A Life Spent Reading

I recently watched this 1982 multiple Academy Award winner again, after an interval of more than twenty years. I have to say that it’s aged exceptionally well. In fact, I think that Gandhi may be the best movie I’ve ever seen.

The story follows Gandhi’s life from the time he was a lawyer in South Africa to his death in 1948. Richard Attenborough apparently set out to create a masterpiece, and it’s hard to find even a minor aspect where he might have failed in that endeavor, as is evidenced by the eight Academy Awards the movie won. The cinematography is stunning, the costumes and locales authentic, the subject matter of the utmost importance. Ben Kingsley plays the title role amid a cast of absolutely first-rate actors, and it’s positively eerie how close he gets to the real-life Gandhi.

Although the film is three hours long, as it says in the beginning, there is no way to tell the whole story of Gandhi in a movie. What it does is give a representative sample of the major events in his life, and in the life of India during his time. Gandhi’s goal was nothing less than sovereign independence for his nation — a goal that he ultimately succeeded in achieving through the use of non-violent resistance to Britain’s paternalistic authority. It was a stunning, unprecedented success, and one that put the final nail in the coffin for European colonialism.

Five stars. Everyone should see this movie.

I ordered this exercise DVD last week, and generally speaking, I like it quite a bit.

The DVD is divided into several sections, such as Thoracic Spine Mobility, Scapular Closed Chain and Active Wrist Mobilization. These sections each contain several exercises that you can use to warm up that particular part of the body. The idea of the DVD is to choose one exercise from each section, thus giving yourself a full and well-rounded upper body warm-up — and tune up — before exercise.

As someone who’s passed his 40th birthday and has a lot of weightlifting miles on his body, I found this DVD very useful. The exercises are well-chosen, they are well-explained and demonstrated, and the overall format of the DVD is easy to understand. Furthermore, they’re effective. After my first workout incorporating some of the Inside-Out exercises, I did indeed have a very good and pain-free upper body workout — not a given for me anymore.

I ordered the DVD alone, and for me that was fine. There is also a manual that you can buy, and if you don’t have a fairly decent background in anatomy, and want to understand what the two authors are saying in their “Rationale” clips, it would probably be beneficial to get that as well. As Mike Robertson says, “we put a lot more of the “how’s” and “why’s” in the manual, along with a glossary to help people better understand the geek-speak.” If you don’t care about the theory behind it all, then the DVD by itself is fine, as you will be able to see and understand how to perform the exercises using it alone.

If you are active in fitness and still doing the same old stretching to warm up before getting into your main activiity, you owe it to yourself to try something more effective. (Stretching is fine, but save it for the warm-down.) The benefits of dynamic warm-ups have been known to good coaches for at least two decades now, but the general athletic population still has yet to catch on. Inside-Out helps to get the word out.

V for Vendetta is based on DC Comic book / graphic novel of the same title. Mysterious V is a masked man trying to start a revolution to overthrow a totalitarian government. He helps Evey and they engage in a very complex relationship.

Although the movie is a bit overdramatic at times, it raises an interesting question: What will you give up for “safety”?

This is particularly pertinent to us Americans because of what’s going on in the name of securing our nation and fighting the terrorists. Although the movie scenario seems far-fetched, it’s reasonable to think that perhaps we’ve given up too much, yielded so much of our rights and liberty to the government.

At the same time, V uses terrorism to make his point. After all, the movie kicks off with a spectacular blow-up of the Old Bailey courtrooms. But I don’t think the movie condoned terrorism. After all V pays for everything he’d done at the end of the film.

Although V wears his mask for the entire time, I must praise Hugo Weaving’s exceptional acting that brought V to life without us seeing his facial expression. Natalie Portman also did an excellent job of portraying a confused and scared girl who grows stronger as the movie progresses. The clashing idealogies and characters made for a very thought-provoking yet very fast-paced movie that should keep the viewers entertained.

Having spent a decade and a half in Japan, I have a short tolerance for people who write about the country without actually knowing much about the culture. Thankfully, Takashi Matsuoka — as you might imagine from his name — does not fall into this category. Of course, no one alive today has first-hand experience with shogun-era Japan, but at least Matsuoka doesn’t make the mistake of giving western characters Japanese names and then hoping no one will notice. His Japanese are Japanese, his westerners are western, and the story flows easily back and forth between the two cultural viewpoints.

Summarizing the plot in a paragraph or two would be both difficult and a disservice to the author. I’ll just say that the story is set in the 1860s, just before the Meiji Restoration, and has pretty much everything in it, mysticism, large-scale warfare, romance, individual humor, historical scope, vivid cultural detail. While not as huge and daunting a volume, the novel this book most reminds me of is Shogun. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get an idea of how the Japanese mind works, as well as anyone who just wants to read a good story. Both Furies and I liked this book, and given our vastly different preferences in novels, it seems to me that this is a book that would appeal to most anyone who was even slightly interested in Japan.

Oh, and the trade paperback edition was nicely edited. Kudos to Dell for doing a good job when most publishers are cutting corners right and left.

I picked this up because Joyce received a lot of hype. What a let-down!

The basic setup — Victoria promises to sleep with Byron to save her family from some financial ruin or whatever. Except that I didn’t get any sense of urgency or importance of saving her family. Victoria doesn’t even seem to like her family all that much. Byron is a typical wounded dark hero, who’s just not at all mysterious or interesting.

The writing’s unusually ornate and heavy. Maybe Joyce was trying to show off her vocabulary. Unfortunately, it had an unintended effect: if this were a film, it would be a poorly done B-horror flick with over-the-top sets and make-up on its actors. Victoria’s just cold and brittle with very little depth, and I couldn’t even finish this book because it wore me down with utter boredom and disinterest.

The Veil of Night supposedly follows the old Gothic tradition. Which I believe is an excuse to justify the lack of humor and dullness of this book. It has none of the mystery or seething passion of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I won’t bother picking up Joyce’s second “Gothic” novel.