Finding Neverland – A Movie Review

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I think I am in a very strange mood these days. I have been watching too many sappy movies and reading too many sappy books; and shedding so many tears that Mr.K has been left scratching his head whether it is something he has done…

I did not mean to, I swear! Cross my heart! I blame it all on the gloomy weather.

On Children’s Day (Nov 14 in India, now you know how long I have been sitting on this post!), I was flipping through the channels looking for a nice children’s movie that I could watch with my daughter when I came across Finding Neverland.

What I knew about this movie was sketchy at best. I knew it was about Peter Pan (so it should be fun for kids), and it stars Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, so great eye candy for adults also

The story turned out not to be so much about Peter Pan, but about the author of the Peter Pan books. JM Barrie (Johny Depp) is a playwright whose latest play has flopped badly. While searching for inspiration, he comes across 3 boys playing in a park and their young recently-widowed mother (Kate Winslet).

Despite the disapproval of her mother and the resentment of his wife, he pays Kate Winslet and her boys frequent visits. They all spend many a happy day engaging the boys in tricks, disguises, games and sheer mischief, creating play-worlds of castles and kings, cowboys and Indians, pirates and castaways. He transforms hillsides into galleon ships, sticks into mighty swords, kites into enchanted fairies and the boys into “The Lost Boys of Neverland.”

From his interaction with these children (particularly Peter), a sweet and solemn boy who is feeling particularly terrible about his father’s death, he gets the inspiration for creating Peter Pan – a play and ultimately a book.

Their friendship bordering on love ruins his marriage and makes a bit of a scandal within their society. But, neither of them care – because she is suffering from consumption and could die any day.

The story finally ends with him staging his “Peter Pan” play, which becomes a huge success, and she dying of consumption. He then takes on the guardianship of the three boys.

How enjoyable is this movie?

Well, I must say that the first half is really enjoyable indeed. I loved the relationship between Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, and her children. The relationship looked very real, nothing forced about it. The second half of the movie changes tone, as Kate’s illness is discovered and her health deteriorates very quickly. The end of the movie is very touching and satisfying.

I do think that this is not a children’s movie. It is about children but I would say, not for children (or at least very small children). It is always something scary to watch a movie where children lose both their parents in quick succession.

I liked the movie at the time I saw it. It is very sweet and sentimental. I loved both Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet’s performances. The movie is beautifully shot; the countryside shots look fresh and green, and Kate Winslet looks amazingly beautiful yet simple.

Here are a couple of nice images:

Don't they look good as a pair?

A collage of images

But, then I went online to check how much of the story is true. And as it turned out, not much. Hollywood has conveniently turned Kate’s character into a widow, when in actuality her husband was alive and well at that time. In addition, their relationship spanned a number of years, not the way it was portrayed in the film.

And that disappointed me quite a bit. The actual story seemed to be so much more complex and interesting; that this tame Disneyfied version of events no longer looked as appealing. It seemed more like a calculated movie that was trying to target all audiences rather than a movie made with heart.

Such a shame, this is a good movie, but there was a possibility of a much more interesting movie that was never actualized on screen.

Still worth a watch though.

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Has Anyone Tried Posterous Yet?

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I am probably very late to the Posterous party, and everybody already knows everything there is to know about it; but still I need to think through Posterous out loud and hopefully, you guys can tolerate my rambling on about yet another blogging/social networking tool.

So, what is posterous? It is apparently the "simplest, easiest, and fastest way for anyone in the known universe to become a blogger, a journalist, a lifestreamer".

If you can send an email, you can create a Posterous blog. That’s because that’s the way you blog – you simply send an email to post [at] posterous.com. Your email gets posted, and you get a dedicated URL for all your thoughts – often yourname.posterous.com.

Sounds good?

Well, in addition to creating the blog post for you, Posterous will automatically update things like your Facebook status, your Twitter status, your other blogs, or even an iTunes podcast, every time you email Posterous (depending on the settings you have configured).

I did some more investigation and found out that this could be the perfect tool for a lazy blogger like me. I could send Posterous any kind of attachment and they will format it appropriately and post it to my Posterous page. They accept *.doc, ppt, pdf, jpg, gif, png, mp3, avi, and mpg formats.

So, based on all that I read, I decided to start a Posterous presence. I don’t want to use the term blog, because well even though it is a kind of a blog, I am still not very sure what I”ll actually use this page for.

After setting everything up, I sent out a mail to Posterous with a bunch of photos, and this is what they created for me: http://booksandmore.posterous.com/lunch-at-serengeti – a very nice little slideshow. This is incredibly efficient. It took me just 2 mins to mail these photos before they were up on the site. I don’t have to fill up dreary forms, no long uploads, no signing in …nothing. I just have to attach photos to my GMail account and hit Send. How easy is that?

After seeing this, I am quite inspired to use this site to post all family photos, and videos. I do wish I had thought to give a different name to my Posterous space though, because as of now, I am not really planning to post anything books related there. I don’t plan to change the name now though. My tool loyalties are so fleeting that I am never sure whether I am going to use anything long enough for it to be worth the effort of configuring it. If I am still using Posterous a month from now, I will definitely try playing around more with it.

Because Posterous can even publish stuff to my WordPress blog I am definitely going to give that a whirl, starting with this post. Let’s see how it displays.

If it is good, I could continue using it to post to my WordPress blog, which is always slow at the best of times, and impossible at its worst!

Mom, in case you are reading this post, you can check out my posterous link this weekend. I will be uploading tons more photos there

Test Results : If I include the body of the text within the email, Posterous formats it beautifully and uploads it here (much faster than doing it via WordPress itself). However, I did need to log in to WordPress to add tags, categories, and create the slug (but it is still quicker because you can use WordPress Quick Edit facility).

I need to do another post with images, and see how it displays.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with how quickly Posterous publishes. I do wish there was some way for me to specify the tags and categories within the email, so that it makes it even quicker for me.

I also do wish there was some way to automate the “digg” and “Share” links that I add at the bottom of my posts. Sigh! things would be just dandy then!

Ah! Kabul!

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As promised in my previous post, I am adding this poem “Kabul”, by the 17th-century Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi. This is one translation of the poem that has inspired the title of “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. A second translation can be found here

Ah! How beautiful is Kabul encircled by her arid mountains
And Rose, of the trails of thorns she envies
Her gusts of powdered soil, slightly sting my eyes
But I love her, for knowing and loving are born of this same dust

My song exhalts her dazzling tulips
And at the beauty of her trees, I blush
How sparkling the water flows from Pul-I Bastaan!
May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye of man!

Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise
For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven
From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection
Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

Her laughter of mornings has the gaiety of flowers
Her nights of darkness, the reflections of lustrous hair
Her melodious nightingales, with passion sing their songs
Ardent tunes, as leaves enflamed, cascading from their throats

And I, I sing in the gardens of Jahanara, of Sharbara
And even the trumpets of heaven envy their green pastures

Hope you like it!

A Thousand Splendid Suns – A Book Review

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Love that she's walking in high heels across the rocky terrain

Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is a story of two women and their lives in Afghanistan over the past 30 years spanning such tumultous events as the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan, the years of Mujahideen resistance, and the rise and fall of the Taliban.

Mariam is an illegitimate child who is forced to marry Rasheed, an abusive husband at age 15. Rasheed is an ugly, cruel man who breaks Mariam’s spirit time and again. Laila is an attractive girl who lives just up the street. She is born to educated, liberal parents and enjoys the freedoms Mariam is restricted from. She has a boyfriend, but their plans to marry get derailed when he has to leave the country and move to Pakistan as a refugee. Although he offers to marry Laila and take her with him, she opts to stay back with her parents who need her.

During the wars of the 1980′s and 1990′s, a rocket destroys Laila’s home and family. Finding herself alone and pregnant with her boyfriend’s child, she decides to accept Rasheed’s offer of marriage and becomes his second wife. The story then deals with how Mariam and Laila form an almost impossible friendship, and how they support each other through all their travails.

My Review:

A Thousand Splendid Suns does a wonderful job of giving glimpses and insight into the daily life in Afghanistan through the eyes of two very different women who become friends and allies.

I was very apprehensive to pick up this book. I hadn’t much liked “The Kite Runner”, and all that I read about this book made me feel it would be a tear-jerker, overly emotional kind of novel. The sort I normally try to avoid.

Anyway, I did eventually read it, and I must admit that I loved this one so much better than The Kite Runner. I really loved the 2 main characters. They are not spineless at all, but each show maturity and strength in the midst of unimaginable hardships. The ending of the book is superb, redemptive, and hopeful.

Khaled Hosseini paints a stark picture of what it means to be a woman in a culture where they are valued only for how well they keep a house, and how many sons they produce. A culture where they are subject to the whims of men. Those that value them as worthwhile human beings are welcome oases – they seem to be the exceptions in their world, rather than the norm.

To my surprise, there were also some subtle humorous passages in the book.

There is a hilarious aside in the book about a painter who is forced to draw pants on his paintings of flamingos to hide their “nudity”. I also loved reading about how people worked around the Taliban ban on TVs by burying it in the garden during raids.

What horrified me in the novel was the actuality of how rubbish daily life really was under the Taliban regime – no TV, no cinema, no books (apart from Islamic religious texts), no kite flying, full burqas, no cosmetic use, women could not travel without a man to escort them. What on earth did people do for recreation? I mean all the simple pleasures of life were taken away.

I am not even looking at this from a gender perspective. Life would have been hellish for men too, I am sure.

There are some nice bits of Islamic poetry and songs scattered through the novel, which I loved.

I will be posting a longer poem in a separate post, but I thought I would end this review with an excerpt from this shorter, very lovely ghazal that was included in this book, and which epitomizes its very spirit. This ghazal is by someone called Hafez:

Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not,
Hovels shall turn to rose garden, grieve not,
If a flood should arrive to drown all that’s alive,
Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not.

In short, this book is every bit as splendid as the title suggests. Go read!

Certain Girls – A Book Review with Some Mild Spoilers

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Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

I picked up Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner, because it was a kind of sequel to “Good In Bed”, which I had read many years back and enjoyed thoroughly. Jennifer Weiner is also one of the better “chick-lit” writers out there whose books always offer something a bit more meaningful than the Sophie Kinsella-esque fluff that is so common these days.

If you have not read “Good in Bed”, do read it if you get a chance. It is a really good read; and far better than it’s rather suggestive title and cover would imply. It is also far better than this rather tepid sequel.

Certain Girls takes place about 15 years after Good in Bed ends. Cannie Shapiro (the heroine in Good in Bed) is now happily married to her dream guy, and she has a 13 year old daughter (from a previous relationship). She spends her time ghost-writing some science fiction novels and planning how to organize her daughter (Joy’s) upcoming bat mitzvah.

Cannie’s husband Peter is dreaming about having another baby and convinces his wife to try out for another baby. Following the trauma of Joy’s birth, Cannie’s not able to have more children, so it means finding a surrogate.

Joy is struggling with an identity crisis. She feels stifled and embarassed by her mother’s over-protectiveness. She has also stumbled across an old book written by her mother, which reveals certain family truths that disturb her.

The story alternates between Joy’s and Cannie’s points of view, so it makes it easy for the reader to understand their motivations.

Eventually, this is a family story that revolves around how mother and daughter resolve various issues that are tearing the family apart, and the life lessons they learn along the way.

My take on this novel:

I don’t know what I was expecting when I checked out Certain Girls; but it definitely wasn’t this.

The first half of the story was quite predictable and I found the mother-daughter fights to be a wee bit on the hysterical side – way too much drama for very trivial things.

For example, for half the book there is an ongoing drama about a Badgley Mischka dress that Joy wants to wear for her bat mitzvah and to which her mother strenuously objects. I just didn’t get why there was so much fuss over what seemed to be a non-issue. Cannie objects (not for financial reasons, which might make sense), but because it is too party-like for what is essentially a religious ceremony. I really felt that she was being quite unreasonable there. A young girl on the brink of a ceremony that symbolizes her entry into adulthood would definitely want something a llittle grown-up. Also, the dress sounded prefectly lovely and perfectly suitable to me.

In addition, I was quite disappointed by Cannie’s character. She was very lively and witty in Good in Bed, but here, she seemed to have settled down into becoming a suburban and somewhat whiny mum. She is unable to forget and forgive the people who have done her wrong in the past. I found that rather childish; I mean it’s been more than 10 years for God’s sake. Surely, you can’t still be holding a grudge against people!!

Well, anyway the hysteria builds up to a point where Joy decides to run away from home. And I must say, that is the point onwards where the story direction starts to move in a very unexpected manner. The end of the novel is a complete shocker; I just did not see it coming and neither will you.

In the end, I think the final bits of the novel redeemed it for me. I know the ending would have disappointed some other readers who were looking for something more upbeat, but for me I felt it was the only way to end the story in a strong manner, which gives enough substance to the rest of this otherwise lukewarm novel.

Be warned, it is a tearjerker though. Just perfect for those rainy days when you just want to curl up with a book under a blanket and go sob, sob, sob. I must say, I ended up with a rather runny nose after reading this one!

The Bad Girl – A Book Review (Warning: Spoilers Ahead)

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The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa

There are some men who equate love with pain; who crave love that brings them misery and unhappiness. The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa is the story of one such man.

Ricardo Somocurcio is the protagonist, the soft-hearted man who has no ambition in life other than living in Paris. He meets the girl of his dreams at the tender age of 16 in his hometown of Miraflores in Peru, and falls under the spell of her “mischievous laugh” and the “mocking glance of her eyes the color of dark honey.” From then on, they follow a crazy cycle where she betrays him time and again, only to return back and be forgiven.

The story moves from Peru to London, Paris, Tokyo, and Madrid where the two encounter each other. He calls her “the bad girl”, and she calls him the “good boy”.

For the rest of the book, they pretty much play according to these good boy/bad girl stereotypes, until the final end to their love story.

My thoughts on this book:

While the love story itself is nothing much to write home about, I loved his descriptions of the places and the actual events that occurred at the time period they lived in.

I loved the peek into Parisian cafe life in the 1960s; the idealism of those times that prompted well-established young men to chuck their lives in the cause of bringing communism to their countries; of a time when Fidel Castro was considered a hero among the leftists; when terms like Maoism were not just words that were bandied about, but actually an ideology that was taken seriously and which promised to change the world.

I loved 70s swinging London when AIDS first makes its scary appearance, and his descriptions of Peru and the political turbulence of that time.

In many ways, this book mirrors the movie “Forrest Gump” – both are based on simple people who unconditionally love one woman. Both make a lot of references to important world events that occurred during the course of the story. Both the stories also have a pretty much similar ending (there I have given the ending away, but then it is something easily guessed!). The only difference is that this book is lacking in the schmaltz factor and the one-liners that evoke the tears.

What I mean to say is that I enjoyed this book, loved it even, but read it with a feeling of slight detachment. Not for one moment did I truly care whether the two would have a happy ending or not. This book did not evoke any kind of stronger emotion in me – rage at the bad girl, or sadness when she betrays him, nothing, de nada.

I don’t know why is that. Usually, I really get sucked into such type of stories.

Finally, before I conclude this strangely unsatisfying review (I feel I have so much to say about this book, but the words are not coming to me), I must say that I did enjoy it better than Love in the Time of Cholera. Two similar books, but the writing styles are very different. I must say that I much prefer Mario Vargas Llosa’s modernism compared to Marquez’s magical realism.

Before writing this review, I did some research on Llosa, and it appears that “The Bad Girl” is one of his lesser books. I quite liked this one, so I definitely do plan to read more.

What about you? Have you read any of his other books? Which one would you recommend for me to read next?