back page: blood meridian or the evening redness in the west

xii.

blood meridian or the evening redness in the west by cormac mccarthy**

12/27/07
according to bauercount.com, jack bauer, the protagonist of 24, has killed 185 people over the course of six seasons. yet the glanton gang of mccarthy's blood meridian could teach bauer some things about killing; they eclipse this feat without the benefit of automatic weapons, and because mccarthy writes so matter-of-factly of violence and brutality (not because of the sheer number of murders), these indian scalpers make bauer seem like a harmless saint nick. biblical commentators speak of the earth groaning as it awaits the expulsion of darkness, and no novel offers a grimmer account of the pulsing menace of humanity (and our complicity with satan and, for that matter, nature) than blood meridian (not even the road). read it if you dare.

14 out of 17*

*the 17 point scale panel of experts--andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, andrew, and, yes, andrew--rated blood meridian between 13 and 16 and have yet to formally declare their rating tried and true. they still have some thinking to do.

**i think the cormac mccarthy lemonade is flooding hollywood. i just read that ridley scott will be directing blood meridian. i can't imagine how this could be filmed tastefully yet with profundity. do dark, dark, bloody epics translate well to film?

updated ratings and chapter 3 of the grandpa interview

after a great deal of thought (several months, in fact), i've finally rated some more books and films.

books
14.gilead.marilynne robinson ! - as the links (i.e., this link and the link within the next page which sends readers outside the blog) suggest, gilead may initially require an effort--it may seem slow at first--but the narrator is so likeable and so authentic that after a few pages you'll want to know what this thoughtful, well-meaning old codger says next. it's a great book for reading around the fire.

11.the great divorce.cs lewis - only the first third of this link is relevant, but it describes my sense of the book: the great divorce is an interesting allegory, but for a novel it ends rather poorly. to quote from the back page: "crazy goose. an interesting vision of heaven and hell and the lessons we may learn there."

11.harry potter & the 1/2-blood prince.jk rowling - yes, i read the final two harry potter books. as the creative writing editor for a culture and faith magazine (the other journal), i thought i should at least be familiar with the books behind the harry potter hysteria. the roommate and his family love harry potter, so i borrowed his books. i found them entertaining yet formulaic. the link is to a wikipedia article that briefly summarizes some of the critical responses to potter. the wikipedia article also suggests that potter is increasing literacy, but this article in the washington post offers an interesting counterpoint.

10.harry potter & the deathly hallows.jk rowling - see hp & the 1/2 bp.

10.cities of the plain.cormac mccarthy - i found this, the third novel in mccarthy's border trilogy, to be predictable and considerably less engaging than its predecessors. the link is to a german amazon.com site, and i'd direct you more particularly to the review "Don't like it? Have it your own ignorant way," which takes my ambivalence for the third novel and tosses it to the heavens, building a strong case that cities of the plains is a fitting end for this magnificent trilogy. thus, despite rating this book a 10, i think that i'd still give the series a 15 or 16.


films
09.flags of our fathers - too many characters - director clint eastwood had a chance to make this story great, but i found myself lost in a sea of characters, and (with the exception of one scene) i had trouble buying into their onscreen camaraderie. thus, the movie seemed to drag on at times. i've heard that letters from iwo jima is the better of eastwood's two WWII films.

08.fearless - martial arts movie - there's nothing blatantly wrong with fearless, so i could probably be convinced to increase my rating of the film. in the meantime, i found that the relationships, emotion, and drama of the film were unconvincing (and thus an 8). however, they were markedly better than the jackie chan films i've seen. the fighting choreography seemed cool, but i have absolutely no sense of how cool. the link is to jet li's wikipedia page, primarily because although fearless is set nearly 100 years ago, it appears to be somewhat autobiographical.

interviews
and now a longer segment from my interview with grandpa where he describes his father as responsible and discusses the relationship between farming, logging, and the great depression:
iii. livin' on farms, workin' on wood

ratings updated, the reviews (and links) are not

i'm worn out from tonight's soccer practice. it's hard work pretending to be the coach. anyway, i've added several books and movies to the rankings on the left (in bold), including mikhail bulgakov's the master and margarita, a 20th century russian "masterpiece" that you're far better letting other people read.

i'll post something worthwhile someday. in the meantime, this is my favorite picture from the mayan ruins of tikal:

andrew david. "frond framed ruins." tikal, guatemala.

ratings and foreign films

generally speaking, my film ratings (see the left hand panel) have a standard deviation (SD) somewhere in the neighborhood of 1. that is, if we were to imagine the scale on a visual plane, each rating would occupy a small range of space rather than a precise point. for example, i rated syriana a 13, but it's really more of a 12 to 14. this may seem entirely too subjective, but an SD of 1 is actually rather small. indeed, i'm suggesting that if you gathered 17 andrews on a movie review panel, they would independently arrive at ratings within the same two-point range.

i suppose this is something of an intuitive (or imaginary) science, and unfortunately, the SD of 1 isn't entirely uniform. sometimes i am charitable in my ratings and can't imagine a particular film moving in any direction but down (e.g., elf and snakes on a plane); sometimes i nail a rating and can't imagine the film moving at all (e.g., flight plan and v for vendetta); and sometimes i peg a film at the lower point of its range where it seems possible only to rise (e.g., searching for bobby fischer and the three burials of mequiades estrada).

if you're thinking that this two-paragraph digression is overkill, you may be right. however, i'm preparing to rate four foreign films, and i'm finding it difficult to fit them snugly in the scale. i'm finding that they may belong to that latter category of films which are assigned a rating that is at the lower end of their possible scope of ratings. here are the four films:

tsotsi (thug)
a 9 on the 17 point scale
#9 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 academy award for best foreign language film

tsotsi has received a great deal of acclaim. it's certainly a redemptive film, but i felt that there were some significant gaps in character development and that the director telegraphed a few too many of his passes. moreover, like many foreign films, perhaps there was something lost in the translation--i strongly preferred the director's short film the storekeeper, which managed to tell a 20-minute story without a single subtitle (that is, there were no words).

le fils (the son)
an 11 on the 17 point scale
#7 on christianity today's 2003 top ten list
2002 cannes film festival best actor

l'enfant (the child)
a 12 on the 17 point scale
#2 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 cannes film festival golden palm award

these films were directed by jean-pierre and luc dardenne, a pair of belgian brothers. when i watched the films, i didn't realize they were shot by the same directors, so i walked away from the films thinking, "gosh, these french [sic] films have a surprisingly similar style. apparently the french [sic] are the modern masters of cinematographic silence."

indeed, both films limit their dialogue to the bare essentials. instead, the camera is trained on on the actors as they awkwardly go about the business of life. much of the plot is spent watching the actors think, and this works rather effectively. it's a refreshing change of pace to see films that reject the fast-pace and visual effects of hollywood. however, the films also seem to take this measured pacing to an absurd end. it can be slow going, especially when the camera has us craning our necks to watch a driver from the back seat or when we must watch the most ridiculous moped chase in the history of cinema (although, i suppose that there aren't many big-screen moped chases).

sophie scholl: the final days
a 12 on the 17 point scale
#6 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 academy award nominee for best foreign language film

this is an enlightening look at the german resistance to hitler's nazi empire. it's an interesting true story that features one of the most inspirational protagonists of the 21st century. the film is anchored by a tense intellectual debate between sophie scholl, the aforementioned heroine, and her nazi captor. i highly recommend the film to those interested in history and questions of right and wrong, however the film's cinematography style seemed rather juvenile. as i watched the film, it sometimes felt like a channel 9 special.


andrew david. "movies" greenwood, wa.

mp3 update

i've finished rating my mp3 library, hooray! that means that i've assigned a rating to 4,184 songs. in celebration, i've spent the last 15 minutes listening only to songs that were rated five stars (that's 88 songs on random play) and posting a picture of cake (the next best thing to eating it). i also deleted some of those nasty albums that were wasting precious disk space (about 1 gig to nearly be precise). now, because i know you all love lists, here are the first 11 albums (/artists)to receive the axe:

doolittle/pixies (everyone seems to love the pixies; everyone but me, that is)
frances the mute/the mars volta (intriguing album and band name, but, oh, well)
hoars/16 horsepower
laundry service/shakira
peel slowly/the velvet underground -- i left a few 3 star songs
so jealous/tegan & sara
the best little secrets are kept/louis XIV (it serves them right to have their album deleted; it's title is a lie)
the downward spiral/nine inch nails -- kept "hurt" and "a warm place"
with teeth/nine inch nails -- kept "every day is exactly the same" and "right where it belongs"
the Futureheads/the futureheads -- kept "the city is for you to use"
wet from birth/the faint (it's too bad; i liked their band name)



andrew david. "kayaking down a river of eggless chocolate" shekinah, saskatchewan.

886 to go

there is christmas music wafting up through the air ducts. that's right, i live with a guy who listens to christmas music on october 1st. what the goose???

well, i too have my strange musical habits. perhaps the most extraordinary of these unusual tendencies is my analytical assualt on alex layton's mp3 collection. in the summer of 2005, alex allowed me to copy his exhaustive music library onto my new laptop. with the addition of this generous earful, the total number of songs on my computer was 4186.

if i were to rank my friends (and perhaps my acquaintances too) in terms of their musical acuity, alex would be somewhere in the top ten. however, we humans are fallible (and sentimental), and everyone likes to listen to a little crap now and then. thus, despite the impressiveness of alex's musical taste, many of his songs don't strike me as worth the 5mb it takes to keep them alive.

soooo...in order to purge my system of musical malcontens, i elected to rank EVERY single song using the itunes five-star ratings system. while this is a daunting project, the quirkiest piece is yet to come.

in the download-happy world of the single, the prevailing musical mood seems a bit against the concept of an album. still, i continue to embrace the idea that songs are significantly connected in a web of meaning. perhaps i give too much credit to the music industry, but there's something tragic in the disassociation of the chapter from the book. therefore, i will not delete the musical atrocities until i have determined that the entire album is bad.

now, one more word about my methodology: while i support the concept of the album as an important, undivided entity, i have been listening to my unrated playlist in--gasp--random order. at first i rated albums song-by-song, but i soon found that by the last third of an album i was influenced as much by the previous tracks as the song itself. because i was afraid that this manner of rating might make me miss some gems, i adopted the unbiased method of listening to tracks in random order.

wow, it took a lot longer to explain that than i thought...

beth the s.o.. "andrew summiting the highest mountain in the world" cypress island, wa.
by the way, that's the andrew that spends his time ranking music not the andrew that spends his time thinking