BOOK REVIEW: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

British author David Mitchell is most well-known for his seminal work Cloud Atlas (which is one of my favorite books of the 2000-2009 decade and was made into a fascinating, underrated 2012 movie by the Wachowski siblings starring Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Halle Berry).  His latest book is The Bone Clocks which I received as a present for Christmas in 2014 and I am ashamed it took me so long to pick it up and finally read  because in my opinion it's even more compelling than Cloud Atlas. The two books have a lot in common in that they are both written using the same structure, Mitchell's signature writing device (interlocking chapters or novellas set in various settings or styles featuring characters who are loosely related to others that appear in earlier chapters). Mitchell's books are often quite acclaimed by critics and are also recognized by fans and award nominating committees as belonging to the speculative fiction genre that encompasses science fiction and fantasy. For example, The Bone Clocks was the winner of the 2015 World Fantasy Award while Cloud Atlas  was nominated for the Man Booker, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards. In Cloud Atlas, the interlocking chapters/novellas are written in various genres (a series of letters, historical love story, hardboiled detective mystery, far-future science fiction, etc) with very different characters in different times and places. However in The Bone Clocks, while several characters weave in and out of first-person perspective chapters, the setting moves from 1980s Thatcher's England to a near-apocalyptic 2034 United Kingdom and constantly revolves arounds a central science fiction-y mystery (involving the existence of creatures who can transfer their consciousness to achieve immortality). As with most of Mitchell's work, the writing is flashy but beautiful also.

If you liked Cloud Atlas  (and after 150,000 ratings on Goodreads it is above 4.0 on a 5-point scale) I am confident you will also love The Bone Clocks.

The central character in The Bone Clocks is Holly Sykes. In the beginning of the book she is a mindless teenage git but somehow she grows on you, even if she is not always front and center in the story.  (She's one of the characters that persist through the multiple novellas that make up the book). By the end of the tale she is a resourceful grandmother trying to insure a hopeful future for her extended family in a future dystopia. 

The book grabbed me on page 5 and never let me go for 600 pages and 48 hours later. It is divided into six sections set in six different years  over a half-century (A Hot Spell, 1984; Myrrh Is Mine, Its Bitter Perfume, 1991; The Wedding Bash, 2004; Crispin Hershey’s Lonely Planet, 2015; An Horologist’s Labyrinth, 2025; Sheep's Head, 2034). Some of these are not as successful as others but the last three (in particular) are absolutely sublime and the effect of reading them is entirely engrossing.

Overall, The Bone Clocks was one of my most enjoyable reads of 2015; a compelling, thought-provoking book whose characters and scenes resonate in the mind long after you turn the last page.

Title: The Bone Clocks.
Author: David Mitchell.
Paperback: 640 pages.
Publisher: Random House.
Date Published: September 2, 2014.
Date Read: June 25, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A+ (4.25/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A+.

MOVIE REVIEW: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The summer blockbuster movie season began with The Amazing Spider-Man 2  on May 2 and  Godzilla on May 16  (neither of which I went to see) and continued with X-Men: Days of Future Past which I went to see on opening day. I spent a fair portion of my formative early teen years reading the X-Men and New Mutants comics and I have enjoyed the X-Men films, especially the ones directed by Bryan Singer which play up the metaphorical analogy between having mutant powers and being gay. (In both cases, the person often tries to keep information about their status secret and often has to "come out" and reveal it, and society stigmatizes the status of being gay and being a mutant.)

Anyway, the latest X-Men movie is Days of Future Past and follows events depicted in 2011's X-Men: First Class. The movie starts in our near-future ad life sucks for the mutants because giant, adaptable robots called Sentinels are successfully hunting down and killing all mutants on Earth, making life pretty miserable for everyone on the planet as life as we know it is collateral damage to the ongoing human-mutant war.

Our heroes (from the earlier X-Men movies that starred Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, James Marsden as Cyclops, Anna Paquin as Rogue, etc) realize that the only way they can win this battle is to go back in time and prevent the current war from starting. This means that their earlier selves (who were introduced in  X-Men: First Class as James McAvoy as Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto/Erik Lensherr, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique/Raven and Nicolas Hoult as Beast) are going to have to be convinced to stop fighting each other and save the day.

Time travel stories are often tricky and non-sensical but Singer manages the action deftly, communicating the main details of Simon Kinberg's screenplay effectively to the audience, reveling in the early 1970s setting to depict the funky fashion and other foibles of the era.

It turns out that only Wolverine has the healing ability to survive a trip back in time (technically only his consciousness goes back in time facilitated by the mutant powers of Ellen Page appearing in her first summer blockbuster as a now openly lesbian actress). So he has to convince McAvoy's Charles and Fassbender's Erik to work together to stop Lawrence's Raven from killing Peter Dinklage's Dr. Bolivar Trask and thus precipitating Trask's evil invention of the Sentinel into the future-killing juggernaut it becomes, especially since Mystique's own DNA is a key component of the Sentinel (since in the original time line she gets caught after killing Trask).  Charles is currently addicted to the drug which allows him to walk but eliminates his psionic powers and Erik is in a metal-free prison deep in the heart of the Pentagon, accused of manipulating the bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy. Yes, the plot is complicated, but it is comprehensible.

The film really centers around the performance of 2013 Best Actress Oscar winner Lawrence with Oscar nominees McAvoy, Fassbender and Jackman having the next most prominent roles. Lawrence is more than up to the task of carrying a huge, visual effects extravaganza on her shoulders (as she has shown repeatedly with the Hunger Games movies) and acquits herself well here also. Dinklage and Hoult are both excellent, with Hoult having the added benefit of being very attractive. There's a small but memorable appearance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver during the action sequence to free Magneto.

The film raises some thought-provoking questions such as "If you could go back in time and stop a bad person from doing a bad thing, should you?" and "What would life be like if we had incontrovertible evidence that people with mutant powers existed"?

Overall, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an intellectually stimulating and well-made movie, smarter than the average summer blockbuster, but plenty entertaining.

Title: X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Director: Bryan Singer.
Running Time: 2 hours, 11 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.
Release Date: May 23, 2014.
Viewing Date: May 23, 2014.

Writing: B.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A.
Impact: B+.

Overall Grade: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

WATCH: Trailer for X-Men: Days Of Future Past

The trailer for the latest entry in the X-Men franchise is out. The movie is called X-Men: Days of Fture Past  and one that I am actually interested in seeing, thanks to its stunning cast and the fact it is being directed by Bryan Singer, the openly gay creator of the first two X-Men films.

The movie is released on May 23, 2014!

FILM REVIEW: Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is an amazing, complicated tour de force of a novel. David Eggers' (in)famous phrase “a heartbreaking work of staggering genius” would not be out of place to describe this literary achievement. It was #6 on my list of my favorite books of the decade, and I confess (then, and now!) that I did not read every word.

At this point I must warn the reader that I am going to include some spoilers for the book. If you haven’t read the book but are interested in seeing the movie, read on. If you haven’t read the book but do intend to, you should probably stop reading this review. Now.

I found Mitchell’s book difficult to read in its entirety because it is an intricate weave of six different stories (set in six very different times and locales), using six different genres (and writing styles), divided into distinct chapters which, at first, do not seem to have any coherent thread tying them together. Part of the joy of reading the novel is discovering for yourself what the threads are that connect the various stories and characters in the book. Interestingly, you can also enjoy the book on other levels, simply as a collection of short stories.

Although the book was widely celebrated it was generally regarded as unfilmable. However, the film-making trio of The Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tykwer decided to take on the challenge of adapting the book into a film. Because of the Wachowskis' past successes (basically reinventing the special effects super hero movie with 1999’s The Matrix), they were able to raise enough money (estimated at over100 million dollars) to go and make the film they wanted. The three co-wrote and co-produced the film together and then each person directed two of the six vignettes which were then merged together.

The first thing I must say is that I think the filmmakers have done a superb job of adapting the book to be a film as well as creating an entertaining (and frequently beautiful) piece of filmed entertainment. They have distilled the essence of the book, and in addition, have taken advantage of the nature of the medium of film to tell all six stories from the book simultaneously in a way the printed page was simply unable to do. They should be shoo-ins for multiple Oscar nominations, such as Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. 

One of the reasons I did not read every word in the book was because of the difficulty of following the central storyline in Cloud Atlas, the one set far into a post-apocalyptic future, where English itself has drifted and there has been some kind of technological disruption so most of humanity lives very simply without any modern amenities and speaks a pidgin English which I simply was unable (or unwilling) to slog through in order to follow wherever Mitchell intended to take me. However, in the filmed adaptation of this storyline (which is the longest section of the book and opens the film) the filmmakers have bravely decided to keep the pidgin (with no subtitles!) and rely on their to-dream-for cast to use the visual language of the medium (and the actor’s craft) to communicate meaning. And it works. In fact, for me, it works much better than the book did (obviously, since I skipped that part of the book!)

Here now we must discuss the cast. The film stars 2-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia), Oscar winners Halle Berry (Monster's Ball), Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking) and Jim Broadbent (Iris). The always stellar Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings) and the (in)famous Hugh Grant are also present. Additionally, the cast includes other very good actors who are up and coming stars such as Ben Whishaw (played Q in Skyfall), Korean film star Doo-Na Bae, Jim Sturgess and James D'Arcy (Hitchcock). 

One point of contention that may explain the generally muted critical response to the film is the fact that many of the actors play multiple characters, sometimes characters who have different race/ethnicity and/or gender than the actor portraying them. There are examples of the non-white actors (Berry and Bae) playing white women but it is the case of the two British actors playing Korean characters with physically altered eyes to appear “more Asian” that has garnered cries of “yellow face” and general opprobrium from some critics.

There is no question that the cross-racial casting is problematic. Primarily this is because it simply doesn’t work and is frankly distracting. The makeup can not hide the fact that very British Jim Sturgess is playing a character named Hae-Joe Chang  or that Korean Doo-na Bae is portraying a frizzy red-head with freckles (who happens to have almond shaped eyes?). It’s not clear what the solution for the filmmakers to this problem could have been. Central to the point of the film is that the characters played by these actors have connections through time, space and circumstance that transcend identity characteristics, so they have to be played by the same actors. Here the visual aspect of the media actually thwarts the filmmakers because there really is no way of having an actor with one racial identity portray a character with a different racial identity without being impacted by the specter of racial stereotypes in our modern day culture.

That being said, I don’t think that the racial misstep of the filmmakers is a fatal weakness of the film. The strengths of the film far outweigh its weaknesses in my opinion. The brilliant visual canvass on which the Wachowskis and Tykwer paint is awe-inspiring and the individual stories are enthralling. Even for readers of the books, we’re not sure whether (and how much) the film’s plot will differ from the book’s so that keeps these viewers in suspense. Another small weakness is the somewhat haphazard nature of the makeup. Some of the makeup is simply appalling (i.e. the trans-racial stuff already discussed) while some of it is so outstanding you don’t even realize that it’s there (like Halle Berry appearing as a wizened Korean surgeon and Tom Hanks appearing as a 30-something punk with wildly decorative facial hair).

Overall, I would recommend Cloud Atlas as an entertaining film with great visuals and performances by award-winning actors playing roles you’ve never expect to see them play. I’m sure this film will stay in my memory far longer than the excellent and exciting Skyfall (the latest James Bond movie). As a filmgoing experience, it was more enjoyable and enthralling than (the edifying history lesson provided by) Lincoln.


Title: Cloud Atlas.
Director: Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer.
Running Time: 2 hours, 51 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated Rated R for violence, language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use.
Release Date: October 26, 2012.
Viewing Date: November 21, 2012.

Writing: A.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A+.
Impact: A.

Overall Grade: A- (4.083/4.0).

Celebrity Friday: Lana Wachowski, Trans Director

Larry Wachowski is best known as the creative force, along with his brother Andy, of the seminal science fiction movie The Matrix as well as the subsequent sequels in what is known as The Matrix Trilogy. Their producer and director credits on the The Matrix were listed as "The Wachowski Brothers."

However, in 2007, Larry Wachowski transitioned to being known as Lana Wachowski. The highly awaited film adaptation of David Mitchell's acclaimed novel Cloud Atlas (read Madprofessah review) is the next high profile project for the Wachowskis, with the two listed as producing, directing and writing with Tom  Twyker  separately as Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. 


This certainly makes Lana Wachowski the most prominent and most successful transgender Hollywood film director to date. The trailer for Cloud Atlas is out and it looks astonishing, as visually advanced as The Matrix was in its day, and that's saying something. The book is an incredibly hard one to even conceive of as a film, because it's structure is so unique: a set of 6 interlocking stories about the nature of life, love and the human condition told in very different settings using various genres (historical drama, crime thriller, futuristic science fiction, mystery, etc). It is a writing tour de force, hopefully the movie will do it justice. There is hope that it will.

Check it out!

WATCH: TV Ad For Meryl Streep's The Iron Lady

Harvey Weinstein is pushing hard to help Meryl Streep to finally win her 3rd Oscar for her stunning performance in The Iron Lady. Watch the television ad which ostensibly is promoting the movie but is also pushing Streep towards her much deserved win. However, Viola Davis from The Help is the sentimental (*cough* white guilt *cough*) favorite and won the Screen Actors Guild award which is a good sign she has a big following among the actors, which is the largest branch of the Academy. If Davis were to win she would be only the second black woman in 84 years to win for Lead Actress (Halle Berry for Monster's Ball). In fact the number of Black people who have won Oscars in my lifetime can basically be counted on one hand  two hands (Denzel Washington (twice!), Jennifer Hudson, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman and Monique).

What do YOU think is going to happen at the Oscars on Sunday February 26th?