Summer Reading: We Were the Lucky Ones

The next selection on my summer reading list, We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter, was actually recommended to me by one of my students so you can imagine how eager I was to read it! Hunter, while interviewing her grandmother for a school project about her family history, discovered a heretofore unknown story about how her grandfather's entire family survived the Holocaust in Poland. This led to a decade-long quest to find out the details of his story and these details became the basis of her novel. At the start of the war the Kurcs are a comfortably well off and loving Jewish family living in Radom, Poland. Sol and Nechuma preside over three generations of their family including five children, their spouses, and a granddaughter. They try to ignore the horrors overtaking Europe but soon they are all separated as they try to escape the Nazis and they go to extraordinary lengths to survive and be reunited at the end of the war. Any novel about the Holocaust is going to be incredibly poignant and I had an emotional response to much of it, especially when one of the siblings and his family end up in a gulag in Siberia and when another sibling is looking for her daughter after the bombing of Warsaw, but there was both too little and too much going on for me to truly connect with it. The narrative is very episodic, jumping from character to character and location to location spanning long periods of time. It seemed as if the focus was to catch the reader up on what had happened since the last time we were with each character and then there would be a small vignette about what was currently happening. I would have liked a more in-depth exploration rather than a chronicle of events. I never really had the chance to connect with the characters because there were so many of them. It was often very confusing and I felt like I needed to keep notes on who was married to whom (some spouses were separated) and to have a map of where everyone was currently located. Also, there was very little dramatic tension because, although characters go through some incredibly harrowing experiences, I knew going in that everyone survives (they were the lucky ones, after all). I know that this is a story that many people will enjoy (my student thought it was the best book she had ever read) so I recommend it even though it didn't particularly appeal to me.

Note:  Have you read We Were the Lucky Ones?  What did you think?  Once again, I am in the minority with my response.

The Producers

Last night I went to a screening of The Producers (which is celebrating its 50th Anniversary) as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series.  I have seen the stage musical many times but not the movie so I was excited to see it on the big screen.  Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystock, a once great theatrical producer down on his luck, and Gene Wilder plays Leo Bloom, his neurotic accountant.  When Bloom mentions that Bialystock would make more money with a flop, they become partners and come up with the perfect plan: find the worst play ever written, Springtime for Hitler written by ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), hire the worst director on Broadway, the flamboyant Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewitt), and hire the worst actor, a hippie named Lorenzo Saint DuBois (Dick Shawn).  Of course the show becomes the toast of Broadway so Bialystock and Bloom produce Prisoners of Love while serving their sentence at the state penitentiary.  This was so much fun because there is nothing better than an overwrought Gene Wilder!  He is particularly funny in this movie and the scene with his blue blankie had everyone in the theater laughing out loud!  Mars is also hilarious, especially when he watches Springtime for Hitler performed, and Andreas Voutsinas is an absolute hoot as Roger’s assistant Carmen Ghia.  While I really enjoyed seeing this on the big screen, I think I prefer the stage musical.  I can appreciate how groundbreaking this was for 1968 but, to me, the musical is much more irreverent!

Upgrade

Last night I went to see Upgrade, a movie that I wouldn't normally see but one I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would.  In a dystopian future where houses, cars, and even soldiers are automated, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) and his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) are attacked by cyborgs.  Asha is killed and Grey is paralyzed in the attack but a reclusive CEO of a tech company (Harrison Gilbertson) offers to implant a computer chip in Grey's spine to give him back the use of his limbs.  This computer chip, called STEM, is sentient and has the ability to talk to Grey and take over his body when the need arises (this provides many comedic moments).  Grey uses his enhanced abilities to track down his wife's killers and unravels a conspiracy with a wild twist at the end.  The characterization is completely over the top and the acting is laughably bad but I really enjoyed this movie.  The premise is really interesting and, if you think about it, it gives a subtle message about the role of technology in our lives and how we become slaves to it rather than vice versa.  But, honestly, don't think about it too much!  What makes this movie so much fun is the action.  There are some great fight sequences and a fantastic car chase.  This movie has a kind of Blade Runner and Terminator vibe to it that I really dug.  My fifteen year old self would have loved sneaking into the basement to watch this movie on HBO at 2:00 am (I watched Blade Runner and Terminator countless times on HBO at 2:00 am) and I think it will eventually became a cult classic just like those movies!

Beast

A friend of mine recommended Beast to me so, of course, I had to see it yesterday.  It is a fascinating and intense psychological thriller that I will be thinking about for a long time to come.  Moll (Jessie Buckley) is a young woman with a troubled past and a domineering mother (Geraldine James).  She begins a relationship with Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a young man deemed unsuitable by her family and a suspect in a series of unsolved murders, which causes a scandal in the close-knit community of Jersey.  During the course of their relationship she begins to wonder if he is guilty and the action takes a really interesting turn.  Both Buckley and Flynn give absolutely riveting performances and you cannot take your eyes off of them when they are onscreen together.  You really cannot tell which one is the hunter and which is the prey.  James gives a chilling performance which is somewhat baffling until some information about Moll comes to light.  What makes this film so suspenseful is that information about the characters is revealed very slowly so you are always kept guessing about both Moll and Pascal's motivations and I had all kinds of wild theories running through my mind.  The visuals in this film also contribute to the menace with a dark and foreboding forest juxtaposed with waves crashing against the shore.  I found the tension to be almost unbearable and I would highly recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers.

Colorado Rockies Road Trip

My dear friend Tony took me to my first Colorado Rockies game (he also took me to my first Denver Broncos game and I took him to his first Colorado Avalanche game) and since then I always try to catch a game whenever I am in Denver during the season but it has been a while.  I've been missing Tony lately (he died of colon cancer several years ago) so I decided that it would be fun to go on a road trip to see a few games this summer.  Over the weekend I saw two games in the homestand against the Los Angeles Dodgers and, even though the Rockies lost both games, they were really exciting.  The first game on Friday night was a lot of fun because there were so many runs (the final score was 11-8) and I got to see my favorite player, Nolan Arenado, get a home run!  The game on Saturday was also fun, until the seventh inning when the Dodgers got eight runs (the final score was 12-4)!  I really love the atmosphere at Coors Field and it was a lot of fun to be in Denver for the weekend!

Note:  Sometimes thinking about Tony makes me sad but being in Denver brought back so many happy memories of all the Broncos, Rockies, and Avalanche games and concerts we went to.  I am lucky to have had such a great friend in my life!