The Snowball by Alice Schroeder (2008)

The full title adds “Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.” There were 838 pages, and I read every one of them.  The richest man in the world thinks of himself as “hard-wired” to make money.  It’s as if he had a double gene for stock analysis, and maybe he does.  His whole life—from young childhood—has been devoted to thinking about and making dough.  He has an uncanny ability with numbers.  I guess that’s where the genetics comes in. Couple that with a psychological need to be successful, maybe some urgent desire to please/beat out his father who was a successful, if small time, stockbroker.  Add to that his supreme confidence when it comes to stocks plus an extreme desire to please—as in his partners when he first started out investing big time, and now his shareholders.  And there’s the icing on the cake: his deep and abiding faith in compounding.  Buffet’s private life is layered in uncanny ways.  He idolizes his [late] wife Susy but she lives apart from him.  They always get together for family functions, however, and he is at her side (almost) when she dies of cancer.  At the same time, back in Omaha, Buffet lives with Astrid in an arrangement rigged up by Susy. Susy and Astrid remain fast friends throughout. Buffet makes much about being a humble Omaha boy, living in the same house for 50-odd years, not making zillionaires of his kids thru inherited wealth. Don’t be fooled; the Buffet family lives as royalty: private jets, multiple homes, vacations in exotic places, and—at least with the paterfamilias—public adulation. [11-12/08]

 

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (dir. Kevin Rafferty) ****

If you want to make a documentary and you only have grainy footage and some talking heads,  check in with Kevin Rafferty.  He merged that combo into a socko film.  Amazing.  (It helps if you understand the football of yesteryear and maybe have graced the halls of Harvard or Yale in the 60’s; er, make that Harvard; Elis will blush with shame)

 

Slumdog Millionaire (dir. Danny Boyle) *****

The slums of India produce a brilliant kid who—with information wrought through his own experiences rather than formal learning—manages to reach top rung of the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”  Each question conjures up an event in Jamal’s turbulent childhood, like the murder of his mother by a riot policeman or the murder of a vile predator by his older brother. By chance,  he’s selected for the Millionaire program. He answers the questions, one by one, up to the big 20 million rupee kahuna,  whereupon the police nab him, beat him, and torture him seeking a confession of how he cheated. The clever screenplay has him rendering a hard-life story through the medium of the answers. A thread skimming through his bare existence of deprivation and depradation is his love for another slum kid, Latika.  I laughted, I cried, I cringed at the cruelty—piles of it—heaped on this street child and his orphaned cohorts. The closing credits are a mini-movie in themselves.

 

Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme) ****

Intricate family drama, well-acted, well directed.  What else do you want? Kym ( a fine Anne Hathaway) is a recovering drug addict dropped from rehab into the swirl of her sister Rachel’s wedding preparations. Kym hasn’t the stability—social or emotional—to immediately deal with the maelstrom swirling around her.  Who would–especially since her main role in the family up to now was to be its center (the sick sis).  So the film churns and eddies along until it remarkably resolves. (10/3/08)

 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)

Every time I read a Dickens work, I say to myself, “Ah, this is his greatest book ever!” and this one was no exception. Some critics say the same regarding this tale of Pip’s “rise” from blacksmith apprentice to gentleman.  I saw the characters in pairs: the innocent Pip and the jaded Estella; rich, aristocratic Miss Haversham and rich, ex-convict Magwich; Pip’s loving and steadfast friends, Herbert and Wemmick; and I’d even pair the cynical lawyer with the Lady MacBeth habit, Jaggers, with that provinical clown, Mr. Pumblechook.  Kind Joe Gargery is in a class by himself, although I could pair him with his diametric opposite, cruel Mrs. Joe.  With these characters and more, Great Expectations rolls through Victorian England  baring her foibles, cruelties, and hypocrisies on every page.  Through it all, dear Pip comes of age and to self-realization. Alas, dear ole Dickens sold out (well, a little bit) when he changed his perfect ending into a fan-friendly one. [9/08]

 

Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal (2006)

The book is a bunch of personal essays from the various eras of Gore Vidal’s life. The most poignant passages recount the death of his 53-years companion, Howard.  I was surprised to find—in an almost throwaway line—that it wasn’t a sexual affair; he in fact kissed Howard squarely on the mouth for the first time in the days preceding his death.  Vidal is above all an egotist, but a lovable egotist and oh, to have his command of the English language [1-8/08, reading in snips]

 

The Star Machine by Jeanne Basinger (2008)

From the late 30’s through the 50’s, Hollywood produced a new race of perfect people: the Stars. With fine scholarship Basinger presents most of them to us—their glitter plus the underlying warts.  Plain, shy Constance Ockelman becomes Veronica Lake; others are made over into Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Dorothy Lamour— L’amour, not too subtle.  I loved this era or at least the latter part of it.  I lived in the movies as a kid.  I felt I knew these people, but of course not how the “Star Machine”  had cut and pasted them into the glamor boys and girls I worshiped.  She doesn’t forget the men: Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, etc; but she left out my fave of all time, Gregory Peck.  Nonetheless,  the book goes to the women.  [8/08]

 

Great Expectation (dir. David Lean, 1948 ) ****

Young John Mills plays Pip; young Alec Guiness play Pip’s friend, Herbert; Jean Simmons plays the young Estella; and a heap of famous character actors play the kalidoscope of personalities with memorable names, from hand-washing lawyer Jaggers, to the jilted, crazed Miss Haversham.  But director Lean—who filmed so evocatively and brought Dickens to visual life (not that he needs help)—jazzed up the ending needlessly.  Thanks, Film Forum.

 

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante (2006)

Strange though compelling, this is a story of a woman’s refashioning her inner life with the unwitting aid of casual acquaintances on a Southern Italian beach. The unnamed protagonist, Neapolitan by birth and now living and teaching in the North, falls into reveries of her youth and her marriage and her family as she suns herself quietly and observes a local (and vocal) vacationing family.  She does a decidedly odd thing: steals the ugly but much loved doll of a child—a member of the extended famly sharing the beach. She watches as the little girl falls into paroxyms of grief, and yet she doesn’t come clean until she is found out.  Somehow her old self dies during this process.  Whether she is reborn is left for us to guess. [7/08]

 

A Secret (dir. Claude Miller)****

French.  Intercutting past and present (color and b.w.), the film is based on the true story of a French Jewish family during World War II.  A man and woman fall in love at the man’s wedding to another woman. Out of this incident, in the milieu of occupied France, the story evolves.  It is nothing if not interesting, heart-rending, devastating. (9/5/08)