Her (2013)

I loved this movie on the level that wherever I am I see people, young and old, staring at their smart phones in many inappropriate places.  Like at a very nice dinner with a dozen people sitting around the table I will see someone attending to their phone while a stimulating conversation is swirling around them.  So beware, this is a cautionary tale.



Theodore (played remarkably by Joaquin Phoenix) is an ordinary guy that we can all relate to.  He checks his e-mail on the ride home from work. However, his smart phone and its earpiece work in a futuristic way that is different from ours, and soon it becomes clear that "this is something of a science-fiction film, set in the not-too-distant but distinctly fantastic future. A big part of the movie's charm is just how thoroughly Jonze has imagined and constructed this future Los Angeles, from its smoggy skies to its glittering skyscrapers to its efficient mass transit system (well, that part is harder to believe).

This sets the stage for an unusual love story: Theo, still highly damaged and sensitive over the breakup of his marriage, falls in love with the artificially intelligent operating system of his computer. The movie focuses on Theo's interaction with his OS, Samantha. Samantha is reorganizing Theo's files, making him laugh, and developing something like a human consciousness.  It is interesting and troubling simultaneously. Samantha is a computer, so she has the ability to process data at a higher speed than humans.  Who can compete with that?  And while Samantha's programming is designed to make her likable to Theo, and soon we are liking her too.  She seems like the perfect girlfriend.  Except that she is not real.

In the midst of the heavy implications of falling in love with a machine, the movie finds time for real comedy. At first Theo feels a little odd about his new "girlfriend," and then finds out that his pal Amy (Amy Adams) is getting caught up in a relationship with the OS left behind by her estranged husband. The movie never appears to be an all-out satire, Jonze drops potentially frightening hints about how the existence of artificial intelligence in human society might affect us. It is either very depressing or very thought provoking, or maybe a bit of both, with a satisfying ending.

The Camel's Eye View

Riding a camel was not the only touristy thing that I did while I was in Morocco--I bought a rug, I had my head wrapped into a turban, I bought a fez and balloon pants, and I seriously considered changing all the light fixtures in my house into the wonderful brass lamp coverings that I saw everywhere-- but a camel ride is the obvious choice for the most touristy thing that I did.
Pictured here are the two camels my son and I rode, and he atop his camel. 

Here are my retrospective thoughts on the experience.  First and foremost, it is a shock when the camel stands up.  I was completely unprepared for the sudden altitude change.  One minute I am easily climbing onto the camel's back and seemingly instantaneously to that I am 12 feet off the ground and holding onto the saddle with a death grip.  Once I reassured myself that I was indeed atop the camel, I hung on for dear life and the rest of the ride was pretty enjoyable.  For about 15 minutes.  After that I became seriously concerned that if my life depended on me riding a camel to safety that I might fail at the task.  That is a very wide hump.  The muscles on my inner thighs were not conditioned for a long stroll in the savannah on camel back.  The good news is that I was once again on terra firma in about 60 minutes, and after the shock of going up, I was better prepared for the speed with which the camel descended to the earth and managed to disembark the ride with a modicum of grace.  I know it is the ultimate desert cliche but in the end, I would recommend a camel ride.

General Tso's Chicken

After my recent trip to China, where I ate regional Chinese cooking morning, noon, and night, I returned to Iowa ready to make another attempt at cooking the same cuisine at home.  The unfortunate truth is that aside from a very good Szechuan restaurant, my home town has uniformly unacceptable Chinese food available.  So it is not just a desire but a necessity that I cook it myself.

I have been doing a reasonable job using jarred suace mistures with an array of vegetables from our summer CSA to make a good Chinese dinner once or twice a week.  I wanted to get some frequency down before I ent for more nuanced recipes.  Not so with my spouse--he dove right into trying to create something from scratch.  This was really good.

Marinade cubed chicken (1.5 pounds) in:

light soy sauce (2 TBS),

1 beaten egg,

½ tsp black pepper,

then stir in 1-2 T corn starch.

 

Next flour chicken pieces well, set aside--use your chop stricks to move the chicken from marinade to flour to a plate.  Deep fry chicken until browned--this can be done in a small pot in batches to minimize the oil you use.

 

Meanwhile make sauce:

2 T dark soy sauce,

2 T oyster sauce,

2 T brown rice vinegar (Chinaking vinegar) ,

1 T rice wine (Shianxing),

 3 T sugar,

¾ cup water, 

1 T corn starch

 

In wok, heat up a little (2 T) oil, then add 4-8 chile peppers, 1 T each of chopped garlic and ginger. Then add sauce and 4 T chopped scallions.  You can sprinkle the top with sesame seeds, and you can serve with steamed broccoli as well. 

Philomena (2013)

This movie is based on a true story about an elderly Irish woman searching for the toddler son that she was forced to give up for adoption as an unwed teen living in a convent run by pious nuns who thought all the pain their charges endured was entirely deserved. The movie could be terribly dreary, but it is not.  Most of its pleasures come from the way it confounds expectations.

Philomena (played masterfully by Judi Dench) is a middle class woman with common tastes.  She dresses practically, does not pass up a free meal, and is happy in her life of family and romance novels except for one thing.  She unwillingly gave up her three year old son and on his 50th birthday, she tells her daughter her guilty secret.  She gets help in her quest from Martin Sixsmith (acerbically played by Steve Coogan with just the right mix of irreverance for the church and sympathy for Philomena), a recently unemployed reporter who remains convinced that he is destined for greater things, just not right at the moment, when he is riding our a political maelstrom that got him fired.

Martin agrees to help Philomena and his cynicism balances her optimism beautifully.  They start at the convent where while they claim that all papers related to what happened to adopted children were burned in a 'fire', the papers demonstrating that the girls willingly relinquished their children and all future claim on them remain intact.  Sixsmith tries to get access to a nun who was there at the time Philomena was but is blocked--luckily, the bar maid at the local pub gives them a clue to look in America.

The story has a bittersweet ending, and not one that exonertes the church in any way.  The discovery of a mass burial of children at an Irish convent in the news recently only reinforces the evils of the past, but while Sixsmith damns them, Philomena forgives them.  It is a simple story that arouses complicated feelings in a very kind way.  Beautifully done.

The Berber Colors

One of the many things that I loved about my recent trip to Morocco was learning more about the ancient tribe of Morocco--the Berbers.  As with any ancient tribal culture, it is not so much one culture but many, but there are similarities that bind them together. 

One is the colors that repeat in their hand crafts--the tiles pictured above are the artisanal interpretation of the colors that are found in the Atlas Mountains, pictured below.  Once I understood that, I started to find the things that are man made in these colors more organic, more in harmony with the environment that they come out of, and the more they remind me of my Moroccan trip.

I was visiting a friend recently who had just come back from India.  Like me she had bought a rug (and like me it was more beautiful than she imagined the rugs in India to be, and also more expensive than what she thought she would come home with), but in addition to that she bought a tile table.

I visited a place where tile tables were definitely and option, but after the rug (and a beautiful set of hand painted dishes in Berber colors) I felt a table was, well, off the table, but I think that will be the purchase of the next visit.

Chinese Cucumber and Garlic Salad

There are many delicious dishes that I had on my recent trip to China, but only one of them did I have twice--this refreshing cucuber salad that is both simpe and refreshing, the perfect dish to add to a repertoir of cucumber salads for the summer.  You can make this with chilis or without.


1 cucumber, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 cloves of garlic minced
1/4 tsp. sugar
dash of toasted sesame oile
1 tsp. light soy sauce
1 tsp. brown rice vinegar
dash of salt to taste
pepper flakes to taste if desired

Toss the ingredients in a bowl and mix, taste, and adjust the seasoniing.  It should have a prominent but not overpowering garlic flavor (the region of China I had this in is know for it's small flavorful garlic bulbs).  The sweet-salty-sour flavors should be balanced, and if you add hot, add that balance into your mix.  The salad can be served at the beginning of a meal or as a side dish.

Anchorman 2 (2013)

I want to be perfectly clear that htis is not a good movie.  I find Will Ferrell to be wonderful in dramatic roles and less so in comedic roles, but Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd also fall quite flat in this movie.

So why write about it? It is not simply to warn you off.  It is to reflect on the time within which the movie is set, which is the beginning of the era of the 24/7 news channels.  The movie perfectly captures the essential prolem that these channels perpetuate, which is that when it is not possible to fill all that time with in depth reporting on actual news that they just make stuff up and call it news.  These guys go from washed up newsmen to sought after TV personalities based not on talent but on being completely outrageous.  Never let the truth get in the way of telling a sensational story.  That is what we have stooped to, and that is where we remain.  But maybe not for long--I read a poll last week that the average age of people who watch these shows is over 60 years old.  I did not read the original data, so it is unclear if that is because to be able to watch at noon you have to be retired, or if that is the entire pool of people who watch, regardless of the hour, but if it is the later, then perhaps their days are numbered.

A few weeks ago I read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about the Golden Age of Journalism, where crack reporters revealed the inherent corruption in American business and politics, which sawyed public opinion and led to progressive changes in the country.  Anchorman 2 convinced me that those kind of changes are not possible in the era of fake news masquerading as real news. 


Childhood Cancer Deserves a Better Spokesperson

Charles Hemenway, MD, PhD (who speaks, by the way, not like the majority of pediatric oncologists that I have met) wrote a review of the movie "The Fault in Our Stars, based on the book by John Green about two characters with childhood cancer.  While he acknowledges that a work of fiction does not have to be accurate, what he goes on to say denegrates the cancer experience of all children who have undergone treatment, regardless of their outcome.

The most outrageous thing he says is that dying from a childhood cancer is not common.   Yes, getting cancer is rare for children, but once you have it, dying is not all that rare.  As a physician, a 30% mortality is nothing to minimize, and as a parent that number is absolutely heartbreaking.   These are children, after all, who have not yet had a chance to experience the things that bring joy into many of our lives, including the experience of falling in love.  The question he should have answered is "Does this happen?" and the answer is that it most certainly does--children with cancer are frequently hospitalized and attend cancer related events together, and they have many opportunites to meet each other, to fall in love with each other, and to know children who have died.  That is a reality he has apparently failed to appreciate in his years of caring for his patients. 

Next on my list of complaints is the use of the word 'cure', because for the vast majority of survivors of child hood cancer, they have significant health and psychiatric effects from their cancer experience.  In the June 2013 issue of JAMA the first article to prospectively evaluate the long term effects of cancer treatment noted: At age 45 years, the estimated cumulative prevalence of any chronic health condition was 95.5% and 80.5% for a serious/disabling or life-threatening chronic condition for adult survivors of childhood cancer.  That means almost everyone has problems from their treatment.

Finally there is his denial of the emotional trauma of cancer and the effects it has on families.  That is not as inexcusable as dismissing the children who die, but it is a close second, and it neglects the literature on the subject.  I am not saying that cancer is necessarily a different experience than other life threatening illnesses.  It is, however, life threatening, and that trauma ripples out across a family, and remains there over decades.  Cancer is no walk in the park, no matter what age you are.

I know this rant is long, but I want to close with how much I loved John Green's book, and his depiction of the emotional roller coaster that happens with serious illness and at the end of life. Don't pay attention to the nay sayers, the  joy that can be found for dying teens in his book is a ray of hope to be hung onto.  He brought childhood cancer to the attention of many and contributed to dimishing ignorance.  Which is more than can be said for Dr. Hemenway's reveiw.

George Will: Socially Stupid, Generally Clueless, Simply Misogynistic, Or Worse?

I know that it is regretable to respond to someone you know shares none of your values, but really George Will?  The op/ed piece that ran in the Washington Post this past week is really out of bounds, even for someone with your record.  To suggest that there is some kind of status in being sexually assaulted is beyond insulting.  Many women graduate from college without experiencing sexual violence, but the vast majority of those who do not are targeted by sexual predators, and there is no glory in that story.  Stop with the 'they asked for it' and stop thinking of sexual violence as sex--it is not.  Additionally, the prevalence of sex on the college campus that I teach on seems to be no more prevalent than when I went to college 35 years ago.  What has changed is not how often sexual violence occurs, but how often people tell what happened to them.  Duh.

I am baffled by the conservative opinion of women.  We do constitute half of the eligilbe voting population, and while there is plenty of evidence out there that voters do not vote in their own best interest, and that married women are more likely to vote for conservative candidates, there is a limit to the amount of abuse the gender will tolerate.  Saying not only are women to blame for being assualted but that they glory in it is one example of putting your foot over the line.  The Todd Akin line, for example, where it is impossible to ignore the fact that this man lacks respect or admiration for women.  Maybe he even crossed over the line with a woman when he was in college, I do not know.  Is it the conservative columist's equivalent of the pedophile's excuse that the children enjoy sex with them, but that society just won't tolerate it?  I do not know.  No matter where it comes from it is deeply offensive.

White men in general and old white men in particular appear quite fearful of the changing world.  Hopefully his ideas will go just as he has predicted the opposition to gay marriage would go--that they are literally dying away.  Good ridance.



The Grand Budapest Hotel (2013)

I love Wes Anderson and it was impossible for me not to love this movie as well.  He is an auteur director--you would have no trouble identifying this as his work even if you didn't know he had done it, because it has his unique pacing and sense of comedy stamped all over it.  The sheer volume of great actors that appear in it--Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinson, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Willem DeFoe, Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton to name a few--shoudl be a hint that actors find him enjoyable to work with.  There are many small parts amongst a couple of larger parts, and all of these actors are capable of carrying the lead role, but choose to be in a movie where they are just a small part of the overall story.

The story itself is almost secondary to the atmosphere that Anderson creates, which is an odd combination of slapstick comedy viewed as if it is within a snow globe.  The owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, a decaying skeleton of it's former glorious self, is relaying the story of how he came to own the hotel.  It is not a happy story nor is the ending one that is uplifting, but the viewer cannot help but laugh early and often at the antics of each exaggerated character.  If you love Anderson's work you will not be disapointed, if you do not know his work, this is a good place to start, and if you don't, well, too bad, because this is what is fun about movies.