Interesting article on the future of film criticism

Today's the happiest day of the year, so enjoy!

Thanks to Noel Vera for linking my blog on his site. To the uninitiated, Noel Vera is a Filipino film critic who regularly posts his reviews online and in publications like Business World. While I don't normally agree with some of his reviews, I think they're all well-written, filled with wit, and he provides strong passionate arguments. I love his various assessments of Miyazaki's films.
---

I haven't been posting a lot lately, since I've been busy preparing for summer classes and I've been engorging myself in some summer reading. In fact, it had been a while since I've read a true book. For the last two years, I've been indulging myself in DVDs, CDs, the Internet, TV, but except for the occassional non-fiction stuff and graphic novels, never books of true fiction. It wasn't until I had to read Tim O'Brien's "In The Lake of the Woods" for my English class did I reignite my passion to read. So as summer was starting, I decided to pick a challenging book to read to pass most of my time during our brief weekend in Vegas and before summer classes began. That book was John Irving's "The World According to Garp".

I had actually seen the film adaptation with Robin Williams earlier, which piqued my curiosity about the book it was based on. After finishing the book, all I can say is that while the film delivered great performances from the cast (Williams, Glenn Close, Mary Beth Hurt, and John Lithgow), I thought it kinda oversimplified the plot and took so many liberties of what happens to be a very complex and interesting novel. Well, I guess it was for the better though, having finally read the book.

T.S. Garp is truly a very interesting character, as the novel chronicles in a Dickensian fashion his life's beginnings, escapades, passions, deceptions, temptations, insecurities, successes, failures, and finally his sudden death. Along the way, we encounter many characters of varying eccentricity that would play a role in the development of the person he would become and would ultimately shape his destiny. Aside from his feminist mother Jenny Fields (whom you might consider the novel might also be all about, from the very early chapters), there is also his wife Helen and their children, the lovable transsexual Roberta Muldoon, his publisher John Wolf, the rape victim Ellen James and a host of others of almost Felliniesque proportions. Sex, wrestling, writing, Vienna, and radical feminism are some of the recurring themes found throughout the novel. We are also treated to glimpses of Garp's work as a writer, notably his short story "The Pension Grillparzer".

"The World According to Garp" is a very engaging read, though it may not be for the faint of heart. Truly a great tale of "lunacy and sorrow", as one of the characters put it.

As for the next book I'm gonna read, it's either Mitch Albom's "The 5 People You Meet In Heaven" or Michael Chabon's "The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay". After reading "Garp", I might probably go for some lighter fare (in this case, Albom's).