An Embarrassment of Riches

ElecTRONic - by Steve Recently I've been on a bit of a way back kick for my movie tastes. No, not WAY way back. But back far enough to see how films from the 80s have held up over time. I grabbed a copy of the original Tron and plunked down to watch it last week. By today's standards, the graphics and computer animation seems clunky. It was 1982 after all! But what's interesting is that it actually holds up over time. And while it didn't gross much at the box office (the arcade game actually made more money than the film), it quickly became a cult favorite.

Two of the film's biggest fans have a bit of a cult following of their own, the duo known as Daft Punk. I've written of my love for them before, but what's great is that they came up with the musical score to Tron's sequel, Tron: Legacy. Sure, the sequel has better graphics, but the score is a glimpse into the true capabilities of Daft Punk. Working with an 85-piece orchestra, they were able to give the sequel the appropriate futuristic electronic funk for which they are so well known.

An animated series called Tron: Uprising is scheduled to premiere in 2012. Let's hope it will stand the test of time as well as Tron, the first.

Release your Inner Child - by Heidi

OK. I know there are a lot of holds on this, but trust me, it's worth the wait. Tangled was the most fun I had at the movies last year. I went to go see it with three other adults and we all agreed, including the one guy, that it was great. It's funny, it has catchy little songs and it's just charming. I watched it again recently with two teen-aged relatives and my mother and they all loved it too.

It's a retelling of the Rapunzel story. You've got the princess trapped in the tower except this time she has magic hair and her prince is a scoundrel with a good heart. There's a pet chameleon that's obviously intelligent and a horse with magical abilities. But it all works, even for an adult viewer, if you're willing to go with the magic for just 100 minutes. You can go back to being a grownup who knows better later. So, go get in touch with your inner child and watch a cartoon. This one is worth it.

Preston Sturges! (Sung maniacally, to the tune of “Western Union”.) - by Rachael

Preston Sturges is the absolute King of the Romantic Comedy, in my opinion, and though I am a chronic equivocator, this is one area where I hold steadfast. Sure, there’s Lubitsch. Sure, there’s Capra. Yes, there’s also Wilder. Those are all great points. But Sturges is King. (As I imagine is obvious, if it’s post-1965 I’m agin' it. ‘Romantic Comedy-wise’ as Jack Lemmon’s character in The Apartment would say.)

It’s a tough choice, but at the top of my ranked-Sturges list is The Palm Beach Story. It stars the iridescent Claudette Colbert – she also starred in The Smiling Lieutenant (Lubitsch) and It Happened One Night (Capra), and it’s no accident that those are my favorites in their respective oeuvres. Recounting the plot would only provide a pale reflection, so I’ll just say this: "You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything”.

The Onion’s AV Club did a fantastic ‘primer’on Sturges a few months ago. The writer describes Veronica Lake’s introduction in Sullivan’s Travels as “machine-gun screwball flirtation at its finest, conversation as half blood-sport, half seduction”. Yes, that’s Sturges.

"Art is mute when money talks"* - by Tama In the early 1960s a librarian and a postal worker fell in love and married. They loved art and began to collect what they could afford, living on her salary, buying with his. At the time what they bought was modern and conceptual art. It was cheap and many of the artists were starving. Now the artists are household names and the librarian and the postal worker own one of the largest and most important collections in the world. And they still live in their one-bedroom, rent controlled Manhattan apartment.

"We never realized something was going to become important...we  never thought of that." Dorothy Vogel

Megumi Sasaki tells the inspiring story of this couple in Herb and Dorothy. The film has garnered a number of awards, including winner of the "Audience Award" at the Hamptons Film Festival, and winner of  the "Best Documentary" award at Provincetown Film Festival.

A Voice Like Egypt - by Markrid

Here's a rare treat for music lovers, armchair travelers, and those who value the cultural background of current events: the 68-minute DVD documentary "Umm Kulthum: a voice like Egypt", narrated in English by Omar Sharif.

Umm Kulthum was an immensely influential Egyptian classical singer. For decades she performed to sold-out houses across the Arabic-speaking world, reviving and expanding the tradition of sung poetry. She was a patriot and a nationalist -"Music must represent our Eastern spirit", she said -  but she was an artist above all. Learn by ear, play by heart, she instructed her musicians; and like "a preacher inspired by her congregation", as novelist Naguib Mahfouz described her, her hours-long concerts would bring her audiences to a state approaching ecstasy. She has no counterpart in the West. She swayed kings and presidents; when she died in 1975, four million people came out for her funeral; and even now, every day at five o'clock Cairo radio plays a song by Umm Kuthum. This short, well-edited film is a fine portrait of a great singer, but it also provides a remarkably compact, insightful look at the evolution of modern Egypt.

The Truth about True Grit - by Alison

I've been thinking lately about the nature of true grit. Like many others I made a point of seeing the movie, having been a huge fan of Charles Portis's original book. In the late 60s and early 70s, books about young women with gumption were sometimes hard to come by. Oh yes, there was Nancy Drew, but she so often relied on 'the boys' to help her out when the going got rough; There was also Pippi Longstocking, but she was for a younger readership.  I was glad to see that the Coen brothers were true to the original Mattie and her enterprising spirit. Truly, she was the hero of the story, and not Rooster Cogburn, as the 1969 John Wayne film version would have you believe.

Ree Dolly, the tenacious teenager from the movie Winter's Bone is cut from the same cloth as Mattie Ross, though the story is darker. The movie follows follows the mostly falling fortunes of 17 year old Ree as she discovers that her meth-cooking father is on the lam, having put the family house up for bond. If he doesn't show up in court, the family - 2 kids and a mentally absent mother - will lose everything. She sets out to find him among all the hard luck people living in her corner of the Ozarks and gains some unwanted attention from those who wish her father to stay hidden. The book is based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, an author whose works have been called "country noir".

Another novel featuring a woman who finds herself in an untenable situation is the award-winning Outlander by Gil Adamson. In the winter of 1903, Mary has lost her baby son to sickness and is frequently beaten by her abusive husband. She takes desperate measures to escape her situation, killing her husband and fleeing west. She is pursued by the vengeful twin brothers of her husband, a pair of single-minded, 'Terminator' type characters who turn out to be excellent trackers. Along the way she falls into the company of a group of eccentrics in a hard-scrabble mining town at the bottom of a mountain. 

Though these stories aren't science fiction, all of them share an apocalyptic feel - an unforgiving landscape, a sense of lawlessness, and a determined underdog on a quest. And there are more of these than you might think: Molly Gloss's story of eastern Oregon, The Hearts of Horses, the somewhat obscure and spoofy Caprice by George Bowering, and Away by Amy Bloom. All of these stories feature strong female characters who move the action along. If that's your cup of tea, then happy reading and watching.

Big Love Under Construction - by Jen

I sat down to dinner recently and noticed something amiss. My otherwise-perfect and untouched plate of food sported an ear of corn with a shaggy crop circle in the middle of the cob about the size of a preschooler's mouth. I looked to Child the Younger, sitting to my right, and asked him if he knew what had happened. He smiled jubilantly, his baby teeth clotted with yellow kernels.  

"Sowee, Mommy."

Sorry indeed.

I have learned from parenting that there is birthed, along with the child, a never-ending list of things-- both done and undone-- for which to be sorry on both sides. This parenting thing is a project without blueprints, continually under construction, using tools that are as frequently inadequate, shoddy, missing or downright dangerous as they are right for the job. If a day on the parenting jobsite is particularly heinous, I may think of the list I have posted at my desk just to remind myself to laugh:

The Six Phases of a Project:

1. Wild Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants

One project I managed to complete on my recent vacation was reading Brady Udall's magnificent novel The Lonely Polygamist. This is a Big Book, in both a physical and an existential sense; it is the American family writ large. Golden Richards is a big man (known to some as "Sasquatch") with three houses, four wives and twenty-eight children. He has problems. Big problems. While his lifestyle creates and magnifies difficulties, his internal struggles could belong to anyone. He attempts to keep his contracting business and his family finances afloat with a morally questionable project: his wives think the brothel he's building in Nevada is a senior center. His wives don't understand him and his children don't really know him. The story builds upon the alternating points of view of Golden, Trish (his fourth and newest wife), and Rusty (the eleven-year-old son of his third wife.) Trish is at a crossroads in her marriage while Rusty hatches a revenge plot for the bungling of his "special" birthday. At the center for each of these characters is a smoldering sun of grief blinding them in various ways to the complicated landscape. Golden grieves a lost daughter, Trish grieves a lost son, and Rusty is a ticking time bomb of grief waiting to happen. In all of this Udall manages to find the inherent humor in each situation, much of it laugh-out-loud funny. Within the mundane Udall raises Big questions, but the one that percolates through and ultimately lifts the book far above anything else I have read recently is this:

How big is love?

This is a question echoed by the deservedly popular HBO television series Big Love which I also highly recommend. Bill Henrickson is a modern-day polygamist living in suburban Salt Lake City with his three sister-wives, their numerous children and houses, and all of the complications and frustrations of his chosen lifestyle. His ties with a fundamentalist compound bring trouble, as do his business arrangements. Can one man find a way to keep it all together when forces both internal and external threaten constantly to tear it apart? Faith and love are big, but are they big enough?

In her memoir The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance Elna Baker discusses the issues that come with Big Faith. By turns utterly hilarious and painfully embarrassing, this described "Mormon Tina Fey" tells tales of what it's like to be an abstinent and religious single young woman in a city that's pretty much...not. Along the way she loses eighty pounds and takes a series of fascinating jobs ( I was entranced by her description of life as an "adoption specialist" for ridiculously expensive baby dolls at FAO Schwarz.) The heartbreak that ensues is predictable, but Baker finds the humor in each situation and manages introspection along with stories such as showing up to a Halloween dance dressed in a failed costume that makes her look, quite accidentally, like a giant part of the female anatomy.

The holds lists may be lengthy for some of these, but believe me: the love is Big. And worth the wait

Lawyers and Solicitors and Barristers, Oh My! - by Ruth All of my siblings are attorneys which means that the conversation at family gatherings can be a bit contentious and peppered with legalese. This talk, coupled with the law classes I took as an undergraduate in political science, has at least given me a decent grounding in the American legal system. Most everything I know about the English judicial system, however, has come from mystery novels and television.  A patron recently introduced me to a great but, alas, short mystery series starring some young London legal eagles and an Oxford professor. I am sometimes baffled by all of the lawyerly terminology, but that hasn't prevented me from enjoying the banter that goes on amongst the five principal players including Cantrip who has an "inferior" education (Cambridge rather than Oxford) and Julia, who gets her knickers in a twist on a fairly regular basis. The Shortest Way to Hades finds them investigating the death of a young woman who has turned greedy and demanded 100,000 pounds in exchange for her signature on a document that will allow an heiress to avoid massive taxes on a multiple million pound inheritance. Was the girl pushed over the balcony or was it suicide?  As Hilary Tamar (the Oxford professor) points out, if it was murder, then the wrong girl died. For more judicial antics, try the Rumpole of the Bailey series by John Mortimer. While not the first in the series, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders provides the back-story on Horace Rumpole's early years. For a wonderful television show about an English law firm and some courtroom drama, watch Kavanagh Q.C. starring the fabulous John Thaw. Any other great stuff out there to amuse me while also increasing my knowledge of law in Great Britain?

Our Best Idea by guest blogger Martha

Our guest blogger is Martha, who is the Reference Coordinator for the library.

The summer after my freshman year of college I followed a cute boy West to Yellowstone National Park where we had jobs waiting tables. That summer I fell madly in love, not with the boy, but with the park. I was floored by the majesty of the wilderness. Watching Ken Burns' recent series The National Parks: America's Best Idea rekindled that passion and my desire to learn more about our National Parks.

As luck would have it Timothy Egan has a new book out called The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. It’s a beautifully written account of the formation of the national forest service, the American conservation movement, Roosevelt and Pinchot’s passion for the wilderness, and a heartbreaking account of the fire of 1910. Growing up in the Midwest I didn't know very much about the fire of 1910 and was surprised to lean it was the largest wildfire in American history. Egan says in less than two days, it torched more than three million acres, burned five towns to the ground, and killed nearly one hundred people. To give some perspective, he explains, it’s like having the entire state of Connecticut burn in one weekend.
Egan has a delightful writing style; it’s as if he’s flopped on your living room couch regaling you with a tale filled with passion, drama, and politics. As a presidential history fan I loved reading about Roosevelt’s relationship with Gifford Pinchot; it was something I hadn't read about in other Roosevelt biographies.
Mr. Egan was recently interviewed by NPR and I expect that explains the large hold list on this book. If you need a national park fix while waiting for The Big Burn you can try the book version of the series (The National Parks: An Illustrated History), Norman MacLean's Young Men & Fire or Gifford Pinchot’s autobiography Breaking New Ground.

I Love L.A. - by Markrid

A few things about Los Angeles.

The ocean is always cold and rough and full of riptides.

The backbone of L.A. County is made of steep wild mountains covered with sweet combustible chaparral, and sometimes also with snow, and within 20 minutes you can be right in among them from most of the 626 and 818 area codes.

Most of the movie-and-TV stuff happens in a very small part of the west side. “Everyone on the West Side is ‘on location’!” a friend said, describing the showbiz self-importance which tilts into the ridiculous.

In most of the county, though, there's a huge and vital kind of human plate tectonics going on: Latin America's cultures grinding against the Pacific Rim's. An excellent place to see this in action is at the Costco in Alhambra on a weekend afternoon.

No place else changes as fast. “I think I get it,” another friend said thoughtfully. We were sitting outside the Melrose Avenue Johnny Rocket’s, watching the highly embellished human parade. “You might as well have your art on the hoof.”

You are free to invent and re-invent yourself endlessly there, and people will mostly take you for whoever you say you are.

Poinsettias will grow into fair-sized trees, given the chance. If you spit a date pit over the side of the porch, a little palm tree might pop up. There are black widows in the garage, and in bad drought years tarantulas come out in the daytime. A flock of feral parrots can screech loud enough to blot out thought.

If you get off the freeway, you’ll find the most anonymous-looking suburbs have little time-warp Main Streets that will just break your heart.

A little more about LA:

Chavez Ravine is the area north of downtown where whole neighborhoods of Mexican-Americans were uprooted to make room for Dodger Stadium. It’s also the name of two great related works, the reissued 1949 album of Don Normark’s photographs documenting the vanished community, and Ry Cooder’s 2005 music CD on the same theme.

Nobody gets LA’s smudgy pink air and belief in magical possibilities as well as Francesca Lia Block. Her Weetzie Bat books for young adults, and Quakeland for grownups, have equal parts glitter, loneliness, hope, and strong female characters.

The electrifying documentary Rize shows African-American kids in South Central making beautiful community art - the dance form known as krumping - out of nothing but passion.

Follow the rise of the Crips in Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member.

Carolyn See is one of those authors who immediately seems like a favorite friend.

Her look at family weirdness in her memoir Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America is so recognizable that we all might have grown up next door to her; yet her blue-collar 1950s Eagle Rock - little stucco bungalows, cracked sidewalks, brown grass - is pure LA.

She also gives us a terrific, racy fable about art, survival, and finding one’s vocation in The Handyman, which may be the perfect LA novel: funny, breezy, and wise.

Bones - by guest blogger Chelsea Cain (watch)

 Our guest blogger is bestselling author Chelsea Cain (www.chelseacain.com/). She writes dark grisly thrillers set in Portland. Hear her speak at the Central Library on Saturday February 21st, 1-2:30 p.m. More details here.

I resisted Bones for a long time.  It goes back to my love-hate relationship with David Boreanaz. I loved Buffy and I loved Angel (though I only started watching it when Buffy ended and desperation kicked in – I mean, at that point I would have watched a spin-off about Dawn). 

Don't get me wrong.  I totally had a crush on him in Buffy. I mean, damaged, soulful vampire – what's not to like, right ladies?  But there was also something – how to say this? – a bit dim about him, like he was one incisor short of a full set of teeth.  Take away the black togs, the Byronic back-story, and he was mighty like your average high school jock.  

In Bones David Boreanaz plays an FBI agent named Seely Booth who wears snazzy belt buckles and shoots people a lot.  His partner, Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is a forensic scientist.  She's played by Emily Deschanel who is the sister of Zooey Deschanel – the quirky indie actress with the fantastic bangs.  Dr. Brennan is serious and smart and a little nerdy.  Booth is cocky and funny and defensive. 

It's a familiar set-up.  Male/Female investigative team -- opposites in every way -- solve crimes while resisting the unexpected urge to do the horizontal mamba. 

But Bones is elevated by its cast and writing.  At least that's what I'd been hearing all that time I was resisting watching it.  And finally, since I write thrillers for a living – and do most of my research by watching cop shows on TV -- I gave Bones a shot. 

And you know what?  

(I love it.)

I don't care how much my husband makes fun of me. 

I don't even care that I'm so late jumping on the bandwagon.

You know that great feeling when you discover a show that you love and there are like thirty episodes on DVD?  It's like having a whole bag of M&Ms or a whole bottle of Vicodin. 

You can enjoy it all the more, because you know there's more. 

Chelsea Cain was born in 1972 and lived the first few years of her life on a hippie commune in Iowa.
Her first novel featuring Detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell, Heartsick, was a New York Times bestseller. The follow-up in the series – Sweetheart -- also a NYT bestseller, is available in stores now.  The third installment, Evil At Heart, hits bookstores in September 2009.
Chelsea is also the author of:
Dharma Girl: A Road Trip Across the American Generations
The Hippie Handbook
Confessions of a Teen Sleuth
Does This Cape Make Me Look Fat? Pop Psychology for Superheroes
She also edited the anthology Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture, was a former columnist for The Oregonian and The Portland Mercury, and has published work in British Elle, The New York Times Book Review, and Ms. Magazine.
Chelsea lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.