Mark Salzman "The Laughing Sutra"

Mark Salzman has lived and taught English in China in 1980s. He is best known for the autobiographical book "Iron and Silk" describing this period of his life. "The Laughing Sutra" is a fiction novel following the adventures of Hsun-ching - a Chinese orphan turned monk turned Red-guard-against-his-will turned vagabond - who travels to United States to retrieve a mythical "Laughing Sutra" for his old teacher/adoptive-father. The book is easy and fun to read, but does not pack a lot of punch. The adventures are too lightweight to make it an action novel. The deliberations about China and USA and their culture are too well-known and stereotypical to make it a treatise about the two cultures and societies. The fun elements are too infrequent to make it a funny book. The references to Buddhist teachings are mixed bag: some deep insights in the beginning coupled with what-was-he-thinking Laughing Sutra ending. The only truly interesting character is Colonel Sun, but even he is not fully developed, since he plays a secondary role. Fun light read, but not more. 6/10.

Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials"

"His Dark Materials" trilogy received praise from a lot of places and garnered quite a few of book awards. Since the movie is coming out sometime this year, I decided to read the books before the movie comes out. My overall impression though was mixed. First part of the first book is just boring. Even though Lyra - the main heroine - manages to stop an assassination in the very first chapter, the book loses its intensity and pacing immediately afterwards. We get quite a few pages of random juvenalia, which is probably supposed to be character building, but is just random child games instead. Only when Lyra has to run from Mrs. Coulter, the pacing improves again. The pacing problems are also apparent in other two books, for example, the middle of "The Amber Spyglass".

Couple more things that annoyed me in the first book were the superbad parent characters, the anti-Church stance, and steampunk world. Parent characters do not improve throughout the trilogy staying lifeless although with a few character twists. Anti-Church rhetoric continues too.

The strong parts of the book are friendship, love and freedom lines. It is quite weird though that the author after proclaiming Love almost the ultimate power and achievement, lets the books end the way they do. Yes, sure he wants to make a point, but his other points suffer.

For an atheistic book there are way too many deus ex machina moments. Angels and demons - literally - appear to save hopeless situations and it seems that the whole plot is dictated by some higher power. I almost expected to meet an old man feeding Oxford pond ducks (cf "Good Omens") in the very end.

With all that said, the books are worth reading just for Iorek Byrnison and maybe for Lyra and Will. It will be interesting to see how the movie is presented and if it will maintain the harsh antireligious position. Apparently Pullman is unhappy about the movie already, so it may have serious differences from the books.

Books 6.5/10. Movie - ?

Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower

I am a definite fan of Nancy Drew games. Although earlier games of the series were marked "For adventurous girls, 10 and up", Her Interactive apparently realized that the market is much wider and now marks the games "For mystery fans, 10 to Adult". The newer phrase hits the mark (pun intended): the series is great for anyone looking to play a classic Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple or Nancy Drew mystery. In the age when both movies and games have moved into the non-stop thriller and action plots, these harken to the earlier age when the crimes were committed with a twist of a key, a misleading word and a smile rather than with a shotgun and chainsaw. Sometimes it's really fun to get back into the middle of odd characters, each of which may have a motive for a crime. And to discover whodunit.

"Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower" is your typical Nancy Drew game. The setting is a mansion turned hotel in Wisconsin. Apparently the owner was your typical early century American, who pillaged European castles not only for artwork but for the whole towers wholesale. Well, maybe the positive side is that they escaped the World War II bombing.

The story is tied to the fortunes and misfortunes of Marie Antoinette. Anyone who has seen the recent movie (6/10), may guess at least some of the mysteries surrounding Marie's history. And even if you don't, by the end of the game Nancy will discover everything. The setting is nice, characters are sufficiently weird and phone conversations with Nancy's friends are as always hilarious. Don't get frozen outside! 7/10.

"Hairspray"

Great musical. The plot follows the aspirations of a short plus-size girl to get on a dance reality show and win the guy of her dreams in 1960's Baltimore. Not much of a plot, but the execution is practically flawless. It touches a lot of subjects: being different in body size, in skin color, in attitudes and occupations as well as parent-children relationships, and even parent-parent ones. And does it in a lightweight manner with almost non-stop singing and dancing, so the viewer is never bored, never being uncomfortable or embarrassed about what's happening in the movie. The hairdos, the behaviors are ridiculous and over top. It's still great. And even though Christopher Walken and John Travolta are cast in weird roles, it almost works.

I'm still humming one of the songs a day after I saw the movie. The only question is whether the songs will survive for another ten or twenty years, like "Grease" (10/10) or "Saturday Night Fever" (8/10). For now though we have 9/10.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

Minor spoilers ahead.

It is said that all good things must come to the end. I guess this is also one of the themes of the last 7th Harry Potter book. This time I decided to follow the masses and pre-order the book for release-day delivery. Now, after 10 hour marathon reading - and a good night's sleep ;) - here is the review. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is probably one of the best Harry Potter books. From beginning to the end it is almost non-stop action and suspense that is captures the reader and do not let them go. Gone are the sidetracks of Quidditch (book 4), lots of memories (book 6), and yearly Hogwarts routines. In fact very little time is spent in Hogwarts. There is nice exposition of the guerilla warfare, where the real deal is survival for months on enemy terrain and not spectacular army-vs.-army battles, even though there is some of the latter too. As in some previous books, there is quite a bit of focus on psychological interactions of characters both with their inner selves and with their friends.

Although much have been said about the expected deaths of major characters and possible plot twists, I found the plot close to what I expected. If you spend some time thinking about the events and predictions in previous books, you might be able to guess almost everything, except for the Deathly Hallows that appear only in book 7. Deaths will occur - as they do in every war - but not of the earth-shattering variety.

Although most of the book shows the sisyphean struggle and desperation of our heroes, some of the victories could be called too simple or easy. Getting into Gringotts seems especially unlikely, since wizard's bank should be protected from such magical break-ins. Some characters such as the new Minister of Magic Scrimgeour and Peter Pettigrew is given way too short shrift. The changes in some others - such as Malfoys - comes a bit too fast. On the other hand, the book already clocks 750 pages, so further exposition or adventures might not be for the best. Most of the loose ends are neatly tied in ways that don't seem artificial.

Epilogue seems to guarantee that this is indeed the last book of this series. I would predict that Rowling will return to Potter/Hogwarts/wizards universe in some way. Most like with a "20 years after" or similar milieus, especially since there are things to follow up. Until then we will have to reread the books, watch the movies, and wait.

9/10 for this book. 8/10 for series - some of the middle books could be tightened without loss of quality.

Virtual worlds or Lithuania?

Terra Nova resident economists just announced that worldwide virtual world GDP is getting close to Lithuania's. So which economy is going to grow faster from here? The real country or the imaginary ones? Elves have not lost any contest until now. ;)

"The Rat Pack"

The movie title refers to the group of entertainers, headed by Frank Sinatra, who were famous in 1950's and 60's. The movie recounts most of this period with quite a few jumps. It also focuses on the Rat Pack influence on John F. Kennedy election and the subsequent fallout of Sinatra and Kennedys due to the former's Mafia ties. The movie is rather weak. While I liked Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis Jr., I thought that both Mantegna and especially Liotta were not suited to play Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Both are tough roles, considering Sinatra and Dean are iconic entertainment figures. The same criticism can be applied to the actors playing Kennedys as well as Marilyn Monroe. Of course, the movie is made for TV, so some amount of lackluster quality is predictable. What I liked is a bit of USA entertainment and political history that we as foreigners don't really know. That alone kept we watching the movie to the end. But it can be done much better. 5/10.

"Wall Street"

I loved this movie, when I saw it first time in 1990 in Moscow. While it is definitely a critique of the Wall Street machinations, I sympathized with the corrupt financier Gordon Gekko then and thought that overachiever-turned-criminal-turned-idealist Bud Fox was an idiot. And of course there was magnificent Daryl Hannah. :) Fast forward 17 years. The movie looks in different light now. Bud Fox's illegal janitorial hijinkses look just that - illegal. Gordon Gekko's high life has lost some of its luster. The effort to save Blue Star airlines and its unions seems rather silly considering the long history of real-life airline failure, consolidation, government bailouts and rise of low-cost carriers. This might be a better story to be told by someone like Michael Moore, but with libertarian bend. Only Daryl Hannah remains timelessly beautiful. And one-liners. "Greed is good". How true Gordon. 7/10.

"Music from Another Room"

"Music from Another Room" is a rather weird romantic movie. When 5 year old Danny helps to deliver Anna - don't ask... - into this world, he announces that he will marry her. 25 years later, fate has brought him back to deliver on his promise. Will he? Won't he? Jude Law (Danny) has balls of steel in dealing with Gretchen Mol (Anna), but even the coin with heads on both sides does not guarantee a win against a woman. (Guys, never bet with a girl, they always win!). Jennifer Tilly plays Anna's blind sister Nina with her own set of neuroses. Funky mother and father with a flair for Russian literature and "Anna Karenina" in particular round out the set. So is there any doubt that we will see a train station and a train? Though nicely weird with a few great one liners, the movie is also rather uneven. For example, it never decides which decade it is happening in. Hairdos are 60's, neighborhood bakeries are 70's, aggressive women's lib is 80's and cars are from 90's. Don't even get me started about mosaic restoration project in a church of a small (?) town in USA... Character relationship edges are similarly written too fast and without sufficient details. Now they hate, now they love, now they marry, now they don't. And I am not even talking about Anna and Denny. 7/10 for a beautiful description of true love though.

"Secret Files: Tunguska"

"Secret Files: Tunguska" is one of the newer adventure games. While "Dark Age of Camelot" MMOG is taking most of my gaming time, I still play single player games from time to time. "Secret Files: Tunguska" was a pretty nice distraction from Camelot's RvR slaughter. You play as Nina, daughter of Russian scientist Vladimir Kalenkov, who seems to know too much about what happened in 1908 in Siberian taiga. One evening you find your father's office ransacked and father himself missing. Now you have to uncover both the past of your father and of Tunguska event itself. Game interface is nice regular adventure game point-and-click interface with hints at hotspot locations. I can't really evaluate graphics and sound, since I usually jump between games released 5-10 years apart, so I usually ignore graphics unless they are particularly great or particularly atrocious. So what about the story and characters? Story is rather nice although I like detective stories in general. There are a number of twists and turns in it to keep you guessing about identities of the bad guys for a long time. And although some arcs are pretty obvious, others will surprise you until the end. I disliked some contrivances in the plot that would be obvious only to ex-Soviet block players. For example, in 1960's and 70's Kalenkov apparently has led international expeditions to Siberia to investigate Tunguska phenomenon with Peruvian and Irish scientists, one of whom is a Lord (!). Sorry, but this clashes strongly with the military interest and secrecy within Soviet Union.

Game characters range from rather mundane and bland to really nicely weird. How about a psychiatric hospital in Cuba with a guard who thinks he is Picasso and a receptionist who thinks she is the next Evita? And these are staff, not the patients. ;) On the other hand, Nina's character is never really fleshed out and made human. Some of the secondary heroes, such as Max are also very much stock figures, which definitely lowers my score of this game.

Some puzzles are quite inventive and novel, which is always welcome in the genre replete with FedEx and "turn that lever" cliches. A new way of listening to somebody else's phone call is both funny and ingenious.

So overall, it's a 7/10 game. Definitely worth playing but not up to the level where you would remember its characters and plot in couple of years.

About this blog?

This blog is going to be about life, universe and other stuff. Like games, movies, travel, and software. As you can guess these are not part of my life and definitely not part of this universe. Or some universe. But maybe they will become part of someone else's universe. Which would be scary...

"Transformers"

Probably I should not write this post, but the current 8.4/10 rating on IMDB is just crazy. No, "Transformers" is not worth seeing. The movie is a total mess. Almost no one can act. The main character is a complete idiot, who does not raise any sympathy. The screenplay is totally hosed: it jumps around a lot of places and people without any need, introduces bunch of totally unnecessary characters, cannot decide if it is a comedy or an action movie. The fight scenes are filmed at such a speed that you can't understand what's happening and then it's over. The transformers are hugely underused - they should be stars. There are a lot of great ways of how their transforming abilities should be used in the plot and yet they are not, mostly it's the car-to-robot-to-car stuff. Horrible. Don't waste your time and money. A lot of anime giant robot movies are much better IMO. 3/10.

P.S. Yes, that was a Nokia phone and no, unfortunately the real ones don't transform into little nasty running spidery things, sorry. ;)