July 14, 1999
In a move sure to anger just about anyone with a brain, Warner Brothers will alter 65 seconds of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut in order to avoid being given an "NC-17" rating from the MPAA. Not one frame will be cut nor will any footage be replaced. Instead, the company will digitally insert human figures in front of the "offensive" images.
The scene we're talking about here is the fluid long shot in which a naked woman shows a masked Tom Cruise through a mansion in which atypical sex acts are taking place in every room. From what I understand, it's one of the most artfully filmed pieces in this already important film and depends on its carefully controlled build-up to inspire a sense of dread in those watching. Those that have already seen Warner Brothers' bit of hocus pocus say this editing procedure instantly negates its intended effect and dilutes its powerful imagery. At the present time, there are no plans to release an unedited, unrated version of the film in North America or Canada although the director's original vision will play throughout Europe. This is curious because both of the former countries currently have an adults-only rating specifically designed for exactly this type of situation. This rating, the "NC-17" (which forbids anyone under the age of 17 admittance into the film whether they're accompanied by an adult or not) was meant to differentiate between films of serious intent and plain old pornography. Established in 1990, this rating became instantly obsolete when almost the entire industry refused to have anything to do with films branded with it (theaters didn't want to show them, newspapers wouldn't carry ads for them, etc.). In fact, the "NC-17" rating is so shunned that I don't know of any filmmaker, even someone as powerful and respected as Kubrick was, whose studio contract doesn't demand an "R" rating or less.
Obviously, none of this would be an issue if Kubrick hadn't died just five days after turning in his final cut last March. Either he'd do some fine tuning with his own hand or he'd publicly support the studio's decision, both of which would be infinitely more palatable than hearing the industry suits speak on his behalf and declaring that this is what Stanley would have wanted. Also strangely quiet on the subject is Cruise, who vowed at the time of the director's death to protect the integrity of the film and stated he would not let one frame be cut from it. Not so quiet is film critic Roger Ebert who's already let slip one or a hundred times that he considers what Warner plans to do a "travesty" and that "We need an adults-only rating, something between an R and porn that doesn't penalize theater-owners and distributors." In lieu of the complete failings of the "NC-17," I don't understand a word of what he's saying.
Another alternative would be to release an unedited version of the film in tandem with the one we're discussing. Sure, hardly any theater would carry it but at least we'd have the option of seeking it out if we wanted to. And just imagine the statement that would be made if the unrated one had better box office! All across the land, movie buffs everywhere would be yelling "Freeeeedom!" louder than Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart.
Ultimately, I don't understand how any of this came into play. Hypothetically speaking, an "R" rating prevents any minor from seeing the film unless accompanied by an adult. Why not simply bend the MPAA's rules in honor of a great director's last film and release it with that rating as is? This is a three hour art film we're talking about here and after it's first week of release, word of mouth between the kids that the film isn't worth their trouble will be swift and total. If the studio really cared about "protecting" today's youth, it would have done just that and the film would have glided effortlessly under the radar into the laps of its intended audience: adults. Having said that, I'm beginning to think the Warner Brothers hypemiesters are as smart and as good at their jobs as the late, great Stanley Kubrick himself ;)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Film Review: "Unbreakable"
A Melancholy Hero for Mediocre Times
Not entirely successful and sometimes just downright silly, Unbreakable opens with Willis having just survived a train crash that's killed an ungodly amount of people. With not a scratch on him, Willis stares dumbly at the emergency room doctor as he explains the many reasons why he should not have lived through that disaster. Seemingly the ultimate survivor, Willis begins to rifle through his memories of the past and slowly realizes he's never taken a sick-day, never sustained any kind of injury and has never even had a cold. It's an endlessly appealing premise that can literally lead anywhere. The fact that it actually has to is perhaps my most unfair criticism of the film: Getting to the film's resolution is much more fun than being there. In Shyamalan's melancholy world, mystery is everything and too many facts shatter the spell, something all filmmakers know is not unbreakable...
Refreshingly blue collar and un-extraordinary, Willis' plainspoken character is seemingly no more Superman than I, and he's introduced to us surrounded by a very believable reality. Stumping through a lower-level security job and estranged from his wife (an unrecognizable and well-done turn by Robin Wright), Willis' sad life should be identifiable to anyone familiar with the middle-class lifestyle that seems to consist more of working and fixing the house than living or sleeping. This stasis is interrupted by Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson), a stranger who seems to know more about Willis' condition than he and who leaves him notes alluding to such. Elijah's eventual explanation, that Willis is a modern day superhero for our "mediocre times," is rejected by both him and us; it's a blindside the film almost doesn't recover from.
It's here that the film starts to falter as we suddenly realize we're not watching a supernatural drama at all but a fable (and a simplistic one at that). In a whacked-out performance of a man who's bones are as brittle as glass, Samuel L. Jackson's every scene threatens to derail the film's integrity and hard-earned realistic milieu. His constant insistence that Willis is a superhero and, worse, that he start acting like one, is, quite frankly, ridiculous; this film stops dead whenever Jackson picks up a comic book. Spielberg, whose films are obviously often aped here, could get away with something like this. Maybe. Shyamalan, whose style is darker in both look and themes, is no Spielberg. Yet.
Willis fares better than Jackson if only because he moves less and is therefore less conspicuous. At times, though, I wondered if he was even awake. Perhaps tired of our perpetual put down of the smirk, Willis goes the entire film sans past crutches like the clever comeback or Michael Keaton-ish raised-eyebrows. In fact, he quietly drifts through the movie with hardly any presence at all. In many scenes, we view him from behind as he interacts with others and the lack of both visual and verbal input from him often makes us feel as though he's not there at all, that we're being shown the other actors' audition tapes. His character is one of spoken ideals, not action. He points out often what he thinks is right or wrong, good or bad but rarely do we see him act on these beliefs.
When, at film's end, he does actually implement the beginnings of an agenda, this sequence of scenes is a winner if only by default. Our stomachs constrict as we watch Willis first identify and then follow an uber-creep to his latest victims' home and our sense of dread multiplies with every step deeper into the house he takes. But even this sequence has it's drawbacks; it's confusingly shot and arranged and I was never quite sure who was where in the house. Obviously, we're meant to be as disoriented and off-kilter as Willis is in exploring the wrongfully appropriated habitat of a very bad man. But when different characters kept appearing on different floors, I wished the usually meticulous Shyamalan had taken a bit more care in the shots' arrangement.
The film also seems to have no ending. When we finally arrive at what we expect to be a resolution or confrontation, the scene freezes and we're given two short paragraphs explaining what eventually went on to happen. This is fine for when the described events are either unfilmable ("John went on to live 100 more years, fought in two wars, had five wives and ten kids.") or intended strictly to strike one last emotional cord (jokey in Animal House or melancholia in American Graffiti) as we're rising from our seats. But such is not the case here and the film just comes to a halt, as if all involved suddenly arrived at clock-out time. And so we think back and reevaluate what we were given to work with and, truth be told, the movie's simplistic threads and themes don't hold much weight or water under serious scrutiny. In fact, the film would almost be considered childish if it weren't for the strikingly realistic crime scenes, something I thought was one of the film's biggest strengths. The criminals we're exposed to here are taken directly from yesterday's newspaper and, again, I'm impressed by Shyamalan's unwillingness to soften his vision for that lighter MPAA rating and the wider audience it would have brought in. Rapists, child molesters and necrophiliacs abound and their presentation to us chills us to the bone.
Especially disturbing is one quiet scene detailing a criminal's entrance into his victim's home right through the front door that is at once highly believable and creepy as all get-out. Yes, I thought to myself nodding, this has to be exactly how these kinds of crimes start everyday. A note to anyone reading this: Don't knock on my door unannounced because I now, after seeing this film, simply will not answer. On this request I remain unflappable...
Despite it's flaws, Unbreakable contains some serious reasons to recommend it. I enjoyed watching the film's pieces fall into place with an almost audible click. Jackson and his mother's spiels about classic comic character's characteristics seem silly and superfluous at first but eventually reveal themselves to have a point (yes, Jackson's hair looks like that for a reason). I liked the evolution of Willis' "superhero" costume (never has the stenciled word SECURITY on the back of someone's rain slicker been more appropriate).
There's also two scenes contained within that will be entered into the history books. The first is when Willis, who's just recently been told of his telekinetic powers, enters a train station and allows himself to "read" all those around him. The quick flashes of the crimes of all whom pass him are so expertly and clearly presented to us that this scene alone begs to be discussed for hours on end and is worth the price of admission alone. Whom, after suddenly finding out that you possess super-human powers, do you exactly go after? Do you waste your time apprehending the thief who stole a piece of jewelry last night or do you wait for someone guilty of something worse? Along the same line of thought, do you choose to bring to justice someone who recently raped someone but might never again break the law?
Which criminals, exactly, should one spend time chasing? The decision Willis eventually makes and his apprehension of such is also excellently presented: Non-violent but also not taking any crap, Willis' behavior in the film's one action scene is a keeper.
I also loved the scene in which Willis' son attempts to prove to him that yes, Willis is different from the rest of us. The fact that the son, in trying to show his father exactly how special he really is, is maybe willing to kill his own father will resonate long in my mind. The scene both horrifies and amuses us ("If you don't put that gun down right now you're going to be in really big trouble!"); it's honestly the best five minutes I've spent at the cinema this year. The scene's ending, in which all who are still standing fall to the floor weeping, touched me in a way that I can't even begin to verbalize.
Forget this film's title. Considering Shyamalan's speed towards when he might offer us a perfect film, I'd have called it "Unbrakable." My advice? Learn how to pronounce his name. If you're a movie-buff, you'll need to pronounce it the day after an Oscar telecast at the water cooler sometime soon. My final verdict: an ambitious near-miss.
December 10, 2000
Film Review: The Blair Witch Project
July 30, 1999
"Revel in the joy of being in a great film!"
Heather to one of her cameramen shimmying across a fallen log perched across a raging riverbed in The Blair Witch Project.
For those not in the know, The Blair Witch Project is a faux- documentary about three young filmmakers who venture into the Maryland Black Forest woods to research the, you guessed it, Blair Witch. After getting lost almost immediately, they dig in and camp. Upon awakening the next morning, they find outside their tent seemingly man-made piles of rocks. Packing up and trekking further, they soon come across a large grouping of eerie stick-figures made out of twigs hanging from almost every tree in that clearing. When the next morning finds them inexplicably missing their map and finding even more ghostly souvenirs, they begin to realize they're in the middle of this myth much deeper than they ever wanted to be.
In my mind, the only thing more damaging to an unreleased film than bad buzz is superhype and Blair Witch had the latter in spades. Completed more than six months ago, this $60,000 independent film first showed at Sundance last January and was immediately snapped up by Artisan for a cool $1.1 million. Since its release two weeks ago in only 27 theaters, the film's already made almost twice the studio's purchase price back. And it's my pleasure to tell you all that you should believe everything you've heard: Yes, Artisan showed good business sense in paying that much. Yes, this film really does live up to almost a year's worth of critical hoopla. And YES, it really is as scary as all those smart people are saying it is. At one point two-thirds of the way into the film, my eyes were tearing with fear and yet I was giggling with respect and admiration at the artistry on the screen in front of me. Soon after that, I actually grabbed the arm of the man sitting next to me out of fright. On the way out of the theater, I was almost hyperventilating as I tried to find the proper words to describe to my friend how well-done I thought this film was. I can only remember four past times leaving a movie theater this excited: Pinocchio (the 1st film I ever remember seeing), Goodfellas (199?), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Leaving Las Vegas (1995).
Despite the fact that the film is shown to us entirely from the filmmakers two video cameras (remember, it's a fake documentary we're watching), we never have trouble understanding exactly what is going on at any given moment. The many shots of blurred scenery (when the kids are running), just blackness (when they're lost at night and don't know what to do) and still trees (beautifully illuminated and outlined in pure white) all contribute to the seduction of our attention. The film draws you in and then grabs you by that corner of your sweatshirt at your elbow and brings you along for the ride. It doesn't give the viewer any choice or a chance to catch their breath. And when two of the three kids finally do get to a house, you're as relieved and thankful as they are. What you end up actually see take place in that house will haunt you forever.
While the film's two directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez will rightfully see their names in all the ubercool movie mags, I'll be wondering why the kids didn't get more credit. After all, they were the ones thrown into the woods all alone with camcorders during the making of this film, given a scant outline of the script and told to point and shoot while improvising. What's impressive is that during all this hardship, the three actors found it in themselves to act. The leader from the start is Heather (imagine Janeane Garofalo crossed with David Letterman's sarcastic, funny asides) followed by her two trusty cameramen: Josh (the inevitable Hollywood remake will cast Matt McConaughey) and Mike. Improvising for the camera supposedly through almost the entire shoot, it's their natural interaction between themselves that gets us to care for them and that which causes us so much stress when things go from bad to worse for the group.
Is this the "scariest film ever made?" No one can answer that one but I can tell you the film is an instant classic and will give the horror genre a much-needed shot in the arm and some of it's respect back. It's good enough in that I believe it will transcend and expand the genre much like the ironic Scream did a couple of years ago. Does it deserve a place among classics such as Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws? Yes and no. Yes because it accomplishes exactly what it wants to (scare the hell out of you) with an amount of money that wouldn't even pay for the catering on one of those other films. But I don't think it'll hold up over time as well as them because once you've experienced Blair's final gut- wrenching trump card, there's really no reason for a second or third viewing. So, while I won't rush back to the theater anytime soon, I will never forget that first time.
A 2nd opinion from Thom:
"I have never been so scared at a movie in my life!!! I was on pins and needles the whole second half. Great freaking movie. My Brother was scared and his friend was scared, too. It was great! I heard a lot of people saying it sucked because of the ending but I thought the ending was great. Man, that was a great film!!!"
"Revel in the joy of being in a great film!"
Heather to one of her cameramen shimmying across a fallen log perched across a raging riverbed in The Blair Witch Project.
For those not in the know, The Blair Witch Project is a faux- documentary about three young filmmakers who venture into the Maryland Black Forest woods to research the, you guessed it, Blair Witch. After getting lost almost immediately, they dig in and camp. Upon awakening the next morning, they find outside their tent seemingly man-made piles of rocks. Packing up and trekking further, they soon come across a large grouping of eerie stick-figures made out of twigs hanging from almost every tree in that clearing. When the next morning finds them inexplicably missing their map and finding even more ghostly souvenirs, they begin to realize they're in the middle of this myth much deeper than they ever wanted to be.
In my mind, the only thing more damaging to an unreleased film than bad buzz is superhype and Blair Witch had the latter in spades. Completed more than six months ago, this $60,000 independent film first showed at Sundance last January and was immediately snapped up by Artisan for a cool $1.1 million. Since its release two weeks ago in only 27 theaters, the film's already made almost twice the studio's purchase price back. And it's my pleasure to tell you all that you should believe everything you've heard: Yes, Artisan showed good business sense in paying that much. Yes, this film really does live up to almost a year's worth of critical hoopla. And YES, it really is as scary as all those smart people are saying it is. At one point two-thirds of the way into the film, my eyes were tearing with fear and yet I was giggling with respect and admiration at the artistry on the screen in front of me. Soon after that, I actually grabbed the arm of the man sitting next to me out of fright. On the way out of the theater, I was almost hyperventilating as I tried to find the proper words to describe to my friend how well-done I thought this film was. I can only remember four past times leaving a movie theater this excited: Pinocchio (the 1st film I ever remember seeing), Goodfellas (199?), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Leaving Las Vegas (1995).
Despite the fact that the film is shown to us entirely from the filmmakers two video cameras (remember, it's a fake documentary we're watching), we never have trouble understanding exactly what is going on at any given moment. The many shots of blurred scenery (when the kids are running), just blackness (when they're lost at night and don't know what to do) and still trees (beautifully illuminated and outlined in pure white) all contribute to the seduction of our attention. The film draws you in and then grabs you by that corner of your sweatshirt at your elbow and brings you along for the ride. It doesn't give the viewer any choice or a chance to catch their breath. And when two of the three kids finally do get to a house, you're as relieved and thankful as they are. What you end up actually see take place in that house will haunt you forever.
While the film's two directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez will rightfully see their names in all the ubercool movie mags, I'll be wondering why the kids didn't get more credit. After all, they were the ones thrown into the woods all alone with camcorders during the making of this film, given a scant outline of the script and told to point and shoot while improvising. What's impressive is that during all this hardship, the three actors found it in themselves to act. The leader from the start is Heather (imagine Janeane Garofalo crossed with David Letterman's sarcastic, funny asides) followed by her two trusty cameramen: Josh (the inevitable Hollywood remake will cast Matt McConaughey) and Mike. Improvising for the camera supposedly through almost the entire shoot, it's their natural interaction between themselves that gets us to care for them and that which causes us so much stress when things go from bad to worse for the group.
Is this the "scariest film ever made?" No one can answer that one but I can tell you the film is an instant classic and will give the horror genre a much-needed shot in the arm and some of it's respect back. It's good enough in that I believe it will transcend and expand the genre much like the ironic Scream did a couple of years ago. Does it deserve a place among classics such as Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws? Yes and no. Yes because it accomplishes exactly what it wants to (scare the hell out of you) with an amount of money that wouldn't even pay for the catering on one of those other films. But I don't think it'll hold up over time as well as them because once you've experienced Blair's final gut- wrenching trump card, there's really no reason for a second or third viewing. So, while I won't rush back to the theater anytime soon, I will never forget that first time.
A 2nd opinion from Thom:
"I have never been so scared at a movie in my life!!! I was on pins and needles the whole second half. Great freaking movie. My Brother was scared and his friend was scared, too. It was great! I heard a lot of people saying it sucked because of the ending but I thought the ending was great. Man, that was a great film!!!"
Book Review: Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney
June 22, 2000
Flawed Falls feels flat
Brightness Falls feels like a novel it's author, Jay McInerney, considers his most mature work to date. Going out of his way to sound like a grown-up, his prose is all but indecipherable. Seemingly going on forever, his sentences consist of too many thirty-cent words, the likes of which a child might memorize right before taking his seat at the adults' table. I constantly had to go back and re-read entire paragraphs just to figure out what simple action or description he was trying to get across. What I suspect the problem is here is that McInerney took the reviews of his previous novel, Story of My Life, too much to heart - basically, "grow up," the critics yelled - and is now bending over backwards only wanting to impress. I did manage to stick with the book until it's end, but just barely.
Set in Manhattan during early 1987, the novel introduces us to a small circle of friends just entering their thirties, none of whom are quite yet comfortable holding down the title of "adult." College sweethearts now married, Russell and Corrine Calloway are at the center of the group and suspected by all to be the perfect couple. Their marriage not as solid as people think, Russell has an eye for the ladies and an even bigger ambition in buying out and someday owning the small publishing company he now reluctantly slaves at. Corrine, unaware of both Russell's infidelities and best friend Jeff's life-long feelings towards her, spends her days working on Wall Street, enjoying an income that was only possible during those fleeting greed-is-good late eighties. Unbeknownst to all of them, there's a god-awful shape-shifting storm on the horizon, alternately taking the form of a stock market crash, AIDs and simple infidelity that will rock their worlds to it's very foundation and change their lives forever.
Not only are all of these characters unlikable, they're downright annoying. Russell is a complete jerk from page one, wanting to sleep with every single woman he passes on the street. His flirting with another woman in an art gallery immediately following a major argument with Corrine (that he started!) was the final nail in my opinion of him. The fact that McInerney sets him up as the hero/dreamer of the group, the one who, in his pursuit to buy out his own company, sets his sights the highest and eventually falls the lowest, is simply a bad move on his part. Considering Russell's character throughout the whole novel, there is no endeavor he could take on and fail at that would have garnered my sympathy.
Even more pitiful is Corrine. Her seemingly undying devotion to Russell-the-snake quickly grows tiresome and pathetic. In my mind, there's nothing more disgusting than a bad man except the weak individuals that choose to follow him. Even more unforgivable is Corrine's constant lapse of intelligence. Suspecting that Russell is sneaking around her behind her back, the conclusions she jumps to about whom he might be cheating with are always wrong! Another incident finds them discussing possibly having a child. His business take-over not going as well as hoped, Russell suggests that, financially, it may not be a good time for them to have a kid. When Corrine counters with, "You don't have to be rich to have a child, you know," I rolled my eyes and thought, great, another unwanted child born to a couple in a bad marriage who're $100 million in debt. That's exactly what we need more of. Her suspicions of what kind of man Russell is, combined with her refusal to come to terms with how below herself he is, coupled with her constant wrong decisions are the three strikes that put her out of my fancy. I could even play devil's advocate here and suggest this is only how I perceived these two but, throughout the book from page one on, I never saw any evidence that either character changes or evolves or grows. Major mistake from an author asking you to spend almost 400 pages with them.
Two good friends of Mr. and Mrs. Calloway come off slightly more sympathetic but McInerney's fumblings eventually do them in as well. Washington Lee is perhaps the most interesting character to follow. A co-worker of Russell's, Washington seems to have more of an issue with his blackness than anyone else around him. It was fun for a while watching him try to balance his ties and loyalties between the very white company he works for and the black community who demand he go to greater lengths to better represent them. But even he's done in by his inclusion into two plot points so contrived and unbelievable, so jaw-droppingly awful, that the character is utterly tainted from those evens on. I could no longer look forward to this character's presence for fear of what McInerney might next have in store for him. The first incident finds Washington excusing himself from an uppity dinner party to use the upstairs bathroom. On the way there, he bumps into the very young, very drunk daughter of the party's host. In this endlessly drawn out passage, the girl tries to seduce him and he winds up with her very expensive watch in his pocket. Unbelievable (Washington seems to be going out of his way to make himself look bad), unfunny (the broad farce of things going from bad to worse real quick falls painfully flat) and pointless (after the incident, the daughter and watch are never mentioned again). The second faux pas comes late in the novel when Washington pulls out a real-looking squirt gun (filled with vodka) as he passes some known racist thugs. His eventual explanation for doing so, "I was thirsty," prompted me to throw down the book and flee my home seeking alternative entertainment.
Finally, old friend Jeff stands at the sidelines offering quips but never conversation and, as such, never materializes into anything more than supposed comic relief. Mostly making smart-ass puns that are neither clever nor wise, the character is tedious. The only one of the group seemingly without interest in takeovers or money, Jeff's failure to get our empathy is perhaps Brightness Falls' biggest flaw, as I believe he was meant to be the heart of the novel, someone the readers were supposed to be able to count on amidst all the crazy actions and attitudes of the times. But, as written, he's not. His eventual declaration of love towards Corrine late in the novel struck me only as self-serving. His revelation of a long ago affair between himself and her that took place before she and Russell were married is handled poorly. Russell reacts as if it happened only yesterday and McInerney seems to suggest that this now puts the couple on morally even grounds. As if.
Do I like any of the characters here? Hardly. Trina Cox, a mergers and acquisitions barbarian who arranges for Russell to buy his company then attempts to bed him, is as shallow and single-minded as her last name is obvious and juvenile. Victor Propp, an eccentric Tom Wolfe-like author who's better at creating interest in his upcoming manuscript than in actually delivering the thing, is the one to initially suggest to Russell that he buy his company but is the first to desert him when things get shaky. Corrine's mother is a selfish drunken lout who's happy sidling up to anyone currently doing her daughter harm. I did like Delia, the suicidal patient Jeff goes through a rehab center with. Her surrendering to Jeff a piece of sharp glass she wasn't supposed to have carries more emotional weight than almost anything the main characters ever do. Alas, she is but a minor, minor character. A suggestion to Mr. McInerney: bring her back.
Plot wise, not much happens here but it was interesting to watch the minor, then major events leading up to the big Wall Street market crash of '87. McInerney subtlety conjures an almost palatable dark force that seems to be invisibly inching itself towards these people with every page we turn (at one point, one character feels it and likens it to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse approaching over their shoulder). Simultaneously, the Colloway's crumbling marriage nicely parallels what's happening in the real world and we get the feeling that no one will come out of this book intact. In fact, there were times I kept reading only because I hoped to see at least some of the characters here get the comeuppance I thought deserved. Somehow, I doubt this was the author's intent.
The shallow, redundant Story of My Life was a step back from the poignant lost innocence that was Bright Lights, Big City and the worldly confidence behind Ransom, McInerney's second and third novels, respectively. But even that slim excuse for a novel is preferable to the ponderous writing and unsympathetic characters of Brightness Falls. The happy conclusion to this review, of course, is that McInerney later went on to write the excellent Last of the Savages, his real first "adult" work. More mature and multi-layered than 100 Falls, Savages more than makes up for the misstep that is this novel. McInerney can still count me as a fan for life; almost all his past work possess far too many good qualities for that to change anytime soon. I don't know what he's working on now but I'll still be there on it's street date. With any luck, McInerney-the-real will be, too.
Book Review: Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
April 14, 2000
It's just a fad; Ignore it
The good news is that, unlike anything he's ever written before, Bret Easton Ellis' fifth work of fiction, Glamorama, actually has a plot. The bad news is that he shouldn't have bothered. Does the premise of a deadly terrorist cabal composed entirely of American models make you giggle? Yeah, me too.
Not one of the gimmicks Ellis incorporates into this 400+ page novel works. The chapter numbers go from high to low instead of the traditional ascension but if this is supposed to stimulate suspense, as the LCD readout of a terrorist's bomb might, it doesn't because the book is divided into six sections. So what we then have is a countdown until the main character, Victor Ward, leaves NYC and then another countdown until the QE2 brings him to London, etc. What's the point?
Ellis' manipulation of his character's reality to reflect his views of this world are juvenile and poorly handled. Characters are chilly and "breath steam" no matter where they go, sometimes even seeing stores and apartment floors and walls covered with ice (it's a cold world out there). They're inundated by flies (they're dead inside) and smell excrement (the world is a cesspool) constantly. During the book's final third, one of Victor's various limbs falls constantly asleep (he's now numb to the carnage around him). At the halfway point, Victor starts imagining that his every move is followed by a film crew and that every location he visits is a film set. Fine. Of course a "model-slash-actor's" nervous breakdown might actually start like this but when this figment of his imagination, these people who are not even there, start moving plot-important items around and actually start influencing the direction of the story, I just finally threw up my hands and asked "Why bother?" There are certain rules, I thought, one must follow when writing fiction and Ellis seems to be going out of his way to break every single one of them.
In American Psycho, Ellis absolutely pummeled his readers with paragraph after long paragraph of mind-numbingly detailed description of what brand-name designer clothes its characters wore, what elitist restaurants they frequented, etc. This was supposed to represent how shallow and image-conscious they all were. In Glamorama, all that's changed is the milieu; instead of greedy Wall-Streeters from the 80's, we're given shallow celebrity wannabes from the 90's and, as a result, page after page of lists of famous people that these fictional characters see where ever they go. Of course, none of these stars ever step forward and interact with Victor or anyone else in the book (would that even be legal?) so we train our eyes and our brains fairly early on to just skip down one paragraph whenever we come across the beginnings of one of these lists; it's all just so much meaningless window dressing. Reading should not be this big of a chore and it seems to me that this results in an awful big waste of paper
The aforementioned brain-damaging waste of ink isn't the only technique Ellis apes from Psycho. In that novel, none of the characters could tell each other apart, they were all as shallow and well-dressed as the next guy. In Glamorama, the slight variation is that people are constantly coming up to Victor and referring to an interaction with him that he denies being present for. At first I thought this was an example of one of his character flaws, that this was Victor's way of avoiding responsibility for his reprehensible behavior (he's not only cheating on his girlfriend but his mistress). But then Ellis starts to drop clues that the terrorists might actually have the power to "double" people and I thought "Ok, this will eventually be explained." It's not. Ever. By the time we get to the last couple of pages in the book and one character is actually in two places at once (I am not making this up), it's obvious that Ellis either doesn't have an iota of respect for his readers and fans or that he simply does not have the capacity to put down on paper anything resembling coherence. Late in the book, it's revealed that the terrorists have the ability to alter pictures, film negatives and videotape into portraying anything they want. This, the novel suggests, is one of their strengths, one of the ways in which they hope to bring the world to it's knees. There's a kernel of a point in this, a suggestion that they who put blind faith in images - read: image - are easily manipulated and destroyed but haven't all of us in the real world been able to do this, in Windows, years ago? The fact that this is presented as one of the terrorist's greatest strengths is not nearly as mind-boggling empowering as Ellis presents it.
Another example of Ellis resting (Sleeping? In a coma? Dead?) on his laurels is his re-introduction of characters from past novels. In fact, in Glamorama, he goes this one better by "stealing" a fictional character from another author's work! I thought the name Alison Poole sounded familiar and, upon doing a little research, I was reminded that she was the main character from Jay McInerney's Story of My Life. But the problem with this seemingly cool bit of pilfering is that Ellis' version of Ms. Poole in no way resembles McInerney's original woman. Once again, it's just a shallow and pointless trick. When American Psycho's killer, Patrick Bateman, shows up in Glamorama for three paragraphs with "weird looking stains" on his suit, that's cool. When other past characters show up and don't even come close to resembling who we originally were told they were is lazy. Again, Ellis has duped the people who are paying his salary.
All this is really a shame because I honestly believe Ellis is intelligent. He's an expert at descriptions of locations that are just slightly off kilter and still, even after 5 crap books, occasionally exhibits the writing skills and effort that can make my jaw drop. At the end of Glamorama, Victor returns to the terrorist's headquarters one final time to retrieve his belongings and finds it empty save for endless piles of cell phones and pentagrams on the walls. It's an eerie sight that won't soon leave my memory.
I also believe he has important points to make and that, in his heart, he is a moralist and is deeply disturbed at the state of today's world. I think that he's exactly right in blaming our lessening of standards on bad parenting (in Less Than Zero) and image-over-substance beliefs (American Psycho and Glamorama). I think he's right in criticizing our society's indifference. I think he's right in that a lot of us have lost our souls long ago and that those of us who yet haven't feel our humanity slipping away bit by little bit with every passing moment. Sometimes the world is a cesspool! But his novels are all but unreadable. Why bury these thoughts amidst pages of descriptions of designer bottled water and stomach-churning violence and meaningless, unfeeling sex? Ellis' characters are especially fond of masturbation. I, for one, look forward to the day when he learns the difference between writing fiction and the latter. Until then, I can't recommend Glamorama, or any of his past works, to anyone.
Book & Film Reviews: A Map of the World & Disobedience
A Map of the World & Disobedience, Novels by Jane Hamilton
A Map of the World, Directed by Scott Elliott
September 15, 2002
Jane Hamilton’s second novel, A Map of the World got a lot of press when Oprah Winfrey mentioned it on her show a few years back so maybe you’ve heard of it. I always liked like the clarity and the attention to detail in Hamilton’s books; her intelligent narrators make these honest, truthful observations of common everyday middle-class life that allow people like ourselves to completely identify with these decent but troubled characters. Much of Hamilton’s narrative is internal and I’d say 70% of her books take place in her characters’ thoughts. Reading pages of flashbacks and memories isn’t always easy to do and once in a while the reader longs for something, anything to take place. But within the context of what they’re going through (a teen learns of his mother’s infidelity, a family is turned on by their entire town), it’s appropriate that they spend more time living within their own minds rather than the real world; they’re outsiders who have no one to turn to. Also somewhat distracting from her usually strong stories is Hamilton’s seeming obsession with her minor characters’ physical flaws. In A Map of the World, at least, main character Alice often notes or points out minor deformities that everyday people would possess. While it’s perhaps in character that someone as neurotic and honest as Alice would notice these deficiencies, she often comes across as a snob (something I don’t believe the author ever intended her to be) and makes for occasionally unpleasant reading. Regardless, I recommend Hamilton’s three novels (The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World and Disobedience) to everyone.
In A Map of the World, two families (each with two young girls) live in the same small Midwestern state and seem to be each other’s only friends. One Monday morning, Theresa drops off her kids at Alice and Howard Goodwin’s just like she always does and before leaving them in their care, promises to pick her girls up before supper. In the blink of an eye, a random tragedy occurs, one that certainly wasn’t intentional but perhaps could have been prevented by trivially just altering one’s location in the space of five minutes; Alice finds one of Theresa’s girls face down in her pond. Theresa is devastated and drops out of the book for a month. Alice, who the town silently decides should be punished for what transpired, drops out of her own life and goes weeks without talking to anyone or even getting out of bed. Only at night does she leave her house, constantly drawn to the very place where all their lives were altered forever: the pond. It’s there that Alice re-imagines what happened over and over, begs to be able to take it all back and communes with the lost girl Lizzy. It’s her conversations with the dead girl that are the book’s most emotional moments (“That’s your house right over there…”).
In the book’s second act, not happy with the lack of criminal charges brought up against Alice in the child’s death, the town’s mothers come up with their own punishment and together falsely accuses her of something so atrocious, she gets carted off to jail immediately. As her husband Howard struggles with the impossible task of managing their farm and looking after their two girls, he’s ostracized by the town in ways that recall the Salem witch trials. But having to drive 20 miles out of town to simply buy bread and milk is the least of his worries; their farm is faltering, his already troubled wife is spending months in the county jail and neither of them know where they’ll come up with the money for bail, court costs or lawyers. A surprisingly forgiving Theresa shows up at book’s middle and seems to be able to offer both of them different kinds of support to get them each through the ordeal.
Considering the somewhat scholarly nature of Hamilton’s writing, I feared the film version of A Map of the World would be a disaster. Specifically, I couldn’t understand how the character Theresa could survive the translation. In the book, after her daughter’s death, she deals with her grief in two ways: through religion and by keeping a forward momentum that’s so continuous she seems never to stop talking once she’s started. In the book, neither comes across as annoying and both are believable. Religion was important to her from the very start and after a meeting with an old friend of hers (a priest who has since left the church), her beliefs become even more grounded as she concentrates on keeping the memory of Lizzy alive and tries to overcome any sense of blame regarding the tragedy. When Alice and Theresa unexpectedly run into each other at the pond one night, Theresa admits to missing Alice as much as she does her own daughter. It’s a transcendent moment, another of the book’s highlights. As for her constant chatter, the reader is so happy to have Theresa back in the story that we appreciate hearing what she has to say about everything that’s going on, we want to know what her viewpoint on all of this is.
I needn’t have worried about that portrayal; Julianne Moore is perfect as Theresa and brings to life everything we liked about her in the book. The film’s screenplay has severely but wisely trimmed her long outbursts but the spirit of the character remains. Surprisingly, it’s David Strathairn as Howard that’s the disaster. In the book, he was strong and rugged, someone who took great pride in owning 400 acres and working that land to provide for his family. He was a man of very few words and mostly dirty all the time. Strathairn’s Howard is a complete wimp. First of all, he presents himself as way too clean cut for us to ever believe that he goes near a tractor much less remove 30 acres of rock in the course of two months. His mannerisms indicate weakness and a willingness to concede to everyone else’s wishes. Verbally, he seems to be apologizing for the very things he’s saying before he even finishes a sentence. Once, and only once, Howard (overcome by all that’s been thrust upon him) tells one of his daughters to “shut up.” It’s a strong moment in the book because we’re watching the beginnings of an absolutely decent and rational man come apart. In the film, the “shut up,” is a whine more suited to a television sitcom. Strathairn is a darn good actor but has misinterpreted the character completely. One wishes director Scott Elliott had stepped in and offered suggestion because it harms the film almost beyond repair.
Sigourney Weaver is by all means strong and smart enough to portray Alice but her performance is all over the place. In too many scenes, she seems to be going out of her way to affect the mannerisms of what she perceives as ‘normal’ blue-collar behavior. Later in the film, her outrageously calm behavior in prison almost comes across as silly. Granted, the character is almost impossible to present as written; Alice goes from everyday normality on through deadening guilt, depression, a nervous breakdown and then the indignities of jail life all in the course of 400 pages. In the film, Weaver is at her best when silent, showing all the above with utter clarity in facial expressions alone.
In fact, the whole film takes the book too literal; there can’t be 100 words spoken that don’t come directly from Hamilton’s prose. Amazingly enough, I think the film would have been better served if screenwriters Peter Hedges and Polly Platt had embellished a bit. What works well on the page hardly ever works when translated directly to another medium. While this faithfulness and respect for the film’s original source is commendable, it doesn’t make for satisfying viewing; both Hamilton and her fans would have been better served with some insightful tinkering.
The screenplay and direction is sloppy in other ways, as well. Watching Weaver and Strathairn act as parents often felt inaccurate. In one scene, Weaver stops her younger daughter from eating pennies, takes away the coins and then places them two feet away from the child onto the coffee table before leaving the room. In another scene, Strathairn takes away a knife their daughter is playing with and then places it two feet away from the child onto the kitchen table before leaving the room. Acting as a witness for Alice in court, Theresa admits that she would again entrust her one surviving daughter with an unchaperoned Alice when earlier in the film she wouldn’t let the girl sleep over the Goodwin’s after the death of Lizzy. But the film never makes it clear if she’s lying for Alice’s sake or has made an important turnaround. The prison environment towards the end is a joke, seemingly no more threatening than your average day at high school; putting up with the constant sassing of inmates is about as bad as it gets, the film suggest. And above everything else, did this movie need to make so many references to Oprah Winfrey? I know this book was championed by Winfrey on her show and thus is responsible for getting it into more readers’ hands than Hamilton ever thought possible. But to show or mention Winfrey five times in the course of two hours is too much to bear. When one character eventually admits that she’s patterned her whole life on Winfrey’s, I couldn’t help but giggle.
The film isn’t all bad. Arliss Howard as Alice’s lawyer Reverdy (named Paul Rafferty in the book) is mostly a joy to watch despite the insistence of the film that he’s simply comic relief. A smart man in a small town, Reverdy makes short work of the accusatory liars and takes great glee in doing so; his scenes toward the end provide a very downbeat film with some much needed kick. Although seemingly doing a perfect Kevin Spacey imitation throughout, he gets away with this bold move on talent alone and is the highlight of the movie. In fact, Strathairn’s eventual announcement that Reverdy “makes him sick,” just as the lawyer is about to get his wife acquitted shocks us but is never explained and serves as another example of the screenplay’s laziness. The director also at least tries to embrace some of the book’s flashbacks by showing them reeling through the minds of his characters in a grainy home movie-type of format. It’s not terribly original but it does get the point across that there’s much more going on in these peoples’ thoughts aside from what we see them doing in the cold light of day.
With much more hard work and some better interpretation, A Map of the World could have been resplendent. As such, it’s not the disaster I feared but is barely mediocre. I can’t recommend it to anyone.
The Hamilton adaptation I’m most looking forward to is that of her last novel Disobedience. In fact, I think it would make such a splendid film that I may start writing the screenplay myself.
The book begins simply enough when teenager Henry mistakenly reads his mother Beth’s AOL email and discovers that she’s having an affair with a minor friend of the family’s. Not sure what to do with this information, Henry keeps quiet about the infidelity and instead silently watches how this secret continual indiscretion subtlety impacts the entire family. Watching his close knit family almost come apart while dealing with his own feelings of guilt and his mother’s perceived betrayal provides this short 300 page novel with it’s main conflict. Complicating Henry’s emotions even further is good friend Karen, who’s alarmingly taking to feminism in almost a militant fashion and the meeting of a first true love at a camp that his family attends every year. About to enter college, Henry’s at that age where nothing makes sense and no one seems to be getting with the program.
From the outside, the Shaws seem the perfect family. Parents Beth and Kevin seemingly carefree and open nature and their love of the arts suggest that they were 60’s hippies who took the most positive aspects of that counter culture to heart and decided to build an entire family on simple peace, love and understanding. Beth is a orchestral pianist who contributes to soundtracks of Ken Burn’s documentaries on the side. Kevin teaches history, a subject he loves almost as much as his family. By far the most interesting character is thirteen year old daughter Elvira, a girl so obsessed with the Civil War that she disguises herself as a boy just to take place in their state’s reenactments of that war. She’s such an infinitely interesting character that she deserves an entire novel unto herself.
Before long, we get the gist of the entire book: every one in this family is faking it, lying as much to themselves as to each other. Beth’s lies are obvious but no more damaging to the family than Kevin’s continued pretence that all is fine or even young Elvira’s abandoning her entire gender alltogether. Observing all of this but never uttering a word to anyone, Henry is perhaps the biggest offender by simply deciding to keep quiet in the hopes of quelling the rapidly approaching conflagration.
Disobedience’s strengths is both it’s focus on a family in modern society (Beth’s reliance on her computer working properly enough to receive her lover’s email, her weekly women’s group discussing the latest Oprah book) and past traditional, perhaps more simpler times (Beth’s lover living in a cabin he built himself in the woods, the simple joy she gets from playing the piano for small gatherings of friends). As in A Map of the World, these are all highly intelligent, confident and decent people we’re introduced to. But their flaws and the way they try to rise above make them both accessible and sympathetic. When something comes close to harming a member of this family at book’s end, it’s Beth who makes a stand, who bares her teeth like a lioness and lets it be known that no one messes with this family, that those who try will do so over her dead body. Despite her romantic wanderings, it’s her family that was always foremost in her mind.
A Map of the World book: Recommended.
A Map of the World film: ** out of ****
Disobedience: Highly recommended.
A Map of the World, Directed by Scott Elliott
September 15, 2002
Jane Hamilton’s second novel, A Map of the World got a lot of press when Oprah Winfrey mentioned it on her show a few years back so maybe you’ve heard of it. I always liked like the clarity and the attention to detail in Hamilton’s books; her intelligent narrators make these honest, truthful observations of common everyday middle-class life that allow people like ourselves to completely identify with these decent but troubled characters. Much of Hamilton’s narrative is internal and I’d say 70% of her books take place in her characters’ thoughts. Reading pages of flashbacks and memories isn’t always easy to do and once in a while the reader longs for something, anything to take place. But within the context of what they’re going through (a teen learns of his mother’s infidelity, a family is turned on by their entire town), it’s appropriate that they spend more time living within their own minds rather than the real world; they’re outsiders who have no one to turn to. Also somewhat distracting from her usually strong stories is Hamilton’s seeming obsession with her minor characters’ physical flaws. In A Map of the World, at least, main character Alice often notes or points out minor deformities that everyday people would possess. While it’s perhaps in character that someone as neurotic and honest as Alice would notice these deficiencies, she often comes across as a snob (something I don’t believe the author ever intended her to be) and makes for occasionally unpleasant reading. Regardless, I recommend Hamilton’s three novels (The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World and Disobedience) to everyone.
In A Map of the World, two families (each with two young girls) live in the same small Midwestern state and seem to be each other’s only friends. One Monday morning, Theresa drops off her kids at Alice and Howard Goodwin’s just like she always does and before leaving them in their care, promises to pick her girls up before supper. In the blink of an eye, a random tragedy occurs, one that certainly wasn’t intentional but perhaps could have been prevented by trivially just altering one’s location in the space of five minutes; Alice finds one of Theresa’s girls face down in her pond. Theresa is devastated and drops out of the book for a month. Alice, who the town silently decides should be punished for what transpired, drops out of her own life and goes weeks without talking to anyone or even getting out of bed. Only at night does she leave her house, constantly drawn to the very place where all their lives were altered forever: the pond. It’s there that Alice re-imagines what happened over and over, begs to be able to take it all back and communes with the lost girl Lizzy. It’s her conversations with the dead girl that are the book’s most emotional moments (“That’s your house right over there…”).
In the book’s second act, not happy with the lack of criminal charges brought up against Alice in the child’s death, the town’s mothers come up with their own punishment and together falsely accuses her of something so atrocious, she gets carted off to jail immediately. As her husband Howard struggles with the impossible task of managing their farm and looking after their two girls, he’s ostracized by the town in ways that recall the Salem witch trials. But having to drive 20 miles out of town to simply buy bread and milk is the least of his worries; their farm is faltering, his already troubled wife is spending months in the county jail and neither of them know where they’ll come up with the money for bail, court costs or lawyers. A surprisingly forgiving Theresa shows up at book’s middle and seems to be able to offer both of them different kinds of support to get them each through the ordeal.
Considering the somewhat scholarly nature of Hamilton’s writing, I feared the film version of A Map of the World would be a disaster. Specifically, I couldn’t understand how the character Theresa could survive the translation. In the book, after her daughter’s death, she deals with her grief in two ways: through religion and by keeping a forward momentum that’s so continuous she seems never to stop talking once she’s started. In the book, neither comes across as annoying and both are believable. Religion was important to her from the very start and after a meeting with an old friend of hers (a priest who has since left the church), her beliefs become even more grounded as she concentrates on keeping the memory of Lizzy alive and tries to overcome any sense of blame regarding the tragedy. When Alice and Theresa unexpectedly run into each other at the pond one night, Theresa admits to missing Alice as much as she does her own daughter. It’s a transcendent moment, another of the book’s highlights. As for her constant chatter, the reader is so happy to have Theresa back in the story that we appreciate hearing what she has to say about everything that’s going on, we want to know what her viewpoint on all of this is.
I needn’t have worried about that portrayal; Julianne Moore is perfect as Theresa and brings to life everything we liked about her in the book. The film’s screenplay has severely but wisely trimmed her long outbursts but the spirit of the character remains. Surprisingly, it’s David Strathairn as Howard that’s the disaster. In the book, he was strong and rugged, someone who took great pride in owning 400 acres and working that land to provide for his family. He was a man of very few words and mostly dirty all the time. Strathairn’s Howard is a complete wimp. First of all, he presents himself as way too clean cut for us to ever believe that he goes near a tractor much less remove 30 acres of rock in the course of two months. His mannerisms indicate weakness and a willingness to concede to everyone else’s wishes. Verbally, he seems to be apologizing for the very things he’s saying before he even finishes a sentence. Once, and only once, Howard (overcome by all that’s been thrust upon him) tells one of his daughters to “shut up.” It’s a strong moment in the book because we’re watching the beginnings of an absolutely decent and rational man come apart. In the film, the “shut up,” is a whine more suited to a television sitcom. Strathairn is a darn good actor but has misinterpreted the character completely. One wishes director Scott Elliott had stepped in and offered suggestion because it harms the film almost beyond repair.
Sigourney Weaver is by all means strong and smart enough to portray Alice but her performance is all over the place. In too many scenes, she seems to be going out of her way to affect the mannerisms of what she perceives as ‘normal’ blue-collar behavior. Later in the film, her outrageously calm behavior in prison almost comes across as silly. Granted, the character is almost impossible to present as written; Alice goes from everyday normality on through deadening guilt, depression, a nervous breakdown and then the indignities of jail life all in the course of 400 pages. In the film, Weaver is at her best when silent, showing all the above with utter clarity in facial expressions alone.
In fact, the whole film takes the book too literal; there can’t be 100 words spoken that don’t come directly from Hamilton’s prose. Amazingly enough, I think the film would have been better served if screenwriters Peter Hedges and Polly Platt had embellished a bit. What works well on the page hardly ever works when translated directly to another medium. While this faithfulness and respect for the film’s original source is commendable, it doesn’t make for satisfying viewing; both Hamilton and her fans would have been better served with some insightful tinkering.
The screenplay and direction is sloppy in other ways, as well. Watching Weaver and Strathairn act as parents often felt inaccurate. In one scene, Weaver stops her younger daughter from eating pennies, takes away the coins and then places them two feet away from the child onto the coffee table before leaving the room. In another scene, Strathairn takes away a knife their daughter is playing with and then places it two feet away from the child onto the kitchen table before leaving the room. Acting as a witness for Alice in court, Theresa admits that she would again entrust her one surviving daughter with an unchaperoned Alice when earlier in the film she wouldn’t let the girl sleep over the Goodwin’s after the death of Lizzy. But the film never makes it clear if she’s lying for Alice’s sake or has made an important turnaround. The prison environment towards the end is a joke, seemingly no more threatening than your average day at high school; putting up with the constant sassing of inmates is about as bad as it gets, the film suggest. And above everything else, did this movie need to make so many references to Oprah Winfrey? I know this book was championed by Winfrey on her show and thus is responsible for getting it into more readers’ hands than Hamilton ever thought possible. But to show or mention Winfrey five times in the course of two hours is too much to bear. When one character eventually admits that she’s patterned her whole life on Winfrey’s, I couldn’t help but giggle.
The film isn’t all bad. Arliss Howard as Alice’s lawyer Reverdy (named Paul Rafferty in the book) is mostly a joy to watch despite the insistence of the film that he’s simply comic relief. A smart man in a small town, Reverdy makes short work of the accusatory liars and takes great glee in doing so; his scenes toward the end provide a very downbeat film with some much needed kick. Although seemingly doing a perfect Kevin Spacey imitation throughout, he gets away with this bold move on talent alone and is the highlight of the movie. In fact, Strathairn’s eventual announcement that Reverdy “makes him sick,” just as the lawyer is about to get his wife acquitted shocks us but is never explained and serves as another example of the screenplay’s laziness. The director also at least tries to embrace some of the book’s flashbacks by showing them reeling through the minds of his characters in a grainy home movie-type of format. It’s not terribly original but it does get the point across that there’s much more going on in these peoples’ thoughts aside from what we see them doing in the cold light of day.
With much more hard work and some better interpretation, A Map of the World could have been resplendent. As such, it’s not the disaster I feared but is barely mediocre. I can’t recommend it to anyone.
The Hamilton adaptation I’m most looking forward to is that of her last novel Disobedience. In fact, I think it would make such a splendid film that I may start writing the screenplay myself.
The book begins simply enough when teenager Henry mistakenly reads his mother Beth’s AOL email and discovers that she’s having an affair with a minor friend of the family’s. Not sure what to do with this information, Henry keeps quiet about the infidelity and instead silently watches how this secret continual indiscretion subtlety impacts the entire family. Watching his close knit family almost come apart while dealing with his own feelings of guilt and his mother’s perceived betrayal provides this short 300 page novel with it’s main conflict. Complicating Henry’s emotions even further is good friend Karen, who’s alarmingly taking to feminism in almost a militant fashion and the meeting of a first true love at a camp that his family attends every year. About to enter college, Henry’s at that age where nothing makes sense and no one seems to be getting with the program.
From the outside, the Shaws seem the perfect family. Parents Beth and Kevin seemingly carefree and open nature and their love of the arts suggest that they were 60’s hippies who took the most positive aspects of that counter culture to heart and decided to build an entire family on simple peace, love and understanding. Beth is a orchestral pianist who contributes to soundtracks of Ken Burn’s documentaries on the side. Kevin teaches history, a subject he loves almost as much as his family. By far the most interesting character is thirteen year old daughter Elvira, a girl so obsessed with the Civil War that she disguises herself as a boy just to take place in their state’s reenactments of that war. She’s such an infinitely interesting character that she deserves an entire novel unto herself.
Before long, we get the gist of the entire book: every one in this family is faking it, lying as much to themselves as to each other. Beth’s lies are obvious but no more damaging to the family than Kevin’s continued pretence that all is fine or even young Elvira’s abandoning her entire gender alltogether. Observing all of this but never uttering a word to anyone, Henry is perhaps the biggest offender by simply deciding to keep quiet in the hopes of quelling the rapidly approaching conflagration.
Disobedience’s strengths is both it’s focus on a family in modern society (Beth’s reliance on her computer working properly enough to receive her lover’s email, her weekly women’s group discussing the latest Oprah book) and past traditional, perhaps more simpler times (Beth’s lover living in a cabin he built himself in the woods, the simple joy she gets from playing the piano for small gatherings of friends). As in A Map of the World, these are all highly intelligent, confident and decent people we’re introduced to. But their flaws and the way they try to rise above make them both accessible and sympathetic. When something comes close to harming a member of this family at book’s end, it’s Beth who makes a stand, who bares her teeth like a lioness and lets it be known that no one messes with this family, that those who try will do so over her dead body. Despite her romantic wanderings, it’s her family that was always foremost in her mind.
A Map of the World book: Recommended.
A Map of the World film: ** out of ****
Disobedience: Highly recommended.
Non-Fiction Essay: Woodstock '99: Degeneration Nation
August 3, 1999
Non-fiction Essay
A couple of not-so-fun facts you probably won't see posted on the official Woodstock '99 web site:
* Approximately 225,000 people each paid the $150 ticket price for the honor of attending the three-day concert in Rome, NY.
* According to a spokesperson for the organizers: one 44-year old man died of a heart attack, 3,000 others received medical attention for anything from heat exhaustion to broken bones and at least 44 people were arrested for "criminal mischief and/or reckless endangerment."
* New York State Police are currently investigating allegations of at least four rapes that occurred at the event. Volunteer counselors working at the festival also reported witnessing many more sexual assaults, and the Rome office of the American Red Cross is said to have treated multiple victims who claimed to have been attacked in the mosh pit. And at least one New York State Police supervising officer has been suspended while Internal Affairs looks into an allegation that has him and seven of his men encircling two women and demanding they remove their clothes.
* By the festivals end Sunday night, the town of Rome was burning and "between 200 and 500 people" were freely looting and rioting.
Once again, our desire to return to a more innocent frame of mind goes up in flames and there's not a "peace candle" in sight. Forget Peace, Love and Understanding; how about simply being able to go out in public and not busting things up and hurting people? Are we just not able to do that anymore?
Like probably everyone else watching CNN, I'm standing here scratching my head asking myself yet again How and why does something like this happen? Did the concert-goers bring this bad attitude into the show with them? Were they looking for a fight from the very beginning? As a society about to enter a new millenium, is this really who we've become, ready to drop our funnel cake and raise our fists at a moment's provocation? According to reporters at the scene, the mostly young crowd was restless right from the start, giving a cold and indifferent reception to the performers that didn't strike their fancy (both Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow got less than polite comments from the crowd) and becoming downright nasty to the acts they weren't familiar with (poor Elvis Costello received the worst of this mass animosity). Kind of hard to feel sorry for this group of people that caused MTV News commentator Kurt Loder to report: "There was a hateful, hostile [feeling] coming off the crowd in waves kids were throwing bottles at each other and at security guards and stagehands. It was just ugly and out of control" To get a feel for what Loder was talking about, one only had to read the day-after postings at Woodstock.com's site: "You screw people out of $4 for water and $10 for a burrito, it's gonna come back and bite you on your fat greedy gluttonous ass." Another one read: "I hope we did as much damage to you as you did to us!"
Granted, the conditions at the show were horrendous. Overcrowded and squalid beyond belief; the overpowering stench from the overflowing Porta-Potties wafting through the air; nonexistent garbage collection; scant no-cost drinking water. Not one person there should have had to put up with even one of these inhumane elements and when you factor in the 100 degree temperatures and exorbitant price-gouging on necessities like food and water, I don't see how anyone could have not seen this trouble coming. Looking back on it all now, it's hard to believe that even one person gave one moment's thought to the planning of this fiasco. And yet I can't help but ask myself Well, what did the crowds expect exactly? We are in the middle of a hotter than average summer and one only has had to go to something like Great Adventure once to know that the promoters of these types of events absolutely thrive on captive audiences such as yourselves and will shove a $6.50 hot dog down your throats even if they have to do it with their own bare hands. Surprisingly, in my research for this article, I've not been able to unearth one single charity that's benefiting from this show. This tells me someone's walking away from this thing having made a lot of money and my anger at the planners and promoters rises a couple of more notches
Lastly, did we really need ignorant musicians like Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst taking the stage and provoking the crowd with shouts such as "Let's all start some shit?" I think not. Now I've talked before about how I believe almost all artists deserve complete creative freedom in pursuing and portraying their chosen craft as they see fit but this kind of behavior just strikes me as irresponsible. Someone should remind Mr. Durst that he is responsible for the things he says between songs, when he's supposedly presenting his "real self" to impressionable audiences. Sing how it might feel like to be an angry young man, Mr. Durst, don't play the part of one between gigs (that's not your job, after all). Not in public. Not in front of the kids. And especially not in front of a group of a quarter million overtired, overcrowded and overheated people that were probably close to their breaking point a full 24 hours before your pampered ass took the stage. I mean, it is still illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, isn't it?
For information and/or help dealing with issues of sexual abuse, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network operates a toll-free 24-hour hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE. Additional information can be found at http://www.rainn.org/.
Non-fiction Essay
A couple of not-so-fun facts you probably won't see posted on the official Woodstock '99 web site:
* Approximately 225,000 people each paid the $150 ticket price for the honor of attending the three-day concert in Rome, NY.
* According to a spokesperson for the organizers: one 44-year old man died of a heart attack, 3,000 others received medical attention for anything from heat exhaustion to broken bones and at least 44 people were arrested for "criminal mischief and/or reckless endangerment."
* New York State Police are currently investigating allegations of at least four rapes that occurred at the event. Volunteer counselors working at the festival also reported witnessing many more sexual assaults, and the Rome office of the American Red Cross is said to have treated multiple victims who claimed to have been attacked in the mosh pit. And at least one New York State Police supervising officer has been suspended while Internal Affairs looks into an allegation that has him and seven of his men encircling two women and demanding they remove their clothes.
* By the festivals end Sunday night, the town of Rome was burning and "between 200 and 500 people" were freely looting and rioting.
Once again, our desire to return to a more innocent frame of mind goes up in flames and there's not a "peace candle" in sight. Forget Peace, Love and Understanding; how about simply being able to go out in public and not busting things up and hurting people? Are we just not able to do that anymore?
Like probably everyone else watching CNN, I'm standing here scratching my head asking myself yet again How and why does something like this happen? Did the concert-goers bring this bad attitude into the show with them? Were they looking for a fight from the very beginning? As a society about to enter a new millenium, is this really who we've become, ready to drop our funnel cake and raise our fists at a moment's provocation? According to reporters at the scene, the mostly young crowd was restless right from the start, giving a cold and indifferent reception to the performers that didn't strike their fancy (both Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow got less than polite comments from the crowd) and becoming downright nasty to the acts they weren't familiar with (poor Elvis Costello received the worst of this mass animosity). Kind of hard to feel sorry for this group of people that caused MTV News commentator Kurt Loder to report: "There was a hateful, hostile [feeling] coming off the crowd in waves kids were throwing bottles at each other and at security guards and stagehands. It was just ugly and out of control" To get a feel for what Loder was talking about, one only had to read the day-after postings at Woodstock.com's site: "You screw people out of $4 for water and $10 for a burrito, it's gonna come back and bite you on your fat greedy gluttonous ass." Another one read: "I hope we did as much damage to you as you did to us!"
Granted, the conditions at the show were horrendous. Overcrowded and squalid beyond belief; the overpowering stench from the overflowing Porta-Potties wafting through the air; nonexistent garbage collection; scant no-cost drinking water. Not one person there should have had to put up with even one of these inhumane elements and when you factor in the 100 degree temperatures and exorbitant price-gouging on necessities like food and water, I don't see how anyone could have not seen this trouble coming. Looking back on it all now, it's hard to believe that even one person gave one moment's thought to the planning of this fiasco. And yet I can't help but ask myself Well, what did the crowds expect exactly? We are in the middle of a hotter than average summer and one only has had to go to something like Great Adventure once to know that the promoters of these types of events absolutely thrive on captive audiences such as yourselves and will shove a $6.50 hot dog down your throats even if they have to do it with their own bare hands. Surprisingly, in my research for this article, I've not been able to unearth one single charity that's benefiting from this show. This tells me someone's walking away from this thing having made a lot of money and my anger at the planners and promoters rises a couple of more notches
Lastly, did we really need ignorant musicians like Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst taking the stage and provoking the crowd with shouts such as "Let's all start some shit?" I think not. Now I've talked before about how I believe almost all artists deserve complete creative freedom in pursuing and portraying their chosen craft as they see fit but this kind of behavior just strikes me as irresponsible. Someone should remind Mr. Durst that he is responsible for the things he says between songs, when he's supposedly presenting his "real self" to impressionable audiences. Sing how it might feel like to be an angry young man, Mr. Durst, don't play the part of one between gigs (that's not your job, after all). Not in public. Not in front of the kids. And especially not in front of a group of a quarter million overtired, overcrowded and overheated people that were probably close to their breaking point a full 24 hours before your pampered ass took the stage. I mean, it is still illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, isn't it?
For information and/or help dealing with issues of sexual abuse, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network operates a toll-free 24-hour hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE. Additional information can be found at http://www.rainn.org/.
Software Review: Windows XP Beta Test
Windows XP
Beta 2, build 2428
"Whistler" professional edition
May 10, 2001 Software Review
Updated:
5/10/01
5/11/01
5/12/01 XP Games: 4 for 0, IE and OE 6
5/15/01 2nd draft
5/16/01 Restore, Task Monitor, Defrag, Summary, proofed
5/18/01 Compatibility Mode, rollovers, proofed
5/19/01
5/20/01 Mouse
5/31/01 Posted this file and began reformatting it's text
Installing/upgrading details, please.
Installing this thing was a friggin' nightmare. You have a choice of a full "clean" installation or an upgrade. I tried to do the full into it's own folder because I wanted the option of dual-boot but that method wouldn't work at all. Gave me tons of Can't Find so-and-so File errors during the process. Doing the upgrade still reported two missing files during the install, a .ttf and a .dll (during multiple tries). After that, it would allow me to get to the Windows login screen but not let me enter further. I had to boot into safe mode and change a registry entry. Then all was fine.
To this day, still no signs of trouble yet about those two "missing" files.
No beta lives forever, right?
Wrong. I believe that one change I had to make to the registry deactivated Microsoft's "Activation Rule." XP has not once asked or reminded me to activate this setup since. I haven't even had to register it. Don't tell anyone.
Is it faster than my 98 setup?
Too early to tell but I can tell you it's not terribly slower. And after only three days of playing with it, I've gotten it to boot, shut down, open folders and launch applications quicker and more efficiently than the default settings with only minor "tweaking."
After deactivating many of XP's desktop special effects and lowering the amount of programs loaded during startup, the speed difference is now negligible (if there at all). Generally, applications and processes seem to run quicker (i.e., loading a website or switching a Word doc) but the startups and shutdowns still mostly come at the getting-old rates of Windows 9x's of year's past. Why does booting the computer still take over a minute? Why, in XP, does it take my modem 15 seconds to disconnect from a simple ISP connection? There are waits when the whole system seems to just sit there doing nothing.
One reason for this may be that XP wants RAM and plenty of it. Running just the operating system, Microsoft Word and a utility called TweakAll occupied almost 100 MBs of RAM. Just booting up swipes 70 MBs from my dear old motherboard. Running this OS on a 128 MB system, as I am, might simply not be enough and might explain these pauses. System requirements for XP have not yet been released so there's no way to tell if what I'm witnessing is good or bad behavior
Another explanation may be that XP is in fact computing something in the background and we're just not aware of it. This is 100% brand new code for the home user, folks (this iteration has nothing to do with the previous ME, 98 or 95), and there's a lot going on behind the scenes of it. Like Windows ME before it, XP comes with a handy System Restore feature that lets users restore their system settings to a happier, more workable time if their system should become too unstable. For instance, whenever you go ahead and do something that XP has recommended you don't, XP automatically saves a restore point. This situation usually ends up with your OS giving you one of those I-told-you-so looks while you sheepishly restore your computer to one hour before you fearlessly changed three drivers and deleted four items from Device Manager. This, of course, takes time to do (1-2 minutes) but the system never gives any indication that it's doing it. I'm betting that at least some of these hanging pauses are a result of the invisible execution of this feature. That's but a small price to pay for getting your seemingly unbootable computer back to perfect working order in less than 30 minutes.
Also always running is the Task Monitor, the much bigger brother of Win 9x's feeble Close Program box. You remember the Close Program box, don't you? It was that thing that sometimes might come up if you pressed CTRL, ALT + DEL at the same time. In it was a list of programs that were currently running (usually with the phrase "not responding" to the right of them). The idea was that you'd highlight the problem program and hit End Task and Windows would close the program and supposedly let you go on with your work. But sometimes it would misunderstand and shut down all instances of that application (if, for instance, you were working in multiple browsers or Word docs). And my favorite result: sometimes it didn't work at all but instead just flat out froze your system even deeper. Well, the Task Monitor eliminates all that nonsense. Just some of it's improvements are that it lists CPU and memory usage next to every application running (or animated bar graphs if you'd rather see it that way), tells you who on your system is currently running that program, lets you log off that user or shutdown, restart or go into hibernation mode. Enable this thing to free up RAM and it'd be the only system monitoring utility you'd need.
While we're on the subject of improvements, it's nice to finally have back the option to see how defragmented our drives are before making the decision to go through the time-intensive deed. This small feature hasn't been seen since Win 95 and I can't for the life of me figure out why Microsoft ever took it away. One more thing: there's no more Scan Disk. XP will run it after a bad shutdown but it's no longer in your power to perform one. I'm assuming this is now being done invisibly and automatically before every defrag. If so, why weren't these two similar cleansing utilities combined earlier?
Also in the what-were-they-waiting-for category is a simple desktop mouse rollover that now gives you almost as much information as opening an icon's property box. Hold the mouse over a Word doc and you'll see its file type, author, title, date last modified and how large it is. Hold the mouse over a shortcut to an application and it will tell you exactly where it leads. Hold it over a folder and it'll tell you how much hard drive space all the files in it are taking up. In Windows, any new feature that saves us about 900,000 mouse clicks a year should be cherished. This is one of them.
Is it really "crash-proof?"
Almost, but not quite. Had one or two nice ones so far where I had to shut down cold. But I see now that these crashes were simply the result of me telling XP to do something it didn't want to do. XP warned me I shouldn't do what I foolishly went ahead and did and gave me a rock solid lock-up as a lesson. Having said that, in normal day-to-day operations, I've never lost control of the mouse once. I've not experienced one lock-up, one random crash, one blue screen of death or one "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" since install. I've also not once been disconnected from the Internet (5-19-01: scratch that, I've been disconnected once in 14 days). This is a huge noticeable improvement in stability over my last Windows 98 setup.
Any trouble with games?
Not much. Two of the three games I tested first ran fine with no effort whatsoever. But for when you do come across something difficult, XP now has a brand-new Compatibility Mode in which you can attempt to run a problem program in a simulated 95/98/ME/NT/2000 environment (that may be better suited to what the programmers had in mind at the time). And once you find a proper compatibility mode for that application, XP will update that program's shortcut and run it in that mode from here on in with no more effort on your part required. Disabling that boot process is as simple as bringing up said shortcut's property box and unchecking Run In Compatibility Mode. My experiences with this new feature so far have been great! Some notes:
XP is very picky with Microsoft-approved drivers and thusly assigned my Nvidia TNT2 video card an MS driver for that chipset. Graphic-intensive first person shooters like Serious Sam and Undying didn't like this driver and both failed to load. But now I have no other legitimate options to get a MS approved vidcard driver cause XP is too new and no companies are posting them yet. I changed vidcard driver to the card's manufacturer's Windows 2000 version and tried SS again. NO GO. I ran it again but this time in XP's Compatibility Mode. Bingo. Runs fine, tastes great and goes down easy. Ditto Undying.
Any trouble with any applications?
No, there has not been one program I've not been able to run.
So, why'd you do it?
Most honest answer is because I could.
Plus:
The System Restore (details above): The feature even lets you set "restore points," giving you total say in when saves are made and control over how far you must go back in time to get your computer in working, bootable order. I believe this feature will prove indispensable and it's already saved my bacon more than I care to admit. Invaluable, introduced in Windows ME.
Remote Access: Kind of like a built in PC Anywhere in which I could connect to your computer through the Internet and make actual changes to your system by controlling your mouse (think of how much easier this would make my job). But since I don't know anyone that has XP yet, I've not had a chance to try it : ( Not tested.
Microsoft thinks the above-mentioned Compatibility Mode so important that it just made this feature available to owners of Windows 2000 in a 100 MB downloadable patch. This feature effectively enables Windows NT obsolete. Invaluable.
Through Windows XP, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express get upgraded to version 6 (available as a free download at MS's site). While I see no change whatsoever in OE, IE offers plenty of decent new features. Most importantly, it allows you to manage images on websites much easier. Hold your pointer over a picture and a small toolbar pops up. With one left click of the mouse, you can save, print or email it instantly. IE also now resizes images to reflect the size of the browser. Open a picture in only a partially opened IE and it shows you a thumbnail instead of that partial corner of the yellow curtain behind George Clooney's head from that cover of People you want so badly. For anyone that needs to manipulate many pics in a short amount of time (webmasters or porn-viewers, for two), this is a godsend. Useful update, available as a free download.
The OS also makes it extremely easy to configure different Windows settings for many users (think Outlook Express' identities). This will be very handy to you manly men who share theirs w/ a wife or to parents who wish to protect their kid's eyes from sensitive material. Have a curious youngster not yet ready for the 'net? Setup a profile for him that doesn't even have Dial Up Networking on it. Tired of your roommate's 100 icons on the desktop? Setup up your own and then don't even put a My Computer icon on it if you don't want to. Useful for a 2+ person household.
XP is much more customizable and offers a completely new interface called Luna. This offers "smart" folders, toolbars, taskbar and start menu that remember what programs you used most recently and thus re-positions them accordingly, making them easier to get to than the old standard list. And as with almost every new feature described in this paper, you always have the choice of turning something off or simply just defaulting to "classic view."
In fact, maybe the greatest thing about XP is that it eliminates the need for many various third-party programs you were forced to use to do things Windows couldn't. System Restore eliminates the need for a "ghosting" back-up application, Remote Access a networking application and Compatibility Mode a dual-boot setup. Windows Media Player 8 now plays DVDs (untested). Windows Movie Maker is a full-fledged video editor (untested) and Internet Explorer 6 now includes some basic instant-messaging features. The hard drive space, headaches and hassles you save by now being able to do all the above in Windows alone is unbelievable and you'll never understand how you lived like you did back in '98-Land.
Quirks?
A few.
The mouse driver XP assigned me during install doesn't let me assign a function to the wheel. Normally, I had that set as double-click so I could open any document with just one press and now not having that option annoys me. This was curious as the item in question is a standard Microsoft Wheelmouse. Taking a que from the message boards, I attempted to install Logitec's latest Windows 2000 driver. No go and a locked up system to boot. Downloading and then installing Microsoft's own latest driver eventually proved to be the answer and gave me back total control of buttons and other functions that the initial driver didn't
Outlook Express would work in one of my XP identities but not another. After importing settings to working identity, I simply deleted the problem one and went on with life.
The system crashed when I tried to install Office 2000. Deleting Office folders left from a previous install solved this completely. Word, Excel and Outlook 2000 now run flawlessly.
No matter the length of your password, it shows up as 16 *'s in dialers. This makes it especially hard to spot incorrectly entered ID.
In the beta copy I have, a comments link is embedded into the top blue bar of every browser and folder (to make sending reports to Microsoft as easy as possible). This was easily disabled with one change in the registry.
No driver whatsoever for my Lexmark 1000 and so therefore no printing. Obviously, this is a BIG drawback and originally I was not sure if it was Microsoft or Lexmark that was acting slow on the draw. This turns out to be Lexmark's problem, as they simply don't support this model printer above Windows ME. But because XP is still five months away from an official release, I have no right to criticize the lack of available support for this old crappy printer. I could have also gone to Microsoft's site and found this out before installing. They've posted a hardware compatibility list (http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/) which tells you up front what will and won't work with this new OS. Its straightforward and honest, as I believe Microsoft would rather you don't buy XP than get it and be dissatisfied with it.
Check the list twice, is what I say, because you're going to want this to work. This is finally the perfect merging of the stability of NT/2000 coupled with the compatibility of Windows 9x. This is what we've waited seven years for and is what we've always wanted. Hell, it's what we've always needed. This is the one we'll all have to finally upgrade to. Forget the worthlessness of Windows 98 Second Edition and Millennium. This is the real thing and it's hitting store shelves October 26th, 2001.
Pricing has yet to be announced.
APPENDIX 1
Working Programs:
Applications: Excel 2000, Internet Explorer 6, Outlook 2000, Outlook Express 6 and Word 2000.
Games: Black and White, Darkstone, Longest Journey, Nocturne, Serious Sam and Clive Barker's Undying.
Utilities: TweakAll 2.0.
Non-Working Programs:
None found as of yet.
APPENDIX 2
Tweaks:
To disable the comments link in all folders and browsers, set the value of
My Computer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ LameButtonEnabled in the registry to zero.
APPENDIX 3
Time Statistics:
Startup:
1:15 (auto login)
Restart:
1:55 minutes (w/CD in drive)
1:40 (auto login)
1:40 (auto login)
Shutdown:
35 seconds
All tests performed with only volume control loaded into System Tray.
Beta 2, build 2428
"Whistler" professional edition
May 10, 2001 Software Review
Updated:
5/10/01
5/11/01
5/12/01 XP Games: 4 for 0, IE and OE 6
5/15/01 2nd draft
5/16/01 Restore, Task Monitor, Defrag, Summary, proofed
5/18/01 Compatibility Mode, rollovers, proofed
5/19/01
5/20/01 Mouse
5/31/01 Posted this file and began reformatting it's text
Installing/upgrading details, please.
Installing this thing was a friggin' nightmare. You have a choice of a full "clean" installation or an upgrade. I tried to do the full into it's own folder because I wanted the option of dual-boot but that method wouldn't work at all. Gave me tons of Can't Find so-and-so File errors during the process. Doing the upgrade still reported two missing files during the install, a .ttf and a .dll (during multiple tries). After that, it would allow me to get to the Windows login screen but not let me enter further. I had to boot into safe mode and change a registry entry. Then all was fine.
To this day, still no signs of trouble yet about those two "missing" files.
No beta lives forever, right?
Wrong. I believe that one change I had to make to the registry deactivated Microsoft's "Activation Rule." XP has not once asked or reminded me to activate this setup since. I haven't even had to register it. Don't tell anyone.
Is it faster than my 98 setup?
Too early to tell but I can tell you it's not terribly slower. And after only three days of playing with it, I've gotten it to boot, shut down, open folders and launch applications quicker and more efficiently than the default settings with only minor "tweaking."
After deactivating many of XP's desktop special effects and lowering the amount of programs loaded during startup, the speed difference is now negligible (if there at all). Generally, applications and processes seem to run quicker (i.e., loading a website or switching a Word doc) but the startups and shutdowns still mostly come at the getting-old rates of Windows 9x's of year's past. Why does booting the computer still take over a minute? Why, in XP, does it take my modem 15 seconds to disconnect from a simple ISP connection? There are waits when the whole system seems to just sit there doing nothing.
One reason for this may be that XP wants RAM and plenty of it. Running just the operating system, Microsoft Word and a utility called TweakAll occupied almost 100 MBs of RAM. Just booting up swipes 70 MBs from my dear old motherboard. Running this OS on a 128 MB system, as I am, might simply not be enough and might explain these pauses. System requirements for XP have not yet been released so there's no way to tell if what I'm witnessing is good or bad behavior
Another explanation may be that XP is in fact computing something in the background and we're just not aware of it. This is 100% brand new code for the home user, folks (this iteration has nothing to do with the previous ME, 98 or 95), and there's a lot going on behind the scenes of it. Like Windows ME before it, XP comes with a handy System Restore feature that lets users restore their system settings to a happier, more workable time if their system should become too unstable. For instance, whenever you go ahead and do something that XP has recommended you don't, XP automatically saves a restore point. This situation usually ends up with your OS giving you one of those I-told-you-so looks while you sheepishly restore your computer to one hour before you fearlessly changed three drivers and deleted four items from Device Manager. This, of course, takes time to do (1-2 minutes) but the system never gives any indication that it's doing it. I'm betting that at least some of these hanging pauses are a result of the invisible execution of this feature. That's but a small price to pay for getting your seemingly unbootable computer back to perfect working order in less than 30 minutes.
Also always running is the Task Monitor, the much bigger brother of Win 9x's feeble Close Program box. You remember the Close Program box, don't you? It was that thing that sometimes might come up if you pressed CTRL, ALT + DEL at the same time. In it was a list of programs that were currently running (usually with the phrase "not responding" to the right of them). The idea was that you'd highlight the problem program and hit End Task and Windows would close the program and supposedly let you go on with your work. But sometimes it would misunderstand and shut down all instances of that application (if, for instance, you were working in multiple browsers or Word docs). And my favorite result: sometimes it didn't work at all but instead just flat out froze your system even deeper. Well, the Task Monitor eliminates all that nonsense. Just some of it's improvements are that it lists CPU and memory usage next to every application running (or animated bar graphs if you'd rather see it that way), tells you who on your system is currently running that program, lets you log off that user or shutdown, restart or go into hibernation mode. Enable this thing to free up RAM and it'd be the only system monitoring utility you'd need.
While we're on the subject of improvements, it's nice to finally have back the option to see how defragmented our drives are before making the decision to go through the time-intensive deed. This small feature hasn't been seen since Win 95 and I can't for the life of me figure out why Microsoft ever took it away. One more thing: there's no more Scan Disk. XP will run it after a bad shutdown but it's no longer in your power to perform one. I'm assuming this is now being done invisibly and automatically before every defrag. If so, why weren't these two similar cleansing utilities combined earlier?
Also in the what-were-they-waiting-for category is a simple desktop mouse rollover that now gives you almost as much information as opening an icon's property box. Hold the mouse over a Word doc and you'll see its file type, author, title, date last modified and how large it is. Hold the mouse over a shortcut to an application and it will tell you exactly where it leads. Hold it over a folder and it'll tell you how much hard drive space all the files in it are taking up. In Windows, any new feature that saves us about 900,000 mouse clicks a year should be cherished. This is one of them.
Is it really "crash-proof?"
Almost, but not quite. Had one or two nice ones so far where I had to shut down cold. But I see now that these crashes were simply the result of me telling XP to do something it didn't want to do. XP warned me I shouldn't do what I foolishly went ahead and did and gave me a rock solid lock-up as a lesson. Having said that, in normal day-to-day operations, I've never lost control of the mouse once. I've not experienced one lock-up, one random crash, one blue screen of death or one "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" since install. I've also not once been disconnected from the Internet (5-19-01: scratch that, I've been disconnected once in 14 days). This is a huge noticeable improvement in stability over my last Windows 98 setup.
Any trouble with games?
Not much. Two of the three games I tested first ran fine with no effort whatsoever. But for when you do come across something difficult, XP now has a brand-new Compatibility Mode in which you can attempt to run a problem program in a simulated 95/98/ME/NT/2000 environment (that may be better suited to what the programmers had in mind at the time). And once you find a proper compatibility mode for that application, XP will update that program's shortcut and run it in that mode from here on in with no more effort on your part required. Disabling that boot process is as simple as bringing up said shortcut's property box and unchecking Run In Compatibility Mode. My experiences with this new feature so far have been great! Some notes:
XP is very picky with Microsoft-approved drivers and thusly assigned my Nvidia TNT2 video card an MS driver for that chipset. Graphic-intensive first person shooters like Serious Sam and Undying didn't like this driver and both failed to load. But now I have no other legitimate options to get a MS approved vidcard driver cause XP is too new and no companies are posting them yet. I changed vidcard driver to the card's manufacturer's Windows 2000 version and tried SS again. NO GO. I ran it again but this time in XP's Compatibility Mode. Bingo. Runs fine, tastes great and goes down easy. Ditto Undying.
Any trouble with any applications?
No, there has not been one program I've not been able to run.
So, why'd you do it?
Most honest answer is because I could.
Plus:
The System Restore (details above): The feature even lets you set "restore points," giving you total say in when saves are made and control over how far you must go back in time to get your computer in working, bootable order. I believe this feature will prove indispensable and it's already saved my bacon more than I care to admit. Invaluable, introduced in Windows ME.
Remote Access: Kind of like a built in PC Anywhere in which I could connect to your computer through the Internet and make actual changes to your system by controlling your mouse (think of how much easier this would make my job). But since I don't know anyone that has XP yet, I've not had a chance to try it : ( Not tested.
Microsoft thinks the above-mentioned Compatibility Mode so important that it just made this feature available to owners of Windows 2000 in a 100 MB downloadable patch. This feature effectively enables Windows NT obsolete. Invaluable.
Through Windows XP, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express get upgraded to version 6 (available as a free download at MS's site). While I see no change whatsoever in OE, IE offers plenty of decent new features. Most importantly, it allows you to manage images on websites much easier. Hold your pointer over a picture and a small toolbar pops up. With one left click of the mouse, you can save, print or email it instantly. IE also now resizes images to reflect the size of the browser. Open a picture in only a partially opened IE and it shows you a thumbnail instead of that partial corner of the yellow curtain behind George Clooney's head from that cover of People you want so badly. For anyone that needs to manipulate many pics in a short amount of time (webmasters or porn-viewers, for two), this is a godsend. Useful update, available as a free download.
The OS also makes it extremely easy to configure different Windows settings for many users (think Outlook Express' identities). This will be very handy to you manly men who share theirs w/ a wife or to parents who wish to protect their kid's eyes from sensitive material. Have a curious youngster not yet ready for the 'net? Setup a profile for him that doesn't even have Dial Up Networking on it. Tired of your roommate's 100 icons on the desktop? Setup up your own and then don't even put a My Computer icon on it if you don't want to. Useful for a 2+ person household.
XP is much more customizable and offers a completely new interface called Luna. This offers "smart" folders, toolbars, taskbar and start menu that remember what programs you used most recently and thus re-positions them accordingly, making them easier to get to than the old standard list. And as with almost every new feature described in this paper, you always have the choice of turning something off or simply just defaulting to "classic view."
In fact, maybe the greatest thing about XP is that it eliminates the need for many various third-party programs you were forced to use to do things Windows couldn't. System Restore eliminates the need for a "ghosting" back-up application, Remote Access a networking application and Compatibility Mode a dual-boot setup. Windows Media Player 8 now plays DVDs (untested). Windows Movie Maker is a full-fledged video editor (untested) and Internet Explorer 6 now includes some basic instant-messaging features. The hard drive space, headaches and hassles you save by now being able to do all the above in Windows alone is unbelievable and you'll never understand how you lived like you did back in '98-Land.
Quirks?
A few.
The mouse driver XP assigned me during install doesn't let me assign a function to the wheel. Normally, I had that set as double-click so I could open any document with just one press and now not having that option annoys me. This was curious as the item in question is a standard Microsoft Wheelmouse. Taking a que from the message boards, I attempted to install Logitec's latest Windows 2000 driver. No go and a locked up system to boot. Downloading and then installing Microsoft's own latest driver eventually proved to be the answer and gave me back total control of buttons and other functions that the initial driver didn't
Outlook Express would work in one of my XP identities but not another. After importing settings to working identity, I simply deleted the problem one and went on with life.
The system crashed when I tried to install Office 2000. Deleting Office folders left from a previous install solved this completely. Word, Excel and Outlook 2000 now run flawlessly.
No matter the length of your password, it shows up as 16 *'s in dialers. This makes it especially hard to spot incorrectly entered ID.
In the beta copy I have, a comments link is embedded into the top blue bar of every browser and folder (to make sending reports to Microsoft as easy as possible). This was easily disabled with one change in the registry.
No driver whatsoever for my Lexmark 1000 and so therefore no printing. Obviously, this is a BIG drawback and originally I was not sure if it was Microsoft or Lexmark that was acting slow on the draw. This turns out to be Lexmark's problem, as they simply don't support this model printer above Windows ME. But because XP is still five months away from an official release, I have no right to criticize the lack of available support for this old crappy printer. I could have also gone to Microsoft's site and found this out before installing. They've posted a hardware compatibility list (http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/) which tells you up front what will and won't work with this new OS. Its straightforward and honest, as I believe Microsoft would rather you don't buy XP than get it and be dissatisfied with it.
Check the list twice, is what I say, because you're going to want this to work. This is finally the perfect merging of the stability of NT/2000 coupled with the compatibility of Windows 9x. This is what we've waited seven years for and is what we've always wanted. Hell, it's what we've always needed. This is the one we'll all have to finally upgrade to. Forget the worthlessness of Windows 98 Second Edition and Millennium. This is the real thing and it's hitting store shelves October 26th, 2001.
Pricing has yet to be announced.
APPENDIX 1
Working Programs:
Applications: Excel 2000, Internet Explorer 6, Outlook 2000, Outlook Express 6 and Word 2000.
Games: Black and White, Darkstone, Longest Journey, Nocturne, Serious Sam and Clive Barker's Undying.
Utilities: TweakAll 2.0.
Non-Working Programs:
None found as of yet.
APPENDIX 2
Tweaks:
To disable the comments link in all folders and browsers, set the value of
My Computer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ LameButtonEnabled in the registry to zero.
APPENDIX 3
Time Statistics:
Startup:
1:15 (auto login)
Restart:
1:55 minutes (w/CD in drive)
1:40 (auto login)
1:40 (auto login)
Shutdown:
35 seconds
All tests performed with only volume control loaded into System Tray.
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