Lots of things to talk about (or at least point to), lots of tabs open, so here we go.

Thing #1: Chinese New Year

Gong Xi Fa Chai, everyone! Janet and I attended the CNY festivities this afternoon at the state fairgrounds, organized once again by TACAS, the Triangle Area Chinese American Society of North Carolina. We ate some veggie dishes, watched adorable kids approximate traditional dances, sampled teas, and I learned how to make an origami box (though I'm pretty sure that now I've forgotten).

Here's hoping the Year of the Fire Pig is a groovy one.

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Thing #2: Volver

We checked out a matinee of this film earlier in the week, and wow. Not enough good things can be said. Pedro Almodóvar has crafted an extraordinary work of art here, ably assisted by an incredible cast; Penélope Cruz is voluptuous and strong and vulnerable and absolutely commands the viewer's attention whenever she's in a scene. I've been hoping to do a proper review, but other things have been diverting my attention lately; I'll just settle for urging anyone reading this to run out and plunk down your $8 to see this phenomenal movie.

The Volver website also has a number of interesting short essays by Almodóvar himself, including this one, on Genre and Tone:

I suppose that Volver is a dramatic comedy. It has funny sequences and dramatic sequences. Its tone imitates "real life" but it isn't a portrayal of local customs. Rather it has a surreal naturalism, if that were possible. I've always mixed genres and I still do. For me, it's something natural.

The idea of including a ghost in the plot is a basically comic element, particularly if you treat it in a realistic way. All of Sole's attempts to hide the ghost from her sister, or the way she introduces her to her clients, give rise to very comic scenes. Although what happens in Raimunda's house (the death of the husband) is terrible, the way in which she fights so that no one should find out and the way she tries to get rid of him also create comic situations.

Although mixing genres is something natural for me, that doesn't mean it's free of risk (the grotesque and the "grand guignol" are always a threat). When you move between genres and cross opposing tones in a matter of seconds, the best thing is to adopt a naturalistic interpretation that manages to make the most ludicrous situation plausible. The only weapon that you have, apart from a realistic setting, are the actors, or rather, the actresses, in this case. I had the good fortune that they are all in a constant state of grace.

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Thing #3: The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson

Like many TV watchers in the States, my first exposure to Craig Ferguson was as Nigel Wick, the effeminate authoritarian boss on The Drew Carey Show, a character that always felt like a caricature, a cartoon. Who knew that the guy was actually genuinely funny?

Janet and I have become night owls since both my jobs ended in December (and I consequently didn't have to wake up early in the morning for work), and even though The Late Late Show is on opposite Conan O'Brien, we've started watching Ferguson more than Conan. In a battle of opening monologues, there's simply no contest; bucking the traditional format of hopping from topic to topic and ending each joke on one-liner, Ferguson instead spends fifteen minutes every night, the camera never moving or cutting away, improvising on just a few topics, moving from one to next in smooth segues that often involve self-deprecating remarks and double entendres. It's like a stand-up mini-set every single night, and more often than not, the guy's got me howling with laughter.

And hey, he's also written a novel: Between the Bridge and the River.

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Thing #4: "The End of the Novel?" by William Deresiewicz

Deresiewicz examines Milan Kundera's newest book-length essay The Curtain:

Although Kundera rightly rejects the notion that he's a political writer, he did his best work after his immigration to France in 1975. As with so many twentieth-century writers, the tensions of exile seem to have tuned his imagination to its highest pitch. Unlike most others, he lived past the century's symbolic end in 1989, and the removal of the condition of exile -- not the fact of not being at home but the fact of not being able to be -- seems to have slackened it.

An interesting notion and one I hadn't thought of before, but it makes some sense. When I was putting my Kundera books up at SCBA, the ones I was least willing to part with were The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, all of which seem more preoccupied with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia than his later work. These are the books that remain more vivid in my mind, and I'm curious as to whether it's because this was his most vibrant and exciting work, or whether the length of each (which far exceeds his later novella-length books) caused me to remain with the characters for a longer textual amount of time.

Regardless, even though Deresiewicz thinks The Curtain can't compare to Kundera's earlier book The Art of the Novel, I'll still be seeking it out at the library once we get to Singapore.

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Thing #5: Year Zero

Nine Inch Nails is releasing a new album on 17 April, and Trent Reznor has posted two tracks on their MySpace page*: "Survivalism" and "My Violent Heart." And if those tracks are any indication, Year Zero is going to be a disappointing album. Frankly, The Fragile was the high point of Reznor's career; nothing he's done since (with the possible exception of the live album And All That Could Have Been and just a few tracks on With Teeth) has measured up in terms of quality and scope. It's been merely okay. This may have something to do with the complete turnover of his band members, or it may just be that his best days are now behind him.

I hope that this isn't the case, and being a completist NIN fan, I'll still pick up Year Zero when it drops, with an optimism toward the other songs on the album. But Trent, d00d, you're starting to lose me, man.

* Am I the only one who thinks that it's weird that Nine Inch Nails has a MySpace page? Because industrial metal + social networking tool for teenagers = Jason's brain exploding. Of course, Janet made the point that if you're any type of musician these days, you need to have a MySpace page in order to compete at all.

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Thing #6: Nineteen Eighty-Four, the film

Some brave soul has posted the entire movie on Google Video Canada (via Ed), so go see it before it gets taken down. (The book is in the public domain now in Canada, but I'm guessing the film is not.) The Orwell novel is still one of my all-time favorites, and this film is the ultimate in adaptations. The acting, the direction, the cinematography, it all breaks my heart every time I see it. Big Brother is Watching You.

It's also one of the few DVDs I'm taking to Singapore.

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Thing #7: Two skiffy writers coming to North Cackalacky

Cory Doctorow will be in North Carolina on 22 February, giving a talk on copyright at the University of North Carolina at 2:00 p.m. and a talk on privacy at Duke University at 5:00 p.m.

Jonathan Lethem will be reading at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on March 26 at 7:00 p.m. to promote his new novel You Don't Love Me Yet.

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Whew. Well, that's all for now. Happy rest-of-the-weekend, y'all.