2009: The Year in Stuff, Part 2

Movies


It was hard to resist the one-two comedic punch of I Love You, Man and The Hangover. Both had irresistible stories. The Hangover especially had a narrative thrust that could not be denied: three groomsmen wake up the night after a bachelor party with the groom missing. The three can’t remember a thing, and spend the rest of the movie retracing their steps to discover the case of the missing groom. It deflates a bit when all the pieces start to come together, but for a time it’s the perfect movie, with delicious interplay between perfectly mismatched leads Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis. Flick’s wholly redeemed at the end when we’re finally shown photographic evidence of the missing night with a series of rivetingly filthy and hilarious snap shots.

I Love You, Man was aimed directly at guys aged 30-45. Paul Rudd plays Peter Klaven, an average guy in L.A. who, after he proposes to his girlfriend, realizes he has no male friends to be his best man. He begins a painful exercise in man-dating before he meets Jason Segel’s Sydney Fife, a relaxed, single uber-dude who shows Peter the ways of chilling, jamming, and all things Rush. It’s a hilarious love story of a dude and his new best friend.


When the credits rolled for Up in the Air, Liz turned to me and said, “Finally, a movie for adults.” Up in the Air was tailored for the past year of company layoffs, shutdowns, and pay and hiring freezes. George Clooney plays layoff consultant Ryan Bingham. Ryan flies the country firing employees with efficient, practiced lines. His world is shaken twice. First he falls for a fellow corporate jet setter. She’s a reflection of him, so naturally he’s attracted to her. Then at work he’s paired with a young woman who travels with him to learn why he’s so good at his job. Meanwhile his company initiates a new high-tech way of firing people. The film catches spot-on today’s corporate language and the effects company’s blind decisions have on employees. There are no explosions or anthropomorphized animals. The fun is generated from watching a well written character study about a man whose relationships with people and his job are forced to change.

Another movie for adults is A Serious Man, which falls within the Coen Brother’s domain of simultaneous comedy and drama. A Serious Man concerns Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish mid-America college professor in 1967 who finds his life upset by a series of significant events, including his wife leaving, his brother in legal trouble, and a bribe attempt by a student for a better grade. Larry struggles to impress reasoning onto his life while struggling to determine how his faith can help. There are some very funny moments, as in all Coen Brother’s films. It’s an interesting milieu and the movie is never boring. But the ending is indelibly marred by being ambiguous and truncated, while introducing an unforeseen act of nature (or is that God?) just before the credits. This may well hint that Larry’s trials will never end, but this moviegoer was hoping for more resolution.

Cringe when you see another star of the Twilight series on the cover of Entertainment Weekly? Yawn when HBO’s True Blood comes on? Park Chan-Wook's Thirst pumps new blood into that tired trope, the vampire movie. The setup is silly and circuitous—priest turns into a reluctant blood sucker after volunteering for an odd-ball church-run experiment. His new vampire lifestyle puts a real crimp in his old priest lifestyle. He hooks up with the repressed wife of a childhood friend. She’s nuts, he’s smitten; can you say eternal love? There are moments of levity, but also a few of unadulterated terror. Especially the scene when the couple’s friends, over for another game night, find themselves unwitting blood donors. From there things really get nihilistic.



Which movies tickled your toes and flipped your cookies last year?

Originally meant as a two-parter, I'm going for three parts. So, tune in next time when I take a look back at last year's music.

2009: The Year in Stuff, Part 1

This end-of-year post isn't late, just well thought-out. What follows are synopses of books and graphic novels read and TV shows discovered in 2009. (Stay tuned for part 2: music and movies, and stuff that made me go Meh.)

Books

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Many of the comic and gaming culture references leaped over my head, but Junot Diaz' story of a depressed, bull-headed, outcast who finds love with the very woman he should run from, is a sumptuous, heady look at one of the most unusual but vivid characters introduced in the aughts.

Mohawk. Richard Russo's tender, tough, surprising first novel vivisects the underpinnings and undoings of a small upper New York town at the end of its industrial era. A fading town, seething secrets, longing, and lust. Half-way through Russo tosses his characters in a cup, shakes them up, then jumps them a couple years ahead. I never knew what was coming, and that's all you can ask of a good read. The prose sometimes smacks of mid-80s work shopping, but is never dull.

Lost City Radio. A thinly-veiled look at contemporary Peru filtered through the story of an unnamed South American city. Daniel Alarcon's odyssey follows Norma, host of a radio program called Lost City Radio, who helps citizens find their relatives lost to jungle wars and political unrest. When her own husband goes missing, boy comes into her life who she thinks can help her uncover the truth. Harrowing, tender, and unforgettable.

2666. The paperback came out in 2009, although I already had the boxed set from 2008. I’m only partially through book four of six, the part about the crimes, but already 2666 is the opus that everyone claims. Richer and looser than The Savage Detectives, Bolano, in his final written work, leads the reader through hundreds of vignettes to shape a tapestry of yearning, forward motion, and loss.


The bravado of the prose is so grounded it keeps you reading even through descriptions of dozens of murders of women in the fictional northern Mexican city of Santa Teresa. And who is this mysterious writer named Archimboldi that a passel of critics are trying to track down? And why does his trail lead them to Santa Teresa?

Revolutionary Road. Stark, honest, naked, vicious. With this portrait of a young couple in the New York suburbs, Richard Yates rewrote the rules for how married characters think and act in literature. A glorious achievement that I will probably reread every few years to remind myself what writers are capable of. A template for how to construct a novel, and how to reveal layers.

Last Night at the Lobster. Stewart O'Nan's portrait of a snow-bound Red Lobster franchise during its last shift before shutting down. The day evolves in crisp detail through the point of view of Manny, the 35 year old restaurant manager. It's a novella, so there's no time for back story or flashbacks. This book doesn't need them. O'Nan clearly presents Manny's longing for a coworker while he simultaneously struggles to buy the perfect Christmas gift for his girlfriend. Quietly hopeful, and full of longing, small betrayals, and loves, this little Lobster delivers big (pull-quote of the year folks! I got a million of 'em).

Graphic Novels
Noir. An anthology of illustrated crime stories in stark but effective black and white, Noir brings together many wonderful contemporary storytellers working different angles of noir. Contributors include Ed Brubaker, Kano, David Lapham, Ken Lizzi, and novelist Chris Offutt. Here we have straight up crime stories of hitmen, kidnappings, robberies, and other shady dealings. Entertaining and thrilling, Noir packs small, lethal punches.


Filthy Rich. Set in 1960s New Jersey and Manhattan, Filthy Rich is a story of how an ex high school football star nicknamed Junk becomes the bodyguard/chaperone to the daughter of a powerful Jersey used car dealer. An assignment for which nothing good can come. Written by Brian Azzarello (also a contributor to Noir) with art by Victor Santos, Filthy Rich is a frenetic, sometimes elliptical tale supported by stylized black and white illustrations of tough brutes with square jaws, hot dames with soft lines, hard hearts, and big boobs. Nice retro feel to the dialogue and characterizations. One hitch to full enjoyment is how Santos' busy frames and fussy lines make many of the male characters look confusingly similar, and the smaller trade paperback-sized format hinders a full appreciation of each panel.

TV
I finally allowed myself to get sucked into the wonderful world of Mad Men, that retro look at the workplace of mid-town Manhattan in the early 60s. Where men were encouraged to smoke, drink, and treat women like objects. And women were only beginning to find ways out of this trap. Mad Men avoids repetition with strong characterization, writing, and stories that never stray far from the strong atmosphere of an advertising company.



Something happened on Wednesday nights that I can’t quite explain: I became a fan of Cougar Town starring Courtney Cox as randy, goofy, selfish, charming real estate agent Jules. It’s a breezy show; each week the story lines concern nothing more than Jules worrying about crow's feet, looking younger, and hanging with her neighbors in a cozy Florida cul-de-sac where everybody has a swimming pool and it’s always sunny! Always! Courtney is gloriously game, and her comic timing, honed from years on Friends, runs circles around the rest of the very funny and believable cast.

What are some of the books you discovered last year? What TV shows can't you live without?

Stay tuned for Part 2!