Murder, She Wrote: Me and Agatha Christie

I'm obsessed with murder. Nothing gets me more than a gripping whodunit, a murder mystery that takes us from corpse to culprit with all the swiftness that a good, juicy offing should have. Why are murder mysteries so ghoulishly fun anyway?

When I was ten, my parents took me to see Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap in Toronto, which is the longest running play in theater history in its London incarnation. And from then, trapped I was. I can't say I've read Christie's oeuvre, but I'd wager on twenty out of her eighty detective novels. It's hard to remember exactly which ones. Most are works of instant thrills, to be read on pins and needles amid the guns and daggers. She hardly ever strays from a tried and true formula: we meet the cast, one meets an untimely demise, and in swoops the detective for interrogations, clues, epiphanies, and the explication. None of her mysteries are left unsolved. That wouldn't be very British of her.

Like afternoon tea, Christie's books feel punctual. The train to murder takes off and arrives exactly on schedule, with all loose ends tidied up and no lingering sentiments except discouragement that, once again, we've been bested. I have never successfully deduced the solution to the crime, which is precisely how the author intended. But reading more of her novels helps understand their structure, the frequent fake-outs, which details will resurface as clues for Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple.

The murder mystery that's most rewarding, I find, is the most lighthearted. The more disconnected our emotions are from the murder, the more potential arises for comedy and social critique. Perhaps this is why I prefer Agatha Christie to the endless CSI and Law and Order gristmill. At least Dame Agatha has fun, writing with the panache of Julia Child frosting a cake.

You Make (Us) Feel Like A Natural Woman

Review: The Kids Are All Right

The opening credits to The Kids Are All Right scroll around the screen like graffiti while skateboarders cruise the California streets, over grainy indie film stock and a Vampire Weekend song. Does the movie already intend to be ironic, or is there secret joy in being part of this hip vegan eco-crunch neighborhood? It's the land of opportunity, where a scruffy motorcycle man makes enough income from his organic restaurant to afford a sprawling, self-consciously indigenous garden in his backyard. It's also the land of normalcy, where two women can share the same over-represented suburban paradise/malaise as everyone else.

Director Lisa Cholokendo straddles this line of parody and sincerity as she navigates the problems of this upper-middle-family, headed by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. The two moms bicker over hers and hers sinks about their daughter off to college, and their son who isn't realizing his potential. Of course Bening's character Nic imposes too much, and can't please her wife Jules (Moore) emotionally or sexually. Nor does she support Jules' wandering ambition, now manifested in her new startup landscaping business.

It's harder to feel for Nic through all this. She's unfailingly uptight, while Jules' free-spirited (and somewhat free-loving) impulses befit her lackadaisical California lifestyle so well. But Cholokendo has created a comedy that finds humor in common relationship and parenting moments, such as two parents' simultaneous eagerness and reservation over the possibility their son is sleeping with his best friend. It's appropriate for a story about gay marriage that isn't really about being gay at all.


Cholokendo knows how to assemble a top-notch cast, with an especially luminous and relaxed Julianne Moore. Mark Ruffalo's leather jacket and five-o-clock shadow fit the sweet but impossibly naive sperm donor of the couple's son. His interaction with the family, over a few bottles of wine and a few more rolls in the hay, is an engaging comic premise--one laced ultimately, and realistically, with emptiness. The traditional family structure is what lasts.

This film shares some aspects of that other female-driven summer comedy, Eat Pray Love. That movie feels constantly like it's driving toward the inevitable romantic outcome; of course this independent woman will find a man. Yet the narrative wanders to get there. Maybe because the movie comes from a real-life quest for life and love, which seems manufactured but really happened as authentically as a writer with a book deal can proclaim. And though the makeup and wardrobe (not to mention culinary) budgets are many times the size of Cholokendo's, Julia Roberts has such a natural charm and radiance, we know everything's all right. Her men need her more than she needs them.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Review: Inception

When Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo in 1958, he and his cameramen invented a new camera move, tracking back with the camera while zooming in, to capture Jimmy Stewart's acrophobia. The Vertigo effect was the wonder of its day. In many ways, Christopher Nolan's summer film Inception shares the bitter romance and disorientation of Hitchcock's movie. But special effects have advanced greatly in the last fifty years, and Nolan takes full advantage of twisting, turning CGI-scapes that would tickle M.C. Escher.

Though not as profilic, Nolan has proven himself to be a sort of modern Hitchcockian. From The Dark Knight and The Prestige to his best work, Memento, Nolan has played the showman with tricks up his sleeve, who gleefully manipulates the audience then reminds us it's just a movie. The wonder of Vertigo is that it uses the same tricks as Hitchcock's usual crowdpleasers but sinks deeper as it unfolds. Nolan goes the opposite route with Inception, trying to force profundity upon a fun popcorn flick.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a single father in exile, gifted at extracting information from entering people's dreams. He is called upon by a Japanese industrialist to enter his competitor's dreams not to remove an idea but to add one, a process known as inception. Within the running of the film, though, the rationale behind this entry into dreams becomes the MacGuffin, glossed over in the sea of exposition that makes up the first hour. Nolan's rules for inception are complex, and slogging through them at first feels turgid because the script doesn't allow its characters to breathe. Nor does Hans Zimmer's oppressive score, which overstates with crashing timpani and wailing brass.

Just when I was wishing the whole thing would lighten up, the actual inception begins. Suddenly we're watching a different movie--an elaborate bank heist that wows more as it goes along. The inception team enters dreams within dreams, and watching these overlapping worlds line up is the real fun. Joseph Gordon-Levitt even gets a moment or two of levity, not to mention a thrilling levitation stunt in a hotel lobby and elevator. Ultimately, the scales tip in favor of Inception: all the rules that were explained pay off in the final act. But I do wish Nolan had found more ways to humanize his film.

Marion Cotillard is his secret weapon. She looks ravishing as Cobb's deceased wife, whom he recalls by revisiting his memory-box of dreams, and ironically feels the most flesh-and-blood of the cast. Everyone else is subservient to Nolan's mind games except for Cotillard. Her eyes, cruel and agonizingly sad, are something out of a nightmare. In a movie of dazzling plot twists and shifting city streets, her performance is the stuff dreams are made of.

When Book Covers Wax Poetic

They say don't judge a book by its cover. But when you're window shopping at bookstores, it can be hard to believe them (whoever they are). Book covers are marketing, pure and simple. The ideal cover matches thematic content with a sharp selling point--but like titles, sometimes sales outweigh the "art" of it. Fine by me; as long as good books sell, I don't care how their covers look.

Unless the covers are boring. Public-domain classics are the worst offenders. Have you looked for a Moby Dick you can be proud of? I searched the Harvard Coop for a good cover, but the whole batch looked unoriginal, so unfailingly historical. (Art department: "Let's go outside the box. We'll draw--wait for it--a whale.") Herman Melville is soporific enough on his own. Where's the adventure?

From the odd indie press to giant publisher Penguin: Call them Ish-fail.

But Penguin Classics has a trick up its sleeve, the Deluxe Editions. Welcome to a world of deckled edges, French flaps, and provocative cover art. They range from Jane Austen to Thomas Pynchon in style and age. They're appealing, whimsical, and often humorous. Hey, look--color! But I also wonder if the designers have ever read the books. What do you think about these?

1. Candide: Voltaire meets the comics store! Calling X-Men fans--there's a French satire with your name on it.


2. Ethan Frome: Edith Wharton might purse her lips at the title, embossed in red letters like a Harlequin paperback. The lovers look caught in the spell of winter romance--but read the book and you'll realize a much different outcome is in store.

3. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The most puzzling. Why is Huck walking underwater? Is this a reference to Mario Puzo (sleeping with the fishes)? The credit to Mr. Mark Twain is a clever in-joke, though.

4. The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne's original subtitle was A Trip to Hot Topic.

5. Pride and Prejudice: You know, I like this one. It's a Jane Austen for those of us with Dickensian aspirations. Though it looks like the man is named Pride and the woman Prejudice. Cruel parents they had.

6. Wuthering Heights: Or, Wuthering Catherine, who hasn't eaten a meal in weeks. What's the phallic tower behind her? Is Heathcliff's home now at Mordor?

Penguin even carted out a Deluxe Edition of Moby Dick full of color, energy, and violence. And also a whale jumping over a ship. I'm pretty sure that happens in chapter thirty-one, right? Chalk it up to whimsy.