Media Glutton: Kung Fu Panda, Firefly Rain, and Obedience

Media Glutton: Reviewing Obedience, Firefly Rain, and others

Double dipping of Media Glutton this week - part of the fallout of my massive dose of free bookage this past weekend. Plus I just saw Kung Fu Panda and wanted to get in a good word about that right away.

So let's start with Kung Fu Panda. I haven't really gotten on board the animated movie bandwagon. I know in theory that Pixar flicks are great, but I've only seen the Incredibles and one other one. I don't even remember which one, one of the early ones. Not Toy Story. For whatever reason, I just never feel like going. Now, Kung Fu Panda's a Dreamworks film, not Pixar, but it's the same kind of thing. Plus, it's really, really good. This is just about a perfect movie. It's not a great movie, and it doesn't break any new ground or transcend the genre, but it is certainly a great time and does everything it's trying to do with precision, grace, and style. It's the story of an overweight dreamer of a panda bear named Po (voiced with perfect verve by Jack BlackJack Black) who dreams of being a kung fu warrior only to be recruited by seeming accident into just that fate. But of course there are no accidents, as the wise sage turtle who runs the kung fu temple keeps saying. I don't even need to go through the plot - it's mostly exactly what you might expect from the set up, but the brilliant parts come in all the details, from subtle and broad jokes to the little twists and turns that surprise just enough to keep things interesting. We were in an audience full of kids who loved the movie - and in the end when Po beats the bad guy (that's not really a spoiler is it?) he does it while saying a cute little Jack Blackism. And it was great. It was awesome! I wanted to repeat the little word outloud I was so swept up in it. The kids sitting behind me did just that, and I laughed and laughed. So if any part of you thinks catching this flick sounds like a good idea, listen to that part; it's totally right.

So let's on to books with Will Lavender's Obedience, which was recommended to me by one of those Suggested Summer Reading lists, maybe in the New York Times or possibly on Salon.com. I'm not going to link to it, because, quite frankly, I don't think it's to be trusted. Obedience jumped out at me from its description: a mysterious college professor at a small university manipulating his students into some strange and possibly dangerous mental game. It called up memories of one of my favorite books, Donna Tart's The Secret History. I went and bought it that very day, in hardback no less. That was, it turns out, a mistake. Obedience is not a bad book by any means, but I found it very unsatisfying. It treads in territory where others have gone before, which is fine and good, but it's tricky territory. We're talking the same kind of story that John Fowles handled excellently in The Magus and David Fincher was less convincing with in his film The Game. It's a mystery combined with a bunch of mind games that may or may not be spinning out of control. Everyone's playing an angle, and you don't know who to trust. Except it soon became pretty clear who to trust and who switched sides, and the final resolution was unpredictable only insofar as it was an even less plausible version of what I'd expected all along. I finished the book out of sheer orneriness and a compulsion to find out what happened, but I can't say I'm happy I did.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we have Rich Dansky's new horror novel, Firefly Rain. This is a Southern Gothic ghost story, working firmly in that tradition, although updating it for contemporary times. The fact is, unlike tales of college professors manipulating their students, I don't much go in for Southern Ghost tales, but I did some freelance writing work for Dansky a decade ago, and I liked his writing, so when I saw him at BEA promoting the book, I was excited to say hi and pick up a copy.

Firefly Rain sucked me right in. I started it Tuesday and finished last night, staying up until 2 am to finish it off. It is a classic ghost story, at least in the set up - a prodigal son returns to his ancestral Carolina home after his mother has passed on and his big-city career has fallen apart. Almost immediately things start to go weird, as his car gets stolen and his neighbors give him the stink-eye. This is a small, family ghost story, with just a few characters, all of them interesting, and some genuine yet subtle scary moments. It's been a while since I read a good ghost story, and Firefly Rain not only satisfied me, but whetted my appetite for some more at some point in the near future - hopefully Dansky's next book isn't too far away.