The Road ***

By Cormac McCarthy
Copyright 2006
Published By Alfred A. Knopf
Pages 241.

This is dark, dark stuff, but it's great. Basically it's a post-apocalyptic book. The interesting thing is that it's done from the viewpoint of the protagonists who are a father and son trying to make it south, where it's warmer and to the sea.

There is no explanation of why the apocalypse happened or how it happened. The only thing that the reader knows is everything is burnt and they are living in a world of ashes where there are no living things. All is dead except for a very small handful of survivors. The lack of food, remember there is no plant or animal life, makes their situation particularly grim and hopeless. In fact hopelessness is pretty much the theme here. There is no escape from certain death for the father and son, and certain extinction for mankind and the Earth itself.

The hopelessness is oppressive. What little hope there is is usually crushed. There are a few holes or errors in the narrative. For instance, I can't imagine that no plant life had survived if some animal life had survived. And even if everything was killed, wouldn't there be seeds buried in the ground that could sprout later? The book never tells us if this destruction is worldwide or only regional. Perhaps there are people living in other continents or even in more distant parts of the U.S. How could flames engulf an entire world and still have survivors? But those are flaws, and perhaps glimmers of hope that the author does not directly state, that we have accept as part of the narrative if we want to enjoy the book. A suspension of belief. It is after all a post-apocalyptic story, so some suspension of believe is always required.

Besides this is really a story of a man and his son and the love they have for each other even in the most hopeless and severest of situations. The grim setting amplifies these feelings of love for each other that the characters have. The father is very clear in his desire to do anything to protect and feed his son. He'll kill to protect his son. Note how I said kill and not murder. Through out the whole book, the father and son are trying to be the "good guys". They are trying to civil in a world gone horribly awry.

There is a movie coming out and I am very excited by it. I read that Nick Cave is doing the Soundtrack. On that basis a lone this will be a must see film.

here is an interview with Oprah. By the way this was an OOprah Book Club book. Interesting choice for Oprah.



And here is a trailer for the upcoming movie.

The Hurt Locker ***

Directed by Katherine Bigelow.
Written by Mark Boal.
With Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lily
Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, Christian Carmargo, Suhail Aldabbach, Sam Sprell.
Released July 2009
Seen in Theater

I liked this film - a lot! But I'm looking for that something extra, that something that will put this film over the top into 4 star levels, and I can't. It's directed by one of my favorite directors - Katherine Bigelow, who also directed one of my all time favorite films "Near Dark", about punk rock cowboy vampires.

The movie's intense, in that there is a lot of tension. I am on the edge of my seat almost the whole time, especailly during the combat scenes. The action scenes were well shot and the acting was well....acted. So perhaps I should give a summary so that I can explain the "tension" idea a little more.

The Movie centers around a bomb squad that defuses IEDs in Iraq. Every moment in the easy half dozen scenes is frought with worry or concern. Of course one worry is whether the bomb will go off. But there are also hostile Iraqi's observing who can shoot at them or ignite the bomb themselves. Add to this the arrival of a new bomb expert that has a gung-ho cowboy attitude and the tension mounts even more. His colleagues are sure that they are endangering not only himself, but their own lives when he refuses to follow protocol.

So I''m looking for some thematic ideas here, and there is only one that Bigelow makes fairly obvious. That is that these men are addicted to the rush of adrenalin. The new bomb expert is the one who epitomizes this idea. That's why he behaves as he does. Of course war is hell, but that doesn't really need to be mentioned for its obviousness. That's it. Basically this is a film about men in combat and how it feels - and in that sense, the film does quite well. But it doesn't really seem to have anything more to say.

Bigelow is know for her extraordinary lighting effects. In this one, it's a scene in which the men are investigating a bomb after it had exploded. It is night time and it looks like Dante's inferno with flames and fire in the night sky. There are some powerful shots in this scene.

Bigelow being a woman and an action director, usuallly has strong female lead. All the major characters here are all men. No strong female lead. I wonder why. It could have just been the material, but there are woman in the military, so certainly she could have included one.

Here's a clip.

Moon ***

Directed by Duncan Jones.
Released 2009 - seen in theater.
Written by Duncan Jones, screenplay by Nathan Parker
With Sam rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Matt Berry, Robin Chalk,


I really enjoyed this movie. It's a science fiction film, but it is more like the sci-fi films of the 70's. More about psychological drama and less about aliens and explosions.

The plot is a little convoluted, especially since the film reveals information in a rascally way. It only lets you know things when it wants you to know. That said, the film is not that hard to follow.

An energy company has found that they are able to obtain fuel from Moon rocks. Something to do with their ability to absorb energy from the sun. The actual science is besides the point of the story. All that we need to know is that there is a worker, Sam, that works the operation, seemingly alone, which is in my opinion a plot flaw because I would think that they would want more than one person and a computer, voice by Kevin Spacey, to operate such a large operation. But I'm ready to suspend belief for the sake of the film.

So Sam has a three year contract and is excited to go home to see his wife and child back on Earth. He begins to have visions and his sanity is beginning to unravel, and so it would since he's been alone for three years now. When he's out in his lunar vehicle, he has a vision of a woman out on the moon scape, (his wife or daughter) and crashes because he's so distracted.

He wakes up in the infirmary. He wants to go check on one of the energy collectors, but the computer won't let him. He fools the computer into letting him outside and comes across the crashed lunar vehicle. He finds the man (himself) injured in the vehicle and brings him back to base.

So now there are two Sams on ship, one that is injured and one that is healthy and fresh. Clones. It takes them a while, but eventually they figure out that they are clones, and that they all have the memory of the original Sam "injected" into their memories. It turns out that the corporation has grown clones to work the moon, so when the 3 years are up, they wake up a new clone. Of course, we know that clones are human beings and not robots and the two are quite distressed and the rest of the film is the two Sams trying to figure out what to do.

Kevin Spacey has a nice part of the computer voice with an ability to show human emotions - demonstrated by emoticons on his screen. He's like a Hal from 2001 Space Odyssey, but he turns out to be nicer.

A highly recommended film.


A trailer of the film...