Backyard Safari Mega Magnifier

I got my boys a $9.95 Backyard Safari magnifying glass from Summit (cheaper than the $14.97 shown here on Amazon). The thing is HUGE! It's a fresnel lens, is plastic, not glass -- you know, like those lenses made of concentric circles like they use in lighthouses? It is a cute toy, and it is BIG -- like 15" across, and a foot wide. When I bought it from the bookstore, the clerks were transfixed by it (hadn't realized it was on sale there) and kept playing with it. My boys love it, and it's fun to use, with some slight distortion in the lens because it's such light plastic.



However, I would warn you that fresnel lenses are very effective magnifying glasses, and that means if you have a kid who has any procilivity for starting fires, this is an excellent means of doing so -- so be careful of that. Not that the product is dangerous per se, but definitely don't leave it on a windowsill or in the hands of a kid who knows that magnifying glasses = fire and likes starting fires.

By way of testing it, I was able to light up a piece of cardboard in 15 seconds (indoors, mind you) with this sucker, once I found the sweet spot. It burned a hole in a piece of cardboard in that amount of time. 15 seconds to smoking ruin!

This is a fun toy and, as a novelty, it can't be beat -- it is the biggest magnifying glass I've personally seen, but just be careful with it (and you'll want a welder's mask or some other means to protect your eyes if you're focusing that beam, because it's bright). Fun to play with, however. I found myself wanting to get several to extend the power.

Despicable Me (2010)

I saw this one with my boys yesterday, and I'm glad I did. It's funny and well-written. Plenty of laughs for the grown-ups and the kids alike. The story follows Gru, this apparent supervillain who has been outclassed by an up-and-coming villain named Vector (Vector is the Apple to Gru's PC -- you can definitely see that in everything Vector does). Gru wants to reclaim his position as top supervillain by stealing the Moon, and, as part of that scheme, he adopts three orphaned little girls (sisters -- the cerebral oldest sis, the quasi-tomboy middle, and the cutsie pie youngest). Gru's villainous heart is, of course, softened by the introduction of these three kids in his world. It's kind of a nod to good parenting, I think -- that kids bring fun and love to your life in ways that a job never will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_rUbqbhUEQ

Anyway, the animation is crisp, the characters are amusing -- Gru's a stitch, and the girls are dangerously cute, and the story is light and entertaining. Universal is in Pixar's shadow, but this is a great addition to their portfolio. I can't wait to get it on DVD.

Despicable Me (2010)

I'll review this one tomorrow. A lot of fun, well-written, good times!

**** (out of five)

Inception (2010)

So, I caught "Inception" tonight, deciding to spend my valuable entertainment dollar on this Christopher Nolan-directed blockbuster. First off, it's going to do very well -- the theater was packed, the most-packed I've seen any theater in recent memory. I honestly can't recall a more-packed theater, so people are into this movie.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I really, really wanted to like this movie, but IT WAS BORING. I was fucking bored. Where to begin (without throwing any spoilers into the mix?) Hmph. It's a lukewarm action movie -- I mean, I have a problem with the whole "It's all a dream" kind of narrative conceit to begin with. I like my fiction to be REAL, ironically enough. Don't wrap a fictional tale in a fucking dream, pretty please? But I went anyway, because I thought it might be compelling enough to sit through, anyway.

The build-up was deadly-dull, dishing out the exposition, a few very light brushstrokes on characterization, Leo DiCaprio gamely trying to act -- you know the look, the furrowed brow, the careworn look. The other actors, doing their thing, basically being his foils and sounding boards for Leo's character to react to.

This movie is actually two movies -- a caper movie (but Oooh, it's a DREAM caper), and a kind of ghost story involving another character (a subplot that runs through the thing and is stitched into the larger narrative as part of Leo's back story). And I found myself thinking that the subplot would've made a much better movie, although it wouldn't have been a blockbuster action movie -- the dream caper aspect was just interminable, went on and on, various effects tossed into the mix, as we follow the characters from A to B to C to D levels of worlds-within-worlds. Talk about living in a dreamworld!

But this layer cake plotting is thinly-drawn, since the action isn't TOO over-the-top, and the characterization is nearly nonexistent, so it's hard to care too much about what's going on. It's that bane of lukewarm filmmaking that afflicts some movies.

Oh, sure, Christopher Nolan spackles in the gravitas in his ponderous manner -- the almost-ceaseless soundtrack (which always bugs me, wears down my ear -- the nonstop wash of mood music that tells us Something Important Is Happening Here -- it was used a lot in "The Dark Knight" as well). And he runs the jumpycam action sequences to show that Something Important Is Happening Here. But it's all too telegraphed -- too much and too little.

The subplot around the character "Mal" (!!!) is ultimately the most interesting part of the movie, a kind of dream ghost rattling around in Leo's character's head, but she's given short shrift relative to the exigencies of the broader dream caper, which grinds on to its inexorable and tepid conclusion. But a movie written around Mal would've been far different than the "Inception" that was made -- it would've been better, too, but they clearly wanted to go for the sugar fix of the action movie with super special fx.

And the dream special effects are certainly dazzling on some level, but again, it's too much doing too little. Fucking boring. It was boring. I was bored. And it was too long. I'm being deliberately vague (again, avoiding spoilers, here), but there is a thick vein of "Who Gives a Fuck?" running right through the heart of this movie -- the catalyst for this caper is shadowy, the motivations of Leo's character are murky (I mean, we're TOLD why he's doing it, but it hardly fucking matters), the other characters are pasteboard, and even the dreams themselves are big piles of bullshit.

This is a mediocre movie that didn't move me, and yet it'll likely succeed admirably because people love dreamy special effects. Although "The Cell" was roundly panned, I think it did a much better job communicating the weirdness inside somebody's head than the rather linear portrayals of reality in these dreaming characters. Hell, watch the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, too, while you're at it. They're more satisfying and meaningful movies than this one, which was heavy on dross, but with little in the way of actual dramatic or narrative paydirt. And while the ending had the audience crying out, it felt more like another ruse and I again thought "Who Cares?"

I wanted to like this movie, but it was just boring. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.

** (out of five)

Hercules (1997)

I watched Disney's "Hercules" with my boys the other night, and they seemed to greatly enjoy it, and, while I'm not a particular fan of Disney's movies, it was enjoyable enough. Good performances from the actors, reasonably good animation, and a typically Disneyfied storyline made it light fun.

That said, it's curious to see the Disney cultural meatgrinder go to work on the Greek myths. I mean, where to start? The saucy Megara (she looks hot) stole much of the show (but not too much, mind you -- it's Disney, after all), but I watched her happy ending with Herc and thought "Lordy, she's doomed." given that I know what happened to the "real" Megara when she hooked up with Hercules. NOT a happy ending for her or their kids. Of course, the cuddly, doting Hera was a total pie on the face of Greek mythology -- I mean, Hera? HERA? The original Olympian shrew bar none? A loving mother figure to Hercules? She wasn't even his mom, and what's more, Hera hated Hercules more than she hated most of Zeus's bastard children!



What else? How about the Judeo-Christian ethic evident in Hercules's growth as a hero -- Zeus saying something like "Being strong's not enough; what matters is the strength of your heart." Or something like that, in the context of his love and self-sacrifice regarding Megara. I mean, obviously, it's DISNEY, so they'll hew toward mawkishness whenever possible, but to invert the Greek heroic tradition to serve a Judeo-Christian ethic amused me to no end -- ancient Greeks would've choked at such a representation of Hercules.

The Titans were curiously rendered -- two of them resembled Norse Giants (Ymir and Surtur, if memory serves -- ice and fire giants). They certainly looked impressive enough, but it was odd to me, seeing these grand Norse Giants somehow standing in as Greek Titans. Somehow, I can forgive the gospel-singing Muses (they were entertaining enough), but the hash they made out of the myths was perplexing.

All the same, taking it unseriously, it was enjoyable on its own merits, but Zeus help any kid who gets their understanding of the Greek myths by way of Disney! It was pretty to look at, and fun to listen to (and James Woods was having a blast as Hades, clearly), but I felt like I needed to inoculate my boys against Disneyfication by reading actual Greek myths to them!

Not-So-Great Gatsby

So, I finally read "The Great Gatsby." I don't know how I never got around to it all of these years, but, on a whim, I read it. I think because some folks who've read my writing have said that my style reminds them of Fitzgerald, so I thought "Fuck it, I'll give his masterpiece a read." My stepdad hated that book, threw it out a window when he was in college, and I know someone else who hated the book so much that she couldn't finish it.

Had to tackle it at last, and I did. Surprisingly, for such a short book, it is a fucking slog. I was surprised at how hard it was to get through. Not because it was nearly impenetrable ala James Joyce, because the prose was bright and accessible, but just because it was so boring. Boring. BORING.

Not that there weren't lovely turns of phrases here and there -- there were, but I was surprised that this, the Modern Library's Number 2 greatest work of fiction of the last century, was so spare. I read it as a writer, delving through it, the language, everything. It just didn't do it for me. I was surprised at how lacking it was, in terms of language. Like Ralph Ellison's masterpiece, "Invisible Man" -- that book serves up dazzling prose in thick and juicy slabs -- whole paragraphs and chapters that sizzle with writerly energy. And much of Hemingway's best stuff also hits like that. Whereas Fitzgerald's prose struck me as a dash of seasoning here and there. Very slight.



I found myself wanting to say "WHO CARES?" while reading, even while wanting to get through it. I was disappointed, and wondered how this book became so canonical. And then I did some delving, saw that it had been nearly forgotten shortly after coming out, and Fitzgerald died feeling an abject failure as a writer -- and then, "The Great Gatsby" was included in some WWII pack given to soldiers -- some 150,000 copies were included in those packets, and that made me think that THIS was the reason the book became canonical: all of those copies, those soldiers reading that slim novel in wartime, hearkening back to an era they likely remembered in their childhood -- voila! Instant classic!

Not to be too cynical, here, but would that book have become a super-classic if not for that 150,000-copy literary inoculation given to those soldiers? It likely informed the aesthetic for a generation. Would that every writer could be so lucky! Right time, right place, I guess.

Because, in my opinion, the book was not so great. Well-written, but not nearly as well-written as I thought it would be, and not even close to the best book I've ever read. And now I wonder if I should read more Fitzgerald to see whether I can find what there is in his work that I can take inspiration from, because I found precious little in this little book. I won't forget reading it, but perhaps for all of the wrong reasons.

Also, it was curious for me, because I'd read Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust" years ago, and I found many similarities of style between him and Fitzgerald. And, of course, those two were friends, curiously enough, so it shouldn't perhaps surprise me that they kind of wrote like each other, since odds are they read each other's work.

It was curious for me to read "Gatsby" and see a similar writing voice to West, given that Fitzgerald is, by far, the ultimately more famous of the two writers. And, bizarrely, West died in a car crash on the way to Fitzgerald's funeral, which binds them together in still more curious ways in my head.