Reviews and Giveaways

So talking about “the list” got me thinking about the lists I’ve used in the past to name my children. Today being March 4th got me thinking about marching forth and doing all the things I’ve been planning to do for a long time but haven’t done for no real reason except I don’t much feel like doing them.

As an aside, my house is clean right now. Freakishly clean. It has been for over 24 hours and the children have even been allowed to roam freely about the house at times. You could eat off my kitchen floor – but please don’t….

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Trapped in a house full of munchkins with a sinus headache and feeling decidedly less than lerious, I am reminded that I have yet to do a movie review of The Karate Kid.

I’m worried that once the night-time cold medication kicks in, I’ll be unable to remember all the details of the film that was such an integral part of my formative years. I must get it all down now. It may be hard to believe, but the following synopsical-review is from memory, with no source material of any kind. I have not seen the movie since I was a junior high student in Southern Alberta. Calgarians like sanding the floor and martial arts.

The film has an amazing cast including Elizabeth Shue and Daniel Laruso, also known as Daniel Son. According to the film, wise old Japanese men think every young boy is their son. It takes place in New Jersey or California. Come to think of it, everyone is blond in the movie and my mom is not blond and she’s from Jersey so either it takes place in California or it was directed by The Beach Boys or my mom is lying about her place of birth.

No, I think Daniel Son grew up in New Jersey and he moved to California with his mom in their station wagon so he could listen to Cruel Cruel Summer (not the Ace of Base version. It hadn’t been invented yet.) on a ghetto-blaster while people played soccer on the beach and ground his face into the sand.

His mom has a bad perm. Good then, bad in retrospect. Their station wagon has wood paneling and needs to be pushed to start. He works as a waiter/butler guy until he gets fired for throwing spaghetti on rich people and he’s skinny but highly attractive to 13-year old girls. These factors combine to make him a total loser and therefore the ideal underdog romantic leading man.

Come to think of it, I’ve always liked em skinny…and I’ve always liked em named Daniel.

So he gets beat up a lot. He walks to school. He gets beat up. He eats lunch. He gets beat up. He wears the coolest Halloween costume in history (a bubble-blowing shower stall) and consequently gets massacred. Everyone at his school goes around at night dressed up like skeletons and they’re all karate black belts at a local dojo where the sensei’s life’s work is to train evil high school skeleton bullies to rule the world.

They do.

Daniel-son gets saved by his apartment janitor. Oh. That also makes him a loser. He lives in an apartment and has come in contact with a janitor. I think you’re still okay if you happen to periodically rub shoulders with a butler but janitors are right out.

Luckily the janitor is a karate master who has been chillin’ in the basement, carving miniature shrubberies, eating flies with chopsticks and waiting for his next pupil to surface. He owns a beautiful home and a fleet of vintage cars but has no one to wax the cars, sand the floor or paint the fence. He sees Daniel as an ideal slave and sufficiently unwilling apprentice. It’s no fun to train a student who comes to you willingly. Half the joy of mentoring someone is humbling them into submission, while mumbling incoherent sound bites of ancient wisdom and watching them do all of your housework.

In some ways, I see The Karate Kid as a flawless parenting guide.

Another truth I found in this movie that’s served me well is that the best person to date is your boyfriend’s arch-nemesis. It ups the drama and you get to scream more. By the time the next movie comes around, you’ll probably be dating HIS nemesis so that he’s free to move to Japan and date Mr. Miyagi’s zucchini-farming relatives.

As he does his sanding, waxing and painting, Daniel-Son becomes a karate master and scores a sweet ride with which to take Elizabeth Shue on a date to a montage of amusement park rides.

My throat hurts.

He ends up facing down his enemies in the ring at some big tournament where the evil dojo master encourages his legion of Aryan-Nationesque foot soldiers to maim Daniel slowly so that he ends up like the black knight from Monte Python by the end, spurting blood and standing on one leg. The baddest high school dojo kid is encouraged to “SWEEP THE LEG” and others heckle to “put him in a body bag.”

Mr. Miyagi performs some black magic in the locker room and Daniel wins the fight, the respect and the girl, who proceeds to run him over with an overpowering hug. The skeletons cry, Mr. Miyagi almost smiles and someone in a suit gives Daniel Son the Stanley Cup.

A few more things I remember are that no one is impressed with Daniel Laruso’s fabulous BMX stylings. I’m not sure why. I think they forgot they were in the 80s. I also think there is something about Mr. Miyagi being a widowered WWII vet and I’m fairly sure someone burns his house to the ground. When this happens, Daniel Son may or may not yell “NOOOOOOOO!” and cry a lot.

It’s a good one. Rent it this weekend. No, I was not paid by The Karate Kid or any of its subsidiaries to write this post.

One of the things I learned working in the media department of a public library with a massive film collection was that people like scaring the living chigooly out of themselves on or around October 31st. What many people learned the hard way was that if you go to a video store or library the day before or the day of Halloween, you’ll have to be a little more creative when choosing a scary flick to watch.

More than once have I tried to convince a teenaged boy that Nosferatu would be the oogledy boogledy best scary movie to watch for his Halloween bash. No takers. No love for the original scary, the movie that started it all. I bite my thumb at them. Go to Blockbuster and see if Scary Movie 3 is in stock. Ha HA!

Then there’s the grown men looking for a scary movie on Halloween night. Umm… Nosferatu’s still here or you could try that one about the pride and the prejudice… The screaming, the running, the horror, the sudden fits of narcolepsy. Works every time.

What are some of your favorite scary movies? Here are a few that you may not have seen:

Nosferatu (1922) — silent, B&W, the original vampire movie. Everyone should see this at least once. It also makes a great background on a big screen during a spooky party.

M (1931) — Fabulous German film starring Peter Lorre as one of the all-time creepiest villans, B&W, German with English subtitles.

Le Boucher (The Butcher 1970) — Another great murder mystery, French with english subtitles, directed by Claude Chabrol. You will be freaked out by this well crafted thriller.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) — Kampy, silly 80’s horror flick.

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) — Life is not complete without viewing this 50s horror film. A giant brain from Planet Arous, held up by heavy wires, “floats” around and possesses the body of a well-known scientist. The tagline reads “It Will Steal Your Body And Damn Your Soul.” You cannot lose with this one.

Wait Until Dark (1967) — My favorite scary movie of all time, this film must be watched in a completely dark house. Audrey Hepburn plays a blind woman being terrorized by a team of international drug dealers. There is no scarier movie. Ever. I’m willing to step up and fight you over this pronouncement or step up and dance you over it or EVEN freestyle rap battle to prove my point. I’m that confident.

Now share yours. Some ideas for younger kids would be helpful too. Mine are all relatively clean as horror movies go, but much too mature in content for young family viewing.

Francie and her family close the door on me, just like that? What gives? Where’s book two? A Tree Grows In Brooklyn — the Blog?

I want so much to know what will happen in Francie’s life. Will life with Ben become something wonderful? I believe that she will find a deeper love in Ben than she ever had with Lee, who was only really a dream, her first flailing attempt at love.

I agree with her mother that Francie will never forget him, but I think he will come to be a sweet memory, a foreshadow of things to come, rather than continue as an overpowering presence in her life.

Francie’s mother married her first love, met on a whim, attracted to his good looks and in love with being in love. Don’t you think she’ll be much happier with McShane? They have a quiet attraction and respect for each other, a slow simmer that will build with time. He is more of what her head wants and her heart will grow to follow.

Any other predictions of how their lives will end up? Will Francie finish college, marry Ben, forget about Brooklyn?

As far as the book club goes, I’m starting too think it’s too ambitious for my current life. There are so many projects I am in the middle of and I think I need to know when to say when. So, as far as this book club goes, WHEN. If you plan to read another great book and want to let me know about it, I may just read along. I’ve really enjoyed discussing this one with all of you. It now joins my increasingly too large list of top 10 favorites.

Links:
Lauren writes from a New Yorker’s perspective about the ways our world has changed and how it remains the same.
Allysha says “[…]Often times it’s heartbreaking as Francie has to negotiate the world she has created in her mind with the reality she lives in.[…]” In her usual thoughtful way, Allysha discusses this week’s section about growing up.  She discusses beauty and truth and one of my favorite sections of the book and finishes up perfectly with this post.

Schedule:

• Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
• Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
• Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
• Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
• Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th

Pease let me know if you’ve blogged about the book and I’ll add a link here. And remember, you don’t have to stick to the schedule. If you have something great to say about the first page, let us know.

(My latest is up at Parenting.com)

This section of the book was painful for me to read. It sets in motion Francie’s adolescence, a time full of pain, heartbreak and harsh realizations about the cruel world. No longer can she look upon the family’s frequent bouts of starvation as a game. Gone is her unquestioning faith in God. She finds herself doubting that any woman can truly be good or kind….

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Betty Smith paints with words, talented beyond my limited means to express. As I read this book, I ask myself over and over again the question — WHY HAS NO ONE MADE ME READ THIS BOOK BEFORE?

I’m sure Betty would say that a person cannot be forced to read a book but must discover it on their own. I can imagine she would deny the perfection of her own exquisite prose, stating that there are multiple sides and shades to anything, the good must be taken with the bad and a love or distain created out of the complex web of contradictions.

I was hooked from the moment she began to describe the old man, seated in the bakery.

“Francie stared at the oldest man. She played her favorite game, figuring out about people […] her thoughts ran…’He is old. He must be past seventy. He was born about the time Abraham Lincoln was living and getting himself ready to be president […] He was a baby once. He must have been sweet and clean and his mother kissed his pink toes. Maybe when it thundered at night she came to his crib and fixed his blanket better and whispered that he mustn’t be afraid, that mother was there […] Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don’t want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he’s old and there’s nothing to be happy about anymore.’ […]A terrible panic that had no name came over her as she realized that many of the sweet babies in the world were born to come to something like this old man some day. She had to get out of that place or it would happen to her.”

Aging and death are recurring themes in this book, the idea that our time here is limited. As I read, I feel a growing sense of urgency, an urgency to get out of this place I’m in before “it” happens to me, to choose my life and not live by accident.

Aging and death are recurring themes in this book, the idea that our time here is limited. As I read, I feel a growing sense of urgency, an urgency to get out of this place I’m in before “it” happens to me, to choose my life and not live by accident. Francie’s mother chooses to take charge of her life and clings to the direction she has created for herself, while her father lets life happen to him, playing the victim and enabling himself to fall deeper and deeper into a hole of self-loathing. The amazing part about these two and all of the characters in the novel is the depth with which they are portrayed. I LOVE that I can simultaneously identify with and censure a character. I adore that they do not feel like flat people made up of words on a page but rather living, breathing beings who might accidentally let a fleck of spittle fly my way if I’m not careful.

The description of the way Francie’s sainted grandmother views the world seems to be a roadmap for the way Betty Smith wants you to view the world she has created within the story, seeing the good and the bad in people but choosing to embrace the good, realizing that we are all flawed and we are all deliciously beautiful in all our failure, triumph and daily plodding hypocrisy.

Near the end of this week’s section, on page 95, a Woman is telling Francie’s mother Katie that the child is a whelp who would be better-off dead. Although Katie feels no great love for her child, she fiercely disagrees with the woman’s conclusion.

“Don’t say that,” Katie held her baby tightly. “It’s not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” “Aw, somebody ought to cut that tree down, the homely thing.” “If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful,” said Katie. “But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is. Look at these children.” She pointed to a swarm of dirty children playing in the gutter. “You could take any one of them and wash him good and dress him up and sit him in a fine house and you would think he was beautiful.”

And you’d be right, Betty Smith, he would be beautiful because he already is. We all are.

And you’d be right, Betty Smith, he would be beautiful because he already is. We all are. Yes, you too.