A Curious Statistical Anomaly

War, Inc. Drected by Joshua Seftel. Actors: John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, and others. DVD Release Date: October 14, 2008. It’s hard to know what to say about this film. War, Inc. is definitely anti-war and is listed as such on Amazon. But it’s much more than that, which is usual with any film that John Cusack has a part in. Over the years, it’s gotten so that if Cusack is in a film we put it on our list, because while it may not always be to our taste it will definitely be worth watching and thought provoking. To give you a flavor of War, Inc., here’s the movie trailer:

War, Inc. has some similarities to Grosse Pointe Blank in that Cusack plays an assassin that’s just not getting the job satisfaction that he used to from the job. But Hauser (Cusack) has got a job to do so it’s off to Turaqistan to put an end to Omar Sharif, the politician, not the actor. Hauser, who has been wrestling with doubts and insecurities, is training himself to use hot sauce to quell his concerns. The film is, like Grosse Pointe Blank, a mix of philosophy, political comments, and believe it or not, the concerns most of us face every day. Sometimes surreal and at others laugh out loud funny, it nonetheless manages to highlight the ravages and absurdity of the war. It pokes fun at the way wars have been so sanitized that they are outsourced and used as corporate beachheads in the economics of greed. But it also deals with the people that get chewed up and spit out as they try to live their lives amidst the surrealistic landscape of war for money and profit. It’s definitely worth watching and thinking about. I’m sure the resonances with a current war that the US entered a while back and can’t seem to get out is just coincidence — or maybe not a coincidence, just taken to the inevitable extreme.

The second Mrs. Darcy of the title is Octavia Melbury Darcy, widow of Captain Christopher Darcy (a cousin of the Darcy of Pride & Prejudice). We open with Octavia entertaining a friend in Calcutta, Lady Brierley has stopped in to see if the rumors of Octavia being left with little to no money is true. Captain Darcy’s estate was entailed to a distant relative, George Warren, and Octavia is left with a very small income to live on. The upshot is that she’ll have to return to England and to the care of her half-sisters and half-brothers. We also quickly come to understand that these half-sisters/brothers care very little for Octavia since she’s from their father’s second marriage to a women they consider beneath them.  Therefore Octavia is nothing to them, but her name means that they must make some effort on her behalf or society will think less of them.

While wondering how she can afford to return to England, she is contacted by a gentleman working for the lawyers of a Mrs. Anne Worthington and told that Mrs. Worthington’s estate has been left to her.  Octavia is surprised to say the least and expects that this is all a mistake since, as far as Octavia knew, she had no relatives on her mother’s side of the family, or her Melbury relatives would have sent her off to them years ago. None the less, she is given money to travel to England and the name of the law firm to contact on her arrival.

We now have the set up for the story. Octavia must move in with her Melbury relatives who see her as someone to be ashamed of and married off again as soon as possible. She finds that the inheritance is indeed real and since her husband died before her great-aunt, there is no difficulty.  For if her husband had died after her great-aunt, the inheritance would have gone to him, and she’d be left again with nothing. So, until all the details are taken care of, Octavia must live with her half-sister and her husband and manage to avoid being married off.

Of course, being a novel of romance, action, and adventure, there will be plenty of twists and turns on the way to that “happily ever after” moment at that end of the book.

Elizabeth Aston has written several other books that follow on the Darcy family: Mr. Darcy’s Daughters, The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, The True Darcy Spirit, The Darcy Connection, and Mr. Darcy’s Dream.

I’ve read and reviewed several of these books. Aston deals mainly with the next generation of characters. The children of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane and Charles Bingley, Charlotte and Mr. Collins (somehow it just doesn’t seem right for him to have a first name). In this case, Octavia was married to a distant Darcy cousin but, once back in England, she meets Camilla Darcy Wytton and her husband; Camilla is one of the five daughters of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy. George Warren, who inherits Christopher’s estate is the stepson of Caroline Bingley. Connections within connections.

Aston manages to tell a story that pulls in the various characters from the next generation that has peopled her previous novels. She also adds other new characters and within the confines of the period — its politics and social mores — gives us not only an entertaining and interesting story, but a window onto a the world as it once was.

I find Aston’s books fascinating not only for their connection with the Jane Austen canon but because by going for the next generation, she places her stories at the beginning of the modern era when women were just beginning to realize that they could have options to marriage. However money, as always, was the driving force and a woman without her own funds had few options unless she married — thus the bases for so many romances in this period. Marriage was more often than not a contractual agreement; women, while dreaming of marring for love, in fact often — as did Charlotte Lucas — marry in order to protect themselves and their futures to whoever asked and seemed least likely to abuse them.

There’s a dark background to many of these books, more present in their absence from the actual story line.  Our main character in this story is faced with the very real prospect of being force to marry in order to survive in her social circle, since at her level she can’t be seen to find employment. There were very few employment options for women of class other than governess or companion at that time. Octavia, without funds of her own, is totally at the mercy of her relatives, who don’t particularly care for her. Things were even worse for women of the lower classes, but those stories would be grittier and much less likely to have happy endings.

While each of these books stands alone, the characters from one often show up in the other stories, so reading them in publication order would give the reader a better grounding in this new generation. Personally, I’ve been reading them as I find them — out of order — I haven’t had any problem following the main plot lines. I may miss out on the intricacies of the various relationships, but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment.

Right up front, I’ll admit that I’m a Jane Austen fan and I love searching for those books that continue the saga of the people from Austen’s novels.

The Darcys & the Bingleys continues the story begun in Pride and Prejudice. The book opens with the two couples engaged and deep in planning for their weddings, then we have the weddings, honeymoons, and the two couples settle into their married lives. Altman, knowing that this material would be a bit thin on the ground for a full novel, is actually telling us the tale of Caroline Bingley.

As those who are familiar with Pride and Prejudice are aware, Caroline Bingley has been pursuing Mr. Darcy in the hope of being Mrs. Darcy. She hoped that with her brother being Darcy’s close friend and that her being with them would make his heart grow fonder of her and offer marriage. That didn’t happen, instead Charles Bingley married Jane Bennett and Darcy married Elizabeth Bennett. Now Caroline is nearing thirty, which at that time meant she was unlikely to get a good offer of marriage, and her age was against her. She was desperate and, returning to London after the weddings, she threw herself into the social scene hoping to find a good match.

Luckily for Caroline, she does find someone who offers for her hand. Charles is called to London to meet her suitor and to give his consent. It’s at this point that the book really takes off (not that the preceding scenes of the happy couples settling into their new lives wasn’t interesting). Needless to say, Bingley and Darcy find it necessary to vet Caroline’s suitor. In the process they learn more information about the suitor, about Caroline’s life, and the Bingley children’s childhood.

Altman writes with true sensitivity to the characters as developed by Jane Austen. Never does she violate the moral code or core characterizations of any of the characters. However, Altman does allow them to grow and change with the changing relationships that result as daughters marry, women become mothers, and men become husbands and fathers, and as the new relationships by marriage settle in place. I never felt that she twisted the characters core values and attributes, but she did give them strength and growth. Jane gains a spine. Darcy and Bingley become more like brothers than close friends. Jane and Elizabeth gain confidence and find that their sisterhood becomes even more precious to them. Many things change, but at heart it all grows out of Austen’s original story.

I must mention that Altman manages to tell a taut tale while following the template laid down in the original story, being true to the times while striking out into her own territory. That she manages to do this while also injecting a bit of humor, lively wit, crisp dialogue, and outstanding adventure with a few twists and turns makes the book even more exciting.

I’ve read a number of continuation tales where the authors chose to make the plot move by having the main characters complete change their character, morals, and values. So authors who manage to continue the story while maintaining what we readers loved so much about the original characters, while telling new stories, are to be commended and recommended. Give Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys a try, especially if you’ve been disappointed by other continuations — I believe you’ll agree this is an excellent addition to the continuation tales.

Mark Genevich is a private investigator in South Boston. He’s just gotten another case, or he thinks he has a case…he’s not sure actually. You see, Genevich is a narcoleptic as a result of the car accident that killed his best friend and rearranged his face. As far as he can remember, Jennifer Times walked into his office — refused to take no for an answer — and hired him to find her fingers. The problem is that while she was there Genevich had actually fallen into a hypnogogic state and when he awoke he was alone, there was no check, but there were some cryptic notes on his pad and a manila envelope with two black and white photos of a young girl that looked a lot like Jennifer.

Genevich tends not to take jobs that require him to leave his office. He never knows when he’ll drop into sleep or worse, cataplexy, when he’s awake and aware but can’t move. The little sleeps or hypnogogic states are similar to what happens to most of us with a high fever and tiredness. We fall asleep on the couch with the DVD player or TV on and whatever is playing gets incorporated into our dreams along with whatever our brain’s unconscious serves up. Awoken we don’t know at first what was dream and what reality. For Mark Genevich most of his life is like that. Part of any investigation he does involves figuring out what exactly is the job and what he’s supposed to do, which is why he prefers email, written instructions, and internet searches.

His first step is to figure out what the real job is since he couldn’t have possibly been hired to search for her fingers. It must have something to do with the pictures. However, contacting Jennifer reveals that she doesn’t know who he is or what he’s talking about. So, now it’s necessary to step back and figure out who hired him and why?

The entire story is told from Mark Genevich’s point of view, which means most of the information is disjointed and we, as readers, don’t know anymore than he does. Some authors hide information in mysteries by keeping us out of the detectives head but Tremblay lets us into Genevich’s head because it doesn’t matter what he knows because we don’t know if what he knows is real or dream or a combination of the two.

A gritty, noir mystery with a very different private investigator, Tremblay manages to tell a story that keeps the reader engaged from the first page. It’s not just can you figure it out before the sleuth, but will he figure it out because you both have the same confusing information and little to guide you.

I haven’t read anything this different in a while and it was not only interesting as a mystery, but contained a lot of information about a neurological problem that doesn’t get dealt with much in any fiction. Tremblay does a great job bringing Mark Genevich to life. He may not be someone you like very much, but you will respect his determination.

Since the entire novel is told form Mark Genevich’s point of view, the reader is left as much in the dark as Mark, we can’t know more than he does about anything. The reader and Genevich must decide what memories are are of real events and which are a result of hypnogogic hallucinations. Kept off balance throughout, Genevich is fighting a battle to control his neurological symptoms, retain his memories as well as shift through them to figure out which are real and which are a result of his little sleeps, and solve a crime.

Gritty, noir at its best, The Little Sleep manages to allow the reader to be an active participant in the case as there’s little chance the reader will spot clues before the PI since the reader also has to figure out what to believe. Imaginative and entertaining, it’s a story you just can’t put down.

Cassandra and Jane by Jill Pitkeathley is a fictionalized account of the life and times of Jane Austen, told from the point of view of her sister Cassandra. So, while it’s about Jane and her life and writing it’s a step removed and filtered through Cassandra’s feelings and beliefs. I’ve read all but one of Jane Austen’s novels — some several times over — but other than an occasionally link to a letter on the Pemberly site, I haven’t read any biographies of her life. I thought this fictionalized account would be a good introduction, better than the two movies I’d seen (Becoming Jane and Miss Austen Regrets).

For the purposes of the book, Cassandra is looking back over her life with Jane and wanting to make sure that Jane is seen as she should be, as Cassandra wants her remembered. It’s a given that Cassandra burned most of Jane’s correspondence prior to her own death. Cassandra didn’t want to leave any possibility that people would see Jane’s rapier wit and misunderstand her gentle nature. It’s tragic that Cassandra didn’t put the letters in trust to be opened and seen at sometime in the future so instead we’re left with bits and pieces of Jane’s life and her view of her world.

Told from Cassandra’s point of view, beginning with Jane’s birth, then using bits of letters and other material with fictional narrative to tie the bits together, we get a look at these two sisters — their lives, their loves, hopes and dreams. Cassandra is definitely a woman of her times. Jane on the other hand is a woman out of time. She’s very aware of the unfairness of being a woman in a world run by men. In another 70-80 years she’d probably have been active for votes for women. Without making an advantageous marriage, the sisters would be at the mercy of their brothers and their brothers wives for their home, money, comfort, and there was little to no chance of independence.

Jane chaffed at this while Cassandra tried to help Jane come to terms with her view of the unfairness of the world. Cassandra, much like Jane Bennet, is willing to be used by her family as they feel is best because that is her duty. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your point of view, neither sister married. I find that lucky since if Jane had married it would be unlikely to say the least that we’d have ever have had her novels.

While I enjoyed the tale and the history behind the story, the narrative structure gives us a deep look into Cassandra’s thoughts and feeling and while she never does anything to hurt Jane or put obstructions in her path, she’s jealous of the time Jane spends away from her and is hurt when Jane turns to others for discussions of her works in process. The relationship between the sisters is believable and has all the expected ups and downs of family relationships. Even though I found I didn’t care for Cassandra much, I do have to respect her and her defense of sister and her works.

A worthy addition to anyone’s Austen collection.

Orange, a young high school student, is obsessed with an artist that lives in her apartment building. He’s always drunk. He ignores her, but she looks out for him and hopes one day he’ll pay attention. Then he comes up on the roof while she’s there. He looks at her and shows her a letter. Then he jumps from the building to land on a car below.

Orange is devastated. We then flashback five months.

Orange felt alienated and alone believing that she’s the only one to feel this way and that no one can understand her frustration, anger, and pain. She writes a note, goes up to the roof, and stands on the edge. She nearly worked herself up to jump when unexpectedly, a young man who lives in the same building is up there, drunk and the smashing of his bottle has her off the edge. It’s the same young man who we previously saw jump from the roof.

We now go forward again to that opening moment to see what happened and how these two lives intersected.

The artwork is vivid and filled with movement. There’s flashes for scenes that suggest mood, setting, movement, along with the narrative. Graphical stories are carried as much by the art as the words and when one person does both there tends to be a melding of the two.

Benjamin has produced a story that touches the pain of teens who are unsure of where they are going, what will happen as they transition from older child to an adult. As adult as they may be in their teens, they have no markers to tell them if what they’re feeling is normal or not. There’s no roadmap to adulthood, we all travel it alone. Orange, our main character, is desperately trying to make sense of a life that seems to be empty and lacking in the emotional richness she believes that others have. And then her world is shattered further by her observation of her neighbor’s suicide. It’s a difficult subject and this story gives no answers just the message you’re not alone in how you feel.

Following the story the author has several short pieces explaining some of his other work and his observations on life — mostly his life and art. After reading the additional material the raw energy of the artwork of Orange seemed more intense.

Last week New Scientist had an article on How Novels Help Drive Social Evolution. The article reports on a study by Jonathan Gottschall and co-author Joseph Carroll at the University of Missouri, St Louis, about how “Darwin’s theories of evolution apply to literature” (I’m not putting in a link to the study since you have to pay to view it). Gottschall and Carroll with John Johnson, an evolutionary psychologist at Pennsylvania State University in DuBois, asked 500 people to fill in a questionnaire about 200 classic Victorian novels. The believe:

Boehm and Carroll believe novels have the same effect as the cautionary tales told in older societies. “Just as hunter-gatherers talk of cheating and bullying as a way of staying keyed to the goal that the bad guys must not win, novels key us to the same issues,” says Boehm. “They have a function that continues to contribute to the quality and structure of group life.”

“Maybe storytelling – from TV to folk tales – actually serves some specific evolutionary function,” says Gottschall. “They’re not just by-products of evolutionary adaptation.”

This reminded me that back in March of 2006, I’d reviewed A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong. The premise was that people need stories or myths as much as they needed food and water (my words not hers). Basically, people have always told stories. We gathered round the fire and told of hunts, of battles, of the gods, of how good got rewarded and bad was punished. If you haven’t read this work, you really should.  It doesn’t retell the fairy stories or legends, it helps to place them in perspective according to their appearance along the time line of human social evolution.

In stories we pass on information from the older to the younger generation. Stories allow us to learn from our past and plan for our future. Children play to prepare them for the roles they will take on in life. In early days, they played at the hunt, imitating what they’d heard in the stories from their elders, the hunters of the tribe. They took in these lessons, tips, and warnings and as they grew they internalized these stories and used them in their lives. They observed the life around them and developed stories to make sense of what they saw.

Stories are essential to human culture. From stories we learn how to act. We learn about what is right and wrong and sometimes we learn that what seems right or wrong is actually the opposite. We learn to beware Greeks bearing gifts. Many of the sayings we use daily conversation are based in stories from our past.

We’ve mostly moved from a mostly oral to a mostly written tradition as few people are drawn to the position of Bard or Storyteller. At one time they brought news from one community to another and passed on the accumulated knowledge they’d learned in their travels in the form of  stories. Beyond that, our lives are but stories for the next generations, which I feel Shakespeare touched on when he wrote:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

While you can still occasionally find storytellers, we mostly read books. The Bards/Storyteller of our time are authors — those whose fiction fulfills our need for stories. From books I learned much of what I know of life in different social classes than the one in which I was born, or life in other cultures, or other planets. I learned the manners and modes of behavior; how to survive outside my comfort zone of what I know. I also learned that these people, no matter which century they lived in, had the same fears, desires, wishes, dreams and hopes that I do. I learned that I was not alone. I learned that others had gone before me and that I could learn from their successes and their mistakes.

Stories are cautionary, informative, educational, and entertaining. Yes, “storytelling – from TV to folk tales – actually serves some specific evolutionary function” and any avid reader could have told these researchers about the importance of stories in our lives. However, it’s nice to have our beliefs ratified by science.

28 Weeks Later is directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and stars: Catherine McCormack, Robert Carlyle, Amanda Walker, Shahid Ahmed, and Garfield Morgan.

Basically, 28 Weeks Later is a sequel to 28 Days Later. The movie starts with a couple hiding in a house with an elderly couple and a young woman and young man. It looks like their running low on food but they’ve managed to stay away from the infected. That is until they hear a young boy calling for help outside their door and they open to let him in. He’d been chased and the infected break in — attacking everyone. When the infected get between the husband and wife, he takes off leaving her. All done in a thrilling chase and the same newsreel-ish documentary jerkiness that was a hallmark of the earlier film. Then suddenly, it’s after the infected die off and there’s an American contingent in London helping to clean up the bio-hazard (bodies) and slowly allow the refugees to come home. One island is cleared and safe and they’re working on the rest of the city. It seems the husband/father has survived and the children (older daughter, young son) had been in Europe during the epidemic and now they’ve returned.

Good basis. As the first movie dealt with strangers coming together to make a family — beginning to trust and hope — as they deal with the loss of all they knew, this film deals with a family trying to make sense of what has happened and to move on. There’s surprises and a few plot twists to keep things interesting.

However, it’s also basically a zombie film so we know things are going to go horribly wrong. Where this film fails is in not having a cohesive and solid plot. Yes, there are all the elements necessary but with holes you could drive a truck through. Most of the action/danger occurs because information is not shared, people with expertise and experience are not listened to, and so on…. In other words the plot goes forward based on people being idiots. Now, I will admit that with the kids some of the idiocy is simply due to them thinking as most kids do that they know better than the adults and that the adults are just being overly cautious (a deleted scene in the Special Features section makes this abundantly clear but it was deleted so watching the movie you don’t know this).

On the other hand, the action of the armed forces were unbelievable. I don’t believe for one minute that in a possible infestation that they would take all their civilians, cram them into a tunnel, turn out the lights and forget to lock the doors. Really? I know we all make jokes about the military mind but really — these are professionals.

So while it was a great concept and the action was pretty much what you’d expect for a sequel to 28 Days Later, it lacked the internal consistency and believability that the first movie had going for it. I mean this is a zombie film, the audience is expecting to suspend belief just to watch it, but that suspension only goes so far. While some people acted as you’d expect under pressure and especially after having survived the first infestation — most just didn’t do more than scream and run and become zombie fodder.

While I loved 28 Days Later and it’s part of my zombie training films library of films, I won’t be buying 28 Weeks Later. It was a great action film but not something with enough redeeming qualities to make it a film I’d want to watch over again and again.