[Play] See Through at Push Push Theater

Push Push likes to explore the outer boundaries of art, and they have certainly done so with "See Through."  See Through starts with the conventional but rapidly explores experience in an interactive art exhibit that tells a story displaced in time.  A series of family dynamics is presented but you can explore as much or as little as you like.  They have done interdisciplinary media before but this incorporates all of it into the performance itself.  You start with music, and then go to visual and performance art and then end up with an interactive characterization.

It tells a story, but what makes it particularly fascinating is that it is an interactive story.  It isn't improve either; using a mix of pre scripted happenings with input from the audience.  What I find particularly interesting is that, while I do not know, I suspect that the results from the audience participation affect future performances.  There are numerous instances where they visual art asks questions and demands your particupation.

The performances are all quite interesting.  The lead, Jenny Rose, does a spectacular job staying in character and acting as a young child.  This can be deceptively hard to do, since children are far more aware of their world than we give them credit for.  This limited but deep scope helps us understand the serious consequences of lying and leaving to chance that which should be explained plainly.

Food and beverages are provided.  The door price is very reasonable and there are even a few puzzles (even if, to be honest, I never exactly found them.)  In short, I recommend seeing this while you can.  There are two performances left, one tonight and another tomorrow night.

[Movie] Review of The Woman in Black

It is nice to see Daniel Radcliff in a post Harry Potter scenario, and he confirms his acting chops quite well in this thriller. The thing I liked the most about this was the complete lack of 21rst century gore that still managed to be extremely frightening. There are cgi and special effects but they are kept to a minimum and used very sparingly to maximum effect. Note, this movie does not come across as a budget production that is trying to save money by not showing things, but rather, an understanding per the old school of filmography that less is more and what you imagine to scare you is infinitely worse than the hockey masked psycho with a chainsaw cutting people up in three d-smell o vision so visceral that you might feel like you are there. Technology may progress to a point where you can literally FEEL everything that the victims of a horror movie experience, but movies like "the Woman in Black" will still be great works of art because of what they DON'T show you, long after the most current techno thriller numbs your senses and desensitizes you even more to the violence.

The plot is quite good and slowly dolls out its secrets in a manner sufficient to keep the audience engaged with enough dialog to keep the intelligent interested and enough action or suspense to keep the adrenaline junkie interested as well. The opening sequence is enough to attract your interest right away, and also sets the stakes for what is to come. Normally, I wouldn't hesitate to tell you about the first thirty seconds of the movie (spoilers are for endings and at best middles) but in this case in case you haven't seen the trailer I want to keep it a surprise. Speaking of endings, the twist at the end is... surprising even if the events that lead up to it are not. The supporting cast is also equally fantastic.

The thing I really liked about the whole thing was the consistency of the world and/or plot. They stayed within the regular tropes of the supernatural whilst at the same time adding some of their own unique elements. The characters you don't always care about or think about (specifically, our supernatural friends) are actually consistent in their behavior and do what you might expect them to do given the rules that the movie sets up (as compared to, Demon X who merely shows up and kills people because it might make a scary moment in the movie.)

In short, I highly recommend this movie.

[Book] The Pale Blue Eye by Loius Bayard

This was a masterful work. I enjoyed it a great deal. Moreover, I substituted it for infinite jest to meet one of my yearly goals. I won't get into Infinite Jest until I actually review it, but in the meantime, I did enjoy the Pale Blue Eye. The basic premise of the book is that the detective is called to West Point to investigate a series of grisly murders of cadets. He proceeds to do so but in a rather interesting turn of events becomes allied to a young Edgar Allen Poe, who proceeds to help him with his typical dramatic flair. What is even more interesting is the fact that not only does Poe come to life, but this fictional detective manages to hold his own. There are a number of false fits and starts, red herrings galore. But the story is just as much a study in character, particularly into Mr. Poe, than anything else and in this it greatly shines. You feel while reading it that you are immersed in the setting, which has just the right mix of detail and plotage to keep things interesting. Then, just when you think things have been neatly wrapped up in a tidy bow, in a typical trope of the genre, the author reaches out from the pages of the book and smacks you in the face with a herring until you taste fish for a week afterwards, but you LIKE it, evne if you hate fish. The thing I liked the most about this book was that it used tropes, mechanisms, archetypes and characters typical to poe and the time period, whilst at the same time humoring modern and post modern sensibilities and using the old addages with an entirely fresh take.

Review: The Tudors - Season 1

I had never seen this, but I'm glad now that I have.  The basic premise of the story is a dramatic biography of Henry the VIII.  There is some fictional license taken with history, but for the most part it stays faithful to the real thing.  You can see why Henry did some of the things he did.  By and large, the best thing of the show is that it portrays all of the characters as complex and three dimensional.  A few are cartoons, like Bolin Sr. and Henry's one and only real challenger to the throne, but there are reasons for that.  Specifically both are mechanisms for advancing the plot and showing in part why Henry is able to get away with some of the things he does later.

Ann Bolin is easily the most interesting and complicated character in the story.  She starts out the sister of one of the ladies and waiting and the daughter of the ambassador of France and goes from there.  She plays Henry like a fiddle, and does so in a way that has disastrous and yet fortuitous consequences for England and to a lesser degree all of Europe. 

That's the thing I like the most about the show; its ability to integrate these complex characters and historical forces and make them come to life before our eyes rather than sit as well written passages in dusty historical tomes.  With the Tudors we see the emotions and motivations of the characters, how they conflict and thus what causes them to act the way they do, especially understanding the larger and more important historical conflicts that take place after Henry's death.

I recommend it.

Review: The Avengers

Joss Whedon is a master story teller.  He seamlessly stitches four power threads together in the form of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and the Hulk, capturing the spirit of their independent movies and retaining it in this ensemble film while greatly expanding the characters of Nick Fury, Hawkeye and the Black Widow.  Keeping all of these things juggled while also handling a powerful and scene stealing villain like Loki, giving an action packed fast paced storyline which allows all the heroes to shine and have a reason to be there is utterly fantastic.

This is one of those movies that I can enjoy watching again and again.  It also handles the transformation from a world with superheroes before to a world with superheroes after, including the reaction of the political establishment.  The avengers protected and then literally shook the world and the great powers sat up and took notice.   Joss Whedon maintains some of his themes, but broadly speaking makes the whole thing work.

It is fun.  It is well written, visually stunning and well worth your valuable time.

[Book] The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Whimsical.  Fantastic.  Amazing.  A fairy tale of broad depth and scope, bottling the wonder of the old world turning into the new at the turn of the 20th century.  It represents a conflict between big ideas and the small players that are affected by them; a true nature vs nurture concept while at the same time showing good vs evil. 

Two magicians get two pawns as apprentices that they set against each other.  This is an old contest between them, but this venue is new, and the most public it has ever been.  The fly in the ointment, however, comes when the two fall in love with each other.  This is very well handled by Morgenstern who charts the course of their romance in a way that takes place over years rather than days or months as someone involved with a romantic work such as this might be tempted to do.

She also works the perfect line of giving rules and guidelines for her magic while at the same time keeping the magic actually magical.  There is no 'tapping an alternate plane of existence for energy' or any of that kind of postmodernism...its just MAGIC and it just is.  Sure it is described as 'a different way of doing things' but that still might as well be MAGIC.  And, so the legend goes, the more people who know it, the less powerful it is.

In a book such as this, the delightful thing is that you don't know if it will end well for our heroes, or badly.  It is a fairy tale but more of the Terry Gilliam or Charles De Lint variety; old school.  The characters are all very well rounded, and eventually become more and more aware that they are pawns to pawns in a game over which they have very little control.

Her greatest achievement for the book, however, is that it makes even the most well traveled or cynical of us want to visit the Night Circus.  It is the kind of book that screams for a movie so that we can see with our actual eyes what our mind's eye has painted for us, and it will never quite live up to the expectations.  The prose is magnificent, as is the pacing and the plot.

I highly recommend reading it.

[Book Review] A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison

On the back cover of the book one of the authors supporting it describes it as a combination of Tank Girl meets...I don't even remember.  Something involving Urban Fantasy.  But essentially, its true.  My favorite series of all time, The Dresden Files, has in Harry Dresden a protagonist who describes himself as "more force than finesse" which has nothing on Rachel Morgan.

Rachel is about a subtle as a bag of hammers.  Note, she isn't stupid.  She's just very very very 'let's go kill this thing right now until its dead.'  And her subtler strategies typically involve finding the sneakiest way to go and find the thing to kill it.  I'm not saying she's bloodthirsty either, but I am DEFINITELY saying that Combat sans diplomacy is her preferred modus operandi and quite frankly she's pretty good at it.  Otherwise she'd be dead.

[Spoilers]

This is the tenth book in the series.  Rather than explain the whole series to those who might not have read it, you can learn about it here.  I will say that obviously I like the series, otherwise I wouldn't have read the 10th book in it, now would I?

As far as a Perfect Blood itself is concerned, its a good book.  Very often by the time a series gets this far, it starts to show its age, formula fatigue as I like to call it.  Even the Dresden Files did a little of this before major shake ups.  I will say that while the core dynamic between Ivy, Jenks and Rachel is (more or less) kept the same, as is the love/hate thing with Trent, the rest of it is extremely dynamic and Harrison uses very few to none of the Dues Ex Machinas that might tempt one to use in a world filled with magic.  She sets her rules, and she sticks by them.

More over, since the fantastic (ie Inderlanders) are 'out' in this world it is far more believable than it otherwise would be, and you see real consequences for both the world and the characters themselves, and this book is no exception. Now that the whole world knows that she is a demon, they want to know what she can do.  The dynamic tension between the mortal and supramortal law enforcement agencies is well played out, and she has just started to hint at the true politics of things, as well as the inevitable but natural government response of a super secret 'meta agency' that probably combines the elements of both (which, in my opinion would probably be necessary to make a world filled with as many nasty things as The Hollows work).

The humans are the bad guys in this one.   The biggest complaint I've had about the series for a while is that, as a mechanism for highlighting the awesomeness of the Inderlanders, the humans have, for the most part, been cartoon characters until by the 4th or 5th book we entered our token black and human character, Glenn, who has slowly learned to accept the Inderlanders.

That changes in this book, and while most of the humans are still scum, there are definite exceptions to the rule.  Granted, the better of them ends up becoming a demon by default but still.  So while the humans are STILL mostly cartoon characters, there are hints and shadows of humans with much more depth (ie the Men in Black) and a rather nifty new villain.  IE now that Rachel is getting 'along' with Al and Trent, a new villain is needed and HAPA fits the bill nicely.  HAPA is a human hate organization that has infiltrated lots of human society and wants to harness demons to frak everything else.  If you notice the inconsistency in this plan, so does Harrison, and-let's be honest, internal consistency in belief systems is not exactly something commonly found in the real world either.

In short, I like it.  It has its flaws, but I don't care about those flaws and the general awesomeness shines through.  Read it.  After you read the other 9.