This has got to be the most consistently good series I've ever read. Ten books in and I've enjoyed every one. I'm even a little sad that there's only one left. Anyway, I'd mostly add all of the same praise to this book as I did with the rest. The one thing that sticks out in my mind about Lord Hornblower is that the tragic moments moved me quite a bit more than the previous books. Whether that's because the writing was more effective or just because I've had more time to become invested in the characters, I'm not sure.

Started: 2006-04-07 | Finished: 2006-04-11

Purchase from Amazon

My mom and stepdad have a habit of taking in stray cats. The older one of the two they have I found as a kitten in our back yard about fifteen years ago. The younger wandered away from his owner, who didn't feed him enough—I think he's eight or nine now. A third cat, in between the other two, died this morning. Her name was Sweetie.

I must have been in about the eighth grade when we got Sweetie. My stepdad was working at a local restaurant and noticed that a family of feral cats was living underneath the building. He liked the black and grey bullseye pattern that one of them had on its sides, so he caught it and brought it home.

It became apparent pretty rapidly that our new cat had some problems. She was runty and cross-eyed and extremely stupid. It was kind of exasperating at first, because she kept forgetting who we were. Every time you wanted to pet her you'd have to ease up to her very gently or she would run away. My mom was always best at that. "It's OK, sweetie," she'd say, using the same words and reassuring tone that she would with a frightened child. The name stuck, although it took her several years to adjust to being around people.

My mom related the story of her last moments in an email this morning:

I have some sad news to relate. This morning around 4:45 we were awakened by loud cat meowing, which isn't that unusual...often Bill will wake us early to be fed, and in fact we usually keep our door closed to avoid that morning surprise. We are greeted with waiting cats when we open the door every morning. Anyway, last night we left the door open because we kept the attic fan on all night, and I guess it was a good thing because otherwise we might have missed her last minutes.

 

When we finally turned the light on and checked, it turned out to be Sweetie, and she was on her side, crying loudly and panting. We got down on the floor with her and could tell that she was really frightened, which I guess is why she came into the room with us. She always came to us when she was scared.

A couple of times she managed to get to her feet and stumbled toward the kitchen...we think she was trying to get downstairs so she could get under the couch, which is where she spent most of her time. She made it as far as the doorway of the kitchen where she laid down and never got up again. Her breathing became shallower and shallower until she gave one last stretch and then passed away.

It hit me harder than I would have expected. I think that part of it is that, while I've been expecting them to lose one of their pets pretty soon, I thought it would be the older one, Leon, that would go first. I just got back from a visit to my parents' place and Leon was looking pretty old and crotchety. He's had a fair number of health problems over the past couple of years, and he's gotten all bony and arthritic. I even took a little time to say goodbye to him on this trip. Sweetie, though, was her normal self: dumb as a brick, but fat and happy. I guess I figured I'd have a few more chances to see her.

Maybe another part of it is how descriptive my mom was. I keep seeing the scene in my mind and thinking about how scared Sweetie must have been—even more so because she was so dumb. Maybe that's anthropomorphizing a bit too much. I'm sad about it anyway.

It's a little strange, when I stop to think about it, to be so emotionally involved with an animal. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever have to hold back tears thinking about that cat, but I do. I am. I can hear the strange little chirping noises she'd make and see the sort of vacant, sometimes loving, sometimes wary look in her eyes. I'm going to miss her.

I'm kind of surprised that this movie hasn't been advertised more. I haven't seen any trailers on TV, and the only one I saw in the theaters was only a week before it opened. It's a little strange, because it's actually quite good—the dialogue, in particular, was clever and drily funny. What's more, it had a very bankable cast: Josh Hartnett as the lead along with Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, Morgan Freeman, and Ben Kingsley. I mean, come on, how could a movie with Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley fail to be good? Well, whatever the reason for the lack of promotion, I hope that the word-of-mouth spreads fast enough to keep this film in theaters for a few more weeks, because it's one of the better films I've seen in the past year. If you're into gangster movies at all, check this one out.

Viewed: 2006-04-10 | Released: 2005-04-06 | Score: B

IMDb Page

I decided to continue my reading on American history with Dee Brown's classic about the plight of the American Indian. It was an amazing read, informative and engaging. At times, though, it was almost too effective—the entire book is written from the Indian perspective and the stories Brown tells are heartbreakingly tragic. Despite the fact that I already had some knowledge of the ways in which the Indians were mistreated I still found myself surprised and outraged at some of the episodes Brown related. I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the American West, but be prepared for some heavy subject matter.

Started: 2006-02-23 | Finished: 2006-04-07

Purchase from Amazon

If you're the type that likes to organize and analyze, you can pretty easily split the caper genre into two groups: the ones where the audience is told about the plan beforehand and the ones where they aren't. The former type can get by on action sequences and gadgets, but the latter has to be a little smarter—it's crucial that the misdirection works well. A good caper movie can give you all of the pieces of the puzzle and still surprise you in the end. I'd say this was a pretty good one. It was well-written with an interesting premise and the performances were all pretty solid. Christopher Plummer was particularly good (which is no surprise, really), as was Denzel Washington. Apart from my normal pet peeve about accents (Clive, man, I love your work, really, but you should really stick to English roles) my only real complaint is that the movie made me overthink things. Really, the plot was a pretty straightforward caper, but there were lots of little details—a large poster in the background of one scene, the music under the opening credits, several lines of dialogue pertaining to race and religion—that had me expecting a plot twist involving terrorism or something. I guess I was paying just a bit too much attention, but that's alright since it didn't really diminish my enjoyment of the film.

Viewed: 2006-03-31 | Released: 2006-03-23 | Score: B

IMDb Page

It's quite likely that you haven't heard of this movie. In fact, the only reason I knew about it is because I knew some people who worked on it. Overall, I'd say I liked it. I don't generally enjoy "message movies," because the themes being portrayed—in this case, the effect of the proliferation of guns on American society—are often pushed into the foreground at the expense of good storytelling. This movie didn't totally avoid that problem, but I think that the quality of the performances was enough to offset the fact that the script was a little shaky. All of the principal actors did a good job, and I particularly liked Forest Whitaker and Donald Sutherland. I've also been noticing Linda Cardellini more and more lately—I think she's pretty talented and I found it a little unfortunate that her storyline wasn't developed more. It was a little hard to see how it fit with the rest of the film. From a technical standpoint, it seemed a little obvious that the writer-director was new to filmmaking, because he chose to use a lot of what I call "film school" techniques. Some of it worked, like the way the different storylines had different film textures and color balances. On the other hand, some of the camera angles and cuts kind of bothered me. Still, I think that the film does what it sets out to do, which is to spotlight an issue that we as a culture are currently dealing with. I'm not sure that I completely agree with the standpoint the film seems to take, but it's a subject that certainly merits discussion. If it comes to your local indie theater (and you can check the release schedule at the film's web site), you might want to check it out.

Viewed: 2006-03-25 | Released: 2006-03-21 | Score: B

IMDb Page

I wonder whether or not posting my picks on the same day as the Oscars will become a tradition—this is the second year in a row that I've done it. This year it was only partially due to procrastination. As it turned out, 2005 was a difficult year for film. Box office returns were the lowest in recent history and most of what came out was crap. On the other hand, the few good films were really good. All of this made it difficult to make decisions in many of the categories—either because there were a few really great choices or because there were none. But anyway, on with the show.

Best Drama: Brokeback Mountain

I suppose my pick of Brokeback Mountain is probably not terribly surprising given how much buzz that film has generated this year. It's already won both the Best Drama and Best Director Golden Globes and in all likelihood it will easily win those categories at the Oscars. For me, though, it was actually a tough decision because Match Point was so good. In the end, though, I went with Brokeback because even though I think that Match Point was smarter and better written, and even though both films were technically excellent, Brokeback was more emotionally evocative for me. Though both films had wonderful acting, Brokeback's performances were deeper, and while both made excellent use of cinematography and setting to deliver their respective stories, Brokeback's majestic use of landscape made the setting take on a life of its own.

Runners-up: Match Point, Dear Frankie, Shopgirl, Jarhead, Serenity

Best Comedy: The 40 Year-Old Virgin

Here, again, I had a tough choice between two excellent candidates. I eventually went with The 40 Year-Old Virgin because I felt it was a better film all around. Kung Fu Hustle made me laugh harder and was brilliant in managing to both parody and represent the Hong Kong martial arts genre, but Virgin was one of those rare movies that manages to be both truly hilarious and truly touching. The idea of a sex farce with characters that you care about seems unlikely, but that's exactly what Virgin is.

Runners-up: Kung Fu Hustle, The Matador

Best Actor: Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)

Despite the fact that Heath Ledger's performance runs afoul of my biggest acting pet peeve—don't screw up the accent—the fact is that he did some really amazing work with this role. His performance as the laconic Ennis Del Mar was so nuanced and so quietly passionate. Being able to pull so much emotion out of such a sparse script is really what acting is all about.

Runners-up: Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line), Pierce Brosnan (The Matador), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point), Steve Carell (The 40 Year-Old Virgin)

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)

This category was hard to pick, but for a completely different reason than the first two. There just weren't any female performances that really wowed me this year. Part of this is probably due to the choices we made in what movies to see—in particular I think having seen Transamerica might have made this easier. In any case, I chose Reese Witherspoon because, even though her performance didn't strike any major chords with me and it was completely overshadowed by what Joaquin Phoenix did in that movie, it was certainly the best work she's ever done.

Runners-up: Emily Mortimer (Dear Frankie), Claire Danes (Shopgirl)

Best Supporting Actor: Jason Schwartzman (Shopgirl)

Jason Schwartzman has this great quirkiness that he brings to all of his roles, from Max Fischer in Rushmore to Albert Markovski in I Heart Huckabees. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it—maybe a sort of awkward, geek-chic self-absorption—but whatever it is, I like it. His performance in Shopgirl was a lot of fun to watch, and provided a great comic counterpoint to the LA fable that forms the rest of the movie.

Runners-up: Jeremy Irons (Kingdom of Heaven), Jamie Foxx (Jarhead), Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead), Michael Caine (The Weather Man)

Best Supporting Actress: Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)

I wasn't too impressed with Michelle Williams at first but the more I think about it, the more I appreciate her performance. My attention in Brokeback Mountain was so focused on Ledger and Gyllenhaal that I hardly even noticed her, but having had time to reflect on it, I think that is really to her credit. A lesser actress would have seen the character's struggles as an opportunity to really act, and would consequently have overdone it. In fact, that's more or less what Anne Hathaway did in the same film. Williams, though, gave a much more subtle performance—you never see the actress in her thinking "OK I'M CONFLICTED RIGHT NOW"—which allowed her to play off of Ledger in a much more realistic way. It's a little ironic, really, that sacrificing the "spotlight" in that film is what brought her so much critical attention.

Runner-up: Emily Mortimer (Match Point)

I got the feeling while watching this movie that the filmmakers were doing something brilliant but that it was going over my head because—as is so often the case—I wasn't familiar with the source material. Having had a few days to do a little digging, I think I was right. What the writer and director has done here is take a book that is widely regarded to be unfilmable (Laurence Stern's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and restructured it in such a way that it works brilliantly on film. Rather than try to put the novel on film, what they've done is captured the spirit of the novel by making a movie about making a movie about the novel. (Is your head spinning yet?) The book is described as a self-reflexive, stream-of-consciousness satire full of both low-brow bawdy and more intellectual, meta-literary humor that still manages to ask some serious questions about the limits of self-knowledge and deliver some touching scenes of paternal love. And that's exactly what you get from the movie. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Now, to go get myself a copy of the book.

Viewed: 2006-02-25 | Released: 2006-01-26 | Score: B

IMDb Page

I think what keeps bringing me back to this series—aside from the fact that I already own it—is the characterization. Hornblower is keenly aware of himself and the events of his life so, rather than each story standing alone, the echoes of all of his past adventures continue to be heard as he matures. You get to see how he grows. It's really great writing. Plus, you get to read lots of cool nautical terms like "sternsheets" and "mizzentop."

Started: 2006-02-12 | Finished: 2006-02-22

Purchase from Amazon

As you may know, Judi Dench was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the woman who first brought nudity to the West End stage. I'd say the nom is well deserved. Of course, Dench could do just about anything and it would be good, so it's not terribly surprising. Bob Hoskins and Christopher Guest were also quite good and between the three of them there were some truly hilarious scenes. Much of the film focuses on the shows themselves, nudity and all, and while a real show like that would come off today as hokey and gratuitous, in the context of the film it was kind of endearing—sort of a glimpse into a time that was more innocent despite the tragedies brought about by war.

Viewed: 2006-02-19 | Released: 2005-12-08 | Score: B

IMDb Page