Book Review: Holidays in Hell by P.J. O'Rourke

Reader #62 wrote: As far as vicarious vacations go, this one wasn't half bad. O'Rourke is a snarky, alcoholic journalist who travels to some of the world's most dangerous and impoverished places, at least the ones that were "hip" in the late 80's. His ability to interview parties on both sides of various armed conflicts is impressive, and his language is colorful and entertaining (if occasionally obscene). O'Rourke makes no pretense of being some noble champion of the opressed; he frequently, in fact, reminds us that he's just a selfish jerk who's looking for fun on his publisher's dime. But in spite of himself O'Rourke sheds light on the absurdity and hopelessness of the Third World and more effectively crying out for answers than he probably intended. Grade: A.

Book Review: Danger in Tibet: A Miss Mallard Mystery by Robert M. Quackenbush

Reader #5 wrote: Miss Mallard searches through the foothills of Mount Everest for her nephew. They are world famous detectives and her nephew vanished while attempting to track down an infamous thief! She meets an inn keeper and the housekeeper at the inn where her nephew was staying in Tibet. They let Miss Mallard into her nephew's room and inside she discovers several clues to help her in her quest to find him. One very crucial clue is a gold coin and a map! This book takes Miss Mallard on an awesome adventure that kept us guessing the whole time as to where her nephew disappeared to and why. Just when we thought we had it all figured out, we were thrown for a curve and very surprised at the ending. It was a delight to read and I would even read it again in the future! Grade: A.

Book review: Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman's Last Journey by Ralph Leighton

Reader #83 wrote: One of the great scientists of the 20th century was Richard Feynman. Feynman got a doctorate in physics from Princeton and went to work at the Manhattan Project. There his whimsical nature and his ability to think "outside the box" made a real reputation for himself. He taught himself to crack safes in order to demonstrate security holes at America's most secret project. By 1951 he was a professor at Caltech which he remained until his death in 1988. His lectures on physics have become classics in book and film form. Feynman Diagrams are a visual way to describe subatomic particles he invented in 1948 and remain in heavy use to the present. He also was considered a great bongo player. He had a wild sense of humor and loved telling stories about his exploits. The stories were collected by a Ralph Leighton and published in two delicious volumes, SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN and WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? He was appointed to the Rogers Commission to investigate the Challenger Disaster. He traced the cause of the disaster to the rubber O-ring seals which failed to function in the wintry temperatures of the Challenger launch. These are just highlights of a great career. Any books about Feynman should be fascinating and most are. TUVA OR BUST! would seem on the surface to be one such book, but it is a serious disappointment.

The book is by Ralph Leighton, the close friend of Feynman who collected stories for the above two books. Leighton was something of a traveler and thought he knew geography until Feynman asked him whatever happened to Tannu Tuva. Feynman remembered from his youthful days of stamp collecting that there were triangular and diamond-shaped stamps supposedly from a place called Tannu Tuva. [See comments at the end of the review.] Leighton was stumped and the two began researching the place. When they found out that the capitol was Kyzyl they decided they had to visit any place that has such a strange spelling. It seems to have become an obsession with the two (or at least Leighton). The book TUVA OR BUST! is Leighton's memoir of his search and plans to visit Tannu Tuva with Feynman. Most of the book's illustrations are photographs featuring Richard Feynman. Leighton lets us know over and over what good friends the two of them were. He drops stories of going to parties with Feynman, playing bongos with him, having Feynman as the best man at his wedding, etc. However, little of Feynman's wit comes through in the writing.

Instead, we have a longish account of Leighton's travails in trying to arrange a trip to Tannu Tuva in Outer Mongolia, part of the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. The account is highly detailed and much of it leaves one wondering why we are being told much of what is in the book. The same story made an entertaining hour documentary for the BBC, "Horizon--The Quest for Tannu Tuva" (a.k.a. "The Last Journey of a Genius"). However that same charm spread over two hundred pages, even with wide margins, is a little thin. Much of it is about Leighton butting heads with bureaucracy heightened by international tensions. Contending with the bureaucracies is a major effort. The story is a race against time as early on Richard Feynman is diagnosed with cancer. The book does not focus closely enough on Feynman to track his failing health, but is puts some pressure on Leighton to solve the problems necessary to arrange a visit. It is hard to feel a lot of concern in spite of this because Leighton repeats over and over that one of the chief attractions for the two is the spelling of Kyzyl.

The path to arranging the trip is arduous and requires more than ten years. During this time we observe form an arm's length what is happening in the international competition between the United States and the USSR. We here about the Challenger crash. The pair makes discoveries like finding pieces of the throat-singing music that can be found only in Tannu Tuva. Incidentally, the book comes with a plastic record of with a sample of the music. Samples can be found at .

The book is mostly about Leighton, many of whose journeys were made alone, yet it repeatedly keeps mentioning that there is a connection to Feynman, lest we forget. Leighton bets on the mentioning of Feynman keeping the book interesting and loses that bet. If the traveling partner were some unknown Joe Smith the account would probably have a very much smaller readership. Other stories include how the two go on bongo playing forays. We read about Russian restaurants and how bad the service is. We are introduced to various Eastern Europeans, some of whom are helpful and some are not.

I would recommend this book really only to people who have already read SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN and WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? They are more entertaining and give the reader much more of a feel for Richard Feynman.

Incidentally, I am informed by a stamp collector that the Tannu Tuva stamps that started the whole proceedings probably never saw Tannu Tuva and were never used for postage. Apparently the future Nobel Prize winner was taken in by some fraudulent stamps. My friend showed me a few. Though cancelled, they have full gum on the back, indicating that they served no postal purpose. The postmarks carefully never obscure the pictures on the stamps, so that they can be sold to unwary collectors. Perhaps some government official gave permission in return for a cut of the take. Rating: C.

Book Review: Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft

Reader #82 wrote: Eureka Productions has a series called GRAPHIC CLASSICS, each of which has six to ten short pieces by the featured author, each done by a different person (or people). For example, the H. P. LOVECRAFT volume (ISBN-13 978-0-9746648-9-7, ISBN -100-9746648-9-8) has "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" adapted by Alex Burrows and illustrated by Simon Gane, "The Shadow Out of Time" adapted and illustrated by Matt Howarth, and so on. This means that if you do not like the style of one piece, you may like the next. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" had (in my opinion) too many panels that were almost entirely black and dark gray. "Dreams in the Witch-House" has a very stark (one might almost say harsh) black and white look. "Sweet Ermengarde" uses a much lighter touch, with thinner lines and more detail. "The Cats of Ulthar" is basically a text story with one large illustration on each page. And so on. Similarly, the MARK TWAIN volume (ISBN-13978-0-9787919-2-6, ISBN-10 0-9787919-2-4) has a variety of styles as well. I would love to see GOTHIC CLASSICS (ISBN-13978-0-9787919-2-2, ISBN-10 0-9787919-2-4), which features NORTHANGER ABBEY by Jane Austen and THE MYSTERY OF UDOLPHO by Ann Radcliffe, among others. How they manage to condense a full novel down to forty pages or so is perhaps something I do not want to see--even CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED had more pages than that, I think--but I am still curious.

Of course, a large part of the attraction of both Lovecraft and Twain is their language, and what the graphic form often does is to sacrifice some of the text for pictures. As such, it's more comparable to a film made from the story, rather than the story itself. Grade: B.

Book Review: Suspended In Language by Jim Ottaviani

Reader #82 wrote: SUSPENDED IN LANGUAGE: NIELS BOHR'S LIFE, DISCOVERIES, AND THE CENTURY HE SHAPED by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis (ISBN-13978-0-9660106-5-7, ISBN-10 0-9660106-5-5) is 318 densely packed pages of physics. (Indeed, at times Ottaviani and Purvis abandon the graphic style for solid paragraphs of text-- and hard-to-read text at that, with closely spaced san serif typeface with normal, bold, *and* italic fonts, all in the same paragraph. This would be difficult to follow even as a regular biography, but the added graphics make it even more difficult. (Indeed, one of the points it makes is that the "solar system model" of the atom is the last one that people could visualize--and it is wrong. Part of the Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle is that one cannot see some things, so there is a certain irony in the graphic format here. Grade: C

Book Review: Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards by Jim Ottaviani

Reader #82 wrote: BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS, AND THUNDER LIZARDS: EDWARD DRINKER COPE, OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH, AND THE GILDED AGE OF PALEONTOLOGY by Jim Ottaviani & Big Time Attic (ISBN-13 978-096601066-4, ISBN-10 0-966010663) is about ... well, what the title says. At 165 pages, it covers the subject fairly well with a straightforward approach done in sepia tones. It does not deliver the dinosaurs that the cover seems to promise, except as museum skeletons and isolated fossils, but it does give the reader an idea of what paleontology was like in the Gilded Age. Readers should be sure to read the "Fact or Fiction?" section at the back to find out where Ottaviani took liberties with the truth. Grade: B+.

Book Review: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer Lee

Reader #82 wrote: THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CHINESE FOOD by Jennifer Lee (ISBN-13 978-0-446-58007-6, ISBN-10 0-446-58007-4) began in 2005 when the Powerball lottery had 110 second-place winners instead of the expected 3 or 4. Why? Because five of the six winning numbers were printed on thousands of slips in fortune cookies, and 110 people picked them in the lottery. Lee started out trying to find out the origins of the fortune cookie, and along the way also discovered the truth about General Tso's Chicken, what "chop suey" really is, why Jews like Chinese food (and at least something about the Kosher Duck Scandal of 1989), what the connection is between Chinese restaurants and illegal immigration, and why no one can agree on what soy sauce is. Eventually, Lee does track down the fortune cookie, but the digressions are actually more interesting than that particular search. Grade A-.

Book Review - Handbags and Homicide by Dorothy Howell

Reader #412 wrote: Great book! Not a typical mystery. It's a combination of Legally Blonde and Agatha Christie. Haley wants to be a Beverley Hills detective but she works at a department store with a credit card debt. Howell makes the reader keep guessing. For sure this is a woman-only book. Great surprise ending, not the usual "who kills who and goes to jail." I will be waiting for another Haley Randolph mystery! Grade: A.

Movie review: Chop Shop

Reader #83 wrote: Life on the streets of Queens, New York, is a hand-to- mouth existence for a twelve-year-old Latino and his sister. The camera seems simply to follow young Alejandro around and show us the story of his life and his relationship with his older sister with whom he shares a plywood-clad room over the title auto body shop. Made on a very small budget, this film is actors in front of a camera telling a story that seems very real. The low-key drama has a real feel for the texture of life in the underbelly of Queens. Ramin Bahrani (of MAN PUSH CART) directs and co- authored the script.

This review contains minor plot spoilers. Using no music, little cinematic artifice and an almost documentary style, we are ushered into to the world of Alejandro. Ale (played by Alejandro Polanco) is a Puerto Rican boy about twelve surviving by doing whatever he can. He lives in an auto bodywork shop in Queens. Roger Ebert's review informs me that this area is the "Valley of Ashes" that F. Scott Fitzgerald describes us in THE GREAT GATSBY. It has not greatly improved over the years. Now it is the kind of dead end trap that we think of as being in the Third World.

Ale goes from one small job to the next. He works at the shop and tries to drag in customers; he does day labor for construction; he steals hubcaps; he hawks illegal DVDs; he sells candy on the subway. When he does the latter he announces to the subway car that he is NOT selling for a basketball team. In fact he does not go to school at all. We simply follow Ale around with a handheld camera and watch as he gets himself in and out of trouble. Ale's sixteen-year old sister is Isamar played by Isamar Gonzales. The five major actors all use their real first names.

Isamar has just run away from a safe house and is now living with Ale above the chop shop in a room with plywood walls and apparently one small bed. Together the two of them banter like brothers and sisters do anywhere. Their dream is to own a taco and beans truck. Isamar says it should have her name painted on the side, Ale insists it should have his name. Isamar cooks and cleans the tiny room, Ale hustles earning what money comes in. He and his friends talk in a disarmingly normal way about baseball and hookers. Trouble begins as the boys watch the hookers ply their trade on the ugly streets and Ale thinks he sees Isamar in a truck cab. Now the snack truck means to him not just an easier living, it is also how he hopes to rescue his sister from prostitution.

Ramin Bahrani is an Iranian-American filmmaker whose film MAN PUSH CART was well-received on the film festival circuit. In this follow-up film, he uses a style with a real feel of authenticity. Before the plot takes hold one might almost think this was a documentary. Yet eventually, as with THE BICYCLE THIEF, the scenes start adding up to a poignant plot. Alejandro Polanco has a lot of personality that holds this very low-key drama together as the story wends it way to a melancholy and inconclusive conclusion.

The setting may be New York, but it could be Africa or Central America. And the story could be from post-war Italy with filmmakers like Vittoria De Sica. Grade: B.

Movie review: The Dark Knight

Reader #83 wrote: THE DARK KNIGHT In a year in which one film after another is based on comic books this is a super-hero film whose depth is like no other. It plays with the whole philosophy of the superhero and the whole nature of superhero battles. It manages to bring together an action film and a thought piece. This is a lot more than we have come to expect from a comic book film.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses more abstract concepts and issues than plot points, but they still might be considered spoilers.

In Gotham City (here apparently a visual amalgam of Manhattan and Chicago) five criminal gangs have pooled their resources only to have them stolen by a brilliant but psychotic sociopath, the Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger). The presence of the Joker brings out Gotham's other strange resident, the Batman (Christian Bale) and thus begins a giant battle between two very twisted men in costumes.

THE DARK KNIGHT is possibly the most hyped film of the summer. Surprisingly, for once, the hyped film is also one of the most serious and complex films of the year. Within the lines of this comic book story are some ambiguous moral decisions, and between the lines of the script some deep philosophical questions. This is the second Batman film directed and written by Christopher
Nolan, whose films are best described as astonishing. FOLLOWING, his first, was an unconventional thriller seen by relatively few people. But his MEMENTO was an amazing introduction to Nolan for most film fans. THE PRESTIGE, his latest film before this, was an intricate puzzle box that is fascinating on first viewing and is even more so on the second. Even considering THE DARK KNIGHT, it is still THE PRESTIGE that is his best work.

As for his Batman films, BATMAN BEGINS (which preceded THE PRESTIGE by two years) has a much deeper psychological pitch than any other superhero film in memory. Nolan painted Batman as twisted from childhood and not so much a hero as a victim of his own demons. It was one of the best super-hero films, but BATMAN BEGINS still rested comfortably within the conventions of the comic superhero genre.

Nolan's second Batman film surpasses his first with a dark psychological drama that nearly reinvents the superhero film. It brings us to a land where in spite of the possible good intentions of the superhero, the innocent can become victims of the fight itself. THE DARK KNIGHT is a comment on all other superhero films and the implicit safety net with which they operate. It reminds us that with great power comes not just great responsibility but also some great psychological burdens.

The concept of Batman, as with most superheroes, has usually been that he can do anything that needs to be done to stop evil. The end of a Batman story or nearly any superhero story has traditionally been that order is restored and things have returned to the state they were at the beginning. All dangers have been averted and evil has failed. Somewhat more sophisticated superhero stories might allow one or two innocent people killed to reinforce how bad the evil is. But in general the butcher's bill in a superhero film has been small. That is just part of the formula. And we are supposed to feel fortunate we had the superhero around to keep down the killing. That was just how a superhero story works. But in THE DARK KNIGHT Batman is faced with the proposition that innocent people are killed and others will die until he reveals his identity. He must decide how valuable to him is the secret of his identity. People are dying and that rips away the traditional safety net that his protection is infallible.

With the invisible safety net of superhero story convention gone, there are collateral deaths that Batman cannot avert. They are killed because the Joker wants to show the limits of Batman's power and also for the simple abstract cause of chaos. The Batman supposedly defends order without seeing that he himself, a bat-masked, self-appointed vigilante, is a breach of that order.

THE DARK KNIGHT takes us to a new world in which there can be serious casualties in a battle between super-hero and super-villain. The Joker is attracted to fighting the Batman specifically because he is the Batman. He is not trying to get rich from the proceeds of his crimes; he is simply playing a game with the Batman. And the Batman cannot back away from the fight because he is the Batman.

For the Joker the game is mostly about Batman, but just for kicks he also adds an object lesson for the rest of us. He shows us with a psychological experiment that fear can turn many of us
into mass murderers also. One of his crimes is an exercise to do just that. It is it a potent message in the post 9/11 world. But clearly this is a deeper Joker than Jack Nicholson's or
Caesar Romero's Joker clown who laugh gleefully as they defaces paintings or do other mischief. It is like comparing an abyss to a little furrow. Heath Ledger gives a good performance as the
Joker. He does make one the great silver screen creeps, nearly a polar opposite of his Ennis Del Mar in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

Where Nolan falls down is the background world for his story. At times the background has a very realistic feel, like that of a MYSTIC RIVER. Other times it seems to fall back on the less credible logic of a comic book. One case is when a character has figured out Batman's identity and is scheduled to reveal it on television. We are led to believe the station was ready to put him on television for the revelation, but they do not know whom he is going to name.

THE DARK KNIGHT has an enviable cast of usually lead actors playing supporting roles. In addition to Bale and Ledger, Aaron Eckhart plays District Attorney Harvey Dent on a strange journey from crusading public servant to the featured villain in the next Batman film. Both Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are reduced to playing squires to the Dark Knight. Gary Oldman plays the future Commissioner Gordon who wields the Bat-searchlight. Finally, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Rachel Dawes (the Batman's love interest) and Eric Roberts plays a mob boss. The screenplay is co-authored by brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan who collaborated on the scripts for MEMENTO and THE PRESTIGE.

By July of 2008 the filmgoer might not be blamed if he were a little tired of comic book action films hitting the theaters one after another. IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, WANTED, ... the list goes on. THE DARK KNIGHT leads the pack and is the most intelligent of the lot. Grade: A.