Girl in a Cage

Less Than Meets the Eye

I took my son and 2 of his friends to the IMAX at Jordan's Furniture in Natick, MA to see Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.

I mention the location only so I can praise the odd experience of seeing a movie at a furniture store.  The seats are made of tempurpedic foam!  I sat for 2 and a half hours that felt like 4 hours, and my butt didn't hurt at all!  You try that in a regular movie theater!  

Also, each seat is equipped with some kind of vibrating woofer that jolts you whenever a bass-heavy noise, like, say, an explosion, comes over the soundtrack.  Since something blows up roughly every twenty seconds in this movie, that meant almost constant back and butt massage.  Nice!

On to the movie itself.  I will begin by saying that I really enjoyed the first Transformers, to the point where I bought the DVD in transforming Optimus Prime case at Target. 

And this movie has three things to recommend it. 

The first is the presence of John Turturro, who simply never stops being excellent.  I saw him in You Don't Mess With the Zohan last week and was struck by what an excellent comic actor he is, and here again, he's simply top-notch. (See also his performance in O Brother Where Art Thou if you still have doubts0  His character is the only thing that's a little more interesting in the second movie than the first, and he really elevates what is otherwise pretty slack material by his presence.

The other two belong to Megan Fox.

Okay, I'm done with the good stuff.  The bad has been covered in detail in a lot of places--excessive length, lazy plotting, lame jokes throughout,weird, dumb plot holes--so I'll focus on two things that bugged me.

One is the herky-jerky camera work.  For a guy with a reputation as an action director, Michael Bay does an absolutely crap job of shooting the action sequences in this movie.  The camera jerks around so much that it's nearly impossible to follow who's fighting who or what's happening in any fight scene.  I suspect this is to disguise the limitations of the CGI.  When not really in motion, the Transformers look remarkable, but that's a lot of parts to try to animate convincingly, and the hyperactive camera ensures that our eyes won't catch much more than a blur anyway.  Having said that, he goes twice to the cliche'd "camera does 360s around the couple" shot, with the only innovation being that he has the actors on the camera so it looks like the world is spinning around them.  This may be an artifact of seeing it in IMAX, but both shots were nauseating.

The second big problem I had was with the racism.  And not just the anti-Decepticon racism.  No, now there are two new Autobots who are some kind of Chevy knockoff of a Smart Car (Once again the Autobots are an exclusively GM bunch, calling into serious question both their judgment and their ability to defend the earth properly.) and who are ridiculous stereotypes of blackness.  Seriously, they've even got like one big gold tooth and some bling.  And so they make a lot of wisecracks.  I don't remember the names of these particular, but I'm pretty sure they were called Amos and Andy. 

Tyrese Gibson is back as one of the soldiers, but where white Josh Duhamel gets to make heroic stands, black Tyrese Gibson is the one who gets to say, "we gonna get our asses whupped" and such things. 

The first Transformers was clever, exciting, and strangely heartfelt. This one is dumb, lazy, and has a dead heart at its center.

Musical Math!

Plus Equals

Let the Right One In

So I bought an Xbox 360, because I wanted to play the zombie-killing game Left 4 Dead.  So sue me.  (or better yet, friend me on Xbox live!  I'm soggyclover! We could kill zombies together! Or, more realistically, you could kill zombies and I could take tons of damage and need to be healed all the time!)

And, being a Netflix subscriber, I hooked up the Netflix instant watch thingy through the TV.  It pleases me.  The picture quality is not fantastic--I would say it's slightly sub-regular DVD quality.  Definitely way sub blu-ray quality.  But, let's be honest, you don't really need Blu Ray for a lot of movies.  (But we does need it for Lord of the Rings, don't we, precious?  And the Jackson witholds the blu-ray, precious.  Why? Why does he mistreat us so?  Jacksons is tricksy!)

Ahem. 

Time after Time looked like complete crap, but that's a (really good) movie from 1979, so it was probably a bad transfer in the first place.  H.G. Wells vs Jack the Ripper in 1979 San Francisco, where they got via Wells' own time machine.  Hell yeah.

And then we watched Let the Right One In, Swedish vampire movie from last year.  It looked good, and convinced me that the streaming Netflix thing might be the wave o' the future.  (We watched You Don't Mess With The Zohan on Sunday night, but that probably merits an entry of its own.) 

Let me just say this about Let The Right One In.  Holy crap, this is a fantastic movie.  It's about a 12-year-old kid, Oskar, who gets picked on by bullies.  A 12-year-old vampire girl moves in next door, and, well, complications ensue. 

Things I loved about this movie: the cinematography. Not many horror movies really try to achieve any degree of artistry.  This one has several stunningly beautiful shots (there's a kill in an underpass that is awesomely shot, and there's also a sudden fire that also just looks fantastic.).  Most horror movies are content to throw spring-loaded cats at you, but this one wants to make something beautiful.

And it does.  It's a beautiful, melancholy movie, but don't let those adjectives fool you--the story moves along at a pretty good clip, and there's a lot of great suspense.  We were still talking about it for the whole day after we watched it, which just doesn't usually happen. 

Suzanne does not have my stomach for gore, and she loved it as much as I did.  This is a fantastic movie. It's a horror movie, it's a love story, and it's great.  Possibly the best movie of 2008.  Here's the trailer:

Smooth Criminal

So I don't know if anybody else heard this, but apparently Michael Jackson died!  No, really!

Briefly--gifted entertainer, gifted singer who squandered his gift by destroying his nose (no, really!  When I took voice lessons I learned all about how the voice resonates in the nose.  That's why the silky-smooth vocals of "she's out of my life" were replaced by that growly thing he did in his late career.), wrote a handful of great songs, and I suspect that Quincy Jones was the actual musical genius involved in those records.

Many people have been glossing over the child molestation charges, stressing that he was never found guilty.

I feel he was guilty anyway, and here's why:

1.) People only continue doing things (such as sleeping in the same bed as a kid when you've already been accused of child molestation) that could destroy their lives for three reasons:  money, drugs, or sex.  MIchael only stood to lose money from his child-cuddling antics, so that's out; he had ready access to drugs and didn't need kids for that.  That leaves sex. 

2.) A year ago, I was empaneled on a Suffolk County jury in a child molestation case.  I won't share all the details because it was a really depressing day, but we heard testimony from a kid, now 16, who was 13 when the alleged abuse took place.  The defense attorney offered up the following defense:  "Here's his work schedule; you can see that he wasn't at home 100% of the time during the month in question."  I kid you not!  It was basically no defense at all!  But the kid didn't have his dates straight, because apparently he didn't run right home and put a dated entry in his journal about the creepy neighbor who molested him.

After hearing the testimony and the laughable defense, I was ready to go send the perv away.  And then I got picked as the alternate.  I had to sit alone in a room for an hour and a half while the people on the jury argued.  Eventually they returned a not guilty verdict.  I was stunned, and I asked one of the jurors what the hell they were thinking.  "We felt she didn't really prove her case," they said, referring to the ADA.  I guess they just didn't understand the rules of evidence, because the kid's testimony was evidence and therefore enough to convict.  But I guess these numbskulls wanted a blue dress or some other corroborating evidence that wasn't there in this case.

My point is this:  this guy was acquitted on what seemed like an open-and-shut case to me, and he didn't have a high-priced lawyer and offered almost no defense at all.  How much harder must it be to convict someone with the resources of a best-selling pop star at his disposal?

There's an interesting question here about how we divorce art from the character of the artist, but I'm tired of the whole thing.  So let me just say I hope the children that Michael Jackson victimized get some peace from moonwalking across his grave.

Raintown Playlist

So, okay--I know nobody really wants to hear anyone whine about the weather, but really, this has been a tough month for those of us who live in New England. Especially those of us who live in New England and have anxiety and depression.  We count on banking some sunny days in the summer against the long gray winter. We've had 24 days of rain since June 1st, and rain every day for the last 12 days.  For me, the citalopram is barely holding the line against the gloom these days.

So I did what I often do in tough times:  I made me a little playlist.  It's still gross out, but I feel a little better.  It turned out to be exactly a hundred songs, so I took this as a sign that I should share.  I called it Raintown because a)that's where we appear to be living and b)that was a Deacon Blue song from when I was in Scotland that I don't own or even particularly like that much (Still have a soft spot for "Fergus Sings the Blues," though) but which kinda sticks in my head. There's no significance to the order--it's just how itunes shuffled 'em. I've added some notations where I felt like. 

Mermaids 3:04 Paul Weller
Candy Man Blues 2:47 Mississippi John Hurt
Would You Love A Monsterman (2006 Version) 3:05 Lordi
Cattle And The Creeping Things 3:46 The Hold Steady "Mackenzie Phillips doesn't live here anymore."
E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) 3:43 Blue Öyster Cult
That's Entertainment 3:17 The Jam The superior demo version from the Snap! compilation
The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite 4:09 R.E.M.
Over the Sea 3:48 The Minus 5
Bang Bang You're Dead 3:32 Dirty Pretty Things
Rose Island Road 2:44 Squirrel Bait
Across The Universe 3:38 The Beatles From the Let it Be...Naked album. No strings!
Smash You 2:22 The Ramones Right up there with "Babysitter" as one of the best Ramones B-sides. Written by Richie!
Born Under A Bad Sign 2:49 Albert King
 Let My Freak Flag Fly 2:35 Caesars
Save it For Later 3:36 The English Beat
What Do I Get? 2:55 Buzzcocks In this case, a whole shitload of rain.
Season of the Witch 4:56 Donovan
Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying (Live Version) 4:02 Belle & Sebastian From the live If You're Feeling Sinister from itunes, which is superior to the studio verson.
Crimson And Clover 3:17 Joan Jett
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love 3:47 Van Halen
That's When I Reach For My Revolver 3:53 Mission of Burma
Taking It All Away 2:25 The Edge Not the U2 guy.  The Cincinnati/Boston band from the 80's.
Hideous Mutant Freekz 7:21 Axiom Funk
Red Tan 3:48 The Raveonettes
Even the Clouds Get High 2:10 James Kochalka
Return The Favour 3:10 The Hives
New England 2:25 Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers Just to remind me that it doesn't always suck to live here.
Ugly Truth Rock 2:57 Matthew Sweet
MTV 3:28 Hawaii Mud Bombers
Over 'Fore It Started 2:51 Caesars
Paper Planes 3:24 M.I.A. Still not sick of it yet.  Go figure.
Who Will Save Rock and Roll? 2:59 The Dictators
Smile (Version Revisited) [Mark Ronson Remix] 3:13 Lily Allen Prefer this mix to the original
 LoveSign (Shock G's Silky Remix) 3:53 Prince
A Good Idea 3:47 Sugar
Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam (Album) 3:31 Vaselines
Big Time Sensuality (The Fluke Minimix) 4:55 Björk My favorite Bjork song, though I don't like this mix as much.  Bought it by mistake and don't have the other one.
Stop Your Sobbing 2:06 The Kinks Because, after all, it's only rain.
All Going Out Together 3:02 Big Dipper It could be worse--it could be the apocalypse!
13 Stitches 1:55 NOFX
When It Rains, It Really Pours 2:03 Elvis Presley get it?
Oxford Comma 3:16 Vampire Weekend
Here Come the Girls 5:08 Andy White
Calhoun Square 4:47 Prince
Keep A Knockin' 2:20 Little Richard
Mellie's Comin' Over 2:12 Letters To Cleo
The Card Cheat 3:50 The Clash
Handle With Care 2:57 Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins Traveling Wilburys cover!
Shaking Through 4:30 R.E.M.
 Down But Not Out 3:31 The Mooney Suzuki
Mr. Soul (LP Version) 2:52 Buffalo Springfield Just about the only song that involves Steven Stills that I can stand.
I Feel It All 3:40 Feist
Dark As A Dungeon 3:01 Johnny Cash not just down in the mine, but pretty much everywhere these days.
(Now And Then There's) A Fool Such As I 2:38 Elvis Presley
Maggot Brain 8:27 Funkadelic
Dancing On the Lip of a Volcano 4:18 New York Dolls
Of It 1:28 Sluggo
See No Evil 4:05 Television
Drinking About My Baby 3:01 The Damned
Sick Of Myself 3:39 Matthew Sweet
 Let There Be Rock 4:19 Drive-By Truckers A really profound song about death hiding behind a song about drug-addled teen exploits.
You Don't Know What Love Is [You Just Do As You're Told] (Album Version) 3:55 The White Stripes
Feel Good Inc (Live Sarm Radio Session) 3:44 Gorillaz Unclear to me how a cartoon band can have a live version, but it's good anyway.
Benny and the Jets 4:07 Beastie Boys with vocals by Biz Markie!  Everyone should own this right now!
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) 3:12 Pixies
Mr Blue Sky 5:23 Delgados ELO cover. No idea how I got this song, but I like it.
I Saw The Light 2:44 Hank Williams I'm probably less religious now than at any point in my life, but I still like me some country music songs about Jesus.
Street Fighting Man 2:55 The Ramones
Rocks Off 4:34 The Rolling Stones
Everybody Wants Some!! 5:09 Van Halen Two exclamation points!! Because everybody really does want some!!
Gold 7:23 Prince He's tried to duplicate "Purple Rain" a few times, but this one comes the closest.
 I Wanna Destroy You 2:31 Uncle Tupelo
I love Livin In the City 2:12 Fear This song never fails to crack me up.
Lost in the Supermarket 3:47 The Clash
I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine 2:29 Elvis Presley "I get my lovin' in the evening time."
The Rebirth of the Countess 2:01 Lordi I adore these monster-costumed Finns, and this is the only one of their songs that I actually find kind of creepy.
Every Time You Say Goodbye 3:18 Alison Krauss & Union Station "just like my tears, fallin' down like rain on the ground."
Rainfall 2:44 The Apples in Stereo
Waltz #3 4:40 Elliott Smith Probably a rainy day mix cliche at this point, but I like it anyway.
Mystery Train 2:26 Elvis Presley
Tokyo Storm Warning 6:26 Elvis Costello & The Attractions
The Hawg, Part One 2:54 Eddie Kirk Obscure Stax track I discovered in the box set (Thanks, Eric and Karl!).  I suppose Eddie's instructions to "Root!" disqualify this as an instrumental, but if they didn't, it would be tied with "Walk Don't Run" as best instrumental ever.  Dig the drums on this track!  Outta site!  I posted this on mog.com a while back where I think you can probably still hear it.
Unchained 3:29 Van Halen
Johnny Come Lately 4:10 Steve Earle featuring the Pogues!  Love it, even with the bad chronology (if you fought in Vietnam, it was pretty unlikely that your granddaddy fought in WWII)
Baby Britain 3:14 Elliott Smith
Die You Zombie Bastards 3:25 Count Smokula Brilliant song, absolutely shit movie I had to turn off after 6 minutes, which, if you know my tolerance for bad horror movies, is really saying something.
Stack O'Lee 2:58 Mississippi John Hurt
I Wanna Be Your Dog 3:05 Uncle Tupelo
21 Reasons 5:41 Frank Black
It's True That We Love One Another 2:43 The White Stripes
Substitute (Single Version) 3:48 The Who
No Go 3:03 The Ramones
Mas Y Mas 4:45 Los Lobos
Space Angel 3:23 Human Zoo
Keep on the Sunny Side 2:54 The Carter Family
If It Takes All Night 3:20 Frank Black
Raw Power 4:16 Iggy And The Stooges It's sure to come a-runnin' to you.  Despite the weather.
Nearly Lost You 4:10 Screaming Trees
 She's Always In My Hair 3:27 Prince Prince's best B-side.  Absolutely killer song. Baffled as to why it never made it onto an album.
Sparky's Dream 3:15 Teenage Fanclub

Year One

Suzanne and I took advantage of our temporary kid-free status and saw Year One over the weekend. 

This movie has been lambasted by critics, but we both really enjoyed it.  It's pretty much exactly what you think it is--Jack Black being Jack Black, Michael Cera being Michael Cera.  Also featuring David Cross as Cain, Paul Rudd as Abel, Hank Azaria as Abraham, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Isaac, and, in what's really a star turn for a criminally underappreciated actor, Oliver Platt as the High Priest of Baal.

I suppose it's true that the movie is not pee-your-pants funny, but it is a lot of fun.  So if I wasn't roaring with laughter the whole time, I had a stupid grin on my face throughout the movie. I thought of it as kind of a cross between Spies Like Us and History of the World Part 1. Works for me!

And here's something else I enjoyed: this is quite a subversive little movie.  A lot of reviews have acted like it's really dumb to have these primitive hunter/gatherers cavorting around in Biblical times, but they've missed the whole point of the movie, which is this:  religion is stupid.

I ahven't seen a movie that so thoroughly holds religion up to ridicule since, well, maybe ever.  Our heroes encounter three distinct religions:  their own hunter/gatherer religion, early Judaism, and Baal worship.  All are shown to have ridiculous ideas and silly prohibitions that our bumbling heroes break, usually intentionally, with no consequences whatsoever. 

It's very clever on the part of the filmmakers--since Judaism is the only extant religion they mock, and Jews, even the conservative nutcase ones, can pretty much take a joke, they managed to avoid the kind of huge controversy that would have ensued if the conservative nutcase Christians thought they were being made fun of.

I give it a big thumbs up--not brilliant, but a fun night at the movies.

Boston to Alice Hoffman: Alice Who?

I've been intrigued by the recent controversy on twitter.  This one concerns one Alice Hoffman, who apparently is a best-selling novelist, though I can't say I've ever read one of her books.  I saw the movie based on her YA novel Aquamarine.  It was putrid, but that doesn't really say much about the source material.  I guess another one of her books was made into a Sandra Bullock movie.

So, okay, ol' Alice has had a whole lot of success.  Each of those movies is a six-figure payday, and that's on top of whatever she makes in advances, which is probably quite a bit if she's a reliable brand.  I say all of this to point out two things. 1.) I am jealous of her and 2.) she's not some struggling writer, suffering for her art. Nor is she new to the whole publishing and reviewing process.

And yet she went completely apeshit over this review in yesterday's Boston Globe.  It's not a positive review, and I suppose there's too much plot summary, but it's really pretty respectful as these things go.

Not so respectful, though, was Alice's twitter stream after she got her Globe and, presumably, at least two cups of coffee too many.  Gawker walks you through, tweet by tweet, here. There's a lot to hate: posting your reviewer's contact info and hoping sycophantic fans will complain for you; dissing Boston as a town where a barking dog is the second biggest news story; (stupid, especially because it has no bearing on whether the book sucks or not.  If one needs to be from New York in order to appreciate Alice's genius, why on earth does she permit her books to be sold to us rubes in other places?); and, yes, the "I am woman, hear me roar" pseudo-feminist defense.  (Way to go, Alice!  Don't let that servant of the patriarchy who, um, happens to also be female, silence you!)

The received wisdom for writers is that you don't respond to negative reviews, and Alice's tweets from yesterday show the reason why:  it makes you look really pathetic.

Even more pathetic is the hackneyed non-apology she issued today, via a publicist, because apparently, after urging the reading public to harass her reviewer, she's taken her ball and gone home--she's deleted her twitter accounts, and the contact info on her website leads you only to agents and publicists.  Because we should apparently harass reviewers, but not authors. 

"I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that’s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone and I’m truly sorry if I did.”

Tip!  Here's how you spot a fake apology:  it says "I'm sorry if" not "I'm sorry that."  She's not sorry that she asked fans to harass the reviewer, she's not sorry that she said crappy things about Boston, she's not sorry that she acted like a two-year-old.  She's only sorry if any of this offended anyone. 

Not to worry, Alice!  I'm not offended!  But I am sorry if I won't be reading any of your books in the future.

Battle of the Idiots

If you've been paying attention to real news for some reason, you may have missed the Perez Hilton vs. Will.i.am throwdown.

In brief, they had words, and Perez claims that somebody in Mr. I.am's entourage punched him in the face.  Seems pretty clear that somebody punched him in the face, but of course Will denies that part.

Aside from occasioning a number of really lame "Boom Boom Pow" jokes, this little dust-up provoked two stupid, self-serving videos from the principals.  Here's Perez's video . If you can make it through all 11 minutes, you must have even less of a life than I do.  And here's Will.i.am's , which is shorter, but which I still couldn't watch all of.

I have no opinion about whether this happened like either of these guys say it did--they each cast themselves as the rational, calm one while the other one was out of control. 

I do want to take issue with something in Perez's video, though.  He goes on and on and on about how people can say anything they want, but no one should ever hit anyone. 

I agree about the whole violence is wrong part, but I'm not sure that there's as hard of a boundary between verbal violence and physical violence as Perez suggests.  If you look at Perez in his video, he's hurt, angry, and humiliated.  It's not the pain of his clearly very minor injuries that sticks with him--it's the humiliation. 

Do you think anyone has ever felt such humiliation upon seeing their doctored photo on Perez's site, accompanied by his bitchy prose?  I do not think he deserved to get punched, but I don't think you can make a career out of hurting people and then suddenly get all shocked when you get hurt. 

Words are powerful.  Nobody would write if they didn't believe this.  I think most people, other than those who have been the victim of serious violent crimes, of course, would tell you that the hurts they still feel most keenly even after years have elapsed have come from things people have said to them.

I say this as a former bully--since I was physically small and weak, I thought of myself as a victim, when actually my nasty, sarcastic mouth inflicted a lot of emotional harm on people. I couldn't have beaten anyone up, at least not anyone in my general age bracket, but that doesn't mean I didn't hurt people. 

Again, I'm not justifying anybody punching anybody.  I'm just saying that people who use words to hurt people really can't get high and mighty about how moral they are in comparison to people who use fists to hurt people.

Well, ten days since my last post! Both of my loyal readers must be wondering what's happening!

Not much, which may be why I'm not blogging much.  My writing seems to go in a feast or famine cycle--either I'm working on 2 books, 2 blog entries, and an essay all at once, or I've got nothing much going on.

Also, it may well be that twitter is killing my blogging.   It's actually somewhat challenging to me--it turns out that many things I want to tell the world can, in fact, be boiled down to 140 characters, which calls into question this entire blogging enterprise. (wanna follow me on twitter?  all the cool kids are doing it!)

Or possibly I'm still smarting from arguing with a humorless zealot on the interwebs.  Which is of course like banging your head against a brick wall--the wall doesn't care, and it feels good when you stop.

It may also be the fact that my dog has been recovering from surgery.  I often find myself talking to fellow dog walkers about various pop cultural phenomena, and those ideas often make it into the blog

Or maybe I'm just lazy.

Anyway, enough metablogging. 

My wife and I sat down to watch The Bad Seed the other night, and may I say, holy crap, what a movie!  (Here is the trailer, which apparently predates the idea that trailers should make you want to see the movie.  Still, it will give you a lil' taste of the flavor of the movie)

Now, I've seen evil kid movies before, but this one really took me by surprise because of the psychological realism.  So it's not enough that the evil titular character kills a classmate (in a fashion most awesomely cruel that only comes out at the end)--we actually see the dead kid's mom, half-mad with booze and grief, show up and spill her raw emotions all over the place. 

This was actually a bit hard for me to watch--it poked me in uncomfortable parental places--but it impressed the hell out of me because it was fundamentally more serious than a lot of movies like this. Most movies that involve death don't really deal with the messy grieving process of the people left behind, and this one did.

Adding to the psychological realism was the way the mom dealt with discovering that her kid was a sociopath.  She was genuinely tormented and never stopped loving the kid, which also felt authentic. 

Great performances and far less stilted acting than you often see in old movies,and the music is great--they use the little angel's piano practice melody to great and creepy effect.

Yes, there are some quibbles--long, dull scenes discussing the possibility of children being  born bad, which were interesting only in a historical sense--they really show how different our understanding of things like that is now.  A couple of characters talk about how it's just complete hogwash to imagine that anything other than environment is involved in shaping character, and this newfangled idea that heredity might be involved is just crazy.

And--SPOILER-- the last three minutes of the movie should really be chopped out.  It's clear that because it was 1956, they were afraid to have evil triumphant at the end of the movie as it obviously should be.  Again, it shows what a different world this movie takes place in.  After decades of movies where the bad guy lives to fight another day, or evil triumphs entirely, we're used to the idea, but apparently it was so shocking in 1956 that they actually had to have an almost literal Deus Ex Machina ending, as the Bad Seed (her name was Rhoda, but that name will always belong to Valerie Harper in my mind) is struck by lightning, as though the presence of such evil in the world was such an abomination that the Lord himself decided to eliminate her.

Fight to the Death!

Finally just finished Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games.  I've written before about its similarity to Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, but now that I've read them both, it's time to throw them into the arena for a head to head battle to the death.  Only one book survives! (And may I add, man, this would be a lot easier if I knew how to do columns on this blog.)

Round One:  Originality

Battle Royale, a tale of teens forced to fight each other to the death in a dystopian future by a totalitarian government, hits print in 1999.

The Hunger Games, a tale of teens forced to fight each other to the death in a dystopian future by a totalitarian government, arrives in 2009. 

Battle Royale 1, Hunger Games 0

Round Two: Characters

Battle Royale features cardboard characters who never seem real.

Hunger Games features skillfully drawn, interesting, three dimensional characters.

Battle Royale 1, Hunger Games 1.  (ooh, this is getting interesting!)

Round Three: Prose Styling

Battle Royale is so poorly written it's hard not to cringe on every page. Wooden dialogue abounds, and the book features this, the single worst simile I've ever read.  During a car chase, "The truck spun around like a car in a car chase." 

Hunger Games is very well written throughout, thus allowing the reader to get lost in the story and not be distracted by the colossal ineptitude of the prose styling.

Battle Royale 1, Hunger Games 2!

Round Four: Moral Quandaries.

Battle Royale:  I've said this before , but one of the things I most admired about this book was the way in which it made all of the things that merely seem like life-or-death issues to 14-year-olds actually be life-or-death issues.  Since it's a class that's been together for years that is forced to fight to the death, all the alliances and old hurts resulting from crushes and tween/teen cliquishness become key to the action.

Hunger Games: Overall, I felt that the main characters never really have to confront the moral quandaries involved in what they are doing. Through a variety of plot contrivances, the kills we see end up fairly clean from a moral perspective.  I think this is a missed opportunity.

Battle Royale 2, Hunger Games 2!

Round Five: Gore

Battle Royale: Incredible, stomach-churning gore all over the place.  Every kill described in vivid, technicolor, blood-spattered detail. To the point where it's over the top and starts to seem like a desperate plea for attention on the part of the author.

Hunger Games: Some descriptions of wounds dripping pus, but, overall, the book is pretty clean.  I think this is actually a weakness--I think killing should be gross.  I think the violence is a little too clean, which makes it somewhat dishonest.

No points awarded this round.

Battle Royale 2, Hunger Games 2!

Round Five: Editing

Battle Royale, despite taking place over three days, clocks in at a staggering 624 pages.  It's just way way too long.

Hunger Games: A comparatively trim 374 pages

Battle Royale 2, Hunger Games 3!

Round Six: Putdownability

Battle Royale:  Definitely a compelling read, but I had to take a lot of breaks, primarily to rest my brain from all the bad writing.

Hunger Games: Compelling doesn't even begin to cover it.  I read this faster than I've read books half as long.  I simply couldn't put it down.

Battle Royale 2, Hunger Games 4!

Round Seven:  Sequel Hunger

Battle Royale: Ends with definite sequel potential, but I really don't think I would pick up the sequel.  Without the kill-or-be-killed scenario that carries this book, I don't think you'd have much left.

Hunger Games: The sequel, Catching Fire, is already making the rounds in advance reader copies.  I can't wait to pick it up and find out what happens next.

Battle Royale 2, Hunger Games 5!

The Victor:  The Hunger Games!

And so, with the sun setting over the arena where our books had been unjustly shipped to battle to the death, Hunger Games stood victorious over the immobile body of Battle Royale. Hunger Games pulled out its knife and sliced Battle Royale open, pulling the steaming intestines from its abdomen.  With deliberate cruelty, it unwound the intestines and streteched them tight, then wrapped them around Battle Royale's windpipe and slowly squeezed the life out of the unworthy book.

The Hunger Games stood over the bloody corpse of its dead opponent and loosed a cry to the heavens.  A cry of triumph, certainly, but also of pain at the horror it had been forced to endure, and of impotent rage at the authorities that had forced it to become something it never wanted to:   a cold-blooded murderer.

Hey, that was fun!  Let's do it again sometime!  Suggest other competitors if you have some good ideas!