5 on Friday - Set 78

Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

These songs and musical pieces all come from the Everything is Illuminated soundtrack. Released in 2005, it's one of my favorite indie films, directed by Liev Schreiber.

CLICK HERE to watch video clip from the film, featuring the wonderful use of music throughout the film.

1 - Prologue Babushka - soundtrack composer Paul Cantelon

CLICK HERE to listen to the track










2 - Odessa Medley - soundtrack composer Paul Cantelon

CLICK HERE to listen to the track

















3 - Fear of the South - Mishkalé

On the soundtrack, this piece is done by Tin Hat Trio, but their version is sadly not available (as it is gorgeous.) But I'm very happy to find this live version - thanks, Mishkalé!



4 - Amari Szi Amari - Csókolom



5 - Zvezda Rock N Rolla - Leningrad

Thursday Thirteen - 128 - 13 Reasons to Read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

The year is barrelling along and I've only got three months to complete my Dewey Book Challenge. Considering it's October and I'm finishing the third of six books, you can see my concern.

However, I shall persevere.

All of you avid readers out there who gobble up books like cups of coffee must wonder what it's like to find six books in one year a challenge. Well, I bump whatever I'm reading for myself when a new release comes out that I want to review. Those ones I get to in a hurry.

Also, there's the whole reading-on-the-bus thing. That's pretty much the only time I read. But reading almost always gets bumped for sleep. And during the work week, I average four hours of sleep a night, because I'm a night owl and I'm buzzing with creative energy all the way to midnight. Then I have to wind down and get ready for sleep. 2:00 am comes along and my head hits the pillow. 6:00 am comes and the alarm goes off. The only way I catch the 7:00 bus is by promising myself I can go back to sleep once I get on the bus.

I snooze for an hour with my book unopened in my purse. I blog on my break and during my lunch hour. I read while I wait for the bus on the way home. I even begin the trip reading. But my eyes quickly get heavy, the book goes back in my purse and I manufacture more ZZZs, as a character from today's book would say.

1 - Everything is Illuminated is the third book I'm reviewing for the Dewey Book Challenge.


For those who are new to this challenge, it came about as a way to honor the memory of a book blogger who passed away last December. The challenge asked readers to choose six books from her six-year archive of book reviews. I decided to pick one book from each of the six years she blogged and reviewed, from 2003 to 2008. But I didn't let the year of release decide my reading schedule for me. I began with the book I was most burning to read, which was March by Geraldine Brooks.

Next I simply had to read the other Geraldine Brooks novel I'd chosen - Year of Wonders.



2 - The yellow cover pictured above is the edition I own. It's an Olive Edition, an imprint of HarperCollins.

The original HarperCollins release cover is pictured at left. Both versions were there at the book store. I was just drawn to the smaller, thicker Olive Edition. I liked the sparse cover art.

Once I was into the story, I realized the blue and yellow text cover of the regular version echoes the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The Ukraine provides most of the setting for the book.


3 - As many of you know, I'm a certified Russophile (one who loves Russia and Russians.) That was the main draw for choosing this novel for the challenge.

So why wasn't it the first one that I read? Well, history trumps contemporary for me, so Geraldine Brooks' two historical novels had to come first. But the Ukraine-set story was hot on the heels of the first two.

4 - We meet Alex, the main first-person narrator of the book. He's in his early twenties and living at home with his parents, his grandfather and his younger brother Igor. Alex has crystal-clear plans for his future. He's saving currency in order to move himself and Little Igor to America, where he will become a first-rate accountant and buy an impressive car.

5 - Before this can materialize, however - and Alex has already stashed away a sizable amount in a cookie jar - Alex must act as the translator for Jonathan Safran Foer, a young New York Jew touring the Ukraine in order to track down the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. This fictional character carries the identical name of the book's author, but is portrayed at arms' length, either through Alex's POV, or through the account he writes of his Ukrainian-Jewish ancestors.

6 - The novel jumps back and forth through time. It begins with Alex in present-day Odessa, but alternates between the fictional Jonathan's story of his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and the early life of the town he's come to Ukraine to find: Trachimbrod. It also leaps into the more recent past to cover Jonathan's immigrant grandfather's story before he arrived in America.

The form of the novel also alternates between Alex's direct address of the reader; his letters written to Jonathan from the not-too-distant future once Jonathan has returned to New York; examples of documentation from Trachimbrod's past such as poems, plays and journals; the normal format of a novel; a stylistic alteration of that form to include huge sections without breaks for new paragraphs; empty space on the page; and numerous self-reflexive devices which treat the characters in the story as the fictional beings they are.

7 - The journey to find Trachimbrod also belongs to Grandfather, sent by Alex's father to be the driver for Odessa Heritage Tours. Since the death of his wife, Grandfather insists he's blind, although he's not. The fourth member of the road trip crew is Sammy Davis, Junior Junior, Grandfather's seeing-eye bitch and named for his favorite Negro.

8 - An unending source of delight and many, many laughs is Alex's spastic grasp of English. Check out this conversation between Alex and Jonathan in the kooky little Russian car:

" 'Are there Negro accountants?' 'There are African-American accountants. You don't want to use that word, though, Alex.' 'And homosexual accountants?' 'There are homosexual everythings. There are homosexual garbage men.' 'How much currency would a Negro homosexual accountant receive?' 'You shouldn't use that word.' 'Which word?' 'The one before homosexual.' 'What?' 'The n-word. Well, it's not the n-word, but-' 'Negro?' 'Shh.' 'I dig Negroes.' 'You really shouldn't say that.' 'But I dig them all the way. They are premium people.' "

9 - The language in this book is all over the place, from Alex's hilarious word choices to Safran Foer's poetic gems sprinkled throughout the many narratives. Here are a few gems:

"4:513-The dream of angels dreaming of men. It was during an afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder. Angels were sleepwalking up and down the rungs, their eyes closed, their breath heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as I passed him, waking and startling him. He looked like my grandfather did before he passed away last year, when he would pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh, the angel said to me, I was just dreaming of you."

"If we are to be such nomads with the truth, why do we not make the story more premium than life? It seems to me that we are making the story even inferior. We often make ourselves appear as though we are foolish people, and we make our voyage, which was an ennobled voyage, appear very normal and second rate. We could give your grandfather two arms, and could make him high-fidelity. We could give Brod what she deserves instead of what she gets. Grandfather and I could embrace, and it could be perfect and beautiful, and funny, and usefully sad, as you say."

10 - Mr. Safran Foer really knows how to end each chapter with a hook. Like this, for example:

"Grandfather and I viewed television for several hours after Father reposed. We are both people who remain conscious very tardy. We viewed an American television program that had the words in Russian at the bottom of the screen. It was about a Chinaman who was resourceful with a bazooka. We also viewed the weather report. The weatherman said that the weather would be very abnormal the next day, but that the next day after that would be normal. Amid Grandfather and I was a silence you could cut with a scimitar. The only time that either of us spoke was when he rotated to me during an advertisement for McDonald's McPorkburgers and said, 'I do not want to drive ten hours to an ugly city to attend to a very spoiled Jew.' "

11 - The tone of the book changes on a dime between laugh-out-loud funny and catch-in-your-throat poignant. There are affectionate portrayals of 18th-century shtetl life and blistering scenes lifting the lid on hushed-up wartime decimations of whole histories. Of course, my favorite sections revolved around Alex and his enthusiastic use of words like premium, the hero (referring to Jonathan,) 'I exhibited Little Igor a smutty magazine three days yore', and 'I do not have any additional luminous remarks, because I must possess more of the novel in order to lumin.'

12 - As most of you know by now, I always prefer the film version of any story. It's the film school grad in me. I asked my husband to bring the DVD home even before I'd finished the book, because I simply had to hear Alex's voice. The actor who played him said everything exactly the way I heard it in my head.

This beautifully-done indie film, directed by actor Liev Schreiber, has now instantaneously become one of my all-time favorite films.



13 - I leave you with an excerpt. Keep in mind the author plays around with form and structure. The text appears here just as it does in the novel. Enjoy!

"We became very busy talking. When I rotated back to Grandfather, I saw that he was examining Augustine again. There was a sadness amid him and the photograph, and nothing in the world frightened me more. 'We will eat,' I told him. 'Good,' he said, holding the photograph very near to his face. Sammy Davis, Junior Junior was persisting to cry. 'One thing, though,' the hero said. 'What?' 'You should know...' 'Yes?' 'I am a...how to say this...' 'What?' 'I'm a...' 'You are very hungry, yes?' 'I'm a vegetarian.' 'I do not understand.' 'I don't eat meat.' 'Why not?' 'I just don't.' 'He does not eat meat,' I told Grandfather. 'Yes he does,' he informed me. 'Yes you do,' I likewise informed the hero. 'No. I don't.' 'Why not?' I inquired him again. 'I just don't. No meat.' 'Pork?' 'No.' 'Meat?' 'No meat.' 'Steak?' 'Nope.' 'Chickens?' 'No.' 'Do you eat veal?' 'Oh, God. Absolutely no veal.' 'What about sausage?' 'No sausage either.' I told Grandfather this, and he presented me a very bothered look. 'What is wrong with him?' he asked. 'What is wrong with you?' I asked him. 'It's just the way I am.' 'Hamburger?' 'No.' 'What did he say is wrong with him?' Grandfather asked. 'It is just the way he is.' 'Does he eat sausage?' 'No.' 'No sausage!' 'No. He says he does not eat sausage.' 'In truth?' 'That is what he says.' 'But sausage...' 'I know.' 'In truth you do not eat sausage?' 'No sausage.' 'No sausage,' I told Grandfather. He closed his eyes and tried to put his arms around his stomach, but there was not room because of the wheel. It appeared like he was becoming sick because the hero would not eat sausage. 'Well, let him deduce what he is going to eat. We will go to the most proximal restaurant.'

'What do you mean he does not eat meat?' the waitress asked, and Grandfather put his head in his hands. 'What is wrong with him?' she asked. 'It is only the way that he is.' The hero asked what we were talking about. 'They do not have anything without meat,' I informed him. 'He does not eat any meat at all?' she inquired me again. 'It is merely the way he is,' I told her. 'Sausage?' 'No sausage,' Grandfather answered to the waitress, rotating his head from here to there. 'Maybe you could eat some meat,' I suggested to the hero, 'because they do not have anything that is not meat.' 'Don't they have potatoes or something?' he asked. 'Do you have potatoes?' I asked the waitress. 'You only receive a potato with the meat,' she said. I told the hero. 'Couldn't I just get a plate of potatoes?' I asked the waitress, and she said she would go to the chef and inquire him. 'Ask him if he eats liver,' Grandfather said."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, 2002

Tracie says I started your list, and I was really enjoying it, but then I had to stop because you sold me on this book (I am also a Russophile) and I am going to read it.

Jennifer Leeland says The one thing I love about your blog is that you take things I wouldn't consider on my own and make me look closer. I'm now going to investigate this book.

Lidian says You make me want to drop everything and read Everything Is Illuminated! How am I going to do that?

Through the Opera Glasses - 17 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I've been waiting to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine since the first glimpse of this character in the first X-Men film.














You know the scene. His back to us in the cage fight sequence.


















My husband Brad and I are big superhero fans, and on Saturday mornings in the 90's when I was getting ready to work the matinees at the performing arts theatre in Toronto, X-Men: The Animated Series was always on our TV. I just loved the opening credits music. We both loved waiting for Cyclops to yell, "Jean! No!" at some point during the episode. So I was already familiar with the character of Wolverine when we gratefully sat in our seats at the movie theatre in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 2000 for the first X-Men movie (we lived there for two years.)

Hugh Jackman hooked me with Wolverine the moment he turned in that cage with his raised eyebrow and his keep-away persona. Of course he was a badass. Of course he couldn't turn his back on runaway teenage Rogue. No! He's my perfect kind of male character. Because lurking there somewhere was the revelation that came in X-Men 2: X-Men United. Wolverine had endured a hideous physical transformation that gave him those claws. And he had the disturbed repressed memories to prove it.









When he stumbles upon the scene of the crime in X-Men 2, Wolverine flashes back to the top-secret military experiment that resulted in him.









These flash backs came to us as they came to him. Horrible scenes of agony, thrashing in a tank of liquid, breaking free of the perpetrators, trying to make sense of what had been done to him.









But they were only flashes, and Wolverine blocked them out as soon as he could.

Knowing an origins film was in the works simmered in the back of my mind for what has seemed like an endless torment. Not as tormented as Wolverine, mind you. But close.

Finally, finally X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened on May 1st. At last I could find out how he got in that tank, could brace myself to see the awful truth for myself.

Except that I couldn't. My personal hell of migraine plague was raging. This winter has been my worst on record, and by May 1st my endurance level was hitting critical failure. The Wolverine origins film was sure to be flashy and loud. No Wolverine for me.

I read reviews which said:

The movie is somewhat limited in its denouement in that as a prequel, Sabretooth and Stryker must live to play another day (in X-Men and X2) and Wolverine must remember to forget these events. Nonetheless, it’s engaging action, and a spur to watch X2 again on DVD. - David MacDonnell, Starlog

Which begs the question - why do I want to see an origin story so badly when I already know what happens to this character in the future?









This past Friday, all systems were go. My head was bugging me but not so badly that I couldn't grit my teeth and bare the flashy parts. And the explosion parts.

I met up with Brad and we greeted the long weekend finally sitting down in a theatre to see how Wolverine got to that opening cage fight scene back in X-Men.









For me, the irresistable call of the origin story is going through the transformation along with the character. Instead of having zero interest level because I already know what's going to happen to him in the future, for me this moment shown above is so much more gripping and heart-crushing because I know so much about Wolverine.

He readies himself for something we already know will be excruxiating in the extreme. It will change almost everything about him. The true transformation of one incarnation into another is my favorite type of story - a thread that runs through all of my own stories.













The echo of transformation resonates so strongly in us because so many of us experience its painful process.

We leave home, move to a strange city, experience hard times and must rely on ourselves to get through it. The new being that emerges has some battle scars, but stands straighter, taller.

A woman goes into labour and emerges as a new being - a mother. The transformation is painful. But the new persona created by that event provides the baby with its own personal superhero, someone who can push past the boundaries of the previous woman who existed before the birth transformation took place.

The chrysalis mythos is a basic element of the human condition. Without transformation, there is no growth. Without growth, there is no life.









When Wolverine endures the inevitable, I endure it with him - gladly. It reminds me that all the days that absolutely suck are not just meaningless torture. They are part of my chrysalis.









When Wolverine erupts out of the tank roaring with new life, a lean mean fighting machine, it reminds me of the way in which I meet my own personal pain, my own personal Black Moment. It's really my cue to show my true character. The transformation changes almost everything. The thing that remains is character.









The opening credits show this as Wolverine and his brother Sabretooth ennact their version of the Universal Soldier. A really nice sequence. Sabretooth's true nature is uncovered by each successive battle they're in.

And having Sabretooth portrayed by Liev Schreiber only adds to the joy for me.











Because I write about vampires, this scene above where the two brothers, Sabretooth and Wolverine are about to be executed by firing squad - when they and the audience are aware that they have the ability to regenerate and will now have witnesses to their unexplained ability - sets up a delicious anticipation.


One of the complaints about the film is the inclusion of various Marvel Comics characters without giving fan-favorites enough screen time. Because the X-Men stories are really about a team of beings that work together, I don't see how you could tell an X-Men story without them.

My favorite of the new characters is Gambit, played by Taylor Kitsch.








I really liked his wizard-y fighting staff.




















And Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool gets particular flack from fanboys and I assume fangirls because of mysterious retooling of the character's basic elements. His wisecracking personality, to be specific. Not being one of these, I enjoyed Reynolds performance and his swirling katana swords. You know I love me some swords.

Travis says It sounds great when you analyze it. But for me, I'd have to give the film a B-.

Ms Snarky Pants says I did always kind of have a crush on Gambit, though, so my expectations may just be a bit high. LOL Every other aspect of the film, however, I found absolutely delightful.

Bobbi says My youngest daughter is not a fan of X-Men, she went to see the movie just for the Hugh Jackman factor!!