Author: Susan O.

10 Great Movies That Take Place in Autumn

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Summer may be a time for huge blockbuster action flicks, but as the kids settle back into school, autumn is a time for more peaceful reflection.  Grab a cup of hot chocolate, some fresh-baked cookies, your favorite warm blanket, and curl up with one of these films that take place in the fall. You’ll be glad you did!

Dead Poet’s Society – Robin Williams as an inspiring teacher in a prep school. One of his best roles.

Rudy – Sean Astin in a true story about a boy who wanted to play football for Notre Dame.

On Golden Pond – Henry Fonda’s Oscar-winning role as a family tries to come back together before it’s too late.

     

 

The Four Seasons – an all-star cast leads this sweet Alan Alda film about a group of friends vacationing through a year.  Gorgeous autumn scenery set to a soundtrack of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Hannah and her Sisters –  Woody Allen directs this film about a family, beginning and ending with Thanksgiving.

The Big Chill – A group of old friends gather together for the funeral of one of their own, accompanied by a fabulous soundtrack.

      

Sweet November – a sweet little love story starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron.

The Trouble with Harry – Alfred Hitchcock’s frightful comedy about a body that won’t stay buried.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – a John Hughes comedy starring Steve Martin as a man trying to make it home for Thanksgiving, when the world seems out to get him.

Far From Heaven – Connecticut in the fall of 1957, and the prejudices that existed.

Susan reads: The Queen of Katwe

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Wow – two books on chess in the same year?  Odd, yes, but this book fed my brain AND my sense of social welfare at the same time. In The Queen of Katwe, Phiona Mutesi is the poorest of the poor – poorer than the Indian children of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, poor as only the poor of war-torn Uganda can be, yet through her own uneducated analytical mind, she rises above everything as a sort of chess savant, traveling to Siberia to compete on a world level – at the age of 15, a girl who has never even seen a flush toilet, who does not even know when her birthday is.

Much of the book is taken up not with Phiona – how I wish more of the book focused on her, her thoughts, etc. – but with everyone around her, and just how the circumstances formed for her to shoot her star so incredibly high. Throughout, Phiona is a shadowy figure, almost a mentally disabled girl who for a few brief moments is able to see and understand clearly, and then is sent back down to the depths of her dull & hopeless life. Is it crueler to leave her mindless in the mud of the streets or to show her the glory of the rest of the world, and then send her back to nothing? I’m not sure. It’s a real “Flowers for Algernon” conundrum.

And I can’t help but wonder what the author could/did do for some of these people – you see them trying to teach chess with boards missing pieces, so crudely carved you can’t always tell a knight from a rook – did you buy them a few chess sets, when what to us is $10 and to them is a year’s salary? Did you donate so the club could continue to feed the starving children who come there to learn? I myself could not look upon such conditions without trying to help, but the author is silent as to how he himself was moved by the situation. A good book, an incredible story, but I wanted so much more, both for me and for Phiona.

Susan vs. the Wizards + Warriors

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      The long-bearded ancestor of all wizard, warrior, and chivalrous knight stories is arguably Le Morte d’Arthur, compiled by Sir Thomas Mallory and first published in 1485 – not bad, considering the printing press was only invented in 1450. These tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable was later worked by T.H. White into The Once and Future King, published in sections between 1938 and 1958, and taken up by Disney in 1963 as The Sword in the Stone.  In the same time period (1937-1954), J.R.R. Tolkien was busy pounding out The Lord of the Rings, his infinitesimally detailed trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King) that set the bar for most fantasy novels to come, so massive in scope that ten hours of movie magic can’t encompass it all.

Tolkien helped shape Dungeons and Dragons (1974), the endlessly successful fantasy game – wizards, warriors, dwarves with their battle axes, elves, orcs, checking for traps and spells – they all started with Tolkien.  Dungeons and Dragons, however, is directly responsible for creating several lines of worthy novels, perhaps the best being the two original Dragonlance trilogies, Chronicles (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, etc) and Legends (Time of the Twins, etc). While some have complained that “you can hear the dice rolling in the background,” these are the novels that set my brain on fire.  I had the misfortune to read them as they were being released, having to wait anxious months for each delicious installment. While Chronicles sets up the characters and sends them off on a very D&D-type adventure, Legends runs with the developed characters and explodes with adventure.  These trilogies are clean enough for the 11-15 year old crowd, and a great place to send them after (or in preparation for) Lord of the Rings. There are more than 200 novels under the Dragonlance umbrella (and a film), so let them read!

The modern crown of medieval fantasy, however, must go to George R. R. Martin (what’s with all those R’s?).  His Song of Ice and Fire series, better known as Game of Thrones, the first title of the series, is Tolkien grown up dark and twisted (yes, darker than Mordor, where evil is only ever alluded to). Dragons, kingdoms, sex, murder, warfare, dwarves, incest, murder, swords, traitors, child brides, sex, murder, backstabbing, murder, sex, murder – Game of Thrones is nothing short of a massive soap opera set in a fantasy world of medieval powerstruggles.  While the HBO series consists heavily of nudity and violence, it is not a tenth of the amount of extreme brutality and sexual depravity of the books – these are NOT chivalrous tales for the young, but bloody and too-realistic horror stories of warfare. Yet, they will suck you in with compelling characters in a story that is too painful to read further, and too engaging and dramatic to ever put down. Each volume runs 800-1200 pages, so unless you can clear your schedule (you won’t want to stop), you may want to check out the audiobooks instead.

Read them. Savor them. Imagine them.  Then go beat up a tree with a sword. Just make sure it’s not an Ent first.

What’s an MP3-CD Audiobook?

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Many of our newer (and a few of our older) audiobooks are labeled “MP3-CD AUDIOBOOK – THIS WILL ONLY PLAY ON AN MP3-CD PLAYER”. This label often creates instant panic and confusion – “I want this audiobook, but I don’t think I have an MP3 player.”

Without getting into the deep technicalities of it, chances are, you probably do.  As Blu-Ray is just a little different than a DVD (bandwidth, essentially), so MP3 (short for MPEG) discs are almost, but not quite, the same as a regular CD. It’s the same files, just squishedrealtight.

Anyone familiar with putting music on an iPod (or an MP3 player, which is any iPod-like music player that isn’t made by Apple) is familiar with MP3 files. When you listen to your iPod, you are generally listening to an MP3 file. An MP3 file is merely the same sound file found on an audio disk, squished tighter, so you can fit more into a small space.  That’s why a regular audiobook may have 12 discs, but the MP3 audiobook only has one or two.  Technically, the sound quality is a little poorer on the MP3 disc, but unless you have an extremely expensive, high-tech system, you will never notice the difference. Audiobooks aren’t listened to over subwoofers and boomboxes, cranked to the max.

   Like the BluRay disc, not all players can handle this tight format.  Your computer can. Any new CD player probably can.  A new DVD player or Blu-Ray player can probably handle it. The biggest problem is with older CD players in older cars – if your car is more than 7-8 years old or so, its CD player may not be able to read the discs.  Look carefully at the CD player – it will probably tell you right on the dashboard, as my 2007 Honda does. (note:  WMA, or Windows Media Audio files are Microsoft’s attempt to create their own MP3 monopoly.  Just know that if you used the Microsoft Windows Media Player, the built-in music system on your computer, to make discs, the player can handle them).

What can yo011u do?  If you have a computer, you can download the discs to the computer and listen to them there.  You can load the discs onto an iPod or MP3 player (which is what they’re designed for).  If you’re desperate, you can download them to the computer, download a program to change them back, and then burn them to many disks – just don’t expect the highest quality. The alternative is to buy a newer CD player that will handle them.

Give one a try. If it works, great!  You’re all set.  If it doesn’t, check the manual for your car or ask your mechanic if the player supports MP3’s. If not, then try a different player you may have.

PS – Don’t forget your DVD player also plays CDs!  Just remember, you have to turn the TV on if you want to hear the sound.


Susan Reviews: The Last Ship

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Sting (born Gordon Sumner) is one of those hold-overs from the last golden age of music.  His career took off as lead singer for the band The Police, whose pop singles such as “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” scored gold even when re-released. Since the break-up of The Police in 1986, Sting has had his share of solo chart-topping success with power albums such as Dream of the Blue Turtles, but I’m not sure his latest endeavor, The Last Ship, will do as well.

Don’t get me wrong – the album is lovely and showcases Sting’s wide range of talents in a heavy northern accent we didn’t hear during his Police years.  The songs – his first after a ten-year writing hiatus while he dealt with the deaths of his parents – are soft, almost melancholy, exploring the closing of the shipyards in the town he’d grown up in.  It’s a long, long way from “Roxanne” or “King of Pain.” Instead, we’re left with an album that vacillates between traditional-sounding folk tunes (the haunting title track, “The Last Ship,” which never seems to want to leave your head) and soft Sunday-brunch jazz (“August wind”).  If there’s a bad side to the album, it’s that it lacks the wider scope of variety we’ve come to expect from Sting as he has explored various types of music, from pop to rock to jazz to symphony.

If you love soft music, or ballads, or folk music, you’ll enjoy this album, The tunes are haunting, the lyrics thoughtful, with a presence so strong you feel as if you’re walking the streets through an old British-Isles sea town.  If you’re looking for chart-climbing pop singles, go back to Fields of Gold.