Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

As a child I never really read 'young adult' fiction. I went straight from reading kids books to reading Lonesome Dove, Jurassic Park and Stephen King novels. In middle school I even had an English teacher that would question my reading list for the journal entries we were to write for class. Mr. Hillenburg wrote 'this book might be inappropriate, do your parents know you're reading this' in my first Lonesome Dove journal entry. I didn't always know what was going on in these books because of technical or adult issues (especially my first few times through Jurassic Park) but I sure enjoyed reading them.

I bring this up not to say that Ender's Game is young adult fiction, but the book was originally described to me as the 'perfect book for a 13 year old boy' and after reading it I can agree that this is indeed the case. It may be a little violent at times but it's action packed, quick paced and virtually all of the main characters are between the ages of 6 and 14.

The Ender in Ender's Game refers to the main character, a boy who gets picked at the age of 6 to join the illustrious Battle School. Battle School is necessary, as we learn throughout the book, because there is an ongoing intergalactic war between humans and an alien race only called the 'buggers'. We eventually learn that in the past hundred years there have been two major conflicts with the buggers and humanity lives constantly under the threat of another possible bugger invasion attempt. Because of this climate, children are taken at a very young age and trained to become the soilders of the future.

Although the bugger war could have been a rich source for wide reaching plot lines, the novel mostly focuses around Ender's personal development in battle school and how the bugger war relates to him and those he knows. Battle school is mostly a training ground for soldiers, teaching them battle tactics instead of traditional academic studies. They do have classes on things other than battles, but as the story goes on it becomes clear that the only thing that matters are what the kids learn about war.

The kids are all separated into teams (which is slightly reminiscent of the houses in Harry Potter) and then are pitted against each other in play battles every week or so. They battle in a zero gravity room (the school itself is a space station that has gravity elsewhere in the building) with fake guns and flashsuits that simulate real battles by freezing the kids if they get shot. The students start out as scrubs, and as they grow and mature become they become platoon leaders or commanders of entire teams.

Although we never really learn why, Ender is a an especially gifted child and is considered by the army leaders to be the future commander of the army and the savior in the war on the buggers. The teachers and military staff constantly put him in situations that will shape him into the future military leader of Earth. They isolate him by pointing out how great he is and getting the other students to turn on him, and by constantly testing him with unfair battle conditions as he quickly makes his way up the ranks.

Much of Ender's Game is concerned with how an almost superman like person deals with adversity and the knowledge that the future of humanity rests with him. You don't often hear of stories that focus around someone who has an ingrained superiority to all those around him, and how he uses that to fulfill his destiny. Ender does often whine that he is being treated unfairly, and yearns to be just 'one of the gang' , but these are more often passing feelings that are quickly replaced with thoughts of how he can overcome his current situation and how he can beat those around him. In fact Ender never loses a battle in the whole book! He overcomes adversity to be sure, but he is never truly tested.

Because of this, one could mistakenly believe that Card is trying to promote the idea of the superman, akin to Hitler's master race. This would be a mistake because despite all of his superior gifts and ability to implement them, Ender never truly desires to be a despot. Even when he crushes his enemies he never intends to hurt them, and is often concerned with their safety above all else. He may be a superior man, but he never acts arrogant and doesn't want to control those around him.

You may have noticed that despite saying that the book started when Ender was 6 I have been talking about him like he is a full grown man. The characters are mostly children, but they are written and act like adults. Part of this I think rests on the inability of Card to correctly write a child, but I think he is also making the point that these children are so special they have the advanced mind of an adult. Also as Ender grows up in the battle school he ages much more quickly than his contemporaries.

Because I knew this book was a series I was kind of fooled by the twist at the end. As stated before, the majority of the book concerns the battle games kids play in the special school. In the last quarter of the book Ender graduates and starts his training to become the future army commander. They give him a new game that involves him commanding fleets and ships in what looks like a video game simulation. I figured that the book would end with Ender assuming command of the fleet and the subsequent books would be about his epic war against the buggers.

In the climax of the book, we see Ender enter a room to complete his final simulation in frontt of the military officials. Everyone acts as if this were like an oral qualifier for grad school. Ender faces seemingly impossible odds in the simulation and through his cleverness and ruthlessness he cruses the simulated bugger army and destroys their entire fleet. Everyone in the room celebrates and Ender is confused by how jubilant they seem over his passing of the exam.He then learns that it was not a simulation at all and that for quite some time Ender had actually been controlling the Earth's fleet! They used a talented child who thought he was just playing games to destroy and entire race not only because of his abilities, but also because he would have no qualms about sacrificing his own virtual ships or cruelly obliterating the enemy.

I felt a little foolish for not seeing this coming but as I stated before I was slightly tricked by knowing this was a many book series, but let's not to take anything away from Card's ability to write a riveting story. I'm not sure if I'll read anything else in the series, this book actually wraps up pretty well and easily stands on its won, but I quite enjoyed Ender's Game and would definitely recommend it to my 13 year old self.

Best Films of the 2000s

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about my favorite films of the decade. On his podcast and in his articles Bill Simmons has been discussing what he thinks are the best movies made since 2000 and this made me want to make my own list. His qualifications are 'excellence, originality and (this is crucial) rewatchability.' Although I appreciate the importance he places on rewatchability, I don't necessarily consider that as important as the ability of a film to stimulate me intellectually or emotionally. I also place a higher importance on originality, I like to watch a movie and think 'wow I have never seen anything like this before.'

Below are my top 5 films of 2000-2009. Although I may title this post as the 'best' films of the 2000s I realize that everyone is looking for different things from a movie. It's more of a list of my favorite movies, but that is all semantics. I figure that towards the end of this year many lists like this might come out so I want to put this out there before I have the chance to be affected by the other lists. Hopefully I didn't overlook anything, and I had quite a few films that barely got cut. The films that just missed the cut include Primer, Donnie Darko, Gladiator, Oldboy, The Departed and Let the Right One In.



Honorable Mention: Comedies - Zoolander (2001)













I'm not the biggest fan of comedies. I tend to enjoy them, but never really get obsessed and don't often feel the need to watch them more than once. My problem is not that I don't like to laugh, it's that as movies they tend to lack that extra something that dramas have. It's incredibly hard to balance the comedic aspect of films with the plot arc necessary for the medium. Thus for my list it was necessary to create an independent comedy category so as not to ignore an entire genre. And for me, Zoolander wins this category in a landslide.

Although there might be 'better' comedies (like Juno) nothing that came out in the past 10 years made me laugh like Zoolander. It might have helped that I had friends in high school who were also obsessed with it and walked around randomly yelling 'OBEY MY DOG' at inappropriate moments, but as I've gotten older I found that people in college, and now in my life after college were equally into this movie. Not only is this my favorite performance by Ben Stiller, I think that this might be Will Ferrel's best role. Almost everything that Mugatu says or does in Zoolander makes me laugh and all of his lines are extremely quotable. It may be completely ridiculous and nonsensical, but I haven't found a comedy as funny or rewatchable as Zoolander.



Honorable Mention - Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)


















I love these movies. Love, love, love them. Some of the best nights I've ever had involve just sitting around watching one of the extended films with my best friends. But I wasn't able to put them in my list because for me, it's impossible to separate these films from the books that spawned them. Peter Jackson did what was once thought impossible, and turned the most famous fantasy book of all time into a series of epic movies. Although a few plot points were changed for better or worse, he completely nailed the tone, feeling and overall story of Tolkien's masterpiece. They are a wonderful companion to the books and although technology might improve in the next century, I think future directors will be hard pressed to create an adaptation of the books that surpasses than Peter Jackson's crowning achievement.



#5 - Children of Men (2006)












Children of Men not only works as a depiction of a possible dystopian future, but also as a straight up action movie, political and social commentary, and as an intense personal drama. As you might note from this list or my other posts, I am partial to genre films and Children of Men fulfills that part of my interest while being a great film in many other ways. It's hard not to get caught up in Theo's struggle for self preservation in a dead world even before his conscious forces him to care for, and protect humanities last hope found in the first pregnant woman in decades. The story is taut, the action is exciting, and the camera work is superlative. The film uses many single-shot sequences which are incredibly hard to pull off, but extremely rewarding when done correctly. In my opinion, the final action sequence, which is over 7 minutes long, is one of the best action scenes ever filmed.



#4 - WALL-E (2008)



















I think that any list of the best films of the decade that doesn't include a Pixar film would be amiss. No film studio of the 2000s comes close to the string of success that Pixar has achieved. Since 200o Pixar has put out Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up. Not only are Pixar movies financially successful, they are uniformly loved by critics, kids, adults and young adults. Everyone enjoys Pixar's films and rightfully so.

Although I love Monsters, Inc., WALL-E is probably my favorite Pixar film. The first 20 minutes or so which are completely without dialog might be the best single sequence of any of the movies on this list. The film becomes a little more formulaic after the initial sequence, but the quality of the film hardly drops at all. The ability to make the audience feel the entire range of human emotions with just the body language and facial expressions of a pair of robots should not be overlooked. I even have a friend who refuses to watch WALL-E and claims she doesn't like it because it always makes her cry. WALL-E also contains some very poignant social commentary in its view of our possible future that is a little more believable than the picture painted by most films which use science fiction as social commentary (ie Children of Men or Idocracy).



#3 - The Dark Knight (2008)













The Dark Knight might end up being the defining film of the 2000s. It fully captures the fear that permeates our post 9/11 society in a way no other piece of art has. I also can't remember another film that opened with such high expectations and then fully surpassed them. Think of The Dark Knight like LeBron James if he had already won 3 championships. Although the Academy that runs The Oscars will never nominate an action or science fiction film for any major awards, many people and critics felt like this movie should have won more than just the award Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded.

In addition to all this it is easily the best superhero/comic book movie of the decade in a time where at least a half dozen or so of these open a year. Time will tell how future movies are affected by The Dark Knight, but it already seems like the film is to the superhero film genre that Watchmen was to comic books in the 80s. Although films had been getting darker before The Dark Knight opened, it ratcheted up the intensity and respectability the same way that Watchmen did for super hero comic books. And like Watchmen I doubt that The Dark Knight will be surpassed any time soon.



#2 - The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)















This would have to be my sentimental favorite. The Royal Tenenbaums was my first 'favorite movie' and holds a special place in my heart. I'm not sure what to say that hasn't been said about this film. Wes Anderson still has a long way to go in his career, but it feels at this point that you can separate his career into pre-Tenenbaum and post-Tenenbaum sections. After The Royal Tenenbaums his films seemed to be more concerned with quirk and aesthetics than with real human emotion. However The Royal Tenenbaums combines the meticulous and beautiful aesthetics of The Life Aquatic with the emotional anguish found within Rushmore.

Barring the effect that The Dark Knight might have on future films, The Royal Tenenbaums more than any other film on this list has shaped the films that came after its release. Every indie film of the day feels like a Wes Anderson knock off and even commercials such as the ones currently run by Comcast use a distinctly Anderson look. However, none of these imitators can touch the emotion or feeling found in The Royal Tenenbaums.



#1 - Mulholland Drive (2001)

















It was tough for me to order my favorite films after narrowing down the top five. I had all of the top three in this slot at some point before settling on David Lynch's masterpiece. The reason that Mulholland Drive claimed the top spot is the 'intellectual' factor that I discussed in the opening. While watching Mulholland Drive you end up asking yourself 'wait, what's going on' for most of the film, and Lynch makes no concessions to make this easy for the viewer. Not only do you have to think while watching the movie, after its conclusion if you didn't have to discuss what you just saw with whomever you watched it with and/or go online to read about the film, I'm not sure we were watching the same thing.

Lynch gets a lot of crap for being 'weird' or 'Lynchian' (the nice way of calling his particular methods weird) and I think that's just unfair. Lynch has no interest in typical story telling, and I find this refreshing. His movies are all unique and interesting, and there is a reason that there are armies of cinephiles that swear by everything he does.

Interestingly, Mulholland Drive was initially intended to be a television pilot for ABC in 1999. Predictably, the network declined to pick up the show and Lynch was left with some fantastic, but unusable footage. When he was making Twin Peaks Lynch was faced with the same possibility, and shot an 'extended pilot' that wrapped the story up and could be told as a stand alone story. As anyone who has seen this 'extended pilot' knows, it's completely awful and unwatchable. It seems like Lynch learned from his mistake and whether he had a contingency plan to turn Mulholland Drive into a film or not, the result is stunning.

Because much of it was initially shot to be a television pilot, there are multiple loose ends and red herrings that could be found to some as bothersome. I don't mind these seemingly unconnected loose ends because with Lynch's dreamlike style it's impossible to tell metaphors from plot relevant events.

Mulholland Drive does have that 'weird' factor found in Eraserhead and his later films Lost Highway and Inland Empire, but it also the great storytelling and mood found in what many people consider to be his best film, Blue Velvet. For the first 90 minutes the movie feels like it may just be another straightforward narrative that, like Blue Velvet, examines the horrors that lie underneath American society. However, as the last hour of the film unravels it becomes much more than that.

I remember the first time I watched Mulholland Drive and how I felt afterward. It was just like the first time I listened to Radiohead's OK Computer, I knew immediately that it was the best album I had ever heard. It's not often that upon a first experience I have such a strong feeling about something, and it's for this reason that I rank Mulholland Drive first.

Reel Big Fish - Live at the Masquerade

I didn't initially plan on writing much about music on this blog because frankly I've lost interest in almost all of the new music coming out. In my heyday (2003-2007) I listened to, judged, and sifted through almost everything of note that came out, and even made large strides in listening to older artists that were considered 'seminal'. This was true of classic rock of the 70s and 80s, indie rock, rap, and even most pop music. Somewhere along the line I gave up on trying to keep up with the new music coming out. This is likely the result one of the following 3 reasons:

1. New music isn't very good.
2. I didn't have time to sort the good from the bad because I wasn't spending hours in front of my computer in my dorm room listening to music and wasting time.
3. I'm just old and crotchety and nothing could be as good as it was 'back in my day'.

I think it's probably a combination of the three (although I'm still holding out that #1 is true and new music will be awesome again) but whatever the reason I lost interest in the music scene as a whole, stopped going to concerts, and just listened to my old favorite albums or albums that I always liked but never really listened to that much (like with my current Morrissey kick).

Reel Big Fish doesn't fall into any of the previously discussed categories. Being born in 1983, I was already pretty fluent in 90s rock, ska and punk and my love of this music is a little more deeply ingrained. I was a late bloomer when it comes to music, and didn't get into it until 9th grade. I went through the normal albums for a kid my age (Nirvana, Cake, Everclear, The Smashing Pumpkins) but the first album that really hooked me was Turn the Radio Off by Reel Big Fish.

The themes of rocking out, going against the grain, and just having a clean good time really took hold of me. Or it might have been a result of the fact that I grew up mostly listening to and participating in classical music, and this might have caused the horn section of Reel Big Fish to really get to me, but whatever the reason, I was hooked. My first memorable concerts were all Reel Big Fish shows, and although I branched out to other punk and ska bands they were always my favorite. The music was fun, the shows were great and they were actually good at their instruments. I may have moved on in terms of the genres of music I mostly listen to since going to college, but Reel Big Fish always had a special place in my music pantheon. As silly as it may seem to some people, they were the first band I absolutely loved and called my own.

My good friend Brandie was in town this weekend and besides showing her around lots of fun places in Atlanta, we had the chance to go backstage for a Reel Big Fish show. She has become friends with the band since moving to Los Angels, and so she had the hook-ups to get us backstage. I was a little hesitant because I've never really been interested in going backstage for concerts. I always figured the sound was worse, you couldn't see what was going on, you would be pushed around and in the way, and besides I never had any desire to rub elbows with rock stars. I was wrong on most of these counts.

Before the show we actually spent some time on their tour bus before heading in. They were all getting ready in the back so us non band members just hung out in the front having a casual drink and watching the Colbert Report. This was the first time that I got the impression of how workmanlike the whole band was. They have been around since 'making it' in 1996, and half of the original six still remain. It was interesting to see how they approached getting ready just like a businessman puts on his suit and straightens his tie. The members didn't have elaborate outfits or anything, it was just interesting to see how matter of fact everything was, and how little they talked.

Once we headed into the green room and everyone was assembling while the opener finished the energy ramped up a little bit. There was still a little bit of anticipation for the 20 minutes or so while they waited to go on. People were tuning trumpets and strumming guitars getting ready to go. Once they got on stage it was just like seeing all the Reel Big Fish shows from my youth except that I wasn't extremely hot, didn't have people running into me, and could see everything that was going on. They were still as entertaining on stage, and Aaron Barrett (the lead singer) is still good at playing a rockstar. The show moved by quickly (the free booze didn't hurt), the crowd was pretty into it, and it was pretty fun.

After the show most of the band members just put away their instruments, changed, and headed back to the bus. This is when I got the biggest feeling that to most of them this was just a job. Sure they had fun out on stage, but either they were never into acting wild, or the novelty of being a rockstar and partying hard had warn off over the years. Some of them might be good friends, but mostly they acted like a bunch of co-workers going about their own business. Hanging out in the green room after the show wasn't very exciting (again I don't really have an interest in hanging out with 'famous' people), but it was interesting to see how a talented, moderately successful rock band treats a typical workday.

The Big Rewind - Nathan Rabin

I am not usually a big fan of biographies or memoirs. I will occasionally read life-based nonfiction (I am a pretty big fan of David Sedaris) but I feel like most biographies end up the same. The author talks about what adversity they had to overcome when they were young, and how through sheer wit and skill they overcame insurmountable odds to become a success. OK I may be exaggerating a little bit and allowing the recently read Outliers to taint my ideas, but the subjects of biographies are almost universally not as interesting as the author thinks they are. Thus I probably would have never considered reading The Big Rewind if it weren’t for the name on the cover.

As many of you are probably aware, The AV Club is probably my favorite website, and has been ever since graduating college. I find it to be an endless source of entertainment, both intelligent and humorous, and use it as my go-to source for film and TV reviews and articles. Although their music and book sections tend to be a little lacking, everything else is golden. I especially like that the writers are given clearance to write not only reviews about the new releases, but longer articles about older films that really give the authors a chance to spread their wings.

One of my favorite authors at The AV Club is Nathan Rabin. His film reviews are fine, but the article I really enjoy reading are his features. His best feature, ‘My Year of the Flops’, cleverly discusses films that that were interesting cases of commercial and critical failure, and whether or not these films deserved this reception at the time. He also participates in an AV Club feature that Lindsay is particularly fond of, ‘I Watched This on Purpose’, where the staff members watch shitty movies that have a certain cultural infamy. It’s because of his online film writing that I bought and read Rabin’s book. If anything I didn’t mind financially supporting a writer who has given me hours of free writing and entertainment.

The Big Rewind is mainly about Rabin’s life story, and how certain events or themes of his life relate to popular culture. Each chapter is tied somehow into a piece of pop culture that either is important to Rabin, or relates to something in his life. This ranges from Girl, Interrupted and time spent in a mental institute, to the Nirvana album In Utero where he discusses his time as an angry youth in an orphanage, to possibly his most clever connection where he discusses how a rival critic made him feel Frank Grimes to her Homer Simpson, which is taken from a famous episode of The Simpsons.

The Big Rewind was pretty interesting because Rabin’s life wasn’t very normal. After being middle class at a very young age, he grew up poor and eventually had to spend time in a mental institution due mostly to an error. He then spent much of his child and teenage years at an all boys orphanage and then at a seedy, sinful co-op. The book spends a large amount of space discussing the weird people he met along the way and how they rubbed off on him. The later half of the book mostly chronicles his time on a low-rated, shortly lived movie critic show on AMC and his other professional pursuits. I would have liked a little more information about the formation and development of The AV Club, because he hardly mentions it, but I guess he finds that failures are usually more interesting that successes.

In the introduction Rabin states that the purpose of the book is to relate how his personal pantheon of pop culture relates to his life and how it helped him get through the tough times in his life. It seems that he often chooses pieces of pop culture that obviously relate to his life subject-wise, but I would have liked it if a little more time was spent discussing how the pop culture touched him on a personal level. His observations and discussions about pop culture are very interesting, and his reflections on his life story itself were entertaining and thoughtful, it would have just been nice if everything connected a little better.

I am especially looking forward to his upcoming book based on ‘My Year of the Flops’ because I think Rabin’s forte really lies in discussing ridiculous and culturally infamous movies. Although his life story is different than what you would normally find in biographies, I don’t know if I can really recommend this book unless you are really into biographies or his writing on The AV Club. However if you do enjoy Rabin’s other writing, and want to learn a little more about the neurotic self-deprecating fellow, I would easily recommend The Big Rewind.