Bear Flag Blog

Back from Comic-Con. I'll blog about that in a bit.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan - 7/10
I went to the book store looking for a sci-fi or fantasy novel, and as so frequently I do, I came away with non-fiction history. In fact, as I found myself in the history section I had a very minor destiny moment, picking up books and replacing them with the words 'no, that's not what I will read next' until I picked this one up and said 'Yes, this is the next book I shall read'.
At any rate... depressing. Extremely depressing. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, but... sheesh. A good book, certainly, well-written and I'm pleased I read it. I learned a great deal about the actual Dust Bowl, what it was, where, why, and who was in it. But you can only read about so many babies dying from dust in their lungs before things start to seem a little bleak.

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark - 7/10
Very interesting book, full of fascinating characters and historical perspectives. Also, extremely poorly paced. Extremely. Clark spends a good fifty pages on the socio-cultural milieu of eighteen twenties Prussia - and then blows through the period 1866-1945 in about as many. Perhaps the first quarter is excellent, the middle half drags abominably, and the last quarter flies by as though Clark had his dinner on the stove and needed to wrap up before it burned.
Still, a worthwhile read. It irritates me no end that any give bookstore's German history section is 99.5% Nazi. Lots of real insight in this book, even if it took slogging through all that repetitive sociologist crap in the middle to reach it all.
As a side note, one can write a history of Prussia because Prussia is over. It began, happened, and then by gum was ended in a very final way. Just as Solon said "Call no man happy until he is dead," the fact that Prussia is in fact dead allows us to view it and make judgements. Of course, those judgements can only be profoundly mixed; and Iron Kingdoms does a good if not excellent job of providing the basis to make them.

The wife and I had been looking forward to seeing Wanted - I mean, who doesn't like over-the-top action with curving bullets and automobile gymnastics - but we were pretty sadly disappointed. Had I realized that the graphic novel the movie was based on was by Mark Millar I would have better adjusted my expectations. Now, I admit that a film can be a great departure from a graphic novel (witness League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but many of the problems with the film were classic Millar. In particular, the fact that the storyteller seems to think they are being oh-so-clever when in fact they are not, particularly. It was ultimately hokey and disappointing, not saved even by the yumminess of Angelina Jolie. I give Wanted 5.5/10.

I went to Comic-Con before seeing The Dark Knight, which bumped my expectations up to stratospheric levels. And it was good, very good. Not... not stratospherically good. But excellent. My biggest problem with the film was that everything kept working out really, really well for the Joker. Unbelievably well. To the point where it seemed his super power was minor omniscience. At every turn he was multiple steps ahead of the good guys... and it made no sense.
However, other than that I liked it. Heath Ledger's performance was truly awesome. It was tightly plotted and well acted. Grim, but I had been prepared for that. So The Dark Knight gets 8.5/10.

And then there's X-Files: I Want to Believe. It was. That's about it. Not painful, but at no point did I really see a point to the movie. It was a mediocre episode of the show, spread over two hours. 5/10.