If there was one group that I always detested while studying for my psychology degree, it was the behaviorists. The followers of BF Skinner are those who reduce every interaction to types of conditioning. I intensely disliked this mechanical view of humanity, almost as much as I disliked the empirically sloppy and out-and-out lunacy of Sigmund Freud.

Take the situation of a teenager self-harming. A behavorist would be thinking of either extinguishing that behaviour or channeling it into a more “acceptable” alternative. So, just to go to extremes, a behavorist would consider the issue of self-harm “solved” if the teenager in question, say, began making daisy chains instead of cutting his/her inner forearms with a Stanley knife (i.e. box-cutter I think Americans call them). Does that solve the underlying issue? Of course it doesn’t but as behaviorists are only concerned with surface actions and reactions, it isn’t a problem for them.

The dross that passes for the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” series of books are another in this line of fatuous reasoning and if I can ever dig out my copy of that book (then again, I probably used it as toilet paper, thus granting it some degree of utility), I’ll do a review on that one too.

[end: pre-review rant]

Which is my extraordinarily long-winded introduction to “How to Speak Dog” by Dr. Stanley Coren. May I say what an utter UTTER delight it is to come across someone in psychology who actually seems to like and respect animals! I have always regarded our history (whether economic or social) to be incredibly speciesist and unbelievably arrogant about our place on the planet. We would like to be respected but don’t consider it necessary to respect those we inhabit this world with. What a “civilised” attitude to have!

And so, again, to this book. Dr. Coren is a skilful and entertaining writer who is able to explain canine behaviour in a straightforward manner that precludes a purely mechanistic view of animals. He is all for anthropomorphism of our mammal cousins, and I couldn’t be happier. After some interesting and informative anecdotes at the beginning, Coren launches into animal (including human, for we are animals too) evolution. He even makes the provocative and delightful supposition that human speech may owe its development to dogs!

He then goes into describing extraordinarily intelligent animals (with some explanations of how they achieved this…excellent observational skills, mostly) and how dog names affect their reception by strangers. The construction of clever experiments, in this case to test canine cognition and comprehension, always fascinates me and Coren’s examples of such scenarios and the conclusions that can be drawn from them are captivating.

Different chapters of the book cover Face Talk, Ear Talk, Eye Talk, Tail Talk, Body Talk, Sex Talk, Scent Talk and I was able to watch the interactions between our mini bull terriers and our cats with much greater interest (and amusement) after reading the chapter on “Dogs Talking to Cats”. There are even illustrations that show escalated levels of fear, dominance, submission, and so on.

I won’t say that I agree with everything Dr. Coren says. Bull terriers, for example, seem to have their own sub-set of behaviours that doesn’t always appear to correspond one-to-one with the “phrasebook” Coren provides (all the physical indicators, conveniently grouped together in the back). Sausage, for example, always accompanies my husband on his nightly lock-up of the house and approaches this duty with a confident trot and her tail bent sharply up (so sharply, in fact, that it looks broken). Coren says this is a dangerous behaviour: “It is a definite sign that immediate aggression is being contemplated by the dog” (p. 126), but we interpret it to mean a watchful alertness; i.e. “On Guard!”, especially when there is no immediate sign of danger in the vicinity. When her “duty” is done and she’s safely upstairs, Sausage relaxes that sharp bend and comes looking for cuddles, preferably in someone’s lap.

But, other than a couple of niggles along those lines, I have no truck with anything in the book and, in fact, have bought two other books by Dr. Coren on dogs and dog psychology. As with this one, I’m sure the next two books will also be keepers.

Summary: Highly recommended to any caring dog (with cat!) owner. I’ll be giving this 4 stars and copying the bulk of this review to Goodreads.

HOW TO SPEAK DOG: Available from The Book Depository for US$11.00 with free shipping worldwide

The Last Dragon follows a singular adventure of Josh (Louis Corbett) and Ling (Li Lin Jing), in China during school vacation and spending time with their respective parents, Dr Chris Chase (Sam Neill) and Dr Li (Wang Ji). It is in China that Ling discovers she can hear flute music that nobody else can hear. She is, of course, The Chosen One, and must recover the mystical pearl, the essence of a dragon’s power, lost for three thousand years, and restore it to the dragon now residing beneath the site of the archaeological dig.

When I saw Australian involvement in this film, I was expecting great things. Mad Max; Children of the Revolution; Death in Brunswick; The Dish. While I yawn and forget the latest Hollywood blockbuster, these Aussie films remain with me as quirky, surreal glances into other lives and I love each and every one of them. The Last Dragon, however, starts with cliche and goes downhill from there.

Of course one of the kids is The Chosen One. Of course the other one is a hidden genius in another way. They meet the caretaker of the temple (Wu Dong, played competently by Jordan Chan) who is both guide, comedy relief and, of course, martial arts kick-ass guy. After all, he’s Chinese. They also meet the dragon, who seems to like posturing in mid-air more than actually saving the kids during the climax of the film. However, the dragon is good and that is evident the first time you see it. How? Well, all the good dragons have stubby snouts. Haven’t you noticed? The ones with the long, more interesting, less puppy-like profiles, are heinous fire-breathers and although it is stressed to us in this movie that Chinese dragons are not like Western dragons At All…they are when it comes to cliche-ville.

Other discordant notes include the fact that Sam Neill’s character is divorced. A lot is made of this at the beginning of the movie—it’s the reason for father and son evidently not seeing each other for a while—but it’s not carried through. Why are the parents divorced? We never know. Is it even necessary for the parents to be divorced? Not at all, especially when there’s not a hint of romance between Dr Chase (Josh’s dad) and Dr Li (Ling’s mum). It’s like someone sat down with a blank piece of paper and thought of as many stereotypes they could write down before starting on the script. Divorced parents? Check. Smart-arse son? Check. “Aaaawww” moment connected to ex-wife’s birthday? Check. Mysterious book? Check. Intricate locking mechanism to a stone door involving a carving? Check. Machinery that requires split-second timing and some biological oddities in order to be activated? Check.

We find out that the pearl’s disappearance is somehow associated with a dying emperor, but the grieving daughter’s actions are also completely implausible. I swear the dragon is sporting four claws in some drawings and five in others. (It’s important.) And the editor had a strange sense of timing, chopping up important scenes yet keeping irrelevant footage running for way too long. (The first time the kids are in the cave, for example.) I think I’ll stop there before I run through the entire movie.

It wasn’t a complete bust though. The leader of the archaeological dig? A woman, and a capable yet empathetic character she is too. I liked Dr Li a lot. The kids could be swapped for any other Asian/white pair of characters. Sam Neill…well, he didn’t stretch himself but I considered him my eye-candy for this movie, so I’ll give him a pass. Jordan Chan had his moments but got a bit repetitive from time to time.

The other thing I noted was that the villain, a lying geophysicist who was in conflict with both of the other academics, was American. I wonder, with the USA’s declining power, whether we’ll start to see more foreign movies with American villains? It made a nice change.

I have read that the movie was shot entirely at the Hengdian World Studios, south of Shanghai. The studio is reputedly the largest studio complex in the world with over 3 million square metres of built sets. Guys, it doesn’t matter. You can have a studio on the Moon but, unless you have a good script to go with your CGI and (questionable) wire work, you’re not going to have a memorable film. I thought the Australian influence would work its magic in this regard, but I was obviously wrong.

When all’s said and done, however, this was a kids’ film with kid film sensibilities. With that in mind, I should tell you that Little Dinosaur rated this 9/10. More world-weary eleven year old that he is, The Wast grimaced and rated it at 7½/10.

MY VERDICT: Standard B-grade kid flick. Unfortunately. 6/10.

Professor Geras is also ostensibly, like myself, a Marxist. I did not know this two months ago.

And, just to pull one little wiki fact from a hat, he backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Not only did I not know this two months ago but, just fyi, I am vehemently of the opposite opinion.

In any case, colour me flapping like a fish on the deck of a fishing trawler when Professor Geras contacts me via Twitter to ask if I’ll be part of his Writer’s choice series. It’s been going for six years and contains reviews of other writers’ favourite books. If you visit the page I’ve linked to and scroll down the list, you’ll see some pretty (gulp) impressive writers.

As much as I loved the invite, it was also disconcerting to receive. Did the professor realise I wrote … shudder … science-fiction erotic romance, any one of those terms enough to banish me to the depths of hackdom? He didn’t care. If I had something to say, he’d gladly have a look at it.

So HERE it is. A review of that old classic, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Don’t know if it’s as horrorshow as the book, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. And thanks Professor Geras for the opportunity.

German-language The Charlemagne Code (TCC) follows in the footsteps of such movies as the Indiana Jones franchise, National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code.

The Nibelungen treasure is a wondrous hoard consisting of carriages of gold, a chain mail hood that gives invisibility to its wearer, the sword of Siegfried, and so on. The problem was, the very existence of the hoard was enough to start bitter wrangling between nobles during the reign of Charlemagne. Realising that peace would not exist while people coveted the treasure, Charlemagne instructed some of his most trusted subjects to hide the treasure but also provide four clues to its whereabouts, so that “a wiser man in a wiser time may find it.”

Fast forward to eight years ago. Maria and Eik Meiers are a husband-and-wife treasure hunting team but, after Maria (and colleague, André) die in a cliffside collapse on Rügen Island, Eik gives it all up to concentrate (ha!) on raising their daughter, Krimi.

Eight years after the Rügen Island accident, Eik gets drawn back into hunting for the Nibelungen treasure after his house is ransacked and Krimi discovers her mother didn’t really die in a car accident like she’d been told. Meanwhile, elderly and ailing magnate Heinrich Brenner (the authority behind the unsuccessful burglary) tells university museum curator Katharina Berthold that he’s after the treasure and the race is on between Eik (and Katharina) and Brenner and his crew.

This movie starts off well. You can actually believe the stuff about the hoard, the symbols, the history of it, particularly as it’s backed by that very atmospheric Germanic scenery. But then it starts to descend into the enjoyable silliness of a Kommissar Rex episode and we spend the rest of the movie yelling unheeded advice to the characters on the screen.

Benjamin Sadler plays the hero, Eik Meiers. He is reluctant to get involved in the treasure hunt but fully commits once he’s in it. He’s inoffensive enough to watch, although I do wonder at the emotional range of German actors. You see, Sadler was nominated for Best Actor for this role at the 2008 German TV Awards. All I can say is, Germany must have no budding DiCaprios around.

Bettina Zimmermann plays Katharina Berthold, an independent, take-charge, no-nonsense scientist (with a killer body, natch!) who quickly descends into a helpless little fräulein who screams at every cobweb that brushes her face. By the end of the film, I wanted Brenner’s robotic henchman, Richter (Detlef Bothe), to execute her.

Much like Japanese movies, it appears that Germanic movies must also have a male comedy sidekick character. In TCC, this character is called Justus and is played by Fabian Busch. There are a few common traits to every such sidekick-to-the-hero character:

• He must be shorter than the hero
• He must be uglier than the hero
• He must say things at inappropriate moments
• He must have, at the very least, a sarcastic quip ready for every situation
• He must have a few strange episodes in his past that become fortuitously helpful at the right moment

The dying Brenner is played with appropriate panache by veteran German actor, Hark Bohm. The younger, dashing but mentally unstable villain is played by Stephan Kampwirth. The older daughter of Eik, Krimi, who seems to be palmed off into the background whenever she’s inconvenient, is played by Liv Lisa Fries.

While the movie starts off with the right degree of intrigue, it fast descends into improbable coincidence after improbable coincidence. The reasoning is along the lines of: “Look, I just found a small marble. It’s made of pure white quartz. OMG! I just realised that the lunar eclipse will occur tomorrow! That must be what this marble means! OMG! Let’s put the marble in that handy little depression in the middle of a stream that has obviously not seen any kind of erosion for 1,200 years, push this lever over here, climb up and yell up that shaft over there and Something. May. Happen.”

In addition to all the actors, who are certainly easy on the eye, we go haring off from Cologne to Rügen Island to the Teutoburg Forest and even (improbable for a 1,200-year old mystery) to Neuschwanstein Castle, all without knowing where the hell all these places are. An Indiana-style map, animating each step of the journey, would have certainly have helped orient foreign audiences, especially as parent company, Telepool, slated the movie for worldwide release.

In a way, it’s unfair. Spielberg and Lucas built a lot of their sets from scratch using sweat and plywood, but TCC just needed the right permits from the German Tourist or Antiquities Board to go hopping from one ancient pile of stonework to another with nary a care in the world. You just don’t feel that a justified sense of industry has gone into the filming of Cologne Cathedral because, hey, it’s already centuries old and was just hanging around, waiting for a film crew to exploit it. Because of this, TCC (particularly in its second half) resembles more kids playing around Famous Tourist Sites of Germany than a serious mystery. And this is not helped by J’s comment that, “That Charlemagne must have been better than Nostradamus. Have you noticed how every place that contains a vital clue has a conveniently modern car-park right next to it?”

Once I stopped laughing, I realised he was right. A fair slice of action seems to take place in, or within sight, of a car-park which dulls the suspense somewhat. But, speaking of car-parks, Eik’s car was a wonder. It was a dinky little Mercedes SUV. An SUV-let, if you like. And, boy, this car was better than KITT. It didn’t matter that the baddies shot and rammed the poor thing. It was pristine in the next scene. It didn’t matter that the gang of heroes was swept kilometres away by freezing waters. That little white SUVlet was right there where they finally turned up, parked scenically by the edge of a serene lake, serving out towels and hypothermia-busting warmth with barely a burp from its engine. Ah, German technology. Vorsprung durch technik* indeed, if Mercedes will forgive the quote from a rival car-maker.

The of-course budding romance between Eik and Katharina was no more and no less than I was expecting. Same for the climax. I just wished that Telepool had tried to do something a bit original rather than aping North American conventions. Be original and you have the whole field to yourself; copy someone else and the comparisons are unavoidable…and not always favourable, as this review attests.

Having said all that, the family enjoyed TCC in a “Nooooooo, don’t go there!” kinda way and would watch another such German outing again. But a little less self-consciousness next time around would help.

RATING: Silly and mostly enjoyable. 7/10. (The Wast gives it 8/10; Little Dinosaur gives it 9/10.)

(*) Advancement through technology

The family sat down to watch Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” again last night, with a view to getting the series on DVD. The movie tracks the crew of the ship (or “boat”, as they like to call it in the movie) Serenity and how their lives and the life of young River Tam interwine.

River (Summer Glau) is a talented teenage psychic experimented upon by the Alliance in order to build a series of super spies/assassins. Her ability to read the thoughts of everyone around her is stressed a number of times. Her older brother, Simon (Sean Maher), spends all his money to break her out of the grasp of her Alliance handlers. Both flee and find refuge on the ship, Serenity. But things are not so cosy with a nameless, super-efficient Alliance operative on River’s tail.

The captain of the Serenity is Malcolm Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion. He has some baggage, which includes being on the losing side of a system-wide war and a doomed romance with Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute. Alan Tudyk plays the role of Wash, the humane pilot of the ship, married to Zoe (Gina Torres), a tough no-nonsense ex-soldier. Of course, as they’re married, one of them has to die. And there’s the ship’s mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite) who alternates between looking bewildered or about to burst into tears.

My favourite character was Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin), a gun-happy mercenary with a very black and white view of the universe.

WHAT I LIKED

The flashes of humour. The look of the ship sets, which takes the seminal Star Wars grunge look (but only if you don’t already know about Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” which, I believe, was the original space grunge) and projects it light years ahead. Glau’s boots.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

Oh boy, where to begin? And remember, except for catching parts of maybe two Firefly episodes while on my way from one place to another, I’m new to this universe.

If you take away the humour, there was nothing about any of the characters that made me care for any of them. No hints of personal development, no real camaraderie. Instead, they all appeared to be people lumped together with nothing in common except grumpiness and misery. If this is how it started out, it would have been nice to see some growth during the movie. It doesn’t take much. A touch. A surprised look when someone does something unexpected. There was no such growth from the crew.

Summer Glau was great at playing the victim. Constantly. Getting that grid pattern embedded in her cheek because she seemed to spend so much time lying on metal grates eavesdropping on people. (Why? Why have her eavesdrop when she can read everyone’s minds?) But an assassin? She spends more than eight months lolling around, growing over her scars from the multiple puncture marks the Alliance inflicted on her, then we’re supposed to believe that this skinny little girl who hasn’t even breathed hard during the entire movie takes out a company of Reavers that Jayne and Zoe can’t handle? Puh-lease. The spirit may have been willing, little girl, but the flesh really wasn’t up to it. And it shows.

The names. A preacher called Shepherd. Because I’m not familiar with the Firefly universe, I thought it was the dude’s name. And we have “Mr Universe”. In that case, I thought, why not called Inara “Hooker”? Just so we’re all straight on who does what.

The locations. So dreary. So monotonous. And if you’re going to film a supposed settlement, at least tidy it up a bit so it doesn’t look so obviously like you’re filming in an abandoned mining valley.

Mal Reynolds. Yes yes, he’s supposed to be a flawed hero, but he only comes off as a grumpy bastard. Why do these people even follow him? It’s never explained. We’re just supposed to take their loyalty for granted. The one time Jayne comments that he’d rather captain the ship, instead of this leading to a dramatic moment where Reynolds shows why he’s the leader, we get a lame one-line throwaway that isn’t even any good. Way to build character.

The crew. The number of people in the cast was too big for the plot. Inara is introduced just so we can see The Operative go head-to-head with Reynolds, then she disappears for the entire movie and suddenly pops up at the end. “Oh, so she’s still in the movie,” I commented when I saw her again. “Fancy that.”

EDITED TO ADD: The Reavers. How could I forget the Reavers? Aggressive to the point of insensibility. Like nothing better than to eat people alive. Depicted as slavering, mindless nightmares. Yet they can pilot and maintain complex pieces of spacefaring machinery and fire at enemies? How do they maintain their vessels? Scavenge? But that requires the kind of thinking that’s not depicted. Really, the Reavers should have been able to get some ships in space but then they should have destroyed themselves within months, if not weeks. Lame.

The accents. How come I didn’t have any trouble watching, and enjoying, all those old Westerns, but I had incredible difficulty trying to understand what everyone was saying in this movie? With Fillion as Reynolds, this was a particular problem. Put him in profile or with his back to the camera and he might as well have had a bag over his head while orating.

The moralising. Have a moral? Leave it up to the viewer to reach by her- or himself. Don’t have one of the characters stop in the middle of laying waste to half a planet, just to say, “And you know, you can’t force anyone into doing anything.” Really? The political scientist in me wants to say something, but I shall desist.

SUMMARY

Harmless enough. I won’t be watching the movie again. And we won’t be getting the DVD series.

VERDICT: I give it 5/10 and recommend it only for North American sensibilities. The Wast gives it 2.5/10. Little Dinosaur gives it 9/10.

This mysterious ingredient (the frozen leg of mutton in the title*) appears in quite a few examples of the “How not to write a novel” by Sandra Newman & Howard Mittelmark, my recent big favorite for reading on public transport. I would not presume to advise China Miéville (CM from now on) on how to write, or re-write, his The City & the City. This would be pretty arrogant of me, specially considering that I’m not a writer and do not aspire to become one. I do, however, admit surprise by CM’s opening references and credits to Franz Kafka’s and Bruno Schultz’s writing.

Subsequent to her finishing it, Kaz left the book on her desk to share, mentioning the supposed book’s style and atmosphere. I picked it up and began reading.

So, if you ever took the walk with Bruno Schulz down the street of his Cinnamon Shops, it may bring back childhood memories of the first time you were sent to do grocery shopping by your grandma, the first time when you were on an important mission of buying a bag of sugar, loaf of bread and perhaps a slab of butter. The shop was always small, which could be classified in Western terms as a deli-store. Perhaps, in these modern times, an Indian spice market could do the same trick of immersing yourself in a strange place where time slows down and you’re being surrounded by aromas of food and spices, and worn down counters. This was where old people slowly entered the scene, checking on the quality of cheese, pâté, or just making sure that they are buying the right stuff when carefully counting small change. To me it’s a feeling, and a smell, of a holiday. There’s nothing much to do and lots of time to reflect upon life in its details.

Moving to the next reference, if we try to enter Kafka’s world, then it probably would need to be done during a sleepless night, and lived through a nightmare of uncertainty of what is going to happen to us the next day. There is the possibility of failing or being afraid of failing in trivial things. Will my application for something really important pass or fail? What if there is a change in management or, better yet, we have to face some capricious persona who has absolute power over our future. If you want to have Kafka in a pill, take a trip through the Singapore-Johor Causeway and smile at the grumpy Singaporean immigration officers. You will know that they will stop you only if they could find a reason, just to show you who is in charge of that particular minute of your life. Well, Kafka takes it further, thus creating chilly feelings of impending, irreparable loss. Who knows, maybe that’s why not that many people like reading his novels, especially knowing that a lot of his fears turned into reality during WW2.

But guess what? There are no spice-markets in The City & The City, no absurd fear injected into our own reality, just clean CSI-in-a-book. Borrowing lettering from Slavic languages might have some small potential of creating any type of strangeness, but it does not invoke any images and, to a Polish-born person, might be actually quite funny at the beginning, then annoying, then tiresome.

I have to confess that I have not finished reading the novel. I was not even interested in the canonical question of who did it. The “why” became to me even less important. I was left pondering upon one question though: how far have we fallen as ethical beings if we derive pleasure and entertainment from an act of a murder? Is it really necessary to have a character killed in the novel so we can enjoy or appreciate the story? I do not really recall anybody being murdered along the streets with cinnamon shops. Then again I may need to get back to the B. Schulz stories to be sure.

So, where was this frozen leg of mutton being cooked, I wonder.

ADDITIONAL: I told J that people like to read ratings. Why, he asked? Because they do, I replied; they like a little sound-bite to take away. In all honesty, the discussion made me realise just how Americanised my thinking has become, but that’s a dirge for another day. In the end, because he didn’t finish the book, he was happy to let me tag a “DNF” to this post. Sorry, China Miéville but, as far as my husband is concerned, you’re going to have to do a lot better, especially when making specific literary references (all emphases mine):

Among the countless writers to whom I’m indebted, those I’m particularly aware of an grateful to with regard to this book include Raymond Chandler, Franz Kafka, Alred Kubin, Jan Morris, and Bruno Schulz.

at the beginning of your book.

* For those who haven’t read the wonderful and highly-recommended book by Newman & Mittelmark (I’d put a link to The Book Depository here, but they’re down for maintenance at the moment), the frozen leg of mutton is a metaphor for something that’s mentioned in a novel but turns out to be completely irrelevant.

I’ll be honest. The reason I first got into Miéville was because he’s an avowed socialist and we members of an endangered species have to stick together. So, The City and The City (hereafter, TC&TC). What’s it about? The inner flap says:

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel [can't find a way to do a "z" with an acute accent ... sorry -- ksa], somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Okay! Science fiction, crime, and conspiracy theories, all rolled into one. Oh frabjous day! Kaz is delighted, and opens the book with unbridled enthusiasm.

The “gimmick” of TC&TC is that the city of Beszel is interwined with the city of Ul Qoma, and the citizens of both cities have to train themselves to “see” what is happening in their own city, and “unsee” what is happening in the other city, even though there are patches of intense “crosshatching”, where the boundaries between the cities shift from one to the other quickly, even from one house to another, and it takes a deep, visceral understanding not to step across from your own familiar territory into the Other. For those that ignore the rules, and acknowledge in some way the Other, without adhering to the proper protocols (a situation known as Breach), punishment is swift and unremitting via a corps of shadowy figures, also called Breach, that shift in and out of each city, spiriting the trespasser away for immediate retribution.

The novel is told in first person by Tyador and there is a definite European twist to the way the English language is used, a certain economy that’s descriptive and refreshing:

I got off by the statue of King Val. Downtown was busy: I stop-started, excusing myself to citizens and local tourists, unseeing others with care, till I reached the blocky concrete of ECS Centre. Two groups of tourists were being shepherded by Besz guides. I stood on the steps and looked down UropaStrasz. It took me several tries to get a signal. (p 14)

I know I’m generalising wildly here but an American writer would probably emphasise the groups of tourists whereas, with Miéville, you’re caught by the frustration of not getting a clear phone signal instead. It’s these little mundane and completely relatable deviations that make the book such a pleasure to read. Ever since Böll, I miss reading such wry sparseness in a novel.

The rest of the novel charts Borlú’s pursuit of the murder of a woman who was killed in one city and dumped in another. But, even with the intricacies of co-habitating cities, it isn’t as easy as that. There are repeated allusions to Orciny, a city that’s believed to exist between Beszel and Ul Qoma … a city of fable. Or is it?

First, what I liked about the novel. The first-person take. I like the unreliable narrator angle. It makes me work, wondering if Borlú is correct in his suppositions, or not. I liked the use of language and the way Miéville jams two words together to give an indication of tempo (like “stop-started” above). I liked the fact that the two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, were totally different and yet had existed side-by-side for decades. I liked the fact that the novel wasn’t based in the United States. In general, I liked the novel.

Now, onto the tougher bit, which is what I didn’t much care for.

Tyador Borlú. A very likeable protagonist, yet so divorced from his own reality right from the start. There was nothing anchoring Borlú to his home city of Beszel and I thought that made the ending less poignant than it could’ve been. He was already a rootless piece of flotsam, tugged this way and that by forces that — for most of the novel — were beyond him. When all is revealed, it’s a bit ho-hum.

The last fifth of the novel. This ties in with the above point. I found the last twenty percent of the novel to be too predictable, sacrificing — I thought — the speculative side of the theme for something that, more and more, resembled a Hollywood action-film climax. If I had managed to read so far into the novel, chances were I was enjoying it thoroughly. To have the tone change to something more mundane was … disappointing. And smacked of pandering.

The next point could well be my own private bugbear, and I’ll cop to that charge, however…. If your novel is compared to Kafka and Dick, then I’m expecting something that will shake the foundations of the structure that the writer has put together. Throw in the surreal reality of Beszel and Ul Qoma, and I’m expecting something momentous — a towering denouement, a scathing indictment, a vitriolic unmasking. Instead, I get … Establishment. The novel begins and ends with nothing resolved, much the same way as a mix of oil and water may produce some entertaining turbulence for a few minutes before settling back into predictable equilibrium. What has been achieved? Essentially nothing beyond some interesting, and temporary, distraction.

And, lastly, I thought TC&TC lacked atmosphere. From living in many different places, can I tell you that they all smell different? Australia smells different to the United States, which smells different to South-East Asia, which smells different to Ireland. Each place has its own unique combination of colours, scents and impressions that form the whole. Miéville touches on the colours and architecture, but I felt he could have done a lot, lot more with the layers of difference between the two cities. What happens when a sizzling kebab at an outdoor stall in Ul Qoma sends exotic spice-laden aromas across to the more utilitarian Beszel side? One can unsee, but can one unsmell? Totally unhear that which evokes a visceral response? There are so many layers to different cities and I thought that Miéville only hit a couple of them, while ignoring others that would have made his prose a lot richer, and the differences between the two cities more stark and compelling.

And he poses certain questions, but leaves them unanswered. The true nature of Breach. The rationale behind the splitting of the cities in the first place. Some sense of the historic chaos that must have occurred when the cities were split asunder. These are little niggles, but niggles nonetheless.

So those are my impressions of TC&TC. Having said all that, China Miéville is definitely on my to-buy list. I still have three more novels of his that I’m itching to get to, but will have to wait until I’ve discharged my current obligations. So, you may think that I’m flaying TC&TC, but that’s not true.

I give it 7.5 out of 10.

POSTSCRIPT: For a different reader’s impressions, stay tuned for J’s take on the novel on Monday.

ADDITIONAL: And I’m blogging @ Novel Spaces. Why not drop by and say hi?

* a good movie

* a bottle of wine

* snacks

* beauty products

Since we’re war movie buffs, we decided on “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and a bottle of Italian Lambrusco. For snacks, we had a big container of jackfruit. And, for beauty products, we had orange-scented body lotion and a choice of cucumber or clay face masks. The kids took it in turn to lie down while I rubbed body lotion into their arms and legs, giving them a slight massage while I did it. Little Dinosaur declared it “very relaxing, Mama”, thus confirming that she’s going to be a spa junkie when she gets older. The Wast, being all boyish and stoic, only giggled slightly but couldn’t wait for his turn with the cucumber peel-off face mask.

Then we sat back and watched Admiral Yamamoto ( Soh Yamamura) struggle with orders that conflicted with his own superior strategic sense. Twentieth Century Fox must have remastered the movie because the picture is crystal sharp. And I didn’t have to worry too much about the white subtitles appearing on the white uniforms of the Japanese Navy, as I have in the past. There were only two spots when the first word or so was washed out. Other than that, reading the subtitles — for once — was a pleasure. As I’ve always been a James Whitmore fan, I was delighted with his portrayal of Admiral Halsey. The screenplay (written separately by Larry Forrester for the US bits, and Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima for the Japanese bits) was quick, interesting and seamless. Although J disagrees, I thought Yamamoto’s final remark about wakening a sleeping giant (meaning the United States) was the perfect point to end the movie.

Although it’s almost two and a half hours long, I felt the time just sped by and I remain more impressed with the movie now than when I did when I first saw it.

The only problems I had with Tora! Tora! Tora! are purely of a personal nature. While I recognise the obvious intelligence of Yamamoto, the humanity of Fuchida and the brilliant quirkiness of “Ghandi” (one of the major stategists), I can’t help but think of the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the fact that, to this day, Japan has never apologised for the blood it shed across China and south-east Asia.

However, in all honesty, I have to say that if I was a Japanese strategist, I wouldn’t have attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour. So what if the Japanese rampaged up and down the east Asian coastline? Nobody would’ve cared. Not the British, the French, the Dutch or the Americans. If the Allies were willing to sell out their fellow pale-skinned European allies to Joseph Stalin, why should they have cared about millions of brown-skinned natives being beheaded by a superficially sophisticated and supposedly honour-bound race? In fact, considering history, I think the Allies would have preferred to deal with one strongman in the region, rather than have to reconcile the contrary bickering of several smaller nations.

And, for Japan, I think if they had even tried to live up to the rhetoric of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, we might all still be part of the Japanese Union now. But, of course, with Japan’s idiotic view of themselves of the Master Race — and the sadistic mindset that goes along with such craziness — the idea of a cooperative union spanning a huge fraction of the Asian continent was doomed to failure. I’m reminded of Pramoedya Toer’s slim volume, The Fugitive, in this regard. (You can read my 2008 review of the book here.) So, opportunities lost, and I can’t say I’m unhappy about that, but it still bears some reflection.

Girls Night In: 10/10

Tora! Tora! Tora!: 9/10

There is so much already written about the movie, both the original and the re-make with Keanu Reeves, that I won’t belabour the issues here. Essentially, it boils down to Original – Good, Remake – Bad. And that’s fine with me.

(However, as a parent, can I just say that both characters — Jennifer Connelly as Helen Benson, and Jaden Smith as Jacob — riled the hell out of me? A supposed parent casually handing over a child to someone else when the government come for her? Leaving a child alone in a car while she goes looking for the alien in a crowded public transport hub? Letting the child leave the car to go to the toilet in McDonalds by himself? It was as if there was Some Big Point to be made regarding human relationships but, until we got to that part of the script, it was really irrelevant how the step-mother and step-son interacted, or even where they were. All in all, this part of the movie was very badly handled.)

But, moving right along, it occurs to me that this movie could only have been made by a First World power. Think about it. We have a less-developed civilisation. A more advanced civilisation comes along and says that the primitives have trashed the place. They’re going to instill their version of justice, but the primitives are not to know how. It’s enough just to know that the advanced civilisation is, um, advanced. The advanced civilisation starts a “surge” of metal locusts. Then they seem to change their mind and leave, removing the only way that the primitives have of, say, sustaining their health care system and general infrastructure. You’re on your own. Go on, impress us. And if anything else happens, it’s Your Fault. Even though we didn’t tell you how to do it better. (And what was with the James Hong character? How did a so-called “assignment” like that make any kind of sense?) Even though we didn’t exactly explain what we were doing to you in the first place. Even though we’re supposedly sooooo advanced. We’ll just do what we want to do, leave when we want to leave, deliberately leave you in a state of abject poverty, and then expect you to develop a fully functioning Western democracy oops, I mean fully functioning environmentally sensitive civilisation for your entire planet.

Yeah right. The movie was made in 2008, which means it was thought up in the middle of Bush’s neocon regime. And it got me thinking. You’d think that there are no two populations further apart than a military neocon think-tank, and a bunch of liberal film-makers in Hollywood, right? And yet the movie seems to exemplify every hare-brained scheme the United States has indulged in in recent years, from Somalia to Iraq to Afghanistan, to (now) Pakistan. Why is that? Was the director/screenwriter a mate of Wolfowitz? Were there military advisors involved? Or is there some common thread in the American psyche? I’m open to suggestions here.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE: Maria Zannini has a gift voucher for “A Pirate’s Passion” up for grabs at her site. All you have to do is comment here sometime before Saturday (9 May) noon, US Central time. (Thanks Maria!) I’ll have something up for Pirate myself next week. Ah, it’s nice to have friends.

Everyone’s heard of Bruce Lee. Some have heard of the martial art he created, called Jeet Kune Do. Fewer still know he trained Wing Chun before he became a star and developed JKD. The movie Ip Man is about the man who taught Bruce Lee Wing Chun. And that man’s name was Ip Man (pronounced Eeep Mun).

Being a biographical movie, Ip Man doesn’t contain a lot of the characteristics that define your usual historical Chinese movie. For a start, not everybody dies. It starts just before the (Second) Sino-Japanese War of 1937. (Now, I’ll just digress a bit and say that this moment, in my opinion, is the start of World War Two. But, of course, you only have the largest war ever conducted in Asia that only ended with Japan’s capitulation in 1945 to the Allied Forces, so it’s not like it’s important historically or anything.)

A lot of care was taken with the sets, and it shows. They are evocative and sumptuous, and give a wonderful atmosphere of the time in Fo Shan (Fushan), a city in Guandong province situated on the Pearl River Delta. Ip Man is a Chinese aristocrat living in the prosperous trade-based city and so has much time to devote to the training of Wing Chun. He has a wife and a young son and, despite being an aristocrat, is a polite and humble man. In Fo Shan is a Martial Arts Street, where instructors set up their kwoons. But, before they can open their establishment, it is tradition that each new instructor “exchange views” with Ip Man behind closed doors, and we see part of the action when a new instructor approaches him and, later, when a Wushu grand master from northern China also challenges him, sneering at Ip Man that he can’t know much because Wing Chun is a woman’s martial art. (The challenger is correct. Wing Chun was supposedly created by a Buddhist nun called Ng Mui, but this may be apocryphal.) Of course, Ip Man beats the crap out of him. Great stuff.

Everything continues swimmingly, until the Japanese invade. Driven from their home, Ip Man and his family are reduced to paupers, and Ip Man makes a small living by acting as a coolie for a nearby mine. The Japanese leading officer of the region, General Miura, trains in Wushu (another branch of Chinese martial arts) and makes it a point to pit Chinese sifu (teachers) against his men and watch them fail. Inevitably, he and Ip Man meet.

There are plots and sub-plots in this movie that would take too long to explain, so let’s deconstruct it in a way that’s less narrative.

The fight scenes. Oh. My. God. Some of the best I have ever seen, thanks to Action Director and veteran martial arts actor Sammo Hung, choreographer Leung Siu-Hung and with input from Ip Man’s son, Ip Chun. The differences between the Wushu and Wing Chun styles are shown beautifully and there’s only a little use of the wires that enable the actors to fly through the air. (I find their use a bit tiresome, to be honest.) The fly in the ointment was the Japanese, who used the standard karate “greeting”, then went on to fight Chinese boxing rather than karate. (J was totally confused, having come from a karate/judo background.) Even I was reduced to objecting, “Hey, no Japanese would execute a move like that!”.

The characters. I’ve never seen Donnie Yen in a movie before, but I sure am impressed now. As Ip Man, he played the character with a calmness and humanity that fitted perfectly with the character of Wing Chun itself. I’ll be watching out for him again. His wife, Xiong Dai Lin (played by who-knows-who), on the other hand, was a real nuisance — miserable when they were successful and only happy when they were starving to death. Their son never seemed to age. The other characters, from the Wushu grandmaster “thug”, Fan Sui-Wong, industrialist Quan, fellow instructor and friend, Lam, a policeman turned collaborator (played very well by actor Lam Ka Tung), play their roles extremely well, turning this into a well-rounded drama, as well as being a kick-ass martial arts movie.

The Japanese. Treated too kindly, in my opinion. I know there were human Japanese officers (I’m only alive now because one ignored the presence of a radio in my grandfather’s house during a random search, rather than putting the entire family — including my father — to death, as he should have done), but the vast majority of them were brutal, petty and ruthless, hellbent on killing every Chinese they could find and, to this day, unrepentant for what they inflicted on Asia (from China to Indonesia) in the name of the “East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”. I was surprised they were portrayed with a shred of sympathy. It’s more than they deserve.

The plot. This is much, much more than a “mere” martial arts movie and provides enough meat for people who don’t even consider themselves action fans. Director Wilson Yip does a fine job with a complex story, wringing humanity from the unlikeliest of places. The range of characters involved, their interpersonal dynamics, the contrast of settings as time marches on in the movie, are all handled beautifully and will reward the viewer who hangs in there. What’s that, you say? “Hang in there”? I thought you liked the movie, Kaz? Yeah, I did. Until the next point.

The subtitles. To say they suck would be to give them a degree of utility they do not deserve. Do not expect to understand much of the movie, not even the all-important info-dumps that carry no translation whatsoever. You will get the gross plot movements, but everything else is opaque. I am only able to explain what little I can because I read half a dozen other reviews of Ip Man from English-speaking Chinese reviewers before I wrote this. I’m not sure whether the subtitles were so bad because the production company just didn’t care or because they were complete idiots but, either way, they’ve taken a treasure — an absolute classic — and essentially trashed it for non-Chinese speakers. My advice to you would be to go to the Ip Man website which is informative, if unfortunately Flash-heavy. Once you’ve read the information there, get the movie and watch it. You’ll be much more appreciative.

RATING: 7.5 / 10. A few niggles with the Japanese fighting techniques and the fact Ip Man’s son never seems to age, but slashed to buggery due to the woeful, shameful, atrocious, contemptible standard of subtitles. Considering the high calibre of the movie, the English so-called “translations” were nothing short of a travesty.

::Big breath :: And a Gong Xi Fa Cai to all Chinese readers of this blog!