. I did actually love this movie, really.

Please write with your gripes or correct my mistakes, if you think I am wrong.

Movie Review: Interstellar

Interstellar (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

Cooper: Matthew McConaughey

Brand: Anne Hathaway

Murph: Jessica Chastain

Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan

Cinematography Director:  Hoyte Van Hoytema

Music: Hans Zimmer

Christopher Nolan has consistently shown himself willing to take on difficult-to-tell stories (the reverse time flow of Memento is a good example). As the director and co-writer with his younger brother, Jonathan, Nolan has found with Interstellar an incredibly challenging story to tell. If one focuses on the science and time sequence issues, the story might be as confusing as 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the other hand, if one instead focuses on the father/daughter tale, it is a wonderfully emotional story than anyone can follow and appreciate.

The story is of a future Earth (with oddly contemporary trucks and cars) where a “blight” is systematically destroying the Earth’s food crops and converting the atmosphere to an oxygen-free version of today’s air. We are introduced to Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey and his immediate family, which includes a pre-adolescent daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy). These early scenes are often oddly comic in dialog but deeply sinister in foreshadowing. Borrowing sequences from Ken Burns’ documentary on the American dust-bowl, the viewer is shown that the Earth and her inhabitants have no future in this second dust-bowl.

Through a largely unbelievable story line Cooper is engaged by NASA to pilot a vessel to Saturn, enter a worm hole and venture out to three prospective new worlds where Humankind might begin again. There are logical inconsistencies in setting this stage, and the physics (despite being advised by Cal Tech’s Kip Thorne) require on several occasions much from the viewer, but then this is fiction, science fiction, and one must make allowances for this kind of tale.

The stage is a fantastic one, but like television’s The Walking Dead, the viewer is allowed to take in situations and people on this stage that are completely believable in this context and to take part in several scenes of overwhelming emotional intensity. This has always been for me the hallmark, even the raison d’etre for good speculative fiction, whether of a scientific or fantasy nature. That is to say create a stage where the story-teller can give the audience a tale that will involve them emotionally and inform them intellectually; and ideally tell such emotions and ideas that simply cannot be told without that fantastic stage.

The Nolan’s in Interstellar have created a story that makes intimate and completely requisite use of time dilation, of Einstein/Hawking attempts at a theory of everything (and of course, they get one – hey, it’s Hollywood), and to involve the audience in the effects of the former, and the necessity of the latter to save Mankind. Such a fantastic stage this is. And yet, because of the time dilation effects of immense gravity near a black hole, we are treated to a story of life-long love between a father and a daughter that simply cannot be told in any other way.

The acting by McConaughey and Chastain as the adult Murph are as in last year’s Texas Buyer’s Club for McConaughey and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty for Chastain are easily Oscar-worthy performances. Indeed, this movie is filled with superb acting: John Lithgow as Coop’s father-in-law, Michael Caine as Brand’s father, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway as fellow astronauts. But for me the highlight scene involved McConaughey reacting to a message from home – it was almost too painful to watch for its intensity.

Another great aspect of using the science fiction stage was the incredible special effects depicting the worm hole and black hole (though I must say, some of the space ship exterior scenes seemed oddly of a lower caliber). The editing near the end of the movie and the music score by Hans Zimmer throughout were of very high quality. The use in particular of an absence of sound for various space scenes to help give a feel for space versus the soaring music for other scenes of great emotional intensity were often spectacular.

I loved this movie and wanted so badly to give it five stars, but alas the science and logical inconsistencies won’t let me. But I did love this film and want everyone to see it. I’ll write elsewhere of the problematic parts that keep occurring to me after walking out of the theater.

TV: Top Ten TV Dramas

Top Ten TV Dramas

1. Breaking Bad
2. The Wire
3. The Walking Dead
4. Deadwood
5. Mad Men
6. House of Cards
7. Dexter
8. Game of Thrones
9. Sopranos
10. Sons of Anarchy

Each person's Top Ten for any given year for any given entertainment genre is going to be pretty subjective. If you open the discussion up beyond a single year, it is going to get very subjective. Be that as it may, here is my list for Top Ten TV dramas.

As I review the first five in my list above, I feel you could make a very strong case that TV writing and directing is in the middle of a new Golden Age. The acting is not always up to the same very high level as the writing, but it is often of a very high caliber.

I'll start off by grouping Sons of Anarchy at number ten and Sopranos at number nine since to my point of view they are quite nearly the same story: a family of sociopaths running an organized crime organization. Weirdly though, the viewer is drawn into the lives of the characters. Both have very well imaged roles that despite their flaws (and they are legend), you still find yourself rooting for them. I give number nine to the Sopranos for their use of music and the final scene of the series - I get  it, that I may be the only person on the planet that liked it.

Game of Thrones captures my number 8 slot. This is a currently running series that comes from a remarkably long series of books still being written. I give the program's creators points for trying to capture such a complicated story (which if you have not yet read all the books, let me tell you, only gets more complicated). But this is the program's flaw too - too many story lines for TV or a movie.

Dexter as my choice for number seven is something of a guilty pleasure. Like with my choice for number one below, my training as a chemist allowed me some special interest in the job done by Dexter as a forensics specialist hiding a secret. Season four was far and away the best season with John Lithgow as Trinity, though season three with Jimmy Smits was good too. The final episode's final scene was simply brilliant writing and directing.

House of Cards is number six: Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright star in this Washington DC political drama about a merciless congressman. It has very entertaining Machiavellian story lines that stretch its attachments to reality. It is worth watching if only to see how DC might actually run.

Mad Men in position number five is just about the only non-violent drama on my list (sorry for my proclivities), but like the following drama this program has some of the best acting: Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss are the standouts, but frankly are part of a very talented ensemble. This story about an early sixties ad company and America in the post-Eisenhower era rings particularly true for those of us of a certain age.

David Milch's Deadwood captures position four, and in contrast to most of the others on my list, this three-year long series has the best acting as compared to my other Top Ten. Starring Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane we watch a very vicious Old West tale. Some top notch writing helped create the characters so well portrayed by Olyphant and McShane.

Position number three is held very firmly by The Walking Dead (currently running in season five). The writing and season-long story arcs can be of varied levels of quality, and the various scenes of violence with or without zombies can definitely be a challenge for the faint of heart. But what makes this program so powerful in my view is the remarkable way the writers (primarily Charlie Adlard) have asked the question: what would any given individual do when faced with overwhelming horror and desperation? One could argue this story line might be a Holocaust parable.

I was torn in deciding between my choices for number 2 and number 1. I have for a long time regarded David Simon's "The Wire" as the best written TV drama. This seven-year series was so tautly written and so clued into the daily tragedies taking place on the streets of Baltimore that I was convinced it could not be upstaged. The series tails off in relevance and impact near it's end, and for that reason, my choice for number one is the following.

My choice for number one is likely on almost everyone's list for Top Ten, if not for the position of number one: Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan's series of chemistry teacher Walter White gone bad (ok, as a chemist, I'm a little biased here) displays the very best writing and cinematography of all my Top Ten List. And as I note above, the writing bar is set very high (see The Wire). The six year-long series portray's in vivid detail and unsparing grimness how one man's good intentions paved the pathway to Hell for himself, many other criminally-inclined, and a large number of innocent bystanders. Lastly, the closing scene of Walter White laying with his one true love is amazing.

Movie Review: All Is Lost

All is Lost (2013)

Four Stars out of Five

Our Man: Robert Redford

Director/Writer: J.C. Chandler

Cinematography Director:  Frank G. DeMarco

In Robert Redford’s portrayal of a man (“Our Man” according to the credits) lost at sea, we are given the opportunity to view one of America’s best actors; not just one of the best from the late 20^th century, but one of the 21^st century as well.

The movie tells of the struggle made by a sailor crossing the Indian Ocean alone in his sail boat. Why he’s alone, who he’s speaking to at the beginning of the story, where’s he going, we are never told. One of the pleasures of this movie is that by the end of the movie, we are quite convinced that we need not know.

Following a thoughtful and somewhat sorrowful apologia made by Redford (under less than clear imagery to the viewer), the movie moves back eight days as the Redford character awakes one morning on his boat. He is wet and getting wetter. His boat has rammed a derelict shipping container and now is taking on water. This first phase of the events that will unfold allow the viewer to watch the calm stoicism with which  Redford assesses his situation and then methodically ranks the problems assailing him and moves to solve them.

These early scenes are done with virtually no monolog and yet with Redford’s physical movements and his facial expressions, we are able to get a good look into this man’s nature, if not his heart. We do gain a partial view into his heart with his opening monolog and more so later as he slowly realizes that his experience and calm may not prove adequate to his situation.

A very big part of the beauty and greatness of this movie comes from the combined directing and writing skills of J.C. Chandler. The camera moves from outside views of the ship in peril, of approaching external storms to the near claustrophobic interior shots of the ship; most especially telling are the scenes that portray Redford’s dawning realization of his peril, his internal storms. High marks should be given to Frank DeMarco for his cinematographic direction as he portrays these scenes and one very telling sequence from below sea level at the movie’s end.

Is “Our Man’s” story a tale of human survival and perseverance, a story of a single man’s (or Man’s) isolation in a cold and uncaring universe, or maybe a religious parable (consider the final scene and compare it to a particularly famous scene in the Sistine Chapel)? Are we merely watching one competent and singular individual fighting for his survival or is this an argument on either a secular or religious level for the necessity of community?

Like the “Life of Pi” and many others, this story can be viewed and valued on multiple levels. It was, I believe one of the Ten Best for 2013, and possibly one of Redford’s Top 3 performances.

Movie Review: Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine

2013

Drama

3.5 Stars out of 5

Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine was both a disappointment and a pleasure. The story line lacks any sense of subtlety or depth, but the bravura performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role of Jasmine is more than reason enough to watch this movie. Writer/director Allen has created a story to mirror “A Streetcar Named Desire” by exploring the aftereffects of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. He creates a parallel to Blanche DuBois’ mental problems by imagining the fiscal and mental disintegration of a Madoff-like wife in the form of Jasmine. Additionally he contrasts the glamorous rise and disastrous fall of Jasmine to her far more pedestrian, adopted sister, Ginger. As noted, there are strong parallels to the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, though Blue Jasmine stands on its own.

The movie is essentially a character study, with little story arc to propel it. Jasmine channels the high society Blanche DuBois from “Streetcar” as Sally Hawkins plays her blue collar sister Ginger/Stella to great effect. Ginger’s boyfriend Chili/Stanley (well sort of a Stanley) is played by Bobby Cannavale. As in “Streetcar”, the two sisters come from very different worlds: high society for Jasmine, blue collar for Ginger. In a similar manner Jasmine and Chili are immediately at odds with one another, though the Chili character lacks much of the animal-like sexual magnetism of Stanley. In both cases, the Jasmine/Blanche character is devolving into a state of serious mental disarray. And in a similar fashion, the Ginger/Stella character does her best (and despite the endless criticism from Jasmine) to defend and support her big sister.

The key similarity though is the mental disintegration going on with Jasmine/Blanche. Blanchett plays her flawlessly as she moves from talking to herself in public, to haranguing her younger sister for her lack of self-respect, to trying to destroy Ginger’s one vague hope that exists in the form of Chili, to finding a new husband for herself, and back to talking to herself in public. Jasmine appears to be living constantly on the edge of a complete and perhaps irreversible mental breakdown. The final camera shots of her on a park bench gives the impression she has finally moved past that edge; Jasmine is now doomed to a life on the streets as one more homeless, crazed and hopeless street person.

The story is based on various contrasts: the fabulously rich Jasmine married to the schemer Hal (Alec Baldwin) vs. the delusional homeless person; the carefully dressed (at least at the movie’s beginning, much less so by the end) Jasmine vs. her plain Jane sister, Ginger; the crafty scheming Jasmine as she closes in a new beau, Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard) vs. the shortly thereafter scene of her in a state of complete disassociation on the park bench. So many moods and motivations make for a rich playing field by Blanchett, and she makes great work of it; a well-earned Oscar award for best actress.

There is great acting by Blanchett,  good acting by Hawkins, even fairly good acting by Andrew Dice Clay as Gingers ex-husband, Augie and some unusual casting with Louis CK as Ginger’s back-up boyfriend. But the story itself lacks the emotional crescendo and impact of “Streetcar” even as it seems to take so much of its early storyline. This is a fairly good story with great acting, worth seeing for Blanchett’s acting alone.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas

2012

Drama/Science Fiction

5 Stars out of 5

I watched this movie, read the book, viewed the movie a second time (with close captioning this time) and still have several points that remain unclear to me. To say that either the book or the movie is complicated is quite an understatement. Yet, I find both to be as compelling and artistic an endeavor as I have experienced in the past decade.

The book (2004, David Mitchell) and movie are both structured in six parts just like the symphony that plays a central role in the second part of the six part story. However, the book tells the first half of each of the six parts moving forward in time from the Chatham Islands in the mid-19^th century to the early part of the 20^th century in England and Belgium for part two, to the Bay Area during the 1970’s, on to the early 21^st century England for part four, to mid-22nd century neo-Seoul, and finally to the mid-23rd century Hawaiian Islands. The book then turns around and finishes the second half of each story working back in time to mid-19^th century San Francisco.

The movie in stark contrast takes each of the six parts and very cleverly uses editing to correlate the various key points in each story arc with the other six arcs. This is a brilliant editing decision by writer/directors Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, but it certainly requires the viewer to pay close attention to each story. The Wachowskis and Tykwer have two central themes to their version of the Mitchell story: the oppression by the strong of the weak, and the multi-century, enduring linkage of love between two souls. The writer/directors amplify this last point by using a comet-like (i.e. a shooting star) tattoo on the lovers even as they change race, sexual orientation and gender over the centuries in their various incarnations. In short, the movie really boils down to a love story between two star-crossed souls. It is beautifully told and acted.

The manner in which it is acted is another tool the writers/directors use to reinforce the multi-generational link between the two principle characters: Tom Hanks sometimes as the villain, but by the 70’s only as one of the two lovers; Halle Berry in minor roles in the first two stories, but again by the 70’s, only in the role of hero; Hugo Weaving is always a villain, but most effectively as Ole Georgie on the Big Island. There are very notable appearances by Doona Bae as Sonmi-451 in neo-Seoul, as well as Jim Sturgess as her lover Hae-Joo Chang. Several other actors play various forms of good, bad (Hugh Grant is notable), or minor. In general, you witness Hanks, Berry, Sturgess and Bae as one of the two lovers, and in these roles, always fighting the good fight for the weak and oppressed. Conversely, you see Weaving and Grant only in the role of the oppressor.

Thus, the editing, the use of the comet and star metaphors (consider also a Cloud Atlas is a map of the stars - once thought to be unchanging), and the casting meld brilliantly to evoke the image of constants through human history: the good and often weak vs. the always strong, bullying type of bad character. Others have tried to find some character growth across the story lines (e.g. Hanks’ evil Dr. Henry Goose next appearing as the noble Isaac Sachs), but I think this an artificial outcome of the casting decision, and not only not the point, actually contrary to the point. I think rather, the authors believe good is good, and most definitely, bad is bad.

A final note with respect to the book vs. movie: not only are the two structured differently, but also their main themes are quite different. The movie goes for the everlasting love theme coupled with the bully problem, but the book delves far more deeply and with a much more pessimistic view into the destruction of the Earth by Man. The movie has Meronym (Berry) refer to the fact that her group of people known as the Prescients are doomed if they do not receive rescue from the Stars (that is to say off-world colonies), but it is hardly more than a plot point in the movie. In the book, there are no off-world colonies, no rescue for Meronym, no salvation for Man or the Earth. It is a far more dark view of the consequences of climate change and “bully”- originated war and corporate rapacity.

This movie stands with very few others for me as 5 Star movie. It is indeed complicated and requires very careful attention (and cc), but it is one of very few worth the effort.