Reviews for this month

I'm going to start doing monthly reviews of things I've read, seen, etc. This month's books;

Osamu Tezuka's Buddha is a bona fide comics masterpiece. I don't usually like a reading manga, the perversely Japanese subject matter, either incomprehensible, graphically violent or cloyingly sweet, or all three simultaneously, usually make it a grating and unrewarding experience, that can't be fixed by stylistic wizardry.

Tezuka is credited with inventing the 'big eyed' style of manga, but where other authors use it indiscriminately, he only uses it for effect, i.e. only beautiful, innocent and pure women are portrayed as such. Most of the other characters are drawn in a variety of styles, most of them looking more like early Disney characters. This is a very conscious choice, the majority of characters serve the purpose of stand-ins for readers with basic questions about Buddhism.

The story dictates what everything looks like, but not to the degree where it gets annoying. Backgrounds can be lush and detailed or spare and mostly blank depending on the effect Tezuka's looking for. The entire story is presented with incredibly sophisticated cinematic techniques, and all that bizarre manga symbolism is presented completely in context, and entirely understandable for once. It really makes clear how well these angles and facial expressions can work when wielded with some subtlety.

The story sticks quite closely to the life of Buddha, but without delving into superstitious magic or the always unhelpful zen paradox. It mostly points out the obvious reasons why the teachings where necessary at the time, why they were superior to dominant theology and why they're still relevant today. Tezuka goes to great lengths to cast a different perspective on any demons or gods that appear in the tale, preferring to point out the humanity of the characters and staying as far away from metaphysics as possible, presenting the Buddhist philosophy as a straight-forward answer to modern living.

Having tried to wrestle through the Tibetan book of the dead last month, I can't tell you how refreshing and enlightening this comic was. At around three thousand pages it looks imposing and complex, but it's actually as clear and unassuming a religious text as you'll find. No useless celestial hierarchies, no dead language jokes. Just a very entertaining look at why you really shouldn't be afraid of death.

Pierre Bayard's 'How to talk about books you haven't read' is pretty much the exact opposite. It is not, like the title suggests, the bluffer's guide to appearing literate and cultured, but rather a clever exploration of why it's more important to know how to discuss books, their relationship to each other and to you, than to actually read them all.

Bayard illustrates his points with recognisable anecdotes and examples from literature. His brief summaries of famous books are of course littered with inaccuracies that you guess must be there, but can't put your finger on, even if you've just read the book he's talking about. He reveals that he did this consciously towards the end of the book, to make the point that the unreliability of the human memory is the main reason you have to bluff about books you have read at least as much as abut those you haven't.

Even more controversial is his assertion that critics needn't read the books they review, that in fact it's usually better that they don't. My review of Buddha is case in point. I liked it so much that instead of coming up with a pithy one-liner or two, I ended up singing it's praises to the detriment of giving anyone a clear idea of whether or not they should read it. This onion av club review, though it only covers the first book of the eight, perhaps intentionally, is a lot clearer on what's good about it, and what isn't.

I actually read 'The Raw Shark texts' by Steven Hall some time ago, but I still think I should mention it. It's not perfect, but the concept and a lot of the quirky ideas in it are reason enough to read it. The protagonist is an amnesiac who's getting packages from his pre-amnesia self. His former self gives him the advise that piecing together his memories will probably lead to far more trouble than trying to live without the knowledge. Of course, it's irresistible for the hero to find out.

The reason he's an amnesiac is that he's being hunted by a 'conceptual shark', which has the entirety of information as a habitat. It's also being hunted by a self-replicating intelligence that's a hundred and fifty years old, and is continually trying to take over new bodies through hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, conditioning and old-fashioned education. The reason it's such a voracious entity is it's origin as a dying man's desire to live on in another body, multiplied by the need for all the bodies to synchronise information regularly, which only strengthens it's instinct for self-preservation through endless positive feedback.

And those are just two of the ideas Hall wants to get across, the rest of the book is littered with interesting number and language jokes. It's also the book's only major flaw. Hall needs every last scrap of realism and believability for the ideas, leaving none whatsoever for the main character or the villains, love interest and mentor. The prose alternates between fiery and compelling for the ideas and limp and uninspired for the relationships. But in proper sci-fi tradition, you probably won't care, the ideas are more than interesting enough.

As for movies, I've only watched three recent ones, but they were all quite good.



There will be Blood rightly deserved it's Oscar. Daniel Day Lewis stars as an early twentieth century oil baron with an all-consuming greed. His struggle to make enough money to never have anything to do with anyone else ever again is captivating to watch. Even though the film is almost three hours long, it flies by, from one scene pregnant with doom to the next. The finale is an awe-inspiring diatribe against his main antagonist, a delightfully oily and insane teenage preacher played by Paul Dano. It's quite a stylistic break with P.T. Anderson's previous films, especially because of the spaghetti western effects, like the almost unbearably slow tension building scenes, the spare, rugged and beautifully harsh backdrops as stand-ins for the characters inner lives and tight close-ups in the most dramatic moments, all in the service of what is basically a rather complex character study of an arch-capitalist in the tradition of Citizen Kane.



Ridley Scott does a gangster movie with Russel Crowe and Denzel Washington, and though it's good, it suffers from Scott's indecision on whether to follow the gangster movie template or make it a Ridley Scott thriller, ending up with something that's neither. If American gangster had been half an hour shorter, it would probably be the better for it. Based on a true story, Washington plays Frank Lucas, the black drug dealer that co-opted the Maffia into his own New York based empire. He manages to buy the drugs directly from the growers in Vietnam and has them shipped over to the U.S. in Body Bags. Russel Crowe is Richie Roberts, the officer trying to catch him, albeit considerably slower than in other movies. It takes Crowe more than half the movie to even figure out it's Frank Lucas he needs, giving Washington the time to employ his entire family in the business and be the hardworking businessman and lovable family man at the same time. Washington has a hard time trying to fit a Tony Soprano-esque character arc into 30 odd scenes. Russel Crowe is almost the standard dedicated cop with a messy personal life and doesn't really do anything but play that tired old cliché. The movie ends with Frank Lucas caught, but in the epilogue he still manages to finger every corrupt police officer in New York.



Charlie Wilson's War is exactly what I hoped it would be. A tight and interesting political satire by Aaron Sorkin with no possibility of him getting lost in some sprawling, dense forest of plots and counter-plots, seeing as it's all based on true events. Tom Hanks does a fabulous job as the titular character, the drinking, cocaine snorting and womanising representative for a Texan district, who is also a prominent member of the congress black ops committee, but it's Philip Seymour Hoffman's dour, rude and argumentative CIA agent that almost blows him off the screen. Julia Roberts fills a role perfect for her generally wooden acting as the right wing heiress that brings them together to arm and train the mujahedeen, who are fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. The movie ends with the acknowledgment that if the U.S. had spent as much money on rebuilding Afghanistan after their war, the U.S. wouldn't have been occupying it now. Excellent political satire based on true events that is, except for a few necessary character development moments, never cloyingly sentimental or overly simplistic about a complicated and multi-faceted historical development, which is still highly relevant.