In Portuguese, the title of Saramago’s book translates into something closer to “An Essay On Blindness,” as in, what would the effects on society be if everyone were to suddenly lose their sight? As you can imagine, pretty damn scary. I think one thing literature has taught us is that if something happens to everyone, everywhere, and at the same time, it’s going to be bad. You’d think everyone going blind would be the biggest s**tstorm of all time. Blindness doesn’t disappoint.
When people in a nameless country inexplicably lose their sight, the government is quick to throw them into quarantine. But as their numbers begin to grow and the fear of becoming infected spreads, things quickly spiral out of control. Locked in an abandoned mental hospital, a small group, led by a doctor and his wife - who can still see - must learn to navigate their way through a society that’s coming down around them.
Blindness was originally written in Portuguese, then published in English in 1997. For some reason, it always comes as a surprise that one language never translates exactly into another. Such is the case here, which leads to interesting results in the book’s prose. The not-quite-perfect English makes you feel as if the story is something you’re experiencing and not reading. The almost total lack of punctuation, the dialogue of one character flowing into that of another gives you the feeling that you’re the one who’s blind. I found the device clever here when I found it kind of annoying in other books (I’m looking at you No Country for Old Men).
As is often the case with books like these, there are plenty of “oh sh*t!” moments. You’ll find yourself putting the book down, imagining what life might be like if Julianne Moore were the only person in the world who could see. You’ll also be tempted to close your eyes and try performing the most rudimentary tasks - such as using the toilet - in the dark. Do not be fooled, the consequences are devastating and your wife will probably make me sleep on the couch for what I did to the carpet.
Saramago seems to be a keen student of human nature, and this is one of the most enjoyable parts of the book. You empathize with and understand the characters, because you see yourself in them. You’ll have a hard time not putting yourself in their position, and wondering exactly how delicate society’s balance between order and chaos truly is.
The movie adaptation is due out September 26th, and stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Check out the tailer below.
Child 44 was a blind buy. I saw it at Barnes & Noble, read the jacket cover and said, “Well I guess I have to buy it now.” Sometimes it works out for you, and sometimes you buy… I don’t know, Billy and the Clonasaurus. This one worked out for me.
Tom Rob Smith’s debut novel is loosely based on real-life Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo - nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov - who murdered more than 50 women and children throughout the 1980’s before being caught and arrested in 1990. In an interesting twist, Smith has taken his serial killer and placed him in 1953, when the Soviet Union’s official line was that, in their perfect society, there was no crime.
The novel centers around State Security officer Leo Demidov. As a good revolutionary, Leo unquestioningly supports the Soviet Union, communism, and the lengths the State will go to to keep it’s citizens in line. When the bodies of two murdered children are found, the State wants to bury it, forgo any real investigation and arrest whoever’s most convenient. But after being betrayed by a jealous subordinate and receiving a shocking revelation from his wife, Leo begins to question his carefully constructed worldview and sets out to find the real killer.
Tom Rob Smith’s debut novel is definitely a page-turner in the classical sense of the word (or is that the only sense of the word?). Once you get into it, the pages just fly by. What I thought was so interesting was that usually, these sorts of stories generate a sense of danger from the relationship between the cop (the good guy) and the killer (the bad guy). That’s not exactly the case here, as danger isn’t posed only by the killer, but by the State. Leo lies awake at night, waiting for the knock on the door, waiting for the guards to burst into his apartment and arrest him and his wife. Here, it’s not the bad guy, but the “good guys” that keep you guessing.
If I had to find something to complain about, it would be that by the end of the book everything falls into place a little too conveniently. Not enough to make things unenjoyable by any stretch, but enough so that you notice. The prose also feels a little loose in places, understandable as this is Smith’s first novel. With as good as this one is, I doubt it’ll be a problem in the next one.
There are a bunch of authors out there who write a certain character, then revisit them every few years. Tom Clancy has Jack Ryan. Dean Koontz has Odd Thomas. There’s a small possibility left open that we’ll be seeing more of Leo Demidov, although any future novels would, in a certain respect, retread already-covered ground. Eventually, the ever-present threat posed by the State would get stale, and that’s what really sets this novel apart. Could a sequel live up to it’s predecessor? Give it a 60/40 shot.
This book is getting great reviews, which isn’t surprising. I’ve also read that Ridley Scott has already snatched up film rights. For his first major outing, Smith has done a great job, putting a new spin on an old concept. This is definitely worth the extra couple of bucks for the hardback.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a book I felt a little torn over. While I thoroughly enjoyed the story, I couldn’t help but feel that it sort of disappears up it’s own a**hole in certain places. The book tells the story of a father and son, traveling across the former United States after a nuclear holocaust. On their way, the two face roving bands of cannibals, starvation and sickness.
(**mild spoilers follow)
If nothing else, McCarthy knows how to paint a picture. While reading, you have no problem imagining the world in which these characters live, and what’s more, you’re afraid of it. You move through the burned out cities, see the dead bodies, smell the ash that blankets everything. When the father and son find a cellar full of people who are being kept as livestock and slowly eaten, you feel the same revulsion and fear they feel. That’s not something you get with every book you read and was probably what I liked most about this one.
You also get a sense of how much the father loves his son. Everything he does in the book it to protect him, from scavenging for food to traveling with a small pistol loaded with only two shells — one for him, one for the boy. I thought this added a lot to the story, although it didn’t touch me the same way it did other reviewers.
There were two problems I felt the book had. One was that there were very few details given about whatever catastrophe the world had suffered through. Whatever it was, it was huge. A blanket of ash covers everything, animals are dead, very few people are left and allusions are made to this being the case all over the world. Whenever the father is asked about what happened, he says he doesn’t really know. Really? You don’t know? I understand that there are certain things an author won’t illuminate for this or that reason. And it’s good to not give an explanation for every little thing. I think a reader should have to put forth a little effort and come up with their own answers. But with something this big, where the entire planet has been affected, and people are eating other people just to stay alive, dropping one or two hints wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.
One more thing that didn’t strike the right chord with me was the almost maniacal intensity in which the characters are presented. Specifically the father and his dead wife (shown only in flashbacks). While explaining to her husband why she’s decided to kill herself, the protagonist’s wife says, “My only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.” It’s difficult to take people who are so over the top like that seriously, and I find them more annoying than anything else. It’s a bias that might be unjustified in this situation, but it’s the first thing that came to mind when I read it. The father’s mortality and that of his son is foremost on his mind throughout the book, and he does his share of philosophizing on the subject, but when he starts talking about someone who’s coming to take his eyes and fill his mouth with dirt, I felt that it stopped making sense.
Last year, the Coen Brothers did a fantastic job adapting No Country For Old Men, and The Road is another of McCarthy’s works that I believe will lend itself well to the big screen. The film version is due out on November 26 of this year, with Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee set to play the father and son.
Despite a few flaws, The Road is an incredibly engrossing read from one of the great writers of our time. If you’re a fan of McCarthy, you’ll definitely like this one. Those who have never read him will enjoy this one anyway.
We’ve lost a giant. Arthur C. Clarke was one of the Founding Fathers of science fiction and the author of such classics as 2001, Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s End. He passed away at his home in Sri Lanka after breathing complications. He was 90 years old.
Here’s the full trailer for HBO’s John Adams miniseries, which starts this Sunday night. Make sure you’re back here next week, and every week after that for our coverage of America’s sexiest president.
This is the third time Richard Matheson’s novel has been adapted into a movie. The first two, and The Last Man On EarthThe Omega Man, were campy and fun in their own way, but not much more. Will Smith’s latest, I Am Legend, if the first movie to do the story justice. The previews had me really excited for this one, so I was a little worried when I read reviews saying that the movie really reached up there, but ultimately fell short. However, after checking it out myself, I’m happy to say that Legend is probably one of the best films of the year, and a contender for my coveted Top Three of 2007, which all films aspire to be.
The plot is pretty straightforward. Robert Neville (Smith) is a scientist studying a supervirus that’s killed off 90% of the world’s population. Those who aren’t dead or immune have been turned into vampires that either lurch around like zombies or come at you like Zinedine Zidane on gameday. Living in an abandoned New York City in the year 2012, Neville spends his days hunting deer, practicing his drive and searching for a cure. I don’t want to give anything away, but things go wrong. HORRIBLY wrong.
This is an action movie with a lot of action movie staples in it, but what sets it apart from some of the other flops we’ve seen this year is Will Smith. 95% of the movie is Smith all by himself. The fact that he’s able to carry it, and carry it well, is really a testament to the man’s acting chops. There’s a lot of good suspense. The movie isn’t predictable so you’ll be on the edge of your seat a lot of the time. I’m a huge sci-fi fan, so I spend most of my time sad that there are so few people who can do the genre any justice. Legend is a welcome change of pace.
I only had two problems with the film. First, I didn’t like the the CGI vampires Smith is trying to save. The idea is cool, and it was executed about as well as it could be, but in the end they look like zombie versions of Imhotep from The Mummy. Second, the ending felt a little rushed to me. For everything that came before it, it just felt out of place. I won’t go into detail because the three people who read this blog might not have seen the movie yet.
All in all, a very enjoyable film. A great story, and Will Smith is fantastic. Four out of five stars. We’ll be back next week with Charlie Wilson’s War. Until then, I need to catch a cab. I’ll make sure the license plate says “fresh” and there’s a dice in the mirror.
Disclaimer - Although I found the movie very entertaining, what was REALLY great about it was how it destroyed my faith in organized religion. I don’t know if that’s what the producers were shooting for when they made it, but there you are.
Drunk off the sweet success of franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, film studios have been snatching up the rights to popular children’s/fantasy books in pursuit of their own god, the almighty dollar (not to be confused with the one and true God, whom the filmmakers obviously hate). I think Compass succeeds where a lot of these other movies have failed. The themes the story explores are a lot more adult, although (from what I’ve read) a little simplified for the movie version. These are books I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, so I really can’t comment on what they’ve changed and how much they’ve changed it
The movie is surprisingly short (about an hour and forty-five minutes) for a story like this, and as usual there are many different players, all pursuing their own agendas. The film’s protagonist, Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), is an orphan living at Jordan College in a parallel world. Lyra and everyone else in the world are accompanied by a daemon, the physical manifestation of their soul in animal form. Lyra’s uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), is a scholar at Jordan who is planning an expedition to the north to study a substance called Dust, which he believes can bridge the gap between parallel worlds. His expedition is being opposed by the Magisterium (read the Catholic Church), who goes so far as to try poisoning him to prevent it. Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) represents a faction of the Magisterium that’s been kidnapping children and performing experiments, splitting children from their daemons in an atempt to keep them from ever knowing sin. Mrs. Coulter is planning her own expedition to the North, and takes on Lyra as her assistant. This works out nicely, because Lyra’s friend Roger has just been kidnapped and taken to the Magisterium’s super-secret base — you guessed it — in the north. If all of this sounds confusing, it is. With stories like these, there’s always a ton of backstory that needs explaining, and here, Compass‘ cup runneth over (to borrow a phrase from the Bible, which after seeing the movie, I recognize as one giant lie).
On their way, Lyra finds out that Mrs. Coulter isn’t exactly on the up and up and sets off on her own. Along the way, she meets up with witches, aeronauts, Gyptians, and an armor-plated polar bear (who really shines in a scene that’ll be sure to send your kids home crying). The movie ends kind of unexpectedly, although you’ll see how the next two films are being set up. I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any movies in the near future that live up to The Lord of the Rings, but The Golden Compassis one of the better ones that’s trying to. As said, the themes are a little more adult, and the story and its characters are really interesting. Even though I haven’t yet read the books, I enjoyed watching it all unfold onscreen. Even though the movie has a lot going for it, it does suffer from a few shortcomings. There IS a lot of backstory here, so a lot of time is spent explaining it. Also, there’s a lot of book condensed into not a lot of movie. Every obstacle the characters face is resolved without a lot of effort. So hopefully we’ll see an extended DVD version eventually. That makes up for it a little, but still, you go in expecting more. Kids will love it. Adults, give it a 50/50 chance.
From what I’ve heard, New Line has a lot riding on the success of this movie. “A lot” being the future of New Line studios itself. I don’t think there’s much reason to worry though. A movie like this seems guaranteed to do good business, especially with the Holidays coming up. The movie’s shorter run-time allows for more showings in a day, and there will be a lot of kids who want to see this. I give it three and a half out of five stars. It would have gotten more, but it DID turn me into an atheist, which I’m not really sure is a good thing or a bad thing. I’m waiting for the next movie to tell me which.
In Portuguese, the title of Saramago’s book translates into something closer to “An Essay On Blindness,” as in, what would the effects on society be if everyone were to suddenly lose their sight? As you can imagine, pretty damn scary. I think one thing literature has taught us is that if something happens to everyone, everywhere, and at the same time, it’s going to be bad. You’d think everyone going blind would be the biggest s**tstorm of all time. Blindness doesn’t disappoint.
