A Bountiful History

Well, I'm back to the world of non-fiction once again! After a few days of reading American Heritage magazine, I decided to launch into a book I bought years ago and had started reading before putting it aside. It's a history entitled The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander, published in 2003.

It got good reviews when it came out, and I agree that it's well written and interesting. So far it seems to be an account that will be more sympathetic toward Captain Bligh. But whether this is an objective account or biased toward Captain Bligh, I'll find out soon enough.

The story starts at the end, with a description of the aftermath of the mutiny, when the survivors get back to England and the king sends a ship out to search for the culprits and bring them to justice.  Where it will go from there, I'm eager to learn.

As ever, I'll let you know what I think.

The Book with the Multiple Mysteries

This week, I decided to leave off reading the film book and begin a murder mystery. I chose one of the novels by Stieg Larsson that have become quite popular in recent years, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. Though it was slow going at first, after a couple of chapters I was quite involved. I'm pretty sure it was the appearance of the "girl" of the title that made my interest pick up. It was quite a good read, which is why I've already finished it, despite its length of 465 pages.

The Girl is a fairly standard murder mystery in that it presents the murder fairly early, with the detective trying out various possible theories and suspects until he homes in on the culprit who is brought to justice at the end. But the original crime isn't the only one being detected over the course of the novel; new plot threads are added as the narrative continues, and each one has to be "unknotted" by the time the novel ends.

The plot is no more complicated than the characters, however. Each of the major characters change over the course of the novel, growing in some ways but not in others. At the end, it seems fairly certain that readers will not be seeing the last of Blomqvist and Salander, not to mention some of the other characters who feature prominently in this story.

I spent most of the novel wondering why it was titled as it was. I still haven't figured that out yet, but maybe after the next one in this series I will know.

Some of you may know that the author, Stieg Larsson, died of a heart attack in 2004. At the time of his death, none of the books he is now famous for were published. During his life, he was a very controversial figure who was openly Communist but also an anti-Nazi activist who received many death threats. You can read a biography at Wikipedia: Stieg Larsson.

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo was definitely an engrossing book. I recommend it highly!

Not Simply a Movie

Well, I've gotten through more chapters of How to Read a Film, and I've learned some things I didn't know about film.  Chapter 2, about the technical aspects of film, was quite informative. I had no idea producing a film was so complex! So much goes into the finished product, so much to take into account: the film, the camera, the merging of sound and image, the recording of sound, the lighting, the frame, the lens, the shot, the editing and mixing, the projector.  It's mind boggling!

Of course, that's just the technical end of things.  It doesn't include the human factors: the writers, directors, cinematographers, actors, and the many other professionals who create the film.

Making a film comes down to three things, according to James Monaco: choosing what to shoot, how to shoot it, and how to present what you've shot.  But getting there involves much more technology, many more people and much more time than other art forms that are not nearly so technologically intense.

For instance, staging a play seems a fairly simple affair when compared to producing a film, even a play with elaborate sets and costumes, mainly because the technology of a film is so much more complex. 

If you need an example, witness the difficulties of staging Spider Man on the Broadway stage.  It was scheduled to open around Thanksgiving, but they still can't get the production finished and it's nearly Valentine's Day!  The estimated opening date is now March 15.  Though not yet open, Spider Man is already the most expensive Broadway show ever produced. And all because of the many technical problems associated with scenes that were routine for the film's producers. And then there's the danger of recreating Spider Man's antics live.  A number of people have been badly hurt trying to do the stunts.

I think Spider Man's producers and its preview audiences have come to the same conclusions I have: 1) a stageplay is not a movie and never can be; and 2) we don't appreciate all that goes into bringing a movie to an audience, especially these days when with just a few clicks we can see just about any movie we want.

In fact, I was wondering what James Monaco, the author of How to Read a Film thinks of YouTube and its impact on movie making today.

Speaking for myself, I worry what YouTube is doing to how we think about quality films.  It seems that everyone is making a movie and putting it on the world wide web for all to see, but most of those movies are, frankly speaking, crap.  Making a great movie takes more than turning on your video camera or worse, your cheap digital camera, or worst of all, your cell phone's camera and pointing it at some mundane or crudely contrived activity, imagining that you're creating great art.

On the other hand, YouTube also brings us the quality films: old silent films, art-house films, foreign films and obscure films that we might not get to see anywhere else because they're no longer screened or made into videos, as well as the mainstream films (in segments) that you can pick up at the video store or on TV.

And YouTube is not the only outlet for such films. There are other places that will allow us to view films, even in their entirety, such as the many websites that make public domain films available on line. So aspiring filmmakers have many examples of quality films to study and strive to emulate.

But even for those of us who just want to enjoy a good movie, knowing something about how it all comes together just for us helps, I think, to make us appreciate the movie even more.

Moving On: From Reading Stories to Reading Films

I finally finished reading the twenty stories in Best Short Stories of 1990.  I only liked about six of them, I'm afraid.  The stories I liked were straight forward with a satisfying conclusion and characters who were sympathetic in some way.  Of those I haven't talked about yet, here are the ones I liked: "Nothing to Ask For," by Dennis McFarland, about a man who visits a friend dying from AIDS; "Wigtime," by Alice Munro, about two women friends; and "In a Father's Place," by Christopher Tilghman, about how the catalyst of a son's controlling girlfriend changes a father's relationship with his children and his past.

I'm thinking this is not the way to read these books--all at once, I mean.  In the future, I think I might just pick one out once in a while as a change of pace from reading a novel or a non-fiction book.

In the meantime, I've started reading a new book, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia, by James Monaco.  I have the 2000 edition, but there's a new one out, published in 2009. Both are available on Amazon.com. 

It's intended to be a textbook, apparently, having been written as a result of the author's teaching film at the New School for Social Research in New York City.  It's a very comprehensive discussion of film, including its history and technical aspects.  I've always wanted to learn more about the art and technique of filmmaking, and I figured: why not start now?

So far I've read the first chapter, covering "Film as an Art," and part of Chapter 2, which gets into the technology of film.  Chapter 1 is an interesting overview, but I was particularly struck by James Monaco's idea that abstract painting started in part as a response to the availability of photographic images.  Once people could take a photo, they no longer needed someone to paint the world around them as a way of recording the phenomenon.  Painters were then free to interpret the image rather than merely reproduce it.  It's an interesting idea, although I'm not sure I entirely buy it as an explanation of abstract art. 

Another important point made in Chapter 1 is that paintings and even photographs are static forms, unlike novels or stories, narratives which move forward in time.  Film seems to have features of both media.  Not only is it visual, like a painting, but it is also narrative, like a novel.  Both are important, I think, for a film to be successful, something movie makers occasionally forget, especially these days, when special effects are so popular with audiences.  The second trilogy of the Star Wars series are examples of that mistake.

In Chapter 2, the author gets into talking about image and sound and how those aspects of film can be used to create various effects.  It's interesting and will be helpful in my understanding of how films do what they do.

I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to stick with this book--after all, it's not a narrative and is kind of slow-going, but I'll keep you posted on how I do and share what I learn from it and how well I think it's presenting the material.  I also intend to look at films to see examples of what is being discussed, so I'll probably be talking about those films too.  So stay tuned!