Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

Wow.

For all that I’ve been on the National Fencing Squad for years, I’ve been lucky enough to never be picked for drug testing. This changed tonight.

I had arrived at training, and was just changing my shoes, when two ASDA people walked into the room, with my name on their list. This is the first time they’ve ever turned up at our club – previously, they’ve come to National level competitions, but as it happened I haven’t made the top four at the comps they’ve been at, so I was never selected for testing.

The way it works is that from the moment they’ve identified me, one of them has to keep me in their sight at all times. This includes the bit when I’m actually producing the urine sample for them. What fun! (That was sarcasm, by the way.)

After drinking about a litre of water in 40 minutes, I was able to produce the sample in spite of having a witness. But the security around it is really amazing. I had to give them a list of any medication (including vitamin supplements) that I had taken in the past week. They gave me a choice of three (sealed) cups in which to produce the sample. Then I had a choice of three packs of sample jars – the pack was numbered and sealed. I had to unseal it, take out the two jars inside, make sure they were sealed and that they and the pack all had the same numbers on them. I then had to pour the sample into the two jars (they weren’t allowed to touch it) and reseal the pack. One of the jars is sent to a lab for testing, and the other is held for a second test if there is a problem with the first one – i.e. if it comes out positive. If everything is okay, I’ll get a report in 8 to 10 weeks. However, they explained that if there’s a positive result from the first jar, I should hear back in a couple of days, and I then have the right to be present for the opening and testing of the second jar.

It was all a bit embarrassing from my point of view. However, later I got to thinking what kind of a job it must be to follow an athlete around and then watch her pee into a bottle. I hope that it’s only a small part of the ASDA person’s role, or that it’s only something she has to do for a short time, before moving on to bigger and better things. I don’t imagine it’s the sort of job most people are thinking about when they talk to the Careers Guidance person at High School.

I guess it’s hard to distill an entire life into a couple of hours. Nevertheless, Kinsey did seem rather “bitty”. It felt as if there was lots of other stuff happening that we only saw segments of – e.g. his relationship with his son, and with the other researchers. Also, I felt that all the relationship problems were solved too quickly, too easily and too neatly. I found that side of it a bit hard to believe.

I also found the inclusion of the animal footage in the final credits a bit tacky. I assume it was footage taken for serious research purposes, but it seemed designed more to get a laugh – like something out of “Funniest Home Videos”.

Notwithstanding all of this, I didn’t dislike the film, and the performances were certainly good. But ultimately, it didn’t really engage me.

I enjoyed A Very Long Engagement much more than Amélie. I particularly liked the interplay between the uncle and the postman – in fact, I enjoyed pretty much everything that involved the uncle and aunt. I have no idea how true a representation it gave of life in the trenches, but it certainly felt very realistic. I found I had to work very hard to remember who was which among the six condemned soldiers. On the other hand, it is probably to the credit of the film that, for the most part, I did manage to do so. Normally I am very bad at keeping track of characters – particularly if they all look somewhat alike. The introduction of each character gave me a “hook” to remember him by (e.g. the different method by which each one was injured), although it was sometimes challenging when they were referred to by different names at different times.

For me, the scenes involving Tina didn’t fit very well with the rest of the film. She seemed far too ruthlessly efficient to exist in the same universe as the other characters.

I was a bit in two minds about the ending. [Warning: spoiler to follow] The implication seemed to be that he was never going to fully recover, and she would effectively have to become his mother, but that she was content with this. It was certainly more interesting than a conventional “happy ending”, but I wasn’t sure I was entirely comfortable with it. Then again, this was probably the point of it.

I have always been a bit underwhelmed by Looking for Alibrandi, Marchetta’s first book. I quite enjoyed it, but it didn’t give me the real insight into what it is like to be an Italian/Australian that I had been hoping for. Also, I found much of the plot pretty conventional.

Saving Francesca is a whole different matter. The fact that the central character is Italian is not foregrounded so much – it’s not the main point of the book. I thought the the two plot strands – mother suffering from depression, and main character gradually forming a new peer group – wove together well. I found the main character very engaging, particularly the way that her self image was so bound up in the perceptions of her former friends, and she only gradually realises that she has changed – and that they have always been shallow. The subsidiary characters were presented more superficially, so I didn’t really feel that I “knew” them as well as Francesca, but then that makes sense for a first person narrative. However, I liked them, and I liked the way they gradually changed as Francesca’s perceptions did. The only one who left me unmoved was Will, who I basically found completely uninteresting. This is probably because he is a relatively conventional romantic lead, whereas most of the other characters are slightly quirky.

I don’t know a great deal about the life of J. M. Barrie, but I do know enough to be fairly confident that Finding Neverland is quite heavily fictionalised. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it – I suspect a good deal more that if it had been faithful to the facts. Although it didn’t actually ignore the problems with his marriage and the impact of his brother’s death, it didn’t really ask you to think too deeply about his relationships with other people. He came across in the film as perhaps somewhat awkward, but not much more than that. As I said, I don’t really know much about his life, but I gather it is generally felt that the death of his brother was very damaging to his emotional growth.

The Barrie of the film, however, was a totally engaging character, for all his occasional naivetes. I loved Johnny Depp’s performance, and also that of the boy who played Peter. At times it was a bit overly sentimental, but not excessively so.

The only thing that I was a bit bothered by was the suggestion that imagination needs to equate to belief. I got the sense of a subtext was that unless you can actually believe the things you make up, then your imagination is somehow inadequate. But surely something can be wonderful and magical and life-enriching even if you know that it is not actually true. You don’t have to actually believe in something to completely lose yourself in it … do you?

Monsters Inc is still my favourite Pixar production, but The Incredibles probably comes in second. The characters were fun (it was especially nice hearing Wallace Shawn re-use his Vizzine voice from The Princess Bride), and the plot was enjoyable. There was one thing I did wonder about, though. Both Violet and Dash had names that reflected their powers (shrinking violet/invisibility; dash/speed). I assume this means that Jack Jack also had some connection with the baby’s power: maybe I’m being thick, but I just can’t work out what the link is.

I had never read any Janet Evanovich before, and I found these two books a lot of fun. Not knowing anything about her background, I first thought that the detailed descriptions of what Stephanie is wearing at all times, and what she eats, were a link to Raymond Chandler (right from the first paragraph of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, you are given a detailed description of Philip Marlowe’s clothes). However, I later discovered that her background is in romantic fiction, so it’s possible that writing these descriptions is now completely second nature to her. It’s interesting that two such completely different genres can have this kind of overlap.

As detective stories, the plots weren’t anything special (but then, neither are Chandler’s), but I enjoyed the comedy and the slightly surreal nature of the minor characters. Though I hope Stephanie does become slightly more competent as the series progresses – obviously, she’ll never be as good as Morelli or Ranger (doesn’t have their training or background) but it would be nice if just occasionally they could mess up and need her to rescue them.

I had been planning to slowly re-read all of Bujold’s Vorkosigan books in (internal) chronological order. I had not been planning to read these three all in a bunch, but an infected blister, that resulted in two days in hospital on intravenous antibiotics, changed that.

When I set off for the medical centre, knowing that I might spend quite a while in the waiting room, I grabbed Warrior’s Apprentice, knowing that it was engaging, but not too cognitively demanding. (The alternative, which I had just started, was Children’s Literature – An Issues Approach. I decided this would not be ideal under the circumstances.) In the event, Warrior’s Apprentice lasted me not just 40 minutes in the Medical Centre, but also several hours in casualty at the hospital, with a foot that was becoming increasingly painful. The Vor Game and Cetaganda (which Michael brought in for me, along with my laptop and some DVDs) carried me through the next two days in the ward.

These three books have never been among my favourites in the Vorkosigan series. On re-reading, however, they do all have some good stuff in them – Warrior’s Apprentice in particular, since this is the book in which she sets up Miles’ personality. Even in these early books, Miles is an interesting and complex character, and Ivan is a wonderful counterbalance to him. In general, however, I find all three books pretty lightweight when compared to later books in the series.

I absolutely loved Jaclyn Moriarty’s young adult books (Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassy Crazy) so I was really excited when I learned she had written a “fairytale for grown-ups”. Unfortunately, I was bitterly disappointed when I actually read the book.

Although some of the humour of her writing is still present, it lacks the exuberance of her YA fiction. I liked the character of Listen, and the very believable agonies she goes through when her friends unexpectedly decide to dump her. However, I became progressively less interested in – and more irritated by – Cath, Fancy and Marbie. I also found the whole Zing Family Secret to be very anticlimactic.

Very glad I got this book out of the library, rather than buying it. However, it doesn’t change my opinions of Feeling Sorry for Celia and Finding Cassy Crazy – among the best (and funniest) YA fiction I have read.