Movie Review: Up in the Air

Two different CPL staff members reviewed Up in the Air. What do you think about the film?

Up in the Air, the recent Golden Globe winner for best screenplay, is a movie about relationships: with our jobs, with ourselves and of course with our significant others. The film takes us through the empty life of Ryan Bingham, played masterfully by George Clooney, a corporate-hired “hatchet man” who fires people for a living. Ryan’s new, type-A colleague wakes him up to his unfulfilled lifestyle, and his love interest comes with an unexepcted twist, far from the fluff of your typical movie romance. Both characters show the audience a side of them we haven’t seen before, in a dramatic ending worth the wait. Go see Up in the Air for the extraordinary acting, solid life lessons, and two-hour escape the movie will give you. - Kathy (Sunset)

Many critics call Up in the Air one of the best pictures of 2009. The Chicago Tribune even notes that it is nearly impossible to dislike this film. It seems obvious to this movie watcher that those who lavish such positive comments have not read the novel Up in the Air, a brilliant contemporary social commentary by Walter Kirn. Supposedly the movie is closely based on the book but I challenge you to read this fictional masterpiece and tell me you think so. Walter Kirn has presented a novel with little romance and much about how our business community's principles have caused social and economic damage. However, director Jason Reitman saw fit to turn this thought-provoking commentary into a warm romance. The true brilliance of Walter Kirn’s social commentary has been replaced by romantic fluff! - Henry (Downtown)

Robert B. Parker, 1932-2010

Bestselling mystery writer Robert B. Parker died this week at the age of 77. From the New York Times obituary:

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels, died Monday [January 18] at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

Mr. Parker wrote more than 60 books all told, including westerns and young-adult novels, but he churned out entertaining detective stories with a remarkable alacrity that made him one of the country’s most popular writers.

It was Spenser, though, who was Mr. Parker’s signature creation. He appeared for the first time in 1973 in “The Godwulf Manuscript,” in which he is hired by a university to retrieve a stolen medieval document, an investigation that triggers a murder. The first pages of the book revealed much of what readers came to love about Spenser - his impatience with pomposity, his smart-alecky wit, his self-awareness and supreme self-confidence.

“Look, Dr. Forbes,” Spenser says to the long-winded college president who is hiring him. “I went to college once. I don’t wear my hat indoors. And if a clue comes along and bites me on the ankle, I grab it. I am not, however, an Oxford don. I am a private detective. Is there something you’d like me to detect, or are you just polishing up your elocution for next year’s commencement?”

Find books by Robert B. Parker in the library catalog (also audiobooks and film adaptations).

Book Review: Prairie Tale by Melissa Gilbert

Prairie Tale by Melissa Gilbert is a very honest look back at the child star’s life and career in television, and a revealing snapshot of the actress’ vices and loves. Gilbert pulls no punches when uncovering the facts of her relationships with first “real boyfriend,” fellow actor Rob Lowe, or her connection with TV dad, Michael Landon from Little House on the Prairie, the show that started it all for her. From enduring drugs, alcohol, and divorce to finding a nurturing marriage and family life with hunky actor Bruce Boxleitner, Melissa has lived it all. The actress doesn’t regret the mistakes she made more than once along the way, and the reader will enjoy learning about the young “Rat Pack” actors of the 80’s and the inside stories of sharing movie sets with such legends as George C. Scott and Patricia Neal. A quick read with a generally light tone, the book does contain a few heavier, more emotional moments, such as Landon’s death from cancer in 1991. Overall, knowing that even “America’s Sweetheart” had her hang-ups and lived to tell about them in a funny and entertaining way enlightens the reader. - Kathy (Sunset)

Audiobook Review: Swan Peak by James Lee Burke

Ah, nature tooth and claw in SWAN PEAK by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton, and reviewed by Star Lawrence.

Let me stipulate: The Rockies are beautiful, the snow-kissed peaks, the gathering purple shadows, the sound of wind in the pines and larches, cut-throat trout slowly wheeling under lime Jell-O-clear water... If you have read rhapsodic nature-worshipping James Lee Burke, you know where I am going with this.

Burke lives in Montana and New Orleans, and he is apparently a rich man longing for the old America, where men went to war, killed or were maimed, came back and toughed it out in small towns, tramping along as cops or serial killers with their demons riding their backs and peculiar moral codes thumping in their chests.

Under the endlessly gorgeous descriptions of natural sights and sounds, Burke lets us know none too subtly, beats a black heart, men who look like other men but long to burn people alive and backhoe them into premature graves while they struggle to find oxygen amongst the richly fragrant humus being tossed on top of them.

Enter Clete Purcel, the wild-living former cop and rule-shattering PI of many Burke books, and his enigmatically explosive New Iberia, Louisiana police pal Dave Robicheaux (this is their 16th outing). This time, the duo has traveled to visit a crusading professor (Burkean?) living in one of the most idyllic places on earth.

First thing, mayhem-magnet Clete runs afoul of some trashy body guards for two local oil barons, who have the bad judgment to run over the Clete-ster’s fly rod. Uh-oh.

It’s on, babies.

I won’t drop spoilers, but dragged into the volatile mix is a sexually conflicted prison guard, an earnest C&W singer, a gold-digging gal with pipes of her own, a rather thoughtful woman with flowers tattooed all over her tatas, some hapless college kids, and a tacky preacher man.

Will Patton, a perennial favorite reader of Burke books, mutters on in his soft, Southern voice, peeling back the beauty of a sunset to reveal the bloody and bloody-minded human pollution that lies beneath it.

Do I sound cynical? I love Burke, but seriously? This is starting to freak me out. Maybe he spends all day thinking about the only geography that counts, according to him—the hole we will lie in. But I don’t. Sometimes I watch TV, even.

I am being cremated anyhow—and after I die, too.

Star Lawrence owns a recession-beating site called Do the Hopey Copey, http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com/. Her other audio reviews can be found at http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com/.

New Year's Resolutions

It's resolution season! According to Psychology Today, the most popular New Year's resolutions include losing weight, exercising more, quitting smoking, managing debt, saving money, getting a better job or education, reducing stress, taking a trip, and volunteering.

For advice and motivation to help you keep your resolutions, take a look at these titles from the library.

Weight loss
Eat This, Not That
Master Your Metabolism
The South Beach Diet
YOU on a Diet

Exercise
Faster, Better, Stronger
Start Strong, Finish Strong

Quit smoking
Quit Before You Know It
The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

Debt and savings
The Total Money Makeover
The Road to Wealth

Job search
Knock 'Em Dead 2010
Rebound

Stress
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
The Stress Answer

Vacations
100 Best Worldwide Vacations to Enrich Your Life
Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising

Volunteering
Make a Difference
Volunteer Vacations

Movie Review: Avatar

You would almost have to be a hermit to have missed all the praise for James Cameron’s new 2-D, 3-D, and IMAX movie sensation Avatar. With a price tag of nearly three hundred and ten million, this cinematic masterpiece has been setting box office records. Any one who has seen this epic science fiction film is likely to tell you both the plot and cinematic techniques are incredibly unique. However, this moviegoer, while praising the film, questions whether the plot and basic cinematic concepts haven’t been seen before.

In 1994, director James Cameron produced an 80-page draft for Avatar and reportedly wrote it in just two weeks. He noted that his inspiration was “every single science fiction book I read as a kid.” He did not mention as an influence the 1992 Australian animated feature FernGully: The Last Rainforest. For those who have seen FernGully, I challenge you to honestly say there are no cinematic similarities. It’s not just that the plots are similar, even some of the cinematic concepts appear emulated, especially when you consider FernGully was produced in 1992. No one could possibly question that Avatar is perhaps one of the best animated films ever produced, it’s just interesting that no one has mentioned how closely it approximates FernGully. - Henry (Downtown)