As we’ve established elsewhere, I don’t much like tricksters, and The Odyssey is the story of the trickster Odysseus. But I would much have preferred the actual story of the trickster Odysseus to whatever you want to say Christopher Nolan gave us instead.
Selected works of Henry James
As part of my ongoing informal free public-domain classic literature self-education program, I decided to tackle the work of Henry James. I chose 2 novellas and 7 novels and read them in chronological order.
- 1878 – Daisy Miller (novella)
- 1880 – Washington Square
- 1881 – The Portrait of a Lady
- 1886 – The Bostonians
- 1897 – What Maisie Knew
- 1898 – The Turn of the Screw (novella)
- 1902 – The Wings of the Dove
1903 – The Ambassadors1904 – The Golden Bowl
I decided to drop the last two; you’ll see why. Below are my thoughts on the others, starting from the most recently read novel, The Wings of the Dove.
Through Rocks and Clouds (2024)
This movie, set in Peru and with mainly Quechua (not Spanish) dialog, reminded me of Mongolian Ping Pong (2005) because the pacing was slow, and both feature a young boy from a herding culture against the backdrop of an immense natural landscape. However, the relevant landscape in Mongolia was flat, and the relevant landscape in Peru was… not.
The boy, Feliciano, seems to spend all his time outside with his dog (Rambo), his own alpaca (Ronaldo), and a small herd of other alpacas. He loves soccer and hopes Peru can qualify for the World Cup. He breaks into a one-room schoolhouse where he used to go to school, but it seems nobody goes to school there now. There seems to have been a shift away from traditional herding culture; some of the townspeople have jobs related to the local mine, and one of them even has a shiny pickup truck. The mine seems to be polluting the lake, though, and that’s not the end of the townspeople’s problems. Meanwhile, there’s a kind of buffalo spirit watching over Feliciano…
Breakout at Stalingrad by Heinrich Gerlach, translated by Peter Lewis
My German colleague recommended this book and lent it to me. It is a semi-autobiographical account of when the 6th German Army was encircled by Soviets at Stalingrad in 1942 and then, due to freezing winter temperatures and lack of supplies as much as actual fighting, was defeated in 1943. The message is, of course, that the human costs of war are tragically high.
The book was interesting in several ways…
Continue reading Breakout at Stalingrad by Heinrich Gerlach, translated by Peter Lewis
When and Why I Read Breakout at Stalingrad
Recommended/lent by German coworker. Novel based on the author's life experience.
Genre: Historical Fiction (WWII)
Date started / date finished: 10-Jul-26 to 24-Jul-26
Length: 720 pages
ISBN: 9781786690630
Originally published in: 2016/2017/2019
Amazon link: Breakout at Stalingrad
Bambi (1942)
One of my favorite movies ever is Disney’s Lion King (1994). I know the music and the script inside out. So when I watched Bambi in 2021, and again when I watched it recently, I was struck by how similar Bambi is to The Lion King. Both movies follow a princely main character through the major stages of his life.
Toy Story 5 (2026)
The devices. They’re everywhere. Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. We all need creativity and imagination, our kids most especially. Are we losing it? Yeah, apparently so. Do not go gentle into that good night, says Pixar!
The BBC Jane Austen Collection (1972–1995)
Between June 2024 and June 2026, I watched all six of the Jane Austen adaptations in this particular box set, which includes:
- Emma (1972)
- Sense and Sensibility (1981)
- Mansfield Park (1983)
- Northanger Abbey (1987)
- Pride and Prejudice (1995)
- Persuasion (1995)
Most of these adaptations struck me as boring, fussy and strident like a stage performance, or terribly incomplete.
More on various other adaptations below.
Gattaca (1997)
The movie Gattaca combines many things successfully. For one thing, visually, it is a retrostylized future with buildings, clothes, and cars designed to look like those of the past. For another, the society has several types of advanced technology: rocket science, embryology, DNA forensics, and electric cars, which, well, we have too, just not as good as theirs.
But do we want biotech as good as theirs? I mean, look what they did with it: Gattaca depicts a dystopia where people with unfavorable “in-valid” DNA sequences are consistently excluded from social and career opportunities.
Thank You For Banking with Us (2024)
When I’m on a long flight, I try to watch a movie or two from the entertainment system that I never would have heard of any other way, and this Palestinian black comedy is one example.
“When their father passes away leaving a large sum of money in the bank, two sisters put their differences aside and join forces against Sharia law, according to which their brother has the right to take double what they are entitled to.”
If you think it’s hard being a woman in general, try being a woman in Palestine… in this depiction, all the family and economic relationships are tilted against the women. The ambulance staff at first even refuse to state whether their father, who is lying in bed unresponsive, has died because no other male is present. I mean it’s like, a woman is still an adult, right?
In case you’re curious, the two sisters do manage to claim the inheritance for themselves; that’s not really a spoiler because it very much matters for the overall effect of the film how they try to manage it, and how they succeed… Do they enlist the help of someone’s boyfriend, husband, or son? Do they impersonate their dead father, or their undeserving distant brother, or some other male? Do they march into the bank with masks and a stolen gun and threaten the bank teller? Do they launch a protest campaign and achieve policy change? Do they just walk up to a series of ATMs and take out a thousand dollars 150 times over the course of a week?
The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021)
Underequipped but relentless Chinese soldiers fight Americans in North Korea during the Korean War in winter 1950, ultimately forcing a retreat.
