CJ7 (2008)

Stephen Chow is back with another movie, but this one has little to do with martial arts, though it does go for comedy like his earlier films. CJ7 is very clearly a kids movie. While Chow has a supporting role as the father of the main character, the story is really about the son who is 8 or 9 years old. Well, about the boy and his space alien dog.
This movie is reminiscent of Batteries Not Required, if that movie were Chinese and anime in style, with a whole lot of slapstick thrown in. Okay, I guess it's not that much like it, except for the premise. Poor but adorable kid just wants to fit, dad finds alien 'toy' and gives it to the kid. Kid and toy have midadventures and form a tight bond. Something bad happens to dad and toy sacrifices self to help dad. After more sadness and comedy, a whole bunch of aliens come for the toy.
Aside from the handful of actors I recognized from Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, this film is nothing like the other two with it's intended audience being young children instead of adults. But, it's still entertaining.

2046 (2004)

Directed by Wong Kar Wai, 2046 is the story of a writer, Chow (Tony Leung) living in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Or maybe it's the story of a man living in 2046. The film starts in 2046 on one of the "world trains" one that goes to 2046, where many people have gone to recapture old memories, but none have returned until now. It's not made clear now or at any other point in the film if 2046 really is the year the train is traveling in, if it might instead be a time travel kind of deal, or if 2046 is the signifier of a location, or perhaps even the train itself. After a while on the train, where Chow is the only passenger and the only other 'person' is the bartender / engineer and two very lifelike looking android waitresses.
Flashback to the mid-1960s and Chow is just arriving in Hong Kong. He gets work as a writer and tells everyone that he has moved there for a change of pace, but is really there looking for a woman - Lulu, who now goes by Mimi. He finds her and they go out drinking. He takes her back to her place - apartment 2046 in the Oriental Hotel - but she is passed out, so he does the gentlemanly thing, which is taking off her shoes and covering her with a blanket. When he comes to visit her next, he finds that she has been murdered. He wants to rent her room, but ends up taking the room across the hall 'until' 2046 is cleaned up and redecorated. By the time it's ready he decides to stay in 2047 and an attractive young woman who looks very similar to one of the android waitresses moves in. She's a prostitute by trade and she and Chow become drinking buddies, with benefits which he pays for if they have sex in her room, and she pays for if they have sex in his room.
After a while, for some reason Chow ends up doing stuff with the daughter of the Hotel manager, which looks an awful lot like the other android waitress and the bartender / engineer, respectively. Their relationship is purely platonic though. To amuse her, Chow begins writing a book that is supposed to be a cheap martial arts drama. At some point though, Chow changes the focuss of the book, but he doesn't finish it before the girl leaves to be with her love in Japan. Chow gets depressed, but finally finishes the book which turns out to be about a guy riding a train coming back from 2046 with two android waitresses whom he is cautioned about falling in love with, but does with the one that looks like the daughter, while the one who looks like the prostitute develops a crush on him. Chow doesn't just describe the story, the movie switches back to the imagery of the opening.
After a time, we go back to Hong Kong and it's several years later or several years before the first time we are there. Chow explains that he has been in Singapore where he had gambled away all of his money, but that a mysterious professional gambler who goes by the moniker of "Black Widow" because she always ears a black glove on her left hand, helps him out. Back in Hong Kong, he has looked for her and she may have been Lulu / Mimi, or she may have been someone she knew. He doesn't find her or what has happened to her.
Chow doesn't end up with the prostitute or the daughter, or the gambler.
I know this film won all kinds of awards and is supposed to be a masterpiece, but I guess Wong is just going over my head.
Is it a sci-fi psychodrama? Is it a film noir? Yes and no. It's both, but not mixed together. 2046 spends more time as a noir but never develops that aspect, but it is also a sci-fi film, but fails as that too as we never know if the two halves are actually linked, or if one is real and the other imagination.
The one thing that Wong does make clear is that nobody gets to be happy in the end. Things end badly for everyone.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian (book 5)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

The fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series is the best of the books. Now, perhaps this is because Riordan's writing has gotten better, or because I've grown fond of certain characters, or because I know what to expect, or because the reader did a better job. I'll go with a mix of the first three - Bernstein's performance is exactly on par with the earlier books, no better, no worse.
It's the final summer before Percy turns 16 and the prophecy will be fulfilled and Olympus will fall or stand because of it. Jackson is right in the middle of it and is in fact the one upon which everything depends. Riordan takes a couple of pages from Rowling's playbook in accomplishing this - character's are killed, minor yet key villains redeem themselves and our hero stands toe to toe with the baddy and has the realization that the only way to win is to give up his tight control of the situation and depend on those he cares about most.
All the major characters make it through this one and come out the other side a better person / demigod / satyr / cyclops. Jackson gets the girl - Annabeth, not Rachael - as it should be, or at least as is expected. Jackson gets the admiration of all and the respect of many who disdained him earlier.
I feel like I could really rip this book apart, but I'm not going to. I enjoyed it. Not everything is a work of enduring literature, and that's not a bad thing. This book, like the rest in the series is well-based in Greek mythology and is a great jumping off point for a young person just getting into studying the classics or for a middle-aged man who is already familiar and wants to play in a field that he already is familiar with.
The book ends with the new oracle (hay - we knew Rachael Elizabeth Dare was going to be important) pronouncing the next big prophecy, but other than that everything is wrapped up. There is nothing left dangling. I do know that there is another set of books that take place in the same universe, and Jackson has cameos, but you don't need to read them if you don't want to. I think after I give genre reading a break, I'll find that I'm ready to take on some YA again, and I'll probably give them a look. I am willing to give Riordan's Egyptian-based series a shot, too. I just hope that there is a different reader for these other books. Maybe there just needs to be a new director - it's not that Bernstein's voice is annoying, it's doing "voices" for characters that I find annoying. Either go all in and develop a bunch of distinctly different voices, or don't do voices. But, I'm beginning to get off topic...
One thing that I can say about these books is that they are written very cinematically. I don't know if they are making sequels to that first movie, but if they do, I'll probably watch them.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth (book 4)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

For a great synopsis of this story, check out the "The Battle of the Labyrinth" page on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Labyrinth
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You would think that by the fourth book I would be used to the reader. I still haven't gotten used to Mr. Bernstein and his vocal portrayals. I dont' mind the silly voices, I just don't like how he makes so many voices similar, particularly those of main characters. The two main characters have the same voice and when the action heats up and Riordan stops using 'Percy said' or 'Annabeth said' after each quote, it does get confusing. Perhaps if he didn't use any voices I wouldn't be depending on that so much.
This book was the best so far. It was not so much like a stripped down Harry Potter novel. I was also not so familiar with the monsters, which was kind of nice.
Hephaestus and Hera make appearances in this one to help out Percy, though their ends are definitely their own. Poseiden also appears at the end, but he's really their to support Percy and not trick him into doing something.
Thank god Riordan used Rachel Elizabeth Dare, otherwise I would have been really pissed off. I'm not sure why he always refers to her by her full name (okay, not always, but most of the time). She's described as having red hair, and her initials spell 'red'. I have pondering on the significance of this for two books now, and have not arrived at any conclusions. I'm not familiar with any Ancient Greek stories about red-haired people. I suspect that the hair color would have been highly uncommon during that time period, perhaps never seen.
I have thouht about tracking down the ebook version of this book so that I could do a count of how many times Riordan uses the word "mortal" and the term, "ADHD". If you had a dollar for every time Percy mentions that he has ADHD, you could go out for a movie and a nice meal when the book is done.
On balance, with my nitpicking aside, this was a good book. Percy spent a lot more time analyzing his feelings and motivations for action. I guess this might be as telling about me as it is about the books - perhaps I just want something that is more character oriented and less action oriented. Or maybe it just took Riordan four books to find the voice of his main character, or more likely, maybe it just took me four books to get into the groove.
There is only one book left in the series and I know it's shorter than the fourth book. I don't know how I feel about this. There are a lot of issues left to resolve, but they're not particularly complex issues, I guess. There is going to be at least one big, knowck-down, drag-out battle. I suspect that some characters will be killed off, and I also suspect that they will not be mains. The fact that I am actually looking forward to the book is a good thing, though. And this time next week, I'll know whether it was worth it or not.

This series of books has prompted me to step away from YA for a while, maybe even away from genre and do some serious reading. That doesn't meant that I don't enjoy YA, etc. I do. I enjoy these books as well, I just need something that is speaking a little more to my intellect.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan's Curse (book 3)
by Rick Riordan
Unabridged audiobook, read  by Jesse Bernstein

Book 3 of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series breaks with the pattern set by the first two by starting just prior to Winter break instead of right before Summer break. Grover has sent a message to Camp Half-Blood that he needs help. Always eager for an adventure and to help his buddy out, Percy along with Thalia and Annabeth head to upstate Maine to find out how they can help the satyr.
They arrive at the military school where Grover is undercover, only to meet the monster-in-disguise right off the bat. In this case, the assistant Principal is really the manticore and explains that he was a Greek monster before he was banished the lands and the tales of the Middle East.
Annabeth is captured by the manticore, and Thalia, Grover and several of the Hunters (of Artemis) join together to quest for her, notably the leiutenant to Artemis, Zoe and one of the two kids that Grover had brought Percy to help him in the first place. Percy uses Annabeth's baseball cap of invisibility to tag along until he is discovered, when he openly joins the quest.
Artemis, Apollo and Athena help the kids on their journey across the US to San Francisco, which is set up as both the anti-Manhattan and the anti-Olympus. Some interesting things happen throughout this tale, like two of the main characters getting killed off (at least I won't spoil it by saying who), but one of them in such an indecisive way as to make me think that she may make a comeback. We also learn that Hades has two children, but that he didn't break the moratorium on the big three having kids because they have been stuck in the Lotus Eater's Hotel since prior to World War II when the ban on kids for Zeus, Poseiden and Hades went into effect.
The story ends with Annabeth deciding to move to San Francisco to give living with her dad and his family another chance.
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This book has the least resemblance to a Harry Potter book yet. This is neither good or bad, just an observation. It was nice, though, to see a different type of story evoked.
Let's see, which of the gods have helped Percy now? Poseiden, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite. Ares kind of helped, kind of set Percy up, so I'm not going to count him in the "helpers" list. Who are the haters? Zeus, Ares, Hephaestus and Hades, and kind of Athena, but it's not really personal, so she shouldn't be on the list of "haters" I guess.
I know that Riordan is writing the Kane cycle now which is set among the Egyptian gods, but might the statements of the manticore be more than explanation? Might they be a hint of another story cycle to come sometime later?
Speaking of new series by Riordan, I also just learned that there is another series with the Greek gods, called the Lost Heroes or something which not only features some characters from the Percy Jackson series but also uses the Roman pantheon. How the hell does that work? Is there a Zeus and a Jupiter? Or do we discover that sometimes Percy's dad likes to slum it and go around playing Neptune?
Going into this book, I knew that the title had to refer to one of two titan's and predicted I would know within the first chapter and that it would not actually be revealed to the reader until much later in the book. As soon as we learn that Luke has aligned himself with the General of the titans, to help restore Chronos, we know that the villain is Atlas. The other option was Prometheus, who may not want the gods to be in power, but he wouldn't want to replace them with the titans.
There is a muggle, I mean a mortal in this book, that I know we are going to meet again, and if we don't, I will write an email to Riordan detailing my displeasure. The red-headed girl whom Percy meets at Hoover Dam can see through the mist. And then Riordan uses her full name in three other sections of the book when Percy is reflecting on the dam situation. If this is not foreshadowing, I am very disappointed, either at the failure to include her later, or at the editor's failure to allow her full name to be used so much in the book.