I sometimes, in my perverse way, would name Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu as my favorite film stars. They both appeared as regular cast members in the films of Ozu, a great director who, once again, is little known in this country I say "once again" because there was a brief period in the 70's when he was known to most film lovers. In 1972 Tokyo Story was shown at The New Yorker Theatre and there were lines around the block, as well as a rapturous review of the film by Roger Greenspun in The New York Times. In Japanese film I was originally attracted to the films of Akira Kurosawa, gradually found my way to the intensely emotional period dramas of Kenji Mizoguchi and only came later to the extraordinary films of Yasujiro Ozu.
Just recently Setsuko Hara died, at the age of 95. She made six films with Ozu and basically retired after the last one, The End of Summer in 1961. She reminded me of Deanna Durbin, who made her last film at the age of 27 and died in France in 2013 at 92 and Greta Garbo, who also was reclusive from her last film at the age of 36 until her death at 85. Setsuko Hara never married or had children; the same was true of Ozu himself. But in their films together they portrayed the dilemmas of post-war Japanese families, especially those of women who were combining careers with family. In Tokyo Story parents leave their rural area to visit their children in Tokyo, children who now have their own prosperous lives and are too busy to spend much time with their parents. The burden falls on Setsuko Hara, the widow of the son who died in the war, who always has a radiant and understanding smile. Her father-in-law, played by Chishu Ryu, usually replies with "hmmm" to most questions and, as is typical in Ozu's films, this can be said in many different ways with many different meanings.
One of the problems I originally had with Ozu was his intensely austere style, where the camera never moves and most shots are low-angles from the position of a tatami mat. This style was not instantly appealing to one who loves the tracking shots of Ophuls. But gradually I have come to appreciate this rigorous style, with the beauty of movement within the frame and the interludes of so-called "pillow shots," -- non-narrative shots of trains, landscapes, empty rooms and, one of Ozu's favorites, clothes hanging on a clothesline --, that calm one between scenes and emphasize the environment within which the characters live. There are also many ellipses in Ozu's style, where events are discussed both before and after but never actually shown, something those who focus on narrative cause-and-effect may find disconcerting but which I find compelling and involving, in the way that Godard once said that the best movies take place halfway between the viewer and the screen.
Many Ozu films are now available on DVD and I also recommend two useful books:
Ozu's Tokyo Story, edited by David Desser (Cambridge University Press, 1997). It even includes a fascinating essay by Arthur Nolletti, Jr comparing Tokyo Story with Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow.
Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer by Paul Schrader (U. of Cal. Press, 1972)
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Turner Classic Movies in Dec.
Of course there are a number of movies in Dec. that are about Christmas; I'll mention the ones I have seen and liked but please feel free to indulge yourself in others if you care to do so. I do realize that some people do not like Christmas and avoid it to the extent one can in this day and age.
Dec. 3 there is Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941), beautifully adapted from Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, with a particularly moving performance by Joan Bennett.
On Dec. 5 there are two dark films about Hollywood: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, both from 1950 and both about the marginalization of scriptwriters.
On the 8th are Don Siegel's Gun Runners (1958) and Samuel Fuller's Crimson Kimono (1959). The first is the third version of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and best in the action scenes; the latter is indicative of Fuller's interest in Asia and best in the emotional scenes.
Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past is on Dec. 9th. It is one of the very best of films noir.
On the 10th are several films by Claude Chabrol, a French director of bourgeois tragedy, strongly influenced by Hitchcock (about whom he and Eric Rohmer wrote a book) and Lang. My favorite in this group is La Ceremonie (1995), more or less from a Ruth Rendell novel.
Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1941) is showing on Dec. 11; Judy Garland sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
On Dec. 12 is Lubitsch's richly funny and poignant Heaven Can Wait and on the 13th is Charles David's Lady on the Train (1945), with a lovely performance by the largely-forgotten Deanna Durbin. On the 14th is Ingmar Bergman's intense Summer with Monika and on the 15th Chaplin's beautiful The Circus (1928).
On the 18th is Remember the Night, written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitch Leisen; it's a dark and amusing film about the holidays.
On the 19th is Lubitsch's brilliant The Shop Around the Corner, with a holiday motif, and Frank Borzage's moving and downbeat The Mortal Storm (1940), about the rise of Nazism.
On the 20th is John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) and two by Eric Rohmer: My Night at Maud's (1969, which I stood in line for, in the rain, at the 68th St Playhouse when it came out) and La Collectionneuse (1967).
There are several Hitchcocks being shown in Dec., of which I like Under Capricorn (1949) the best, for its mobile camera and gorgeous color. It's showing on Dec. 22.
On the 25th is John Ford's Three Godfathers, an allegory about the three wise men and an unusual Ford Western that was not filmed in Monument Valley. Also on the 25 is Chaplin's The Kid (1921, with Jackie Coogan), his first feature.
On the 26th is Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance (1937), my favorite of the Astaire-Rogers films. The Music is by George and Ira Gershwin and the dancing is lovely.
Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957) is on Dec. 27 and on the 30th are two of Minnelli's dream-like melodramas: Two Weeks in Another Town(1962) and Some Came Running(1958).
Dec. 3 there is Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941), beautifully adapted from Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, with a particularly moving performance by Joan Bennett.
On Dec. 5 there are two dark films about Hollywood: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, both from 1950 and both about the marginalization of scriptwriters.
On the 8th are Don Siegel's Gun Runners (1958) and Samuel Fuller's Crimson Kimono (1959). The first is the third version of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and best in the action scenes; the latter is indicative of Fuller's interest in Asia and best in the emotional scenes.
Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past is on Dec. 9th. It is one of the very best of films noir.
On the 10th are several films by Claude Chabrol, a French director of bourgeois tragedy, strongly influenced by Hitchcock (about whom he and Eric Rohmer wrote a book) and Lang. My favorite in this group is La Ceremonie (1995), more or less from a Ruth Rendell novel.
Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1941) is showing on Dec. 11; Judy Garland sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
On Dec. 12 is Lubitsch's richly funny and poignant Heaven Can Wait and on the 13th is Charles David's Lady on the Train (1945), with a lovely performance by the largely-forgotten Deanna Durbin. On the 14th is Ingmar Bergman's intense Summer with Monika and on the 15th Chaplin's beautiful The Circus (1928).
On the 18th is Remember the Night, written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitch Leisen; it's a dark and amusing film about the holidays.
On the 19th is Lubitsch's brilliant The Shop Around the Corner, with a holiday motif, and Frank Borzage's moving and downbeat The Mortal Storm (1940), about the rise of Nazism.
On the 20th is John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) and two by Eric Rohmer: My Night at Maud's (1969, which I stood in line for, in the rain, at the 68th St Playhouse when it came out) and La Collectionneuse (1967).
There are several Hitchcocks being shown in Dec., of which I like Under Capricorn (1949) the best, for its mobile camera and gorgeous color. It's showing on Dec. 22.
On the 25th is John Ford's Three Godfathers, an allegory about the three wise men and an unusual Ford Western that was not filmed in Monument Valley. Also on the 25 is Chaplin's The Kid (1921, with Jackie Coogan), his first feature.
On the 26th is Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance (1937), my favorite of the Astaire-Rogers films. The Music is by George and Ira Gershwin and the dancing is lovely.
Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957) is on Dec. 27 and on the 30th are two of Minnelli's dream-like melodramas: Two Weeks in Another Town(1962) and Some Came Running(1958).
Friday, November 20, 2015
What's Opera, Doc?
I must confess that I have never seen a full-length animated film that I did not find tedious and claustrophobic but I do enjoy Looney Tunes --each of which is about six minutes -- with my four-year-old daughter. One of her favorites -- and mine -- is What's Opera, Doc?, directed by Chuck Jones at Warner Brothers in 1957. Jones collaborated on this cartoon with designer Maurice Noble and voice artist Mel Blanc. And he used, quite intelligently, music from six different Wagner operas, even some lovely dance music to which Elmer Fudd (as Siegfried) and Bugs Bunny (as Brunhilde) do a pas de deux. Jones is able to parody and pay tribute (the best parodies come from admiration) to opera, ballet, and Wagner quite efficiently and effectively in a mere six minutes! The Wagnerian universe of the film is beautifully designed (including a lovely plump horse on which Brunhilde rides) and directed, with the only contemporary reference (which Jones generally avoids) being when Siegfried calls down not only earthquakes and hurricanes, but also smog. Jones always had an operatic streak in him and this is not his first cartoon with an unhappy ending.
I did want to briefly mention Preston Sturges's brilliant dark comedy, Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which, like What's Opera, Doc?, uses the overture from Wagner's Tannhauser for emotional effect; I'll be writing about that film later. Both Sturges's film and Jones's cartoon were little appreciated or understood in their time. What's Opera, Doc? is available on YouTube.
I did want to briefly mention Preston Sturges's brilliant dark comedy, Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which, like What's Opera, Doc?, uses the overture from Wagner's Tannhauser for emotional effect; I'll be writing about that film later. Both Sturges's film and Jones's cartoon were little appreciated or understood in their time. What's Opera, Doc? is available on YouTube.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
The Prowler. directed by Joseph Losey
The Prowler (1951), like other of Losey's American films, shows the dark side of the American dream: the willingness to do anything to get the money, the car, the house, etc. Van Heflin is the cop who lost his college scholarship and is bitter about life. He kills Evelyn Keyes's husband for the money in a faked accident, letting her think it was for love, and uses the money to buy his dream business of a motel in Las Vegas, where the cars and trucks pass by on the highway just outside. When Keyes announces she is several months pregnant Van Heflin realizes that this will reveal the affair that predates the murder and they go to a ghost town to have the baby on their own, where disaster strikes when there are problems with the pregnancy.
The Prowler was the last film photographed by Arthur Miller, a distinguished cinematographer who had worked with John Ford and Fritz Lang. It is ironic that the screenplay was worked on by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, since after Losey made this film he left for Europe, with HUAC on his heels; it was less important that he was a communist than that he had worked with Bertold Brecht in the theatre. Losey's theatre experience shows in his ability to create complex shots without cuts and his ability to use space --from a luxury house to a bedsitter to a shack in a ghost town -- in a film with only two main characters. Losey's film is an unusual film noir, with its emphasis on choice rather than fate and a psychopath on the police force who appears almost normal.
The Prowler was the last film photographed by Arthur Miller, a distinguished cinematographer who had worked with John Ford and Fritz Lang. It is ironic that the screenplay was worked on by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, since after Losey made this film he left for Europe, with HUAC on his heels; it was less important that he was a communist than that he had worked with Bertold Brecht in the theatre. Losey's theatre experience shows in his ability to create complex shots without cuts and his ability to use space --from a luxury house to a bedsitter to a shack in a ghost town -- in a film with only two main characters. Losey's film is an unusual film noir, with its emphasis on choice rather than fate and a psychopath on the police force who appears almost normal.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
You Know Who Killed Me by Loren Estleman
You sit you watch, you smoke, you listen. Doors open, doors close. Cars pull into the lot, cars pull out. A pigeon pecks at the ants crawling over a box from Wendy's. A hole opens in the overcast, lighter-covered clouds drifting from one side of it to the other, morphing into different shapes, a celestial Rorschach. Doors open, doors close.
--Loren D. Estleman, You Know Who Killed Me (Tom Doherty Associates, 2014).
This is the twenty-fourth in Estleman's series about Detroit private eye Amos Walker (I wrote about the previous book on July 1,2014). Estleman is one of the last to write this kind of energetic pulp: Ross Macdonald, John D, McDonald, Raymond Chandler, etc. are all gone. Walker is one of the old-fashioned detectives, doing a lot of legwork and stakeouts in the search for a killer. Walker barely knows how to use a computer but is smart enough to know those who can and he has many useful contacts from his long career.
This novel is written in the first person, so one only knows what Walker knows, learning it as he does. He follows gangsters, and federal agents follow him as Walker, fresh from rehab, struggles with addiction to pills caused by injuries in a shootout. There is a femme fatale, of course, one of the agents who follows him, whose "legs hadn't suffered from sitting behind a desk." As usual, Walker has no luck with women, though he was married and divorced. When he finally finds the killer, through hard work and intelligent investigation, he goes home alone to drink coffee, which keeps him from sleeping. I was running out of substances to abuse.
--Loren D. Estleman, You Know Who Killed Me (Tom Doherty Associates, 2014).
This is the twenty-fourth in Estleman's series about Detroit private eye Amos Walker (I wrote about the previous book on July 1,2014). Estleman is one of the last to write this kind of energetic pulp: Ross Macdonald, John D, McDonald, Raymond Chandler, etc. are all gone. Walker is one of the old-fashioned detectives, doing a lot of legwork and stakeouts in the search for a killer. Walker barely knows how to use a computer but is smart enough to know those who can and he has many useful contacts from his long career.
This novel is written in the first person, so one only knows what Walker knows, learning it as he does. He follows gangsters, and federal agents follow him as Walker, fresh from rehab, struggles with addiction to pills caused by injuries in a shootout. There is a femme fatale, of course, one of the agents who follows him, whose "legs hadn't suffered from sitting behind a desk." As usual, Walker has no luck with women, though he was married and divorced. When he finally finds the killer, through hard work and intelligent investigation, he goes home alone to drink coffee, which keeps him from sleeping. I was running out of substances to abuse.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovitch
Some correspondents think I was too harsh on Peter Bogdanovitch's She's Funny That Way (see my post from yesterday). To me it wasn't that the movie was not funny - that can be very subjective --but that it was not serious, i.e., the best comedies are serious, they are about something. The deus ex machina at the end of Bogdanovitch's film demonstrated to me a complete lack of seriousness.
So I am here to celebrate Bogdanovitch's seriousness in Who the Devil Made It (Knopf, 1997), interviews with twenty directors of the classical era, all of whom are now dead. Bogdanovitch played an important role in bringing these directors to the public's attention and, because of him, their films were celebrated while they were still alive. John Ford is not included because Bogdanovitch's book about him is still in print (University of California Press,1968), but there is Hitchcock and Hawks, as well as Ulmer and Joseph H. Lewis. These interviews mostly appeared in obscure journals or books long out of print, so it is good that they are now all collected, providing a great deal of insight into the creative and financial aspects of the classical film, including lessons that Bogdanovitch ignored when he started making his own films (yes, it is different now). Even my four-year-old daughter's favorite director is included: Chuck Jones, who directed the justly celebrated Road Runner cartoons, as well as many of the best of Bugs Bunny, et al.
Bogdanovitch may or may not make additional films (he's now 75) but he played a crucial role, along with Andrew Sarris and others, of making us aware of the many great films that have already been made and encouraging us to seek them out.
So I am here to celebrate Bogdanovitch's seriousness in Who the Devil Made It (Knopf, 1997), interviews with twenty directors of the classical era, all of whom are now dead. Bogdanovitch played an important role in bringing these directors to the public's attention and, because of him, their films were celebrated while they were still alive. John Ford is not included because Bogdanovitch's book about him is still in print (University of California Press,1968), but there is Hitchcock and Hawks, as well as Ulmer and Joseph H. Lewis. These interviews mostly appeared in obscure journals or books long out of print, so it is good that they are now all collected, providing a great deal of insight into the creative and financial aspects of the classical film, including lessons that Bogdanovitch ignored when he started making his own films (yes, it is different now). Even my four-year-old daughter's favorite director is included: Chuck Jones, who directed the justly celebrated Road Runner cartoons, as well as many of the best of Bugs Bunny, et al.
Bogdanovitch may or may not make additional films (he's now 75) but he played a crucial role, along with Andrew Sarris and others, of making us aware of the many great films that have already been made and encouraging us to seek them out.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
She's Funny That Way or, What Happened to Peter Bogdanovitch?
She's Funny That Way is Peter Bogdanovitch's first film in seven years, his last one being a tedious documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. She's Funny That Way is something of a sequel to They All Laughed (1981), which Bogdanovitch distributed himself and on which he lost millions. The new film was co-written by Louise Stratten, the sister of Dorothy Stratten of They All Laughed, and Bogdanovitch's ex-wife. She's Funny That Way was originally titled Squirrels to the Nuts, based on something Charles Boyer says in Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (1946). It's too bad that Bogdanovitch does not have Lubitsch's skill at comic timing (an excerpt from Lubitsch's film is inserted at the end of Bogdanovitch's, though out-of-context it makes no sense). The one scene in Bogdanovitch's new film that could have been funny, where a cabdriver gets out of his cab and hails another one himself, needed better camera placement and timing.
Some of us once hoped that Bogdanovitch's success with The Last Picture Show (1971) might have led to more intelligent American films directed by critics and former critics, as happened in France. The problem with this was that Bogdanovitch was never actually a critic, he was a journalist. As a journalist he accomplished a great deal, bringing much-needed attention to classical directors in the sixties and programming films at The New Yorker Theatre and MoMA. He wrote books on Hawks, Ford, Lang, Dwan, Welles and published articles on everyone from Edgar Ulmer to Frank Tashlin. But these were mostly interview articles and books, wisely letting these directors speak for themselves. In 1969 I was at MoMA when Bogdanovitch introduced Alan Dwan at a retrospective of Dwan's films that considerably fueled my interest in classical cinema. But when it came to making films Bogdanovitch turned out not to have a great deal to say.
I haven't seen The Last Picture Show since it came out and it may hold up well. Bogdanovitch's first four films were somewhat impressive, but what Targets (1968),The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc (1972), Paper Moon (1973) all have in common is Polly Platt. She was Bogdanovitch's wife at the time and production designer on all four films. But once Bogdanovitch became obsessed with Cybill Shepherd his marriage broke up, Polly Platt was no longer his collaborator and Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975) were financial and artistic disasters. Bogdanovitch has struggled ever since, not helping himself by trying to sleep with every actress he directs.
Some of us once hoped that Bogdanovitch's success with The Last Picture Show (1971) might have led to more intelligent American films directed by critics and former critics, as happened in France. The problem with this was that Bogdanovitch was never actually a critic, he was a journalist. As a journalist he accomplished a great deal, bringing much-needed attention to classical directors in the sixties and programming films at The New Yorker Theatre and MoMA. He wrote books on Hawks, Ford, Lang, Dwan, Welles and published articles on everyone from Edgar Ulmer to Frank Tashlin. But these were mostly interview articles and books, wisely letting these directors speak for themselves. In 1969 I was at MoMA when Bogdanovitch introduced Alan Dwan at a retrospective of Dwan's films that considerably fueled my interest in classical cinema. But when it came to making films Bogdanovitch turned out not to have a great deal to say.
I haven't seen The Last Picture Show since it came out and it may hold up well. Bogdanovitch's first four films were somewhat impressive, but what Targets (1968),The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc (1972), Paper Moon (1973) all have in common is Polly Platt. She was Bogdanovitch's wife at the time and production designer on all four films. But once Bogdanovitch became obsessed with Cybill Shepherd his marriage broke up, Polly Platt was no longer his collaborator and Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975) were financial and artistic disasters. Bogdanovitch has struggled ever since, not helping himself by trying to sleep with every actress he directs.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Lee Child's Make Me; John Connolly's A Song of Shadows
"I leave people alone if they leave me alone. Their risk, not mine."
--Jack Reacher in Make Me (Delacorte Press, 2015)
To eradicate a little of the evil from the world, did you have to sacrifice something of your own goodness?
--A Song of Shadows (Atria, 2015)
Child and Connolly are two of my favorite genre writers these days. "Genre" is a word I am somewhat reluctant to use, since it is considered by some to denote a lower quality of writing. I do not lower my standards, however, and "genre" indicates to me, among other things, the use of a continuing character. But the writing in these two novels is of a higher quality than that of most "literary" novels these days: the use of a continuing character can be liberating. Robert Silverberg once complained to me that just because his (great) novel Dying Inside was about someone who could read minds it was confined to the science fiction section, which to him understandably made no sense.
The continuing character in Lee Child's novels is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who travels the country with little more than a toothbrush and, though he deliberately does not court trouble, trouble often finds him. He doesn't like to be pushed around and doesn't like to see others pushed around. In Make Me he ends up in the Midwest town of Mother's Rest in the middle of nowhere and is met at the train by a private investigator, Michelle Chang, who is searching for a missing colleague. As soon as the locals try to run Reacher out of town he becomes suspicious and teams up with Chang to find out what's going on. Chang's search for her missing operative sends her and Reacher to Oklahoma and Chicago and eventually back to Mother's Rest, where they find a particularly horrible internet scam in which most of the small town is involved. The detailed research Child portrays is fascinating and the insularity of small-town America is beautifully evoked. With each Reacher novel we learn more about him and in Make Me he is beginning to show genuine feeling for others. The only quibble I have with this novel is that we are only given pieces of what the townspeople are up to. It's good that we don't find out the details of the scheme until Reacher and Chang do but the menace seems only partly clear because of the selectivity. Generally with this kind of novel I find that the first-person is a more effective voice, as in Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald.
Charlie Parker is the continuing character in John Connolly's book (yes, Parker does like jazz). Parker doesn't seek out evil but evil seeks out him and there is an element of the supernatural in Connolly's books, as the shade of his murdered daughter haunts him. In A Song of Shadows Parker, recovering from a shooting, stumbles on a Nazi plot in Maine. Many of the best detective novels are strongly rooted in a particular place and Connolly's uses the details of Maine geography and history to convey a palpable sense of dread; the ocean is always nearby. As descendants of Holocaust victims try to bring the last living Nazis to justice, there are still many Nazi sympathizers who are willing to protect those Nazis who still survive by killing those who hunt them. Parker has a second wife and daughter who also live in New England but separately: his wife has left him because of the aura of violence that surrounds him, even though she remains sympathetic to what he does. Some of Connolly's previous Parker novels alternated first-person and third-person chapters, but this one is third-person throughout, giving us some needed objectivity.
--Jack Reacher in Make Me (Delacorte Press, 2015)
To eradicate a little of the evil from the world, did you have to sacrifice something of your own goodness?
--A Song of Shadows (Atria, 2015)
Child and Connolly are two of my favorite genre writers these days. "Genre" is a word I am somewhat reluctant to use, since it is considered by some to denote a lower quality of writing. I do not lower my standards, however, and "genre" indicates to me, among other things, the use of a continuing character. But the writing in these two novels is of a higher quality than that of most "literary" novels these days: the use of a continuing character can be liberating. Robert Silverberg once complained to me that just because his (great) novel Dying Inside was about someone who could read minds it was confined to the science fiction section, which to him understandably made no sense.
The continuing character in Lee Child's novels is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who travels the country with little more than a toothbrush and, though he deliberately does not court trouble, trouble often finds him. He doesn't like to be pushed around and doesn't like to see others pushed around. In Make Me he ends up in the Midwest town of Mother's Rest in the middle of nowhere and is met at the train by a private investigator, Michelle Chang, who is searching for a missing colleague. As soon as the locals try to run Reacher out of town he becomes suspicious and teams up with Chang to find out what's going on. Chang's search for her missing operative sends her and Reacher to Oklahoma and Chicago and eventually back to Mother's Rest, where they find a particularly horrible internet scam in which most of the small town is involved. The detailed research Child portrays is fascinating and the insularity of small-town America is beautifully evoked. With each Reacher novel we learn more about him and in Make Me he is beginning to show genuine feeling for others. The only quibble I have with this novel is that we are only given pieces of what the townspeople are up to. It's good that we don't find out the details of the scheme until Reacher and Chang do but the menace seems only partly clear because of the selectivity. Generally with this kind of novel I find that the first-person is a more effective voice, as in Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald.
Charlie Parker is the continuing character in John Connolly's book (yes, Parker does like jazz). Parker doesn't seek out evil but evil seeks out him and there is an element of the supernatural in Connolly's books, as the shade of his murdered daughter haunts him. In A Song of Shadows Parker, recovering from a shooting, stumbles on a Nazi plot in Maine. Many of the best detective novels are strongly rooted in a particular place and Connolly's uses the details of Maine geography and history to convey a palpable sense of dread; the ocean is always nearby. As descendants of Holocaust victims try to bring the last living Nazis to justice, there are still many Nazi sympathizers who are willing to protect those Nazis who still survive by killing those who hunt them. Parker has a second wife and daughter who also live in New England but separately: his wife has left him because of the aura of violence that surrounds him, even though she remains sympathetic to what he does. Some of Connolly's previous Parker novels alternated first-person and third-person chapters, but this one is third-person throughout, giving us some needed objectivity.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Royals Win World Series 2015
Frankly, it was a surprise that the Mets got as far as they did; few people expected them to be in the World Series this year and it's thanks to manager Terry Collins and general manager Sandy Alderson, who made some significant trades before the July deadline, that they did. The Royals played assertively and the Mets could not adjust, after defeating the lethargic Cubs in four straight games. For those of us who like runs being produced by singles, doubles and aggressive base running rather than the New York style (of both the Mets and the Yankees) of waiting for homeruns, the Royals were a beautiful team to watch, led by their stoic and heroic manager Ned Yost.
The Royals showed that the stolen base is not, as Joe Morgan and others have claimed, a lost art. What is something of a lost art now is the complete game, which once was common for pitchers. Now a starting pitcher is not expected to go much more than six innings and a closer only one (Goose Gossage, closer for the Yankees in the seventies and eighties, routinely went two or more innings and often came in the game with men on base), which means a team usually needs a seventh-inning guy and an eighth-inning guy and Terry Collins did not have dependable pitchers for those roles. In addition, closer Familia had already blown two saves in the World Series, so I do not blame Collins for leaving in Matt Harvey in the ninth, even after he gave up a walk.
The Mets have good starting pitching and some hitters, especially Curtis Granderson, who can hit with power. They need to improve their bullpen and their infield (which was not helped by the loss of Miguel Tejada in the series with the Dodgers) and learn to put the ball in play more, sometimes even by bunting.
The Royals showed that the stolen base is not, as Joe Morgan and others have claimed, a lost art. What is something of a lost art now is the complete game, which once was common for pitchers. Now a starting pitcher is not expected to go much more than six innings and a closer only one (Goose Gossage, closer for the Yankees in the seventies and eighties, routinely went two or more innings and often came in the game with men on base), which means a team usually needs a seventh-inning guy and an eighth-inning guy and Terry Collins did not have dependable pitchers for those roles. In addition, closer Familia had already blown two saves in the World Series, so I do not blame Collins for leaving in Matt Harvey in the ninth, even after he gave up a walk.
The Mets have good starting pitching and some hitters, especially Curtis Granderson, who can hit with power. They need to improve their bullpen and their infield (which was not helped by the loss of Miguel Tejada in the series with the Dodgers) and learn to put the ball in play more, sometimes even by bunting.
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