mini-reviews, one of each

[calimac]

Book: The Balkans: A Short History by Mark Mazower is supposed to be the best short book on the subject. I found it confusing, disordered, and not very attractive to the nonspecialist.

Album: The Beatles: "Love", George & Giles Martin's mashup, is certainly ingenious and full of unexpected renditions, but too much of it sounds like a radio trying to pick up two stations at once.

Movie: Little Miss Sunshine I thought I would probably hate, but it turned out to be the perfect balance between painful for the characters and funny for the viewer, this viewer anyway.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

It seems reasonable that a book on the Balkans would be confusing and disordered, but there are some ways in wcih art shouldn't imitate life.

Womzilla, Supergee, and I watched Little Miss Sunshine with my sibs when we were in for my brithday, and everyone really liked it.It's touching and laugh-out-loud funny, both. Also, I like how it celebrates beign what you are without necessarily saying that it's better to be weird or, worse yet, nad not to be weird.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Little Miss Sunshine did pay off in the end, but getting there was so painful I don't think I would watch it again.

The grandpa's double standards for females, although classic (girls are innocent, women are whores), was still creepy, however much he supposedly loved his granddaughter. So teaching her a stripper routine, while funny for the movie and strike against the shallowness of the pageant, was also a little creepy. Not to mention that he was sabotaging his beloved granddaughter, since he surely knew this routine would shock and outrage the pageant, which would have been fine if she had known and understood the protest they were making and been a willing accomplice. But she had no idea. The more I think about it, the more cruel it seems, that even though he loved her, he was teaching her a routine that was going to get her booed offstage, just because he thought it would be funny. I'm unwilling to ascribe him higher motives.

Sorry for the rant. I haven't actually thought a lot about why this movie bothered me before this.

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

Little Miss Sunshine was one of my favorite movies last year (which isn't in and of itself saying much - I don't go to many movies).

One form of comedy which I usually hate involves presenting a group of misfits so you can laugh and sneer at them. Why Little Miss Sunshine works for me is you start out maybe snickering at the characters at the beginning, but then you are pulling for them, flaws, creepiness, and all, by the end. At least I was.

I laughed so hard I cried at the end. I don't think the grandfather was intentionally setting Olive up for something bad. He was a bit twisted himself.

What I loved most about the ending was that by that point, Olive and her family look positively normal compared to the beauty pageant weirdos.