Couldn't finish it.  Made it halfway through the last season of Angel before my enthusiasm finally just gave out.  I hopped on Netflix Instant Play, watched the episode with the puppets and the one with Spike and Angel in Rome, and that was that.  Maybe I'll still watch the series finale, though... I saw a bit of it when they aired, and I know it ends with the cast surrounded by enemies and facing certain death.  Now if I could just see them EXPERIENCE that certain death, that'd be even better.

I didn't expect 10 Items or Less to be too great, either, but I was wrong about that.  10 Items is a terrific indie comedy from 2006 starring Morgan Freeman (who basically plays himself, though he's never named in the film).  While researching for an upcoming role, Freeman finds himself at a rundown hispanic grocery store in a poor neighborhood in California, with no way to get home.  A cashier takes pity on him and decides to help him get home, and in exchange he takes it upon himself to try to improve her life.

It's hard to describe the film without making it sound cheesy, and maybe it is a little bit, but Freeman's warm humor and humanity are on full display here, and it turns this genuinely funny comedy into something more.  When Freeman went into the poor neighborhood, I expected to see something along the lines of Bulworth:  gritty depictions of harsh life, gangs, drugs... director Brad Silberling made an interesting choice though, and instead of going for the visceral he depicted the quiet desperation of the lower-middle class, something not as splashy but more universal, not as heartbreaking but more pathetically sad.  This is about a woman who nearly skips a job interview because she can't go to Target to buy a new shirt, who has to beg to borrow her own car from her ex-husband.  As tragedies go, these aren't comparable to those in, say, The Bicycle Thief, but that doesn't make them any less tragic to the people experiencing them.

As I said, what really shines throughout the film is Morgan Freeman, who seems to carry a warm conviction that everyone is worthwhile and worthy of love.  He's extremely charismatic, and engaging with everyone, and I really get the feeling he's not so much playing a role here as just being himself.  But for as upbeat and inspirational as Freeman is, he's not condescending.  This isn't a film about how your dreams will come true if you believe in yourself.  This is a film about hard work, and how some things will happen and other things won't, but if you stop working then you stop living.  A good message, and a realistic one.

It's a truly loveable film, and well worth seeing.

On the other end of the happiness spectrum, we have The Children's Hour, with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine.  This is another film from director William Wyler, whose The Best Years of Our Lives I positively reviewed a while ago.  It's from 1961, which you'll want to keep in mind as I describe the plot:  the film takes place at a private girls' boarding school run by two women.  One particular little girl, spoiled and rich and spoiled, misbehaves constantly and is always finding herself at odds with her headmistresses.  While home on vacation, she decides to do whatever is necessary to avoid going back, and she tells her grandmother that she saw the two headmistresses kissing each other but that, innocent little girl that she is, she doesn't understand what that means.

Of course she knows exactly what it means, and things spiral downward from there.  The film boldly portrays the malicious homophobia of the WASP gentry, and shows how much even a simple rumor could absolutely destroy two people's lives (and let's not pretend the same situation couldn't happen the same way today).  It also repeatedly calls into question the supposed innocence of children, in fine Lord-of-the-Flies fashion.  In short, it's not an easy film to watch.  This is dark, horrible stuff, but enthralling.

This is not a film about homosexual issues, though (the word "lesbian" is never once used in the script).  The characters all treat homosexuality as an abhorrence, as a dark mental disorder, and there's no one to suggest that it might be normal.  Toward the very end, there is a scene that acknowledges that homosexuality is not a choice, and this was dangerous enough for a 1961 filmmaker to say.  The discussion of homosexuality itself goes no further, but what we have in its place is a vivid, dark portrait of raw hate.  Audrey Hepburn plays her part well as always, but Shirley MacLaine is transcendent (not many actresses at the time had the guts to realistically portray a truly disturbed person, but MacLaine does it here and in The Apartment with fury and gusto).  Most of the other actors unfortunately can't keep up, and the balls-to-the-wall 60s soundtrack shatters subtlety at some points (film soundtracks are, generally, my least favorite part of the cinematic experience).  This, and just the overall darkness of the piece, make The Children's Hour impossible to love but very easy to appreciate.  One Netflix reviewer said it was so hard to watch that they couldn't even make it to the end.  And I don't think I'd be spoiling anything by saying it doesn't end well.

I had never seen all of Amadeus, and that is a problem that I was able to remedy last week.  If you're not familiar with the basic plot of Amadeus and/or live in a cave, it's about the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his greatest admirer/most bitter enemy, Salieri.  Salieri was the court composer of Vienna, celebrated in his time and absolutely forgotten today (his operas appear to be entirely absent from the Metropolitan Opera's repertoire).  In this version of events, the film being widely regarded as not at all historically accurate, Salieri recognizes Mozart's genius but does everything in his power to destroy him, because he can't stand the thought of such a young and wild man being so gifted (this portrayal of his character is evidently true).

The first forty minutes of the film suffer from some really terrible pacing issues, the plot galloping along so wildly that it leaves a fair bit of confusion in its wake.  But once it settles down to its main purpose, the story is told brilliantly, full of emotion and humor and gorgeous music.  The music is used to fantastic effect, framing sequences, revealing inner monologues, and sometimes even telling the story itself.  It surprises me that this is based on a play, because I have trouble imagining it as one.  As a film, it's grand and spectacular while never betraying its emotional core.

Really wonderful acting, too.  Really, really, wonderful.  And a fantastic depiction of Viennese fashion, most wig-and-pantaloon historical epics are afraid to show the real absurdity of what these people actually wore.  Amadeus portrays Vienna's elite in all their bizarre powdered glory, and it's something to see.  Anyway, what else can be said about it, you've heard of it, you know it's a classic.  A fine lesson on classical music and opera, and a hell of a lot of fun besides.

Finally moving from film to literature, let's talk about Tai-Pan. Tai-Pan, as you'll remember if you've been paying way too much attention to me, is the second book of James Clavell's Asian Saga, the first book being Shogun.  Shogun was a good book with a lot of problems; Clavell set out to explore the totality of Japanese existence circa 1600, and as a result he ran afoul of some truly horrible pacing issues, where the book raced along and ground to a screeching halt all at the same time.

Tai-Pan is a much tighter affair.  The story concerns the founding of the British colony of Hong Kong, and the merchants and military men who settled there.  Particularly it centers on a man named Dirk Struan, and for god's sake never tell anybody that you're reading a book with a character named Dirk Struan.  One bad name choice aside, Straun is a strong character, tough and intelligent and devious without being cold-hearted.  The Chinese government wants him out, the British think he's wasting their time with Hong Kong, and his rival merchants want him dead.  Struan's story is classic adventure, with pirate attacks, secret plots to overthrow the Chinese Emperor, sea battles, desperate races against time to save a life... it's a tightly-paced story, a whirlwind, which is not something one often finds in a 700+ page novel.

Like Shogun, the story is based off of real people and real events, but names and circumstances are changed to allow greater freedom to explore the world of China in 1841.  Unfortunately we don't see as much of China as we see of Japan in Shogun; aside from a few settlements, China was absolutely closed off to foreigners at this time.  There are a number of Chinese characters in the story, and we gain enough insight into the Chinese mind and lifestyle to gain a decent understanding of their culture, just not quite as much as I hoped.

Still, if I have to sacrifice some expansive knowledge to gain a perfect plot, so be it.  I understand that Clavell is mainly interested in the points of conflict between Europeans and Asians, and if China was mostly closed to foreigners then that has to limit the scope of the conflict.  In these points of conflict, Clavell is as usual very even-handed.  The Chinese are better than the Europeans in some ways, the Europeans are better in others.  Clavell is neither a grizzled flag-waving patriot nor a doe-eyed Japanophile who automatically assumes that everything Asian is better.  Clavell stays objective throughout, and this is definitely one of his best qualities.

But okay, here I am calmly analyzing a fast-paced and truly wonderful adventure story.  How do I portray the excitement?  (Did I mention there were pirates?  Who doesn't love a good pirate story!)  It's hard to convey, so let me just reiterate again that this is a 700+ page book, and it never at any point feels slow or dragging.  Clavell is relentless in putting his hero through his paces, and he accurately portrays all the danger and constant risk involved in the enterprise.  The characters feel a bit one-dimensional when they're introduced, but as the story progresses they're rounded out beautifully.  Even after 700 pages, I was sad when it ended.  I wanted to read more of them.  I wasn't ready to say goodbye.  And the ending is truly perfect, the absolute culmination of Clavell's two main points:  that life is all about luck, good or bad, and that it would take something truly beyond human to destroy a man like Struan.

Lately I've really found myself wanting to pick up another volume of Essential X-Men.  I have the first four volumes, and Marvel has released nine in total.  There's really no way to describe the X-Men in the 1980s.  They were phenomenal, and unlike anything that had ever been published before.  They are the only reason that Chris Claremont still has a job writing comics 20 years later.  Back then, before the X-Men became a huge established franchise, he could and would do anything with them, and it was awesome.

TV-o-rama:  What TV shows am I watching right now?  Making my way through The West Wing, of course... season 4 of Mad Men, which is still as good as ever... been watching some old first-season episodes of Cheers, and they're pretty fun for an old sitcom, some episodes are better than others and I'm definitely looking forward to Frasier showing up... Seinfeld is still as ludicrously fantastic as I remembered... and of course I've been working my way through The Simpsons again, because yeah, it's The Simpsons... in terms of new shows, I watch The Simpsons and Parks and Recreation every week, and I also watch Community but lately I can't work up too much enthusiasm for it.  Some episodes are beautifully done and emotionally striking, and others are just ironic, detached parodies that provide a few solid laughs but feel vapid in the end.  They seem to be settling into their new role as a pop-culture commentary show, and that's a departure from the much more grounded and satisfying first season. 

This week's reading:  I'm already a third of the way into the 1200-page brick of a book that is Clavell's next volume, Gai-Jin.  It brings together plot threads and themes from Shogun and Tai-Pan, bringing to a close the pre-modern era in Asia before European influence became pervasive.  I've been looking forward to this one since the first time I read Tai-Pan a few years ago, and I'm finding that 1) I'm glad I waited and read Shogun first, and 2) it was worth the wait.