Bohemian Girl and Other Stories

By Stacy Danielle Stephens. (Full disclosure. I received a free electronic copy of this book from a friend.)

Right. First of all, this book is about the experiences of various Transsexuals dealing with their experiences in reality and life. The book is excellently written, and I'm a bit surprised at the fact that there appears to be a deliberate attempt at not mentioning what the book is about anywhere I've seen. Given that the theme of the book involves living with and coming to terms with the truth of who they are; it seems a bit of a mixed message to spring a 'surprise' in how it is marketed. Its not like there is some big reveal at the end. The reader learns about it in the first three pages. It seems a bit of a Kangaroo Jack to imply otherwise. I make this comparison not because the book is bad, which it isn't, but because Kangaroo Jack was marketed as a movie about a talking Kangaroo...which it wasn't. At all. Bohemian Girl doesn't go quite into that territory, but it certainly is approaching Hudson Hawk levels (which was marketed as an action drama and was in fact, a quirky surreal fourth wall breaking romantic comedy.)

This book is strong enough to stand alone as what it is. It doesn't need a Shyamalanian twist to get people to read it. I highly recommend it.

The characters are interesting. Personally, I still liked the title story the most. It obvious that the writer has put a lot of their personal life into the book, or researched the lives of others rather thoroughly. Common themes of Nebraska and the Catholic Church seemed especially prominent. The details draw the reader in.

I have often pondered what things I was doing now that might be disapproved of by future generations. For example, while there were blatant racists in the 1940's...there was still a baseline of acceptable behavior by less racist people that would be considered shocking today. I do not want to be judged by history. For a while, I thought that this might be the way we treat animals (and it still might be) and in discussing with others they've said that it might be plastic (or how we treat the planet in a broader sense of the word (and it still might be) but after reading this, I have come to realize that it will DEFINITELY be the case with the way society treats Transsexuals, and if one desires to avoid being judged harshly in the light of future generations, one would be wise to avoid stereotypes and preconceptions as much as possible.

This book does an excellent job of doing that. The characters are real people, with real hopes and dreams. More importantly, while the greater facts of their lives are taken into account, they are still all quite different as individuals and are extremely in depth. This is literature in the finest sense of the world; both for the quality of writing it uses and for the themes that it explores.

Lazy Review

The following things suck:

Space Chimps (as if that wouldn't be obvious.)
Meet Dave

The following things are flawed but watchable
Igor

The following things rock:
The Wire Season 3.

That is all.

Movie: How to Train Your Dragon

It was awesome. This is an excellent kids movie. It teaches a lot of important lessons like using your head, and avoiding stereotypes without beating you over the head about it. It also has a fascinating mythology to the whole thing that is pervasive but comes nowhere near overwhelming anyone unfamiliar with the setting (and I certainly wasn't going into this.)

The summary of the story is that a child named Hiccup doesn't fit in with the rest of the village of Vikings that are routinely raided by Dragons. Obviously (since the title kind of gives it away) Hiccup ends up with a dragon that he has to deal with and bonds with it. The rest of the movie involves how Hiccup solves the challenges that brings him, including how to rectify being the friend of a dragon amongst a people that hate dragons and want to kill them on sight.

Movie: Inglorious Bastards

This movie is seven kinds of awesome. Basically it is a Quentin Tarantino movie about a group of US Jews who are sent behind Nazi lines to kill Nazis. That and the fact that it is basically a movie for those who felt the Nazis, especially the Nazi upper echelons that killed so many people and died before they could really be held accountable to the whole thing. I enjoyed it. There are a few elements of violence that are a little over the top, but since it largely involves blowing up nazis it is very hard to call it extreme. The ending is a classic that will be remembered for quite some time and the very very ending is even better.

In short, this is a movie worth watching.

Movie: Alice by Tim Burton

This was a good movie. It was my third favorite Tim Burton movie after Batman and Beetlejuice. First of all, it was visually stunning. It was pretty, haunting and unique, but not garish like some of Burton's works. His style seemed to work perfectly for wonderland. Second, I liked the plot. He managed to set it up in such a way that you have certain expectations about the world at Alice and the beginning which are pleasantly turned on their head in the middle of the story. Third, comparing it to the recent sci fi mini series of the same name, it also incorporates the original mythology but this time with the same character and the books. While it mixes and matches "Through the Looking Glass" and "Adventures in Wonderland" freely, it does so in a way that actually makes the story work well.

Fluffernutting is a nice easter egg. Depp's performance, some say, is upstaged by the Red Queen. This is true. By a long shot, but in this case that makes sense since the Red Queen is the primary villain of the story. Depp is not so insecure a performer that he'll overact just to be the main stay of the series and it reflects in this, despite the fact that it is marketed with Depp's hatter on the movie poster. The hatter isn't the main character, not even by a long shot, though he is among the most interesting.

I am entirely mixed about the statements it makes about how women are treated at the time. On the one hand, it does so in a personal and visible fashion. On the other hand...it has a ham fisted, almost forced feel to it, but to be fair; one cannot make a historically accurate piece without acknowledging it and Burton takes his worlds too seriously not to. I respect him as a film maker and simply hand waving it away was not warranted. Still, personally I'd have been a bit more subtle about it; not reducing the content in the story but minor changes to the dialog to bring the same point home.

Not that I'm Tim Burton mind you.

The film left the door wide open for a sequel so expect, "Through the Looking Glass" sometime in the next year or two.

Movie: Shutter Island

The last movie that Leonardo deCaprio did with Martin Scorsese directing it was 'the Aviator' which my Wife and I saw on our first date, so I'm not entirely unbiased about this, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it a great deal. The quality is good and it doesn't try too many gimicks, especially unfair gimicks to get its point across.

The basic premise of the movie is that two Federal marshals are called in to an asylum for the Criminally insane (note that it is not called Arkham) called Shutter Island 11 miles off the coast of California. The girl is gone when they get there, and the staff and patients are all behaving rather erratically, as if they are clearly hiding something. One doctor wants to use benevolent treatments while the other believes in old school treatments like Lobotomy, and there are hints early on of associations with the horrific German experiments at Auschwitz. The main character helped liberate the death camps in WWII and as such is highly suspicious of the older doctor.

In short, I liked it. The acting and the directing were perfect. The music score was occasionally a bit too overbearing and loud but I didn't notice it until after the fact when it was pointed out to me.

Movie: Batman - Gotham Knight

So the idea that a bunch of DC comics writers and Japanese anime artists collaborating to make Batman sounds neat...on paper. In practice what it means is that you end up with something similar to 2 out of 6 segments having awesome animation; 3 out of 6 segments having awesome writing and only 1 out of 6 segments having both. I think one of the things that hampered this was the idea that they were tying it in to the Dark Knight universe from Batman Begins (ie the highly popular movies) setting the story between them. They were obviously trying to go for something similar in scope to the Animatrix, but the thing is with the animatrix, the artists (I think) wrote their own scripts as well. I mean, had the anime people been able to take their own twist on Batman (as the whole video was originally marketed) I imagine that they would have been able to tell stories much more suited towards their animation style. I mean you could have had an homage to the 60's era Batman or the 90's cartoon or the Graphic Novel Dark Knight or even something wholly original. Instead they told a series of interlocking stories that could have been interesting but for the most part weren't.

The lesson from this is that one or two neat ideas might work in synergy...but three or four and you'd better wait to try it first with something simple before you take a huge leap into the abyss.