Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Longmire – A TV Review – Part 1

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Last year I watched Justified on Netflix discs. I thought it was great.  I liked it so much I bought the blue-rays and watched it again.  It was still great.    But I didn’t want to burn the show out.  So I asked around to see if there was anything else out there that was worth watching.  One of my relatives suggested Longmire.  He said it was a modern day western, a show about a sheriff in modern day Montana.  It sounded odd but I figured why not.

So me and Camera Girl have watched the first two discs. She thinks it’s great.  My reaction is slightly different.  I like the main character.  My problem is with the female characters.  Sheriff Longmire has a daughter who is some kind of lawyer.  She always seems to be whining about something.  Either her father isn’t doing something he should be or he is doing something he shouldn’t be.  It’s very annoying.  Then there’s the female deputy from New Jersey.  I thought we were done with the female cop who complains about being treated different than the guys.  Apparently she hasn’t gotten the memo.  In one scene she starts gyrating on the stripper poll at a club to get the patrons to give her information and in the next scene she’s threatening some cowboy for checking out her butt while she’s walking in front of him.  I mean, come on.  Do we have to have this nonsense in a cop show?  And there some other things.  There’s a believability thing sometimes.  In one episode Longmire threatens to release a grizzly bear on a suspect unless he confesses to using a grizzly bear to murder his enemy.  I’m not 100%  sure about this but I’m guessing that might be considered a coerced confession.

 

So there are some fantasy aspects to the plot lines in the show and the personal stories of the characters are a little shaky. The daughter I find especially annoying.  I’m hoping he gets that grizzly bear back and lets it eat her for real.  But I actually do kinda like it so far.  Camera Girl has adopted the show and I do like to keep her happy because she feeds me so I’m going to keep watching it.  If it goes completely off the deep end I will have to invoke male television primacy and call an end to it.  But I confess it’ll have to be really bad for that to happen.  It’s like Mueller.  Trump can only pull the plug on him if the damage he is doing is worse than the fallout from the firing.  Definitely a delicate judgement call.

 

So, so far, one thumb up. To be continued.  The jury is still out.

11APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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“It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” are two of my favorite movies.  I often tell Camera Girl that she reminds me of the wife in those movies.  And she often throws things at me afterwards.  Fields was a sort of genius in my opinion.

 

“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree.”

W. C. Fields

 

 

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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis – A Book Review

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Zorba the Greek is a picaresque novel by Nikos Kazantzakis that supposedly is based on a real man that Kazantzakis knew.  Zorba is an old Greek working man who insinuates himself into the journey of a young well-to-do intellectual Greek fellow who is travelling to Crete to take up ownership of a coal mine there.  Their business venture and various adventures together are the story line of the book.  But the story is the apprenticeship of the bookish young man under the tutelage of Zorba.  And the craft he is learning is how to be a free man.

Kazantzakis was fascinated by philosophy and the spiritual life of the modern world.  Being an atheist, he was always searching for meaning and truth.  I’ve read a number of his books.  None of them speak to me except Zorba.  And the character in Zorba the Greek that represents Kazantzakis, the young intellectual, I do not find interesting.  Zorba is the whole story.  When he leaves the scene, I lose interest.

Zorba is a larger than life character that within the confines of his workingman’s world has lived many of the most intense experiences.  He has been a guerilla warrior in the Greek wars against the Turks and the Bulgarians.  He has been a musician, a craftsman, a laborer, a business man and an engineer.  And he has had a life-long career as a Casanova.  But at the basis of Zorba’s personality is his conviction that the only real wealth a man has is his free will.  And that is what he tries to teach the young intellectual.  A man is never free until he can throw away everything he has to follow a whim.  If he can’t do that, then he is a slave to whatever things hold him back.  And he includes wealth, family, patriotism and fear in that category.

Whether Zorba’s beliefs are consistent or even logical I’ll put aside.  The book has many moments that are comical, moving, thought provoking or some combination of the above.  The details of Cretan peasant life are picturesque but if accurate point to a primitive existence that verges on the barbaric.  But this primal landscape provides scope for the larger than life exploits of Zorba.

And no matter how things turn out, no matter how fate conspires against Zorba, he is completely undaunted.  He moves forward and latches onto the next day and the people and things around him and puts together some new mad plan to conquer the world, or at least his world.  And that is the greatest charm of the book.  To meet a man who has an unquenchable appetite for life.  To meet someone who loves life at the visceral level.  Who sees everything as if for the first time.  Sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches things as if he were the first man in the world to do so.  That is the charm if you can imagine it.  That’s what makes it a perfect summer book for me.  At least the parts with Zorba in center stage.

So how does the apprenticeship go?  Well the young man will never be Zorba and at the end of the book he fails the test that Zorba gives him.  But without a doubt his life has been enriched and his outlook has been broadened by knowing and surviving this catastrophic character.

 

 

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10APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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Sometime soon I’ll have to write a book review of Zorba the Greek.  I have a love/hate relationship with the book but every few years I have to reread it.  I think I read it not because the book is flawless (far from it) but because Zorba represents the essential component of the male soul, force of will.

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Chapter 19

…    ‘Let’s get back to our subject! What about Zeus?’

‘Ah! the poor chap!’ sighed Zorba. ‘I’m the only one to know what he suffered. He

loved women, of course, but not the way you think, you pen-pushers! Not at all! He

was sorry for them! He understood what they all suffered and he sacrificed himself for

their sakes! When, in some god-forsaken country hole, he saw an old maid wasting

away with desire and regret, or a pretty young wife – or even if she wasn’t at all pretty,

even if she was a monster – and her husband away and she couldn’t get to sleep, he

used to cross himself, this good fellow, changed his clothes, take on whatever shape

the woman had in mind and go to her room.

‘He never bothered about women who just wanted petting. No! Often enough even he

was dead-beat: you can understand that. How could anybody satisfy all those she-

goats? Ah! Zeus! the poor old goat, More than once he couldn’t be bothered, he didn’t

feel too good. Have you never seen a billy after he’s covered several she-goats? He

slobbers at the mouth, his eyes are all misty and rheumy, he coughs a bit and can

hardly stand on his feet. Well, poor old Zeus must have been in that sad state quite

often.

‘At dawn he’d come home, saying: “Ah! my God! whenever shall I be able to have a

good night’s rest? I’m dropping!” And he’d keep wiping the saliva from his mouth.

‘But suddenly he’d hear a sigh: down there on earth some woman had thrown off her

bedclothes, gone out onto the balcony, almost stark naked, and was sighing enough

to turn the sails of a mill! And my old Zeus would be quite over-come.

“Oh, hell! I’ll have to go down again!” he’d groan.

“There’s a woman bemoaning  her lot! I’ll have to go and console her!”

‘And it went on like that to such an extent that the women emptied him completely. He

couldn’t move his back, he started vomiting, became paralysed and died. That’s when

his heir, Christ, arrived. He saw the wretched state the old man was in: “Beware of

women!” he cried.’

 

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09APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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When I was grade school kid every English teacher made you read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.”  But unlike most of the stuff given to us that story spoke to me.  And after a lifetime of doing stupid things it’s all the more resonant.

 

Following at the man’s heels was a big native dog. It was a wolf dog, gray-coated and not noticeably different from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero. Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were 107 degrees of frost.The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.

 

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More Kevin Williamson!

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Boy, this guy really must need a job.  He’s still getting his friends (and enemies) to talk about him.  Jonah Goldberg expends enormous eloquence and even some unexpected candor quoting Michael Anton’s verdict that the Right must adopt the same rules as the Left or suffer defeat.  But he still refuses to acknowledge its necessity.

The Z-Man will have none of it and his analogy of the Marquis of Queensbury boxer getting in the ring with the Lord Humongous wielding a nail studded club is extremely vivid and persuasive.

I wonder if anyone (including myself) would be this interested if I got fired.  What a big baby.

 

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08APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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I copied this from the public domain Project Gutenberg website but the translation that I know it from is by Howard Thayer Kingsbury and of course from Jose Ferrer’s tour de force in the 1950 Hollywood film version.  I’ll ignore Steve Martin’s Roxanne as too awful to consider.  I have to take the time to watch Gérard Depardieu’s 1990 version someday.

 

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

A Play in Five Acts by Edmond Rostand (Translated from the French by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard)

Scene 5.II

THE DUKE (pausing, while she goes up): Ay, true,–I envy him. Look you, when life is brimful of success –Though the past hold no action foul–one feels A thousand self-disgusts, of which the sum Is not remorse, but a dim, vague unrest; And, as one mounts the steps of worldly fame, The Duke’s furred mantles trail within their folds A sound of dead illusions, vain regrets, A rustle–scarce a whisper–like as when, Mounting the terrace steps, by your mourning robe Sweeps in its train the dying autumn leaves.

 

 

Do I Have to Have an Opinion on Kevin Williamson?

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The Right-Wing is awash in Kevin Williamson opinion.

 

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-negative-asset.html

 

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/04/what-he-said.html

 

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=13425

 

“Schaedenfreude,” “Christian condolence,” “there but for the grace of God,” “I told you so,” “a cautionary tale.” I guess I’m not sure what I think.  Probably a little of each.  But it really doesn’t matter what I think about Kevin and his troubles.  But what I think would be interesting would be an interview by someone farther out on the right side of the spectrum who could explore how he thinks this fits in with his ideas about the just desserts for the dirt people.  I wonder if some intrepid blogger might call him up and find out if his recent experience may have impacted his feeling about the great unwashed.  That would interest me.

 

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American Greatness -Post of the Day – Victor Davis Hanson’s – Trump is Cutting Old Gordian Knots

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I know I’m a sucker for classical allusion but this is a nice summary of the situations that President Trump’s lack of finesse handled beautifully.

 

Trump is Cutting Old Gordian Knots

 

 

Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg – A Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review

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A while back TomD gave me an SF&F book recommendation. He said that Silverberg’s Majipoor series was a combination of science fiction and fantasy.  At the time I couldn’t think of anything I’d read that fell into that category.  Well, my brain is old so I’ll plead that because after thinking about it awhile I remembered that Zelazny’s Lord of Light had aspects that fit both mythology and science fiction.  So I sent away to Bezos’s megamonopoly and received the three volumes in the series.  And of course it was interesting to see that on the cover of the first book (Lord Valentine’s Castle) that Zelazny had provided a positive blurb.  He said it was a picaresque tale.  And as it turned out, he was exactly right.  I’ll cut to the chase with the verdict.  I liked the story.  Now you’ll get the ponderous literary review.

So how can it be both a fantasy and science fiction? The story takes place on a planet called Majipoor.  It was a world colonized by humans via space travel more than ten thousand years before the story unfolds.  So there’s the science fiction.  And the humans seemed to have also brought along a number of sentient species to live on Majipoor from other planets.  These various species and the humans interact as good neighbors, for the most part, in a civilization of twenty to thirty billion souls that comfortably fits on the giant world of Majipoor.  Now here comes the fantasy.  This world is ruled by four beings designated, the Coronal, the Pontifex, The Lady of the Isle of Sleep and the King of Dreams.  The first two of these individuals performed much as the Augustus and Caesar of the later Roman Empire did, being a senior and junior king appointed to rule a gigantic state.  But the second two, the Lady and the King intervened in Majipoor by sending dreams to the inhabitants.  It is this dream life that lends a fantasy element to the story.  And just to lend a fantasy aspect to the surroundings most of the technology is more or less of a pre-industrial vintage.  But there are exceptions.  Beasts of burden pull the carts and wagons of the inhabitants but the wagons are actually placed on anti-gravity modules.  So, whatever power provides anti-gravity doesn’t also produce forward locomotion.  Very odd.

So this is the background. The narrative follows a very engaging fellow named Valentine who ends up on a journey to discover his past and his destiny.  He meets many interesting and amusing characters and even learns an interesting skill, juggling.  It sounds odd and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with either science fiction or fantasy but it makes for an interesting and entertaining read.  And that is the definition of a picaresque story.

Silverberg has invested a substantial amount of effort building up the background and scenery of Majipoor. He has given us the canvas.  There are several other volumes in the series and I like it enough to continue on to the next volume.  But I want to clarify a couple of things.  This isn’t the Lord of the Rings.  There is no solemn morality play underlying Majipoor.  It is a sunny world where the good guy gets the girl and the crown and juggling and wine are their own reward.  Read it for the inventiveness and the story.  No profundity impinged on my reading but it was fun.  Recommended for folks who like their fiction fun.