Happy 100th Orson Welles

"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."

What I've Been Enjoying (Lightning Round)

BANSHEE - I fell a little behind on Banshee and I deeply regret letting that happen. I caught up on seasons 2 & 3 in the last few weeks and have been blown away by what they've done, by raising the bar for serialized action television beyond anything else anyone else is making. Being on Cinemax, which is a network that knows its audience and knows what they want, Alan Ball and Jonathan Tropper and and the cast & crew of Banshee can go completely balls-out and deliver everything that people like me are looking for on television. On the surface, there are beautiful women who are naked a lot & fight a lot and lots of explosions and fights and shootouts and did I mention fights? Those provide plenty of engaging scenes every episode to keep the audience coming back for more but what I've been impressed with is the progression of quality from season to season; the writing and attention to detail that might get overlooked and burned away in a lesser, loud, fast paced show. The world they've written is so rich and the people so fleshed out and, perhaps best of all, so original and interesting and weird.* Banshee is unapologetic, brutal, bloody, fast, kinetic, smart pulp fiction, and I love every moment of it. Banshee is Justified on the next level, Justified without the limits of network cable. And the Proctor-Hood dynamic is the closest thing we're going to get to the Raylan Givens-Boyd Crowder firecracker of a relationship that Justified gave us for 6 years. 

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS - "BEAT THE CHAMP" - Beat The Champ is the latest from the prolific songwriter John Darnielle and The Mountain Goats and their best in years. Where the last few albums seemed to plod along pleasantly down the same road the group has trod for a few years now, their latest offering is a love letter to something near and dear to Darnielle: the squared circle. The whole album isn't about wrestling, but where it excels is when Darnielle marries the low-brow glory of local wrestling with meditations on life and death and childhood. We see the world of these wrestlers through the eyes of Darnielle, how he imagined them as a boy, as heroes in masks and capes, and how he thinks of them now as a grownup, their struggle in the ring for a little bit of glory and maybe a couple bucks to make the long drive home worth the trip. Darnielle has never shied away from documenting his life as a child in the shadow of the tormentor that was his stepfather so one can't help but imagine little John watching these people become superheroes in the ring and have this world to escape to, even if only one match at a time.

THE WINTER FAMILY by Clifford Jackman - Clifford Jackman has submitted a piece of work in what has become one of my favorite genres in the last few years, the dusted off and resuscitated western. The titular Winter family, guided with an unwavering and unrelenting iron fist by patriarch Augustus Winter, stalk their prey all over post-Civil War America as henchmen, bounty hunters and outlaws in search of carnage and chaos wherever they can find it. There's a theme of resistance to the march of time and progress that Augustus leads the fight against, the resistance of the oncoming growth of civilization and civility. In recent years, works by the late Robert B. Parker, Joe R. Lansdale, and the modern classic The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, have all touched on the elements of the classic western story and given it new life by injecting a modern sense of storytelling and, my favorite, some neo-noir bloodlust.
  

 KILL ME THREE TIMES - This is an odd little movie about a hit man who is summoned to a small town at the behest of a bar owner who believes his wife is cheating on him. His suspicions are confirmed, but with that realization comes an entire intricate web of double and triple crosses to come crashing down. The movie is oddly paced and it keeps you interested simply because of how off-kilter it all seems; you want to keep watching as each thread of the story slowly comes unraveled to reveal the next odd turn. It's not really a comedy but it's not dramatic enough to be a thriller; it's somewhere in between, an Elmore Leonard-style dark comedy noir. Simon Pegg plays the hit-man caught up in the middle of a crooked cop, a dangerous bartender, an angry boyfriend, a spurned dental assistant, a hapless dentist, a woman who has an almost cartoonish ability to avoid being killed and a bag of cash.

THE GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS - I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the hometown heroes, the Association's best, my Golden State Warriors. They finished the year 67-15 which, for the uninitiated, is historically good, like, Michael Jordan and the Bulls good.^ As a native Southern Californian, the LA Lakers were a natural choice for my fandom but I've always disliked the Lakers for numerous reasons. The Warriors are a perfect team to get behind; they're smart, well coached, disciplined and humble, and they're winning in ways that people had previously thought teams couldn't win by. Old school basketball people like Charles Barkley want teams to have traditional big men and be able to drive to the basket with strength and power but what the Warriors do is funnel the ball to the outside shooters, most notably Klay Thompson and the league MVP this year, Stephen Curry and use their quickness, ball-handling skills and sharpshooting abilities to outscore just about everyone. Traditionally, teams have a point guard who brings the ball up the court and sets up the play and distributes it to the playmakers but Golden State has the best shooter the league has ever seen who, every time, can either just spot up and shoot a three or, because he commands so much attention, outsmart the defense and get the ball to someone else on their incredibly deep team who can get an easy shot. Steve Kerr, formerly of the aforementioned Chicago Bulls teams with Michael Jordan, is a first-year coach who led his team to the best record in the NBA and have already completed a first round sweep of the New Orleans Pelicans in the playoffs. I can't wait to watch their deep playoff run this year and with the defending champion San Antonio Spurs already knocked out, the presumptive representative of the Eastern Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers, reeling from an injury, a suspension and an old, rusty set of bench players, and no other real competition, I'm hoping the boys will bring a Larry O'Brien trophy to the Bay Area for the first time in almost 40 years.

*Banshee villains include Kai Proctor, former Pennsylvania Dutch Amish turned butcher and gangster; Chayton Littlestone, a brutal, rogue Native American sociopath whose life mission is to take back what the White man has stole from his ancestors; Rabbit, a Russian gangster who was at one time our hero Lucas Hood's former boss; Neo-Nazis; a gangster who is so physically large that he travels in a mobile office inside a tractor-trailer and an unhinged Army colonel.

^That still may not hold any significance for the uninitiated.

The Cats Are Always Watching...

The cats are not what they seem...

Still Fast, Still Furious, Still Going Strong

I've been trying to think about how many film franchises stay viable by the time they get to the seventh in the series, let alone how many franchises continue on with the same cast and continue to be better with each in the series, let alone have the seventh film make 140 million dollars in its opening weekend. I guess it's all about family. But what the Fast & Furious movies have been able to do is pretty remarkable, especially considering how many of the factors that go into conventional filmmaking are notably absent, namely plot, character development, a script, etc. I suppose the audience for these films, starting with the first in 2001, doesn't care so much for character development as long as Vin Diesel throws on a white tank top while prowling around car races amidst girls in bikinis and gleaming rice rockets with their hoods up. However, nearly 15 years and 6 films later, nothing has changed but how much money they're bringing in. I want to say they are creatively advancing but I don't think that's quite accurate. The set pieces are becoming larger and more extravagant, the directing becoming sharper and slicker, the costars becoming bigger and bigger, both literally and figuratively, but in a sense, they've become simplified, boiled down to the leanest, meanest, cleanest thing they can think of. You could watch these movies with the sound off and not miss a beat. The scenes of dialogue in 7 are the same they were in the first, mini monologues on porches and balconies praising street values like loyalty to friends, family, toughness and cars. The draw is the cars and the choreographed scenes of carnage and mayhem inflicted upon the streets of just about every city in the world. There is no subtlety or subtext to anything going on in these films, it's all about watching Vin Diesel fight The Rock, or Vin Diesel fight Jason Statham, or in the case of Fast & Furious 6, which includes a bit of a tongue in cheek gag that has the bad guy putting together a crew that is the funhouse mirror version of our beloved crew, Vin Diesel's Dom and The Rock's Agent Hobbs standing side by hulking side in a tag team match versus Luke Evans as Shaw, the British mercenary and his giant sidekick Klaus. It's something you could imagine seeing in a WWE ring but in this case, it's in a giant cargo plane that is in the midst of crash landing on seemingly the longest runway ever made. The filmmakers know what we want to see. These films are the last of a dying breed; dumb, big budgeted, overblown, larger than life blockbuster crowd-pleasers.

Furious 7 opens with a boner-inducing scene for action film lovers in which we see Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham ... exactly the way Jason Statham plays every character, in a hospital room telling his comatose brother Owen Shaw that he will find Dom Toretto and his crew and avenge him. As Shaw leaves the room, we see that he has wreaked havoc on the hospital and turned it into a war zone in order to gain access to his brother, under heavy guard due to his actions in Fast 6. After blowing up the Toretto-O'Conner home in Los Angeles directly after blowing up Han in Tokyo (who left the crew to go back home after the death of his girlfriend Giselle, the stunning Gal Gadot, soon to be seen in the new Batman movie as Wonder Woman), Shaw sets out for the crew. Described as a ghost, Shaw is working with an African warlord to procure a device known as God's Eye which is capable of spying on any and every citizen in ways that would make every Whole Foods liberal in Berkeley's head explode. The bulk of the film sees the crew protecting a (for some reason incredibly hot) hacker named Ramsey who is trying to both acquire and hack into the God's Eye program to plant a virus and deactivate it. Kurt Russell appears as Mr. Nobody, the head of the shadow organization responsible for developing the God's Eye program who, for reasons not quite made entirely clear, needs Dom and his crew to track it down after it has been stolen. From there, we see Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drive a super car (which, for some reason, has no brakes) from one skyscraper to another to yet another in Abu Dabi, Vin Diesel making an entire parking garage crumble with a stomp of his foot, The Rock flexing his biceps and breaking a cast off of his arm, The Rock shooting down a helicopter with a gatling gun he took off of a drone that he crashed by jumping an ambulance off a bridge into, The Rock saying the line, "Woman, I am the cavalry," and various other amazing gravity and logic defying feats of strength and cunning. Walking out of the theater, you feel like you need to pick a fight or Tokyo drift out of the parking lot; all of the testosterone and bare knuckle brawling makes a guy feel a little extra kick in his step. There is a great scene (repeated verbatim later in the film!) where Diesel and Statham face each other in their respective vehicles, pure American muscle and slick European sportscar, and play a game of chicken where neither of them blinks and end up smashing head on into each other. Another scene has Vin in yet another suped-up muscle car that he drove out of an airplane and parachute-landed on a mountain road as he faces about a dozen henchmen vehicles and gunmen in odd black masks and instead of shooting his way out or trying something crazy and elaborate, he simply just drives off the cliff and crashes to the foot of the canyon. That's it. It's yet another example of the simplified choices they make, you're expecting something crazy but what ends up happening is the most basic yet ridiculous thing you could think of.

What I really liked about 7 is the melding of a few different styles that James Wan brought into this film. A veteran of the kind of horror films I generally don't go for (Saw, The Conjuring), Wan's only real action film directing experience is the 2007 Kevin Bacon film Death Sentence, which was pretty decent. The last few films have been crisscrossing the globe, from Rio to the DR, to Spain and England, to the Middle East and back to where it all began in Los Angeles, which was actually kind of nice to see, as the climax of 7 was the crew zipping around the streets of LA with choppers, drones and Jason Statham after them at every turn. But with Wan comes an eye for foreign talent, which brings in the likes of Statham and Tony Jaa, legendary badasses in their own corner of the world, not to mention Ronda Rousey and Kurt Russell. This newest installment is the most of something else that we've seen in the series so far; one part kinetic close-quarters Asian martial arts film, one part Mission: Impossible-style globe-trotting high tech thriller, one part American muscle action film. I am much more interested in seeing this kind of thing, trying to catch homages and influences, marveling at the sheer delightful absurdity of it all, than trying to poke holes in the plot, which seems to be the big knock from non-fans, which is a tired debate. I found it immensely delightful to see Kurt Russell in a suit cracking jokes and trying to give Vin Diesel a Corona, and then later on, having him go old-school Kurt Russell and start picking off henchmen in a warehouse like he's done it a thousand times. It's impossible to not want to stand up and cheer any time The Rock comes on screen (although he is mostly absent from 7, just one heavyweight match with Statham in the first act and then his triumphant return during the climactic LA battle which involved the aforementioned drone, ambulance, broken cast, etc.) because he makes Diesel look like little more than an overgrown kid. Some non-action flourishes added to the film in an attempt to add dramatic tension involve the completion of the Lettie-has-amnesia storyline and a subplot involving the late Paul Walker's Brian lamenting the fact that fatherhood involves a lack of bullets and explosions. The final scene is a touching if slightly confusing tribute to Paul Walker involving a Vin Diesel voice-over and a montage of the best of Walker. I don't know where the series will go from here, however the semi-cliffhanger ending leaves plenty of avenues to explore and since two of the main characters have died in the last two films and one of the main actors has died in real life, they will either have to bring in some new blood or continue on with who they still have and create another dynamic of some kind.  

What I'm Enjoying Now (Nonfiction Edition)

I've been reading a lot of these nonfic books about trying to understand the world by looking at things a little closer and trying to make sense of the facts and the data that's in front of us. Nate Silver's book The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail But Some Don't is heavy on statistics and data, what Silver is most known for mastering. In Signal, Silver presents many cases where data and deep diving into statistics may present a better view of what's really going on, from evaluating baseball prospects to projecting election results. The book compares and contrasts differing viewpoints regarding analysis and how they can be used in unison as well as be used off each other to prognosticate and predict possible outcomes. He stresses that searching for the signal, the probable truth as opposed to the perceived popular opinion, the noise, may lead us to better predictions and eventually better long-term understanding.

Similarly, William Poundstone, in his book Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing & Outwitting Almost Everybody, stresses that by merely paying attention to the seemingly random and arbitrary patterns that people unconsciously abide by, we may be able to gain knowledge and understanding with which to gain favor, outwit foes and win Oscar pools and games. It's an interesting read, like Silver, Poundstone integrates real-world concerns like figuring out the stock markets and Big Data with sports, where the intersection of data analysis and unscripted action meet. A lot of what the book purports is that you can outguess simple events like multiple choice tests and card games by merely studying and understanding the things that people are most likely unconsciously going to do and using that to your advantage.

Nassim Nicolas Taleb, one of the world's foremost predictive analysts, writes in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, that we tend to come up with simple answers to complex problems after they've already happened, instead of doing the work and the research ahead of time to prevent them from happening in the first place. Taleb focuses on events such as the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis, which Taleb predicted in the book, published in 2007, to prop up his "black swan theory," which, by using psychological and mathematical & scientific approaches, may help us understand and predict seemingly significant acts of randomness, and how to cope with them after the fact. Black Swan is a bit heavier of a read than Silver and Poundstone, and admittedly a bit over my head at some points, but extremely informative and interesting.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, the latest from Malcolm Gladwell, explores the phenomenon of that mythical battle between an unstoppable force and a diminutive challenger and how easy it actually is to combat Goliath by using his own weaknesses against him. Gladwell uses historical events and battles, both physical (such as the titular fight) and cultural (civil rights movements, basketball, etc.) to show how underdogs can outwit their more dominant foes by engaging in unexpected behavior and using perceived weaknesses to exploit holes in expected favorites. Some of the arguments are a bit weak, such as a chapter where a successful Hollywood producer with dyslexia claims he would never wish it upon his worst enemy but wouldn't have wanted to grow up not suffering from it is uninspiring and drags a bit but nonetheless Gladwell's point of view when it comes to addressing the benefits of outliers and underdogs is evident here. It shows us that by merely taking a second look at our battles and re-assessing our strengths and weaknesses may perhaps help us beat the odds.

The most recent book of essays by one of my favorite culture critics Chuck Klosterman, I Wear The Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real And Imagined), explores the phenomenon of cultural villiany and how it affects the way we consume pop culture and the way we see our society's most infamous characters. For example, why we like some sports figures but loathe others, and why a character like Batman is heroic, but we look at real life vigilantes as dangerous criminals. What Klosterman is trying to understand is what we as a society are trying to get at when we label someone as a villain, and why, perhaps, those people are much more rewarding and interesting to study and learn about because, as he states as part of his thesis, as he gets older, the villains are just more fun. This is the most fluid and least concrete of the bunch, more of an opinionated criticism of pop culture than a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of it all but Klosterman is a brilliant essayist and has one of the keenest eyes for this kind of stuff. 

Shooting Down the American Sniper

This American Sniper story is supremely interesting to me. There are so many different levels to this story and so many controversies that it covers just about every base in social, political and entertainment circles. Chris Kyle was a US Navy SEAL who served four tours of duty in Iraq and he lived an odd, interesting, public life, wrote a book, became an icon, was murdered, and posthumously had a movie based on his life. What may or may not have actually happened in real life apparently somewhat differed from what Kyle put into his book, which was adapted and abridged by Clint Eastwood and a team of writers into what is now the number one movie in the US and the largest ever opening for an R-Rated movie in history. Kyle, a blustery, overconfident, uber-patriot is portrayed in the film by Bradley Cooper, who made the film his pet project after Kyle's death. Cooper plays Kyle as a humble, dedicated man who simply wants to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic. As a long-range sniper, Kyle provides cover for ground troops fighting insurgents and clearing buildings. He doesn't enjoy killing but sees it simply as his duty to protect his brothers. He has his mission broken down to it's simplest form; If he doesn't kill them, they'll kill him. The fact that Clint Eastwood, the Godfather of the lone wolf vigilante film and noted conservative icon, is the architect of Kyle's onscreen story is not lost on the film's critics.

First, the film. American Sniper is, at it's heart, an action movie. Seth Rogen famously called it propaganda but it is really just a run-of-the-mill action movie. It feels hastily put-together and rushes through what should be important parts in Kyle's development. That being said, it does what the best films of its kind do right, namely, putting the battle between the life lived in service and the live lived back at home at the forefront. Kyle, compelled to enlist after seeing the twin towers fall on September 11, 2001, leaves behind his wife, played by Sienna Miller, and children to lay prone on top of crumbling buildings in Iraq to lay cover fire for his fellow servicemen. By the end of his first tour, Kyle has earned the nickname "Legend" among his brothers in arms and has become a god among men. We see Kyle and his squadron as they attempt to gain intelligence on a local warlord known as the Butcher, all the while dodging RPG's and the long range bullets of a very lethal sniper in his own right whom Kyle sees as his own personal mission to eliminate, even at the expense of going off-mission. The film is about determination and obsession and hero worship. Kyle says at one point, "The only thing that haunts me is all the guys I couldn't save." He's explaining to a therapist and himself and the audience that he has no regrets. It's hard to not imagine Eastwood himself playing Kyle if he were 40 years younger, stoically grimacing through the entire affair. Is it worth a $100 million opening weekend? Probably not. But the film itself isn't the only reason it became such a behemoth.

Which brings us to the controversies.

As previously noted, there are three versions of the Chris Kyle story. The film is, frankly, a watered down, cleaned up version of the man's life. That fact should not be held against Eastwood and Cooper, as the abridging of an autobiography for the big screen is a common tactic. However, that glossing over of some of the more controversial aspects of Kyle's life has, in itself, turned into a controversy. It seems that the film has become a litmus test for ones political beliefs, with patriotic right wingers applauding the film as a piece of good old fashioned patriotic filmmaking and liberals complaining that the film glamorizes a war and a soldier, in particular a soldier who is a long-range sniper, which Michael Moore this week called a "cowardly" act, in a way that signifies American imperialism and American warmongering. There have been many blog entries and articles about the lies and lessons that the film is supposedly telling us dumb, impressionable American viewers but I'm fairly certain that nobody is coming into a viewing of this film with a blank slate, you've already made up your mind by now. The only thing to discuss is your already formed opinion. Eastwood has said that the film is not meant to be taken as a political statement but it's hard to separate the man and his well documented statements as a conservative Republican from his work.* A secondary aspect of the controversy that has followed the film is it's surprise appearance on the Oscar ballot, perhaps in lieu of the MLK biopic Selma. While both American Sniper and Selma were both nominated for Best Picture, David Oleyowo's name was absent on the Best Actor in a Leading Role ballot while Cooper's name surprisingly snuck in. The lack of diversity on the ballot this year^  happened at the exact time that the American Sniper hysteria was reaching a full boil and the film was in due course roped into the conversation; a film about a white man of questionable moral fortitude who killed hundreds of people achieving more acclaim than a film about the most important civil rights advocate in American history. Not to mention that the film's director, a black woman, was also absent from the list of Best Director nominees (as was Eastwood). Normally, awards show quibbles are meaningless but when the topic of race is at such a forefront in the national consciousness, this type of oversight becomes an issue. The final aspect of this whole story is the fact that {SPOILER} Chris Kyle was murdered in 2013 by a fellow veteran at a shooting range. The man, Eddie Ray Routh, suffered from PTSD and shot and killed Kyle and another veteran at a shooting range in Texas and led police on a car chase before being caught and confessing to the crimes. Routh is currently awaiting a trial in February where a jury will determine if he was sane or not at the time of the shooting. The problem is, the Kyle legend has become such a big story, both to local Texans and because of the book and film that prosecutors believe the trial may become tainted. It's rare that a major legal trial and a mainstream film based on the true events of that case run into each other at the same time like this. After the film's theatrical run is winding down and after the Oscar's are handed out, the results of the trial will again add a new twist in this complex, strange story.

Perhaps the only winner of this entire story is Hollywood. For an R-Rated movie to make $100 million in it's opening weekend in the barren wasteland of January is a major win for the industry. It won't win any Academy Awards but the fact that the film even made it into the conversation is interesting in itself. Recent films treading similar subjects in the same war such as The Hurt Locker are better but the film is still worth watching. If anything, Bradley Cooper is in top form and Clint Eastwood is still proving that he can make a big action movie with the best of 'em. Go see it and then do some reading, I'm interested in seeing where everyone lands on this. 

*The fact that an 84 year old man directed two major motion pictures this year is, in itself, something that should be noted. While American Sniper has turned into a major success, Eastwood's Four Seasons biopic Jersey Boys was somewhat of a flop earlier this year.

^All twenty actors nominated this year are white, a statistic that, while probably a big picture problem, only adds to the confusion of some of the nominations this year, in my opinion. 

What I'm Enjoying Lately

BBC RADIO DRAMAS - Existing somewhere between an audiobook and a live stage play, full cast dramatization radio plays are kind of like listening to a movie without watching it. Where a standard audiobook will have one voice portraying all dialogue and narration, presentations like these BBC Radio Dramatizations I've been listening to lately employ an entire voice cast along with sound effects and music to create an entire piece. This type of radio play goes way back to the time before television where audiences would tune in to serialized weekly radio shows with recurring and popular characters in all genres. Orson Welles famously adapted H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds into a radio production that was produced to sound so realistic that audiences actually believed that they were hearing a radio report of a real-life alien invasion. These shows I've been listening to lately include a series of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett adaptations as well as various H.P. Lovecraft stories, which are particularly enjoyable. I don't drive as much as I used to so the thought of getting through a 10 disc audiobook is now a chore rather than a treat but these fun and different 1 to 2 hour abridged stories are perfect to add to the daily playlist.

WHIPLASH - At this point, it takes a lot for a movie to stick out in my mind in a film landscape awash with movies that are cookie-cutter retreads of the same stories over and over again but every year there are a couple that make the cut. Among all the biopics and controversial films this awards season lies an arguably underappreciated, underseen film made by a first-time 28 year old director called Whiplash. The film gives you the titular sensation as it follows 19 year-old Andrew (Miles Teller) as a talented but troubled music student at a prestigious music academy in New York as he goes from practice room to classroom to stage practicing and practicing and obsessing and bleeding and crying and practicing, practicing, practicing. He wants to be great, not just great at playing the drums, but literally one of the Greats. He stares at photos of his idols tacked to the wall and listens to CDs trying to imbibe their brilliance straight from the speakers. He curses himself and sweats and bleeds all over his kit attempting to perfect his music. His dysfunctional relationship with teacher, tormentor and timekeeper Fletcher (Oscar nominee J.K. Simmons) exists as the classic protagonist v. antagonist until they inevitably realize that they are exactly what they were both looking for, even perhaps they are two sides of the same coin; Andrew wants to be Charlie Parker, Fletcher wants someone to prove they have what it takes to be the next Charlie Parker. Like the song "Caravan" that Andrew plays in the climax, the film slowly builds to a screaming boil until it finally erupts into a brilliant cacophony that literally left me in awe and short of breath. This was the film I've been waiting for Miles Teller to make, something away from the YA adaptations and frat boy schlock he's been associated with for the past few years. Like Jennifer Lawrence was able to do, I think he might be ready to become a real movie star.

THE LONG AND FARAWAY GONE by Lou Berney - The Long And Faraway Gone is a novel that explores the mysteries of memory and how it plays a part in the way we see the world and remember what is important to us. The story consists of two stories told in two different time periods, the summer of 1986 in Oklahoma City and 2012. Wyatt, the only survivor of a massacre at the movie theater he worked at as a teenager and Julianna, whose older sister disappeared at the state fair never to be seen again. Wyatt, now a wiseass private detective in Las Vegas, is forced to return to Oklahoma City on a case and inevitably confront his past in an attempt to find out what really happened that day at the theater and try to find out why he was the only one spared. Julianna, now a nurse struggling to live a normal life, is thrust back into that summer years ago where she was left sitting on a curb eating cotton candy waiting for her sister to return from a chat with a carnival worker. The carny from that day has resurfaced and she is compelled to finally talk to him and find out what he really knows after all these years. What Berney excels at is finding a Dennis Lehane-type way of drawing the reader into a world that is built on the memory of events long-past, where a single act of violence continues to ring through the lives of people struggling to move past it. These two people still in limbo finally and briefly cross paths and in reminiscing about their lives long ago, they might finally be able to uncover what it takes to move on.

THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir - The Martian is a book that I was able to sit and finish in the span of two days, which is rare nowadays for me. The science, math and jargon was way over my head but Weir concocted a story so compelling and interesting that I couldn't stop reading. Mark Whatney, the 17th person in history to set foot on Mars, becomes it's sole inhabitant after his Ares 3 mission goes awry and his crewmates are forced to evacuate the planet after believing him dead. Equipped with a MacGyver-like set of skills and a gallows sense of humor, he survives for over a year and a half on the red planet by cannibalizing his habitat and using the equipment and vehicles like a mechanic uses old cars for spare parts. He builds and takes apart and re-purposes just about everything in his HAB in order to put off the inevitable day where he would run out of food, water, power or all three. The book shifts between Watney's mission logs and the goings-on of NASA back on Earth as they deal with the PR nightmare that erupts after satellite imagery reveals that Watney is, in fact, not dead and that they must now figure out a way to get him home. I have no idea how accurate the tech talk in the book is and frankly I don't really care. It's a very fun and interesting read and will hopefully become a fun, interesting film in the hands of director Ridley Scott and writer Weir. Matt Damon, playing a character noticeably similar (on paper) to the one he played in Interstellar, will anchor a cast that includes the ever-amazing Jessica Chastain as well as Michael Pena, Kate Mara and Sean Bean.