Fiat Lux

I sacrificed a few hours of sleep last night to finish Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". I have to say, when I finished, I kind of wished I'd gone to sleep instead. I won't say too much because I don't want to give away plot if you haven't read it, but given the generally excellent reviews the book has gotten, I felt that the ending was a real wimp-out.

It's late and I'll pay for this when the alarm clock goes off oh so early tomorrow morning, but I saw "Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World" tonight & wanted to throw down a few lines while my impressions are still fresh.

As a longtime avid fan of the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin series, I had waited for the opening of the movie version with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Happily, I was much more pleased than disappointed by the results. Given the limits of what you can cram into one movie, I think they did a fair job of bringing an O'Brien book to the screen. But my pleasure was not unalloyed.

Other, less exhausted reviewers of the movie will go into detail of the subplots cut, the bits freely borrowed from other O'Brien novels, and the somewhat contrived ending. I'll limit myself to these few observations:

1) I think they could have kept the original love triangle subplot with Midshipman Horner, the gunner, and his wife rather than making Horner out to be just another aging, inept midshipman who couldn't pass for lieutenant. I suppose it made the film too long to add it in.

2) I'm a fan of Billy Boyd, but I found him somewhat incongruous as Barrett Bonden. I'd always pictured Bonden to be older and not as good looking.

3) Russell Crowe did a good job as Aubrey. I would have liked to see Aubrey a little more human and less permanently enrobed with the godlike authority of a captain, but that's not what you get with Crowe, and all things considered it was an acceptable tradeoff. He certainly did a good job of the glee Jack felt when sailing Surprise into a storm or boarding a Frenchman's deck, for example. And I loved the 'lesser of two weevils' bit.

4) Maturin. As with Billy Boyd, Paul Bettany is a good actor, but my mental image of Stephen Maturin was not in line with him. Bettany is too tall and too good-looking to be the small, scrawny, bewigged Doctor. And in the final battle, despite the fact that O'Brien does take pains to demonstrate that Stephen is a good fighter, there's no way Maturin would have boarded the enemy. His place was in the cockpit with the wounded and he would not have left it.

4) Blakeney. I would have preferred meeting young Babbington.

Despite my quibbles, I do think "Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World" is a move well worth seeing and I suspect it will fight it out with "Lord Of The Rings" for a few Oscars this springtime.

You know it's getting silly when what Dan Brown left OUT of "The Davinci Code" is newsworthy.

Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.

It's a reasonably entertaining novel but it's not going to sit next to "Wuthering Heights" or "I, Claudius" in the annals of classic fiction. I have to assume that it's the subject matter, and that some people are having a hard time having their religion treated as fodder for fiction.

I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised. The amount of traffic my little review of "The Davinci Code" has generated is still regular, more than six months after I posted it.

I'm currently in the middle of a Daniel Silva novel, "The Confessor." It's a decent read so far. I hope he doesn't have the same third-act problems that Dan Brown has.

I finally got around to watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara yesterday.

All I can say is, wow. Anyone who doesn't think our situation in Iraq today is not similar to the situation in Vietnam needs to see this. It's oh so clear that the people running this country have not learned a damn thing in the ensuing 40 years. Some of the things LBJ said in 1964 (according to the movie) could just have easily come out of GW Bush's mouth. I've blogged previously about how Rumsfeld has channeled McNamara.

One point McNamara made that stands out in my memory was about the huge culture gap between the US and Vietnam, and its resulting problems. He more or less said, "we though we were fighting the Cold War. They (the Vietnamese) thought they were fighting a civil war". This was contrasted sharply in the movie with how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled, where McNamara describes how the US players put themselves into the Soviet shoes and thought through how to resolve the crisis and save face on both sides.

With Vietnam, LBJ is quoted as saying they didn't know what was going on in Vietnam as they got into the war, except that they knew they had to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. "We need to be able to guarantee their security" was another phrase I jotted down as I watched. The parallels with today are so obvious it's not even funny.

McNamara paints himself now as someone who had grave reservations about Vietnam but ran the war as best he could out of loyalty, until finally he found himself disagreeing with LBJ so strongly he had to go. Whether that's really how it was, I don't know. And although he was pushed rather strongly by the filmmakers, he refused to say whether he regretted what he did as Secretary of Defense or explain why, if he felt the war was wrong, he would not speak out against it after he left government service. he sys he has his reasons, but doesn't say what they are.

All in all, for history or political buffs, it's well worth renting. In the additional materials on the DVD are several clips not included in the movie. One was the famous 1964 'girl with dasies/nuclear bomb' commercial LBJ used. I'd read about it many times but never seen it. I sat there slackjawed as it played out - it is amazingly powerful.

I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but with the recent increase in my site's traffic this is a good time to finally post about some coffee that people I know are helping to bring to the USA.

The company is called Cafe Cosa. According to the website, their Q'Tal Tarrazu coffee is 100% single-origin Tarrazu coffee from Costa Rica. I'm by no means a coffee expert, but it's good stuff. Strong but not bitter. Worth a try.

Check out their website and give the coffee a try!

I caught a midday showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 down at the Metreon today. I walked in knowing Moore's trying to get you to walk out feeling a certain way, and in that regard, the movie was pretty much what I expected it to be.

The first section deals with 9/11 and the Bush / Saudi / Bin Laden connection. I could definitely have done without the footage of 9/11 itself. As I've said before 9/11 is a very painful topic for me so I prefer to not be reminded of exactly how painful that day was. I suppose Moore wanted to get some emotional punch in before drawing all the lines between the Bushes, the Bin Ladens, and the Saudis, but it felt a little too much like I was being manipulated to feel bad.

After that, Moore deals with the various responses to 9/11 -Afghanistan and the Patriot Act mostly. And here's what I didn't expect. I laughed. Several parts of the middle section - particularly when two Marine recruiters in full dress uniforms are walking around a parking lot in Flint, MI looking to sign up new recruits - are quite funny in a snarky sort of way.

Moore also sidetracks into one of his bete noires - how African Americans get screwed in America. It's a valid point that most of the kids in the armed forces are from poor backgrounds, but I think he's stretching a point by implying that they're all black. The issue is class not skin color. Even Moore's own footage of Iraq shows more white faces in uniform than anything else.

And speaking of the Iraq footage - I have no idea how he got the stuff but it's very raw and powerful. In a way I felt that this section of the movie was the most original, in that it's something that nobody is actually showing to us here right now. It's not easy to watch soldiers crying out in pain right after being attacked, burned bodies being dragged through streets, or soldiers putting hoods on prisoners' heads and cracking jokes about erections. These are images that show us what is really going on in our name, though, and we need to understand exactly what price we're paying.

It's been widely reported that the story of Lila Lipscombe and how she loses her son in Iraq is the emotional heart of the film. It is sad, but somehow it didn't affect me as deeply. What did make me cry? A little earlier in the film, Moore overlaid the theme song from notable 80s TV flop "The Greatest American Hero" on top of footage of Bush's trip to an aircraft carrier to declare combat operations "over". It's a cheesy song but for whatever reason I have always liked it. The juxtaposition of a song I like over pictures of President Bush surrounded by happy troops was a somewhat surreal combination. And then at the line in the song that goes "Should have been somebody else" I started to cry, thinking we should have had Gore as president instead of this loser.

Yes, I'm probably weird for crying at that point instead of when Lila Lipscombe's son dies. But that's how it happened.

I'm glad I saw the film. I don't think it's going to change many - if any - minds, mostly because the people who most need to see it (hello Dad, are you reading this?) won't bother going. And honestly, I don't see why it got the Palme d'Or at Cannes except as a way of expressing support for the political views in the film. Unlike previous winners with a war theme, like "The Pianist" or "Apocalypse Now", I don't see people watching Fahrenheit 9/11 10 years from now. It's a move for 2004, not for the ages.

All that said, it says a lot about America that despite all the problems our nation has, a film like this can be made and distributed and people can go see it without fear of reprisal. And it's a film worth seeing.

Thanks to the kindness of some friends, Scott and I were able to see the new musical "Lestat" in San Francisco last night.

Overall, I'd give it three out of five stars. The show has a lot going for it, it was entertaining, and the majority of the flaws are fixable ones. Whether it will ever make it to 5 stars, though, I'm not sure.

First, some technical observations. The show is done with relatively minimal set; heavy use is made of projections onto various screens. It worked better for the Paris scenes than the other locations, but overall I was OK with it. Using projections on the screen as special effects when the vampires attacked was a nice touch; and I also liked that there were no fangs and minimal blood effects. Costumes were overall good, although Gabrielle's last costume was just weird, and I'm not sure why they chose to do the ensemble in black and white for "Welcome to the New World". It didn't fit. Lestat's costumes also could use a bit of help -- he seemed underdressed much of the time compared to the rest of the cast.

With one exception, the cast was very solid. I particularly liked Lestat and Gabrielle - both had powerful voices and did a good job with their roles. The actress who played Claudia was also very good - her number, "I Want More" was a highlight of Act 2 - but she was also obviously not 10 years old, and that bugged me a bit. Armand, Louis and Marius were also effective. However, the actor who played Nicolas was clearly not as good as the rest of the cast. His acting was weak and so was his voice. To be fair, Nicolas is a tough role - playing a depressed person isn't easy - but that doesn't excuse the vocal weakness. Perhaps he was having an off-night, but if that's as good as he gets, I hope they recast the role for Broadway.

Before I go into the book, lyrics, and music, I want to talk about the big problem with the show, because it impacts all the rest and I'm not sure they're going to be able to sucessfully resolve it. That's the fact that they're trying to cram a tremendous amount of plot -- two 300+ page books -- into one three-hour event. The problem is, the plot has been cut down to the barest bones of Lestat's life story, and I'm not sure what else they could possibly cut without either ending the story sooner or deviating away from Anne Rice's story. And yet, there's just too much plot.

This impacts everything else. The evening felt rushed, like we were on a whirlwind tour and never had time to sit back and really enjoy the moment. The need to drive the plot forward hurt both the book and the lyrics (the latter moreso than the former; although Taupin's inexperience with the genre probably didn't help). The music was fine but could have been stronger in Act 1. All of the really memorable music comes from Act 2 -- I particularly liked "Welcome to the New World" and "Sail Me Away" (sure to be the single off the cast album when the time comes) -- but other numbers might have been better if they weren't so focused on driving plot, plot, and more plot.

The other problem caused by the deathmarch through all this plot is that there's a minimal focus on the emotional attachments between many of the key characters. There may be more purpose here than just driving plot, though. Readers of Rice's vampire novels are well aware of the significnat amount of homoerotic subtext in these books. I don't know if a conscious choice was made to de-emphasize that aspect of the story, or not, but this aspect of Lestat's life is virtually invisible. This missing part of the story becomes even more obvious when you see that the relationship between Gabrielle and Lestat is well laid out and their bond discussed in several different scenes, but virtually no time at all is given to Lestat's bond with Louis. One minute they meet, the next, they're living together and Louis is unhappy. Later, when Lestat talks about how happy he was in New Orleans, it's hard to see why unless you have your memory of reading the books to fall back on.

"Lestat" is only in the first week of previews, and is still being worked on. Much may change before its San Francisco run ends. At this point, I'm reasonably sure the show will make it to Broadway, but I also don't see any Tony Awards in its future.

UPDATE 12/30: I'm noticing an uptick in traffic to this page. Please be aware that the show has gone through some changes since I saw it and that my comments may not be a valid criticism of the show as it currently stands. Also, I'd love to hear some feedback from other folks who've seen "Lestat".

For a lot of reasons, Scott and I haven't been to the movies in a long time. Last night, though, we finally got over to the theater in downtown San Mateo to catch X-Men: The Last Stand (don't worry, no spoilers to follow).

It was OK. Not as bad as I'd been lead to expect from the reviews, but not OMG awesome either. Some of the 'continuity' issues bothered me more than others. I'm fine with the fact that some changes need to be made to turn a comic book into a movie. But others just didn't make sense. Argh. I really don't want to give spoilers, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

On the bright side, Kelsey Grammer turned out to be a hoot as the Beast. And what's not to like about Hugh Jackman and Halle Berre?

As a bit of a bonus, there was also a tiny "DaVinci Code" protest going on outside the theater. Four people and two signs, plus a couple of bored-looking cops to make sure nothing got out of hand.

Nice juxtaposition of the US flag in there. *Sigh* I guess some people just don't understand the concept of movies being fictional entertainment.

There's an old truism that if you get good customer service, you tell two people, but if you have a bad experience, you'll tell 10. So here's my small attempt to balance the scales:

Hotwire, you guys rock. Not only do you help me book good, inexpensive rental cars, but when I needed to cancel our vacation last week, your Customer Service staff told me exactly what I needed to do to request a refund, and then they processed the refund quickly. And this despite Hotwire's very firmly stated 'no refund' policies. (No, I did not purchase trip insurance.)

Things have been stressful enough around here; you helped lessen my stress. I'm deeply grateful, and you can bet I'll be using Hotwire again in the future.