Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

So, I watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium the other day.  Don't look at me like that, I was on a nine hour flight across the Pacific.  I was desperate.

Anyway.

I really wanted to like this movie.  I really did.  I like odd, quirky, feelgood movies.  Especially ones whose main message is railing against the dying of the light and making every moment count.  I'm a sucker that way.  I mean, I like The Neverending Story.  Hell, I like Toys.  And I wish Emporium was of a rank with either of them.

Wonder Emporium did have a few noteworthy and memorable moments.  There are a few genuinely sweet moments, a few genuinely comic moments, and even a cameo that put a huge grin on my face.  It's just a shame that none of those moments had the movie's lead in them.  

The movie has three plots:  Boy must learn to make friends.  Girl must begin to believe in herself.  Man must rediscover his belief in magic.  And all three will do so with the help of an unlikely hero - Mr. Magorium.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really deliver on any of hem.  Much.  The standard elements are all in place and are all used well - you know the funny moment in the first act turns out to have emotional significance in the third; themes are presented with all the subtlty of a brick to the nose.

The trouble comes in that Dustin Hoffman, a capable actor in many respects, tried to play the title role as a version of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka.  And the movie really needed Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka.

What I mean is, Depp's Wonka is an oddball who knows he's odd.  He knows that the rest of the world does not operate on the same mechanics that he does and so he pushes it further and further away until he is more clown than confectioner.  Wilder's Wonka, on the other hand, did not care if the world thought him odd.  He was perfectly content to run his factory, and by extension, his life, on his own terms and he thought only in terms of candy.

Magorium is weird and knows it.  He revels in it.  He speaks in deliberate non-sequiters, trying to impart an entire philosphers worth of wisdom into every quip and pun.  His eccentricities seem affectations rather than genuine discombobulation.  (It's a word.  Trust me.)

The movie sets up a contrast between the weird and wonderful Magorium and ultra straight laced Henry, played by Jason Bateman in the movie.  And here is where the above problem really begins to come through.  Bateman's journey is so entirely disparate from anything Hoffman does; rather, his journey is manifest through the store itself (and it is a character in itself, as well as being the best part of the movie).  

The ostensibly main plot, Natalie Portman's journey to believe in herself is one we've seen a thousand times.  And here, again, we need a restrained, genuinely odd Magorium, rather than the deliberate clowning Hoffman gives us.

The other plot I mentioned gets dropped more or less completely at the end of the film.  

The movie is worth...obtaining...if not buying or, really, even renting, if only to see the effects that have been put to marvelous use bringing the store to life.  But that's about it.  Dammit.

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The Sandlot

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Moleskine Barcelona City Guide

Moleskine, the famed maker of small, hardback, quality notebooks, has recently released a series of city guides.  The guides are designed to turn a travel journal into a useful guidebook as well.  From the website:

A special guidebook, to buy for your own use or as a gift for your friends.  Ideal for those who travel, whether to see the sights or for work, as a way of organizing your trip and to preserve it for your memory and your records.

I can admit to being a huge fan of moleskine notebooks.  I have several and I have been using them for various things for years, so, when I saw that one of the first in the series was for the city of Barcelona, I picked one up.

It is a quality notebook, with the same high grade construction and durability as regular Moleskines.  Further, the organization of the notebook was very nice, with maps at the front, then blank journal pages, then several pages of...annotation pages, with icons built into tabs on the sides of the pages, and lines dividing the page into small blocks.  At the back of the book is the standard pocket.  One other final design note, in place of the usual sewn-in bookmark, the city guides come with three.

Having said all that, I did not really find the guide very useful.  Well, the journal pages got filled up very quickly and I loved that, although I would have preferred lined pages, and the maps were nice, but the rest was just wasted space for me.  I found that the annotation pages would be really useful if I lived in the city and needed to refer back to that little tapas bar I found last week, but for one time visitors, it was not very practical.

To be very brief and to the point - the books are wonderful for people who live in the city, or for people who travel there often.  If they make one for Tokyo, I'll definitely pick it up.  For other places, though, I will stick with just a plain old notebook.

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The Rough Guides' Barcelona Directions 1 (Rough Guide Directions)

Jules Brown

A good travel guide should provide the traveler with all the information they need to get around the city, tourist attractions, hotels, and restaurants.  A good travel guide should not provide so much information about a place that the traveler has no need to speak to any locals nor to venture outside prescribed tourist zones where everyone speaks English and souveniers can be purchased in bulk.

The current incarnation of Rough Guide Publishing's Directions series does the former quite well.  My recently arrived copy of the Rough Guide Directions: Barcelona is opened and closed with fold-out maps of the city.  In between the book is broken into chapters, starting with an Introduction to the city, then Ideas, then Places, Accommodation, Essentials, and Language.

The Ideas chapter is what I have been most interested in as it lists an assortment of locations and events with only a photo and a line or two to provide the reader / traveler with a, well, idea of what there is to see and do in the city.  The following chapter on Places provides much more information on many of the places listed in the Ideas section, and while keeping itself primarily to a brief description of the location, provides timetables, maps, phone numbers, and contact names where necessary.

The Accommodation and Essentials chapters do much the same as any guidebook, but the Language chapter stands out as an excellent travel preparation and in-country tool, with sections on pronunciation, words and phrases for hotels and taxis, and a well made menu reader.

As an added bonus, purchase of the physical book provides the reader / traveler with a CD containing the full e-text of the book in PDF format for loading onto a laptop or PDA or cellphone.

All in all, this is a quick, simple travel guide for people who like to explore and have a look around, written by people who like to do the same.  A traveler heading to a European destination could do far worse for guidebooks than the Rough Guide Directions Series.

Links:  Amazon Affiliate Link to Rough Guide Directions Barcelona and Rough Guide Directions Venice books.

Cross-posted to Soapadoo.

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The translated manga is published by Viz media, who have made a business out of finding the more popular Japanese properties and translating them with as much of the original art and format preserved as possible.  This includes keeping the right to left reading format of both the book and each page.  That said, there are little, helpful hints such as an arrow pointing left and the phrase "read this way" at the top of some pages to help readers adjust to the Japanese layout.  There are other fun pages scattered throughout the book, such as the page that teaches you to draw a Jolly Roger and one that encourages the reader to design their own pirate flag.

Volume one serves to introduce the main characters and to get the story in motion.  We meet Luffy, the central protaganist, as a young boy hanging out in a pirate bar, listening to the sailors tell stories.  Luffy decides that he will become king of the pirates someday, somehow.  In the meantime there is a scuffle with some bandits and Luffy eats one of the devil fruit, turning his whole body to rubber with the cost of never being able to swim.  (Being made of rubber enables Luffy to use various combinations of stretched limbs to get himself or others out of tough situations.)

Luffy grows up and sets off to become a pirate.  In the first volume, he saves another boy from a dangerous female pirate captain and, with the boy's help, saves the world's greatest swordsman from certain death.  The swordsman becomes Luffy's first crewman and the story is launched.

The original Japanese story was first published in the pages of Shonen Jump magazine, a weekly that presents the next issues of several different stories in one volume.  Shonen Jump is aimed at Japanese boys in the Jr. High School to High School range and the writing reflects this with its themes of friendship and its use of violence to produce humor.   The art is, of course, manga style, with all the cliches and must-haves present.  Emotion causes huge distortions to the mouths and eyes of whichever character is in the throes of an outburst, while Luffy's rubber body stretches to amazing and inconsistent proportions depending on the need at the time.  The art is also brilliant.  Clean lines and a minimum of shading are used to keep the page busy without being cluttered and to get the story from point A to point B easily and clearly.

The book is worth picking up if you are a fan of anime or manga, or simply curious as to what all the fuss is about.  Priced at $7.95 U.S., each volume is almost twice the price of the Japanese versions, which makes collecting and reading the entire series a more daunting prospect.  However, as the English language editions are still being translated, a dedicated reader can take his or her time and pick up new volumes at their leisure.

One Piece has its share of melodrama, absurdist humor, and cartoon violence, all of which makes it a fun, if sometimes simplistic read and I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next.

Links:  Viz Media, Shonen Jump Magazine (English) and my Amazon Affiliate Link for One Piece Vol. 1 Romance Dawn (English).

This entry is cross-posted to Soapadoo.

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David Bowie's Low (33 1/3) (33 1/3)

Hugo Wilcken

Low can be a hard album to listen to.  It does not have the conventional pop singles or tracks that are easy to jump into and out of;  the second side of the LP contains nothing but slow, synthetic songs that seem more at home as background music than as actual pop songs.

Given all that, Wilcken's thoughtful and deep analysis, of the album as a whole and as individual tracks, does an incredible job of reinvigorating the listener's interest in the album.

The book is a series of essays detailing the physical surroundings where the album was created, as well as a bit of background on Bowie's mental state at the time - Bowie was strung out and in the process of getting a divorce - and how these affected the work in progress.

Once past the background and overview of the album as a whole, the book turns to tackling each song individually.  The analysis of the songs is very well done, bringing into focus the instrumentation and themes of each track, plus how they relate to each other and to the album as a whole.

More than that, however, the book made me want to listen to the album again.  And again.  I found myself listening to each track before reading the analysis and then again, immediately after.  I found that Wilcken's essays brought nuances and subtleties, of which I had previously been unaware, to light.  The essays let me re-examine the album, changing it from an older, difficult listen to a master work that blended elements and styles in ways many have since tried to imitate.

That is good writing.

The book ends with a brief mention of how the album has withstood the test of time and the author does not attempt to force any opinions or conclusions on the reader.  Instead, he allows the reader to take the analysis he has written and let the reader / listener draw their own conclusions.

The book is a worthwhile read for casual and die hard Bowie fans alike, as well as being an excellent example of pop music analysis that any music fan would do well to examine.

Amazon Affiliate Link:  David Bowie's Low (33 1/3)

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Clerks and Chasing Amy: Two Screenplays

Kevin Smith

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Broken Flowers

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