SENSATIONAL SLINEY; GOLDMAN THE GREAT; FOREIGN CHILDREN FIGHTING; BAGUIO CITY, IN ALL ITS GLORY

While watching UNITED 93 in the theatre last week, the stunningly powerful new film about 9/11, I couldn't help but be impressed by the performance of the actor playing Ben Sliney, the head of the FAA, the utterly ordinary but singularly courageous dude who made the unprecedented decision to shut down all air traffic control in and out of the United States on the morning of that fateful, horrific day. He seemed so natural, so unaffected, so real; only a superior actor could pull that off, I decided. Probably had stage training, I reflected. Until I checked the web a few days later and discovered that the thespian chosen to portray Ben Sliney was none other than Ben Sliney. The guy. The real person.

I was shocked, though I shouldn't have been. He was so natural that he wasn't acting at all, it seemed to me -- which, paradoxically, is the best kind of acting there is, where you don't notice any acting at all.

And yet, of course, Ben Sliney was acting. He was recreating what had happened to him almost five years ago. (And, get this -- September 11, 2001, was his first fucking day on the job. Welcome to your new world...) He even admitted in an interview that he was asked to swear in the scene where he sees the gaping hole in the World Trade Center for the first time, even though he would never have sworn in real life.

How does a non-actor pull of such a natural performance? Is it easly to 'play' oneself? I don't think so. Think of all those fake news-anchors who can't even convincingly play themselves spouting small talk on a daily basis, let alone in a situation where you are re-enacting the most traumatizing event of your (and your nation's) life. Should he be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. You bet your ass he should.

I don't pretend to understand acting, though I judge it all the time. (Granted, I had the lead in my Grade 4 and 5 plays, portraying Ichabod Crane and Santa Claus, respectively, and my performance in my Grade 13 play undoubtedly helped us perform so well at the Sears Drama Festival in Brantford, Ontario, but hey -- who's keeping track right?) It's such a mysterious, undefinable process -- pretending to be somebody else. And yet we do it all the time, daily -- simulating emotions, feigning interest or concern, fatigue or enthusiasm.

But to do it on screen so seamlessly, in a such an understated, moving film -- I tip my hat to Sliney. He made me believe he was one hundred percent the character he was portraying.

Which he was. And still is.

Which is confusing, yes, but riveting nevertheless.

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What are we to make of a book that begins as a rather routine police procedural set in modern-day New York (with a suitably brisk pace and better-than-average characerization) and ends with Alexander Graham Bell being attacked in Central Park in nineteenth century Manhattan by two thugs possessed by the personality of pawns from the late twentieth century who, using regression-reincarnation techniques, are unwittingly part of elaborate, though separate schemes by American and Soviet intelligence services designed to reverse the course of the Cold War by altering the very fabric of the space-time continuum, resulting in an alternate reality where one Super Power ends up ultimately being dominant over the other?

That's what happens in William Goldman's fascinating 1982 novel Control. Goldman, perhaps best known as the screenwriter of All The President's Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is also a sleek, provocative novelist. His books move. And this book moved in ways that I never, ever expected.

And so late in the game, too! This is a book that doesn't introduce its' science-fiction elements until three quarters of the way through, when the book is almost over. We think it's one kind of a book; it turns out to be another.

It's not a literary milestone, no, but fuck it; i's better than that. I can't remember ever reading another book that holds its cards so close to the vest for so very, very long. Usually, in fiction and film, fantastical, science-fiction elements are made plain and clear early on in a story -- well before the half-way point, at any rate. The novelty and absurdity and logic of this story, published at the apex of the Cold War, delighted me.

I wish more writers were brave enough and clever enough to introduce such potentially risky elements at a point in the story when many authors are already cruising into neutral.

Goldman doesn't publish many novels anymore, but Control, out of which I wasn't expecting much, did what so few thrillers do -- it actually thrilled.

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It's interesting, watching people argue. Especially when they're arguing in a foreign language you don't speak. And especially when the people doing the arguing are eleven years old.

Something's going on -- of that you're certain. But you're not sure what it is. You see the anger elevated; you witness the rage, supressed. You hear words fly and spout, but you're not sure whether they are bad words or hideous words, hateful words or benign words. And because they're kids, you tend to dismiss the importance of the debate; you forget that childhood taunts sting and pierce.

But you keep watching. Looking for the spaces in the language. Watching spittle on lips. Suspicion in eyes. Malice in a shove. Refracted through linguistics, but evident, so obvious, sad and hateful and human.

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The August, Asian edition of Reader's Digest features a beautiful picture of Baguio City in its' readers' photo section, a whole-page piece at the front of the magazine. There is the city I've been living in for the past nine month 1500 metres above sea-level -- the small houses dotting the mountains' green landscape, the white clouds bisecting the manmade structures and the natural-made beauty.

It's affirming, to see a place you're in (literally only miles away), in a full-colour spread in an international magazine. Affirming to know that people in Mongolia and China and Japan and Malaysia will look at that photo -- at the mountains, at the clouds -- and wonder about the houses, and the people inside them.

JOHN IRVING: THE BEST WE'VE GOT; THE LADY IN THE WATER: I AM ALONE NO MORE

Finishing a John Irving novel, as I recently did with his newest opus, Until I Find You, is both a sad and joyous time. Sad, because the odds are good that you won't be reading another new Irving novel for a good four, five years; and joyous, because to read John Irving is to find your faith in literature restored and your love for humanity renewed.

Those are strong words, and I'm all too aware that Irving's critics can't fucking stand the guy. "Enough with the 'modern Dickens' garbage," they say. "Enough with the sentimentality," they spout.

To which I say: Guilty, and guilty. He really is our Dickens, and he really is sentimental (and hey, when did such a humane word as 'sentimental' become a profanity? What's happened to us?).

His plots are improbable, his characters outlandish, his coincidences ripe and frequent. (Just like Dickens.) We grow to love the characters almost as much as much as we love our friends and family, almost as much as the characters grow to love each other. (Hence the sentimentality.)

But as with all great writers, there's 'something else' going on with Irving. He understoods, at a deep, profound level, the unfairness of the world. When I was younger, his books seemed filled with odd, brutal, disarming accidents and tragedies. As I aged, as I experienced more of the world, I suddenly realized that Irving's novels aren't odd, brutal or disarming enough. Living in the Philippines and Cambodia is enough to make you realize that the world is a savage place. (And getting whacked in the stomach by a two-by-four by a homeless Korean in Japan is enough to confirm that absurdity and violence go hand-in-hand.) Those who diss Irving for how ludicrous his stories are don't live in the same world I do. Those who bemoan his sentimentality are denying the common roots of love and loneliness that link us all.

Irving once said: "When I say I'm a storyteller, I'm not being modest." No kidding. I'll go out on a limb and say something that I was never quite sure of before, but am confident of now: that he's the greatest storyteller of the last fifty years. Not the most innovative, or modern, or erudite, or elegant, or stylish, or hip, or clever -- just the best.

Period.

Usually, when I finish a book, I'm on to the next one, usually by the next day, often within the same hour. When I finish reading a John Irving book, I want to start again. Immediately. Like, now.

I'm telling you: He's that good. There's no one better. I don't know how else to say it.

So, enough. Go read The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire and The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Son Of The Circus and A Widow For One Year and, now, Until I Find You.

Allow yourself into in his world. Fall in love with his characters (allow yourself that privilege; it's okay to love fictional characters, words on a page, punctuation in a chapter -- I swear; noone will know.)

All hail the king!

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Absolutely loving a movie that the majority of people don't even freakin' like is a lonely feeling. You start to wonder: Is my taste in movies skewed? Are they all right and am I wrong? Are they sane, and am I a looney? Was I dropped on my head as a child? (If so, fuck would that explain a lot of things. But I suppose that's another post...)

However, any true film fan soon gets over such a sensation, and sticks to their guns. I still think Rocky IV and Superman IV:The Quest for Peace have been unduly, nay, tragically maligned over the years. I'm now convinced that Heaven and Earth is Oliver Stone's best film. (Though probably tied with J.F.K.) The three new Star Wars movies, the last of which was released last summer, are more complex, metaphorical, engagingly political and discretely profound than the incarnations that possessed me as a kid. (As entertaining? Well...) No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, is probably the best suspense film ever made, with the saddest, most subversive 'trick' ending in all of cinema.

Anyone with me here? Anyone? No? That's alright. We like what we like, right?

And yet, I'm heartened by the fact that at least somebody else in the universe considers Lady In The Water as a cinematic event worth celebrating.

I usually read somewhat intellectual magazines like The Economist to try and figure out and understand the world around me, but the July 22-28th, 2006 edition features a review of M.Night Shyamalan's latest film that ends with the statement: "The result is a messy masterpiece, a portrait of turbulent transition, that constantly risks falling on its face but almost never does."

A "messy masterpiece", this anonymous reviewer writes (all writing in The Economist is anonymous, come to think of it); last week I posted a post titled "Lady In The Water: Something Close To Brilliant". And then read online in the next few days a million reviews stating that the flick was, in fact, the worst piece of garbage since, well, The Garbage Pail Kids. (Which actually wasn't half bad...)

But now. Ah. I'm vindicated. I called it as 'something close to brilliant'; The Economist calls it ' a messy masterpiece.' We're spiritual brothers, me and that magazine. A million and one people think the flick blows, but I, at least, I am not alone. Somebody else saw that Shyamalan was trying to do something new and different and special; somebody else recognized that it "risk[ed] falling on its face", and how rare, if not invisible, such a trait is in today's artists.

Me and my homie at The Economist can both spot genius when we see it.

I wonder what he thinks about The Karate Kid III...

SAD LOOKING MOON -- NOT 4 HIRE

Taxis have names here. So do cars, somtimes. As do jeepneys. And so do trucks, their monikers spread across the side doors or their back grilles. I saw one the other day, glossy in green and white: SAD LOOKING MOON. On the side of the vehicle, another familiar sign: NOT 4 RENT.

I suddenly, inexplicably felt sadness, almost pity, for the owner. For who would name their truck such a thing? Was the owner the 'sad looking moon'? Was it his own nickname, or that given to him by his wife, or mother, or son? Was his truck the moon itself? His and his alone, not available for another's use? Did he want to horde his own unhappiness? Did he sometimes, at night, look up at the moon, and see nothing but doom and gloom?

I imagine him leaning against his truck in his driveway, late at night, after the wife and kids have hit the hay. He is smoking a cigarette, his third after dinner. There are few stars out, but only one moon. He stares at the moon for a long time, and thinks about his past, and his kids, and where he is, and where he will not be going. He takes another puff on his cigarette, another stare at the moon, then heads on back inside, throwing the butt over his shoulder. The moon is bright, but he does not give it another glance.

LADY IN THE WATER: SOMETHING CLOSE TO BRILLIANT

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami recently remarked in an interview that the line between reality and fantasy is much more permeable in Japan than in the west, with Japanese readers and viewers being more willing, more able, to accept and integrate the marvellous and fantastic into their lives and their stories. He invoked the notion of the boatman on the River Styx herding passengers onto his boat for their journey to the other, fantastical side; for the Japanese, he implies, it's not that long a voyage, while for Westerners it might be a more bumpy ride until they finally reach shore. (And a lengthier one, too.)

I suspect that Lady In The Water will go over much, much better in Japan than in Canada or America. In fact, I suspect that many in the west will actively dislike, if not hate, Lady In The Water. It's strange, and surreal, and more than a little clumsy, truth be told, and yet it's also something close to brilliant, I think.

There's always a point in M.Night Shyamalan's films where the mystical and the mundane become inextricably intertwined. The hardest part in any story of the supernatural is the point at which the characters suddenly, finally, believe in what's happening; in Shyamalan's films, that moment is always hard to pinpoint. It just happens. The characters accept; the audience accepts.

What are we to make of a film in which a woman is found in a pool in a Philadelphia housing complex, eventually requiring the help of all of its inhabitants to find her way back home?

I'm not sure, to be honest. But there's a tone and a texture to this film, to its understanding of myth, to its acknowledgement of the glorious realities that underlay our own mundane lives, that made me want to cheer and weep at the same time. You are worthy, the film is saying. You, the one in apartment 13-B, can save yourself and others. Things might not work out in the end, but your influence will be felt, and remembered, by others, by strangers, long after you're dead.

There are a number of technical reasons for why I like Shymalan's films: his preference for long takes; for creating a filmic space that has character and style without being obtrusive; his use of sound to enhance and subtract meaning. This time he also has the brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, an Aussie expat who usually lenses Chinese flicks, to augment the colours and tones with his trademark impeccable -- and, here, restrained -- taste.

But there's something else in all of Shymalan's stories, a sense of wonder, a sense of grace that underlines and highlights his plotting. He is a populist, make no mistake; we are not talking about a Godard or a Truffaut or a Bertolucci. He wants to be liked, perhaps a little too much. But he is also willing to go out on a limb, and risk failure, even great failure, to achieve essential human truths.

Oh, and those moments. They're there, in all his films. Those moments where the music swells, slightly, and things start to come together, and the characters' humanity is revealed, and we are made to feel, only briefly, that the world has a mystical and magical underpinning that is here, goddamnit, if only we'd look hard enough and long enough. If only we'd put aside our adult ingenuities and oh-so-sarcastic point of views.

Look, I can see the criticism of this film coming a mile away. (I mean, the fact that the least likeable character in the entire piece is a film critic who gets his comeuppance should hint that the critical response to this film is going to be, well, blunt. Film critics hate to be made fun of.) There is some racial stereotyping that could be deemed offensive, but which I find, ultimately, transforming, part of a larger statement on the ways that we communicate, the enclaves that we build that keep us together and drive us apart. All the characters start out one-dimensionally, but are slowly, gradually revealed to be deeper.

I don't think westerners are ready to accept a film that blends fantasy and reality so comfortably together. We're too jaded and cynical. Give us Superman, yes, but a merwoman in a pool? Come on. And this is supposed to move me? Please.

Well, it did. It moved me. All of Shyamalan's films have, and I've always been surprised by that fact. It's rare that a film or book actually does move me, but this one did. In some ways, it's a strange and odd and ragged jewel of a film, like none I've ever seen. It is a kind of fairy tale, and perhaps we're told for that sort of thing.

The director thinks so, too. At the beginning of the film is a short explanation (voiced by the typically solemn unseen narrator) that explains who these creatures are, and their somewhat tangled relation to the human race. I wasn't sure that this was necessary; too much exposition, I thought, and at the beginning of the film, no less.

Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe us westerners do need to be reminded of magic tales and ancient rites. I think Shyamalan was warning the audience: This a film about myth, and I'm telling you that right from the get-go, so that you're ready and prepared and willing to go where I'm taking you.

This is one of those films that I think is 'advanced', to steal Esquire writer Chuck Klosterman's term. Everyone will hate it, but it's ahead of its time. Of this I am sure. (Like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Stone's Alexander.) I hope people give it a chance, and not scoff and roll their eyes and laugh out loud as the film goes along. (Boy, can I see that happening.) I hope people think about this film, too, because I think it says a lot about who we are as people, and what we need from each other. There's a line in the film that you might miss if you're not listening carefully, something about how people are drawn to a place almost against their will, that they congregate without quite knowing why. The characters in this film do just that: lead simple lives, not realizing that they, too, have the potential, together, to allow the mythic and the extraordinary aspects of life to transform them -- and, in turn, allow their own humanity to transform others.

God, I hope that's true. Because if it's not, then fairy tales truly are just a myth.

HOW DO FISH SLEEP?

How do fish sleep?

This is one of those things that I could google in no time flat, but I'd rather not.

Before Google entered our lives, we would have had to ask our friends, our parents, gone to the library, hunted down an encylopedia. We would have had to earn our answer.

Everything's too easy now. We can find out just about anything we want. (If we're online.) We're not forced to ponder, think, converse with others.

I mean, fish don't have eyelids, right? So how come the water's not always getting in their eyes? And when they sleep, do they still swim around? Are they ever, in their entire lives, still?

All questions I don't know the answers to.

I want to know, yes, but I'd rather look at things from the perspective of the fish in the fishtank, being fed by its master. It maintains the essential mystery of life. For the fish sees, dimly, through foggy glass, a creature that looks in on him. Sometimes the fish opens his mouth, and the creature will drop food on top of the water. The fish is grateful. The fish eats the food. But the fish, at some primal level, must wonder where that food came from. How does it get there? Why does the creature glimpsed through the glass drop it at random intervals? Where does the food-dropping-creature go when it leaves?

I want to be like that fish. Full of questions, denied the answers. Forced to swim, and feed, and wonder what it's all about.

THOMAS WHO?

Thomas Pynchon has a new book coming out soon. I've read a few books by Pynchon, but I've really been able to 'get' him; I keep thinking that he's one of those writers that's waiting for me, sometime down the line, when I'm smarter, more sophisticated, more willing to go where his writing leads.

But I like the fact that nobody knows jackshit about him. He's been one of the leading lights of American literature over the past forty years or so, but doesn't give interviews. Doesn't have his picture taken. Doesn't create a media-driven image of himself and then complain, constantly, when the media distorts who he 'really' is.

Apparently he's voiced a version of himself on The Simpsons a few times recently, complete with a paper bag over his face to hide his identity. That's funny. It shows he's aware of his status as an isolated introvert, but can still poke fun at it. (And still remain an isolated introvert.)

He's a writer who truly, completely allows his words speak for themselves.

In this confessional day and age, that's almost a revolutionary idea: to let a book be a book, and nothing but. Nothing more.

RANDOMNESS

I'm only a hundred pages into the nine-hundred page plus paperback version of John Irving's latest epic, Until I Find You, and I already don't want it to end. Ever. It's not necessarily the story itself, or the language, or the ease with which he tells a story, old-fashioned but in a modern guise; it's something else.

John Irving has figured out what he believes the novel should do, can do, and will do. He has perfected the means by which the novel can achieve its maximum effect.

Others will disagree with his style, his approach, his characters, his plots -- that's fine. That's what writers do: write differently. But I can't think of another writer who has so carefully, so deliberately, come to a place in his or her career where they have understood, at a fundamental, almost archetypal leve, what their art can and can't do.

One usually has to wait four or five years for another Irving novel to hit the stands, so I'm trying to savor this one. Almost bask in it.

But it's hard. The story is so strange and bizarre and human and compelling; the characters, already, this early on, can break your heart.

If you drink the magic Kool-Aid that Irving offers, like I do, then you can only open the book, begin Chapter One, and surrender.

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The advantage of seeing a movie like Pirates Of The Caribbean II with only having seen snippets and snatches of the orginal version is that you're not constantly comparing it to the original film. You understand most of what's going on, but not all; you can figure out the majority of the action, but never completely. Characters come and go and you wonder who they are, and you're not judging them by their past accomplishments, but on what they're doing here, now, at this moment in time.

Kind of like life, strangely.

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I still cannot get used to the clouds here in Baguio, way up high. This morning the tip of a mountain bisected one in such a way that the white and foamy mist resembled nothing more than nature's unibrow, spread out across a green and mighty face.

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Last week Baguio underwent a 'state of calamity', as the government officially dubbed it. There were monsoon rains for three, four days straight, twenty-four hours a day, complete with howling winds and falling trees. I'd never experienced anything like it -- this constant barrage of sheer, unapologetic wetness. Not even the courtesy of a drizzle to offest the onslaught.

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Again and again I'm realizing how most of the world (meaning mostly me) is blissfully unaware of how fucking corrupt most governments in developing countries actually are.

The current Filipino president, Gloria Arroyo, has been caught, on tape, ordering the head of ball0t-counting in the previous election to make sure that she wins by a million votes. Due to the legality of how the tape was acquired, an impeachment seems unlikely. The president infamously apologized on TV for her 'lapse in judgement'.

Countries like Cambodia and the Philippines have governments composed of people who do not give a flying fuck about helping people; they only want to get rich. That may sound naive of me to think otherwise, but, well, I'm a naive guy, I guess. In western countries, if you want to get rich, you go into IT or banking or computers; in poor countries, the only way to make money is to get into government. The result being that the parliaments and congresses are filled with people who will do anything to maintain their status and their money, who have little, if no, qualifications, and who rule by a combination of bribery, fear, and military might.

Look at the leaders of poor countries and they are almost all, invariably, fat. There's a reason for this: To be overweight implies to the slender, starving masses that you have the money and the influence necessary to buy food. You can afford to be big; you can afford to indulge while others starve. You flaunt your wealth and what it can buy.

It's what continues to make me so frustrated over events like last summer's Live 8 concert. Well-intentioned, certainly, but so many countries' governments are so corrupt to their cores that you cannot make poverty go away by cancelling debts. It won't do shit. The governments' will continue to siphon off whatever aid money is available, and the good people who work within the systems, trying to make change, trying to live honest lives, will continue to fight an uphill battle against the forces of inept and almost evil bureaucracy that are aligned against them. But the fight must go on. To concede otherwise is to let the bastards win.

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Sometimes I think that the world is a dream dreamt by a sad and lonely man. I am a character in his dream, as are you, as is your mother, and your fifth-grade teacher. We are all merely characters' in one another's dreams, which is why we sometimes recognize strangers in the street. Our paths have drifted into each other before, and will again, in the future. Unless the old man wakes up and decides to have his cereal. Then we will dissipate, like morning dew after the sun completes its inevitable rise.