Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

It’s kind of too bad that there isn’t a ready-built audience for this movie, because it really does something interesting. This is a fantasy/epic story involving children that is played absolutely straight.

I loved the Narnia books as a kid. The first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, caught me a little off guard with its realism, but there are enough magical elements in it to keep it mostly a fairytale (biblical allegory notwithstanding).

Prince Caspian, however, is essentially a war movie… with children. The blood, violence, and death are unchecked and uncensored. I can’t imagine an adult watching this would not cringe at seeing how efficient these kids are at taking lives. And feel sick that it is the children who have to be the ones doing the killing.

But because of this, this movie moves the story out of children’s fare. I don’t think it’s for grade schoolers any longer.

For me, it was fascinating to watch because I can actually see how all those childhood fantasies of mine would have really played out. I always imagined what I would do if I ended up in Narnia… or in any number of other adventurous lands.

I guess I would have found out that war is war, regardless of where it takes place.

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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The first half of this movie is engrossing and lovingly made. At this point, I was actually wondering why this didn’t get nominated in the overstuffed Best Picture category.

The second half, however, wanders and brings in extra characters and scenes that never get developed and therefore feel like mere plot points to this otherwise wonderfully built character piece. Imagine, Robert Duvall gets to be a mere plot point.

The whole thing is held together by Jeff Bridges and his character Bad Blake. Nothing about the movie is going to surprise you very much except the thought that this kind of music is going to hit on country radio these days. (That is… without the help of an Oscar-worthy movie.)

Jeff Bridges, though, completely deserves his Oscar. No, this is not one of those phony here’s a make up for inferior work just because we’ve passed you over in the past wins. I haven’t seen everything yet, but I have to think that no one is going to top Bridges for this prize. He totally earns and deserves his Academy Award.

If I Picked the Oscars (in order of my vote)

Best Actor:

• Colin Firth, A Single Man
• Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
• George Clooney, Up in the Air
• Morgan Freeman, Invictus
• Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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What a huge change from Gordon Wood’s The American Revolution. In that work, Wood’s biases are hard to determine.

In Inventing a Nation, Gore Vidal clearly is not interested in being a dispassionate educator. Vidal’s favorite founders and personal opinions about the state of America, both yesterday and today, play into his writings here.

Readers should keep in mind that Gore Vidal is not an academically trained historian. The stories that he presents in traditional non-fiction forms are not necessarily the accepted interpretation by historians at large.

This is an intelligent, well-read person’s belief in how the creation of America happened. His version is not necessarily going to be supported by actual, reliable documentation.

Much of the book is presented like a traditional history. The book design also mirrors many of the more popular histories out there. As such, this work can be dangerous if general readers take his interpretations as hardcore facts. For example, Vidal believes completely that Alexander Hamilton was a full-blown British agent. A quick online search will tell you how he may have come to believe this and why many historians are more shaded in what they think.

Still, for what Inventing a Nation should be taken as, it is an entertaining work. Listening to it, I felt more like I was having a dinner conversation with another history fan and less like I was attending a lecture. There’s plenty of humor and light but pointed commentary about our country today.

Audiobook Challenge: nine down, three to go.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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