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My “official” review of Down in the Valley is live if anyone’s interested.

Than being sick on your birthday? Few things. My poor RRHB has a migraine, which means he spent six hours sleeping this afternoon on his birthday. Now, I’m going to have to try to figure out a way to make it up to him. Anyone have any suggestions?

Damn, how badly do I want to do this? But $107.00 USD? That’s way too much for me to spend on finding out my ancestors—but man, it’s totally fascinating. The Genographic Project is one awesome way you can truly, truly know where you’re from, and all the places your genes stopped in between.

I’ve been on a kick lately to listen to more music outside of my usual influences (which count as my RRHB, really, and maybe a bit of Scarbie and KPL, when I used to work at the Evil Empire). I had some great suggestions from a friend in Ireland (holla!) and now, of course, my RRHB discovered Pandora a few months back, which means I’ve been forced to listen and am now converted to the damn site as well.

It’s totally dangerous. Why? A) because it’s freaky in how it delivers stuff that you actually like and without commercials or really annoying radio hosts and b) it clicks you right over to iTunes, which results in a hyper-expensive bill for all the new songs I’m downloading. Today, it’s A Tribe Called Quest radio. I’ve only downloaded one song so far (“Good Music” by The Roots), but I’ve also only had Pandora on for about ten minutes. Check in later and I’ll be broke, I’m sure of it.

Oh, and ‘fess up if you use 90210 as your zip code because it’s for US residents only? I’ll bet it’s not just me…

And speaking of baseball, when I was going through some of my boxes the other week, I found this Bo Jackson rookie card that Blair Macdonald had given me at Queen’s. He was a friend of a friend, a very nice fellow, who gave me the card when he found out about my hip. Apparently, Bo Jackson has also had his hip replaced. I’ve got it on my desk now, an ever-decreasing amount of space left for real notebooks as I pile the stuff on to help keep me inspired. According to the card, Jackson won the 1984 Heisman Trophy. And I think, if I remember correctly, I spent a drunken night making out with him, but that part’s a bit fuzzy.

And I wonder what ever happened to Blair Macdonald (and even if that’s how he spelled his name). But chances are I’ll probably run into him over the next few months as the university session of the “remember whens” will inevitably start up…

For my RRHB’s birthday last year, we went up to Aberfoyle for the day. It ended up being a lovely day, and the first time we seriously sort of started discussing the whole, “can we really get married one day” thing.

Annnwaay, it’s one of his favourite things to do (at least I think so) and despite the rain, despite the near freezing temperatures, we muddled through the many booths and he found something quite fascinating to purchase.

For the most part, we don’t buy many things, but this time, he couldn’t resist. The purchase? An electric accordion. You heard me. It has its own amp and some funny looking power box thingy. According to the seller, you’d have paid thousands for it if you bought it brand new (said the huckster to the huckee), but it was so strange and interesting that he had to have it.

But it was crazy-expensive and when he got it home (after we stopped in Freelton at the other fun antique/flea market where I bought a $20.00 Robert Davidson print that’s now sitting on my desk), he couldn’t get it work for the longest time. However, I’m pleased to announce that my RRHB, who has never played accordion in his life, did get it to work and it’s loud, synthesizer-like tones graced the hallowed halls of our half-wrecked house. Happy birthday to him! He was even kind of giddy it made him so happy. Who cares if we’re now broke and have to eat the mouldy cheese in the fridge until I get paid on Thursday.

I’m kidding.

Well, I’m half kidding.

And what can I say anyway considering when I was off on sick leave a few weeks ago I almost shopped myself into oblivion. Sometimes you just have to spend the money. It’s a reality and a fact of life.

There are those movies in everyone’s life that they’ll watch over and over again, and you repeat every word, know every gesture the actor’s make, and never grow tired of them. One of these movies, The Shawshank Redemption the RRHB and I watch every year, even though we don’t own it, usually at Christmas time. It’s like a good wine; it grows better with age.

Another of these films for my RRHB is The Natural. Coming late in life to my obsessive-compulsive movie watching, I’d never seen it (like many ‘classic’ movies). And since it’s his birthday weekend, we went searching on Friday night for it (we were supposed to go to a party but he ate an apple and then had some strange allergic reaction that’s still bothering him, poor soul), but couldn’t find the film at our local video store. So, on Saturday, when I was out anyway, I bought it and a CD as special, one-and two-days before his birthday presents.

Annnywaaay, it’s a delightful movie, as you well imagine. The story of a great natural baseball talent, Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) who has a tragic accident just as he’s about to embark on his pro career. Injured and unable to play, the film picks up sixteen years later as he gets back in the game. At first, the game, in the form of head coach Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) kicks him right back again, until he starts showing his mettle, and the NY Knights start winning games. When Roy starts winning, things start happening for him. He gets the girl, Memo (Kim Basinger), but that doesn’t end up all it’s cracked up to be, as she’s bad luck, which comes in the form of a losing streak. Oh, and she’s in cahoots with the team’s co-owner, The Judge (Robert Prosky), who’s trying to oust Pop and run the team into the ground. But when Roy’s first love, Iris (Glenn Close) comes back into his life, everything changes for him.

But for a fairly typical sports film, it shows incredible heart, and even though you know Roy’s going to a) knock it out of the park and b) going to be forced to retire from his injury, you’re still happy (and not at all jaded) to see both happen. Some of the shots age the film (oh, the slow motion, it’s so painfully sloooow), and the ending has been parodied so much that when I saw it, I felt like I’d seen it a million times on The Simpsons, which I probably have. But on the whole, it might just be one of those movies that makes the ever-after rotation.

**Ahem, interesting, non-related Blogger note: when Shawshank comes through the spellcheck, it wants to be corrected to “shagging”. Oh, you, dirty spell check.

Well, it’s not good. Not that I expected the hype to lead to anything substantial, but The Da Vinci Code is quite the stinker. Of course, 85 bajillion people are going to see it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what I think. But because this is my space, I’m going to tell you anyway.

The book doesn’t make a good movie. All of the intrigue and what little suspense Brown builds up in the text is completely lost in the film as it loads itself down with pedagogic flashbacks and cuts away any action that might keep the picture moving. It’s kind of shocking actually, because when I read the book, I thought to myself: “It’s just a movie on the page.” But after watching the botched adaptation, it’s not that at all; it’s a potboiler (the book), that manages to keep you (relatively) interested in (somewhat) complex material. None of this translates onto the screen.

Oh sure, the performances are good, but the script is so hacked together that you have to wonder if anyone making this movie actually watches movies. Because if they did, they’d realize that the flashback is a tool best left to bad MOVs on the CBC. The gauzy substance covering the majority of them in “history” didn’t help much either. It’s the cheapest way to tell a story. It doesn’t give you any confidence in your audience, but that’s not surprising, look at the source material.

Annnywaay, I had it in my mind all the ways the film could have been better: load all the historical stuff up front, fast forward to today, actually show all of the four guys at the beginning getting knocked off, I could go on for days. In the end, I guess the biggest criticism is that the film is far, far to faithful to the novel, when a little artistic license and interpretation would have made it a much better film.

On to the next summer blockbuster. X-Men anyone?

So, I gave myself my very first needle today. And do you know what? It doesn’t hurt, really at all. Way, way easier than taking a pile of pills each and every day. Things are looking up. They really, really are.

It’s a truism that people are complicated, multifaceted, contradictory, surprising, but it takes the advent of war or other momentous events to be able to see it. It is the most fascinating and the most dreadful of spectacles, [Louise] continued thinking, the most dreadful because it’s so real; you can never pride yourself on truly knowing the sea unless you’ve seen it both calm and in a storm.

Minutes ago, I just finished Irène Némirovsky’s masterpiece Suite Française. It’s a hauntingly beautiful book about France during the Second World War. Broken into two distinct sections, the first deals with the flight from France of a large cast of characters, and the second deals with a smaller group of people living in a small, rural community once it’s occupied by the Germans.

The stark contrast of both situations, those fleeing from occupation just before the Germans declare victory in France, and those living with the consequences of defeat, is balanced by the even, solid storytelling. In the hands of a lesser writer, the large cast of characters would sprawl unevenly across the pages, but Némirovsky’s deft hand never lets it get out of control. Everyone has a purpose in this novel, if it’s only to truly and completely reveal the horror and beauty of war from a clear, honest point of view.

The novel, lost for years until Némirovsky’s daughter found it in an old suitcase, is like a time capsule. Written before the author died at Auschwitz in 1942, Suite Française hums along like an orchestral movement, each sentence an instrument finely tuned and perfectly in time with the one sitting before and after it.

The novel has a Russian feel to it (it’s tone reminds Dostoevsky) and the narrator remains omniscient with an extraordinary control over the story. There’s a sense of existentialism in the novel, a crucial feeling that regardless of how many mothers mourn their sons, nothing will change the fact that Germans now occupy their beds. Life is life and war is war.

What’s most surprising is Némirovsky’s ability to be sympathetic on both sides. The German characters are drawn with the same keen attention to detail as the French. The enemy is described as beautiful in places; he’s human, just doing his job. And the French take everything in stride for the most part (with a few exceptions). They deal with the situation with an equanimity for the most part, as if a calm acceptance is the only way.

The first half of the novel, as rich and poor flee the city of Paris, the true nature of humanity reveals itself. Class systems, clung to by those who occupy the upper regions are destroyed, maybe for a few hours, maybe for a few days, but the sense that nothing will ever be the same again stays present, despite a civilty that returns once the Armistice is signed. By the second half, having to swallow their hatred for the enemy that now boards in their homes, the citizens rebel in their own little ways: selling their wine for far more than it’s worth, not speaking to them even if they live in the same house, and so on.

You fall into the world of this novel and it’s a world that so perfectly reflects its time and its place that it’s a miracle it was found. It’s a miracle it was published and it’s an important piece of work. But most of all it makes you feel absolutely sad at the ridiculous nature of war, about how unfair it is that Némirovsky died so young and in such a terrifying manner, especially when you think she was going to complete two more novels in the series. What I wouldn’t give to read them now.

And don’t just take my word for it, read Brian Bethune’s blog post and see for yourself.