MOVIE - August: Osage County

R (2:10)

Wide release 12/25/2013

Viewed 1/28/2014 with Sheila & Connie - El Con

RT Critic: 65   Audience:  72

Cag: 5/ I ended up thinking it was quite an exceptional movie - both story AND acting

Directed by John Wells

The Weinstein Company

Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson, Chris Cooper, Sam Shepard, Abigail Breslin, Margo Martindale, Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulrooney

My comments:  This is the story of the most dysfunctional of dysfunctional families.  I've decided I have a very (VERY) dark sense of humor, because this is another movie that when I started looking at it for the humor, I loved it.  Yup, it's a pretty dark story.  People dig themselves up out of a crappy childhood or they burrow themselves deeper.  This story contains a little of both.  And it's the kind of story that keeps adding layers after layer of "What the F?"  The lineup of actors was amazing, and the acting itself was, too.  I've got to give it to Meryl Streep - she doesn't care what she looks like or what kind of a woman she portrays, she gives it her all and her all is always unbelievably believable.  So I didn't even walk away from this could-have-been dark story with a cloud of darkness.  I enjoyed it very much, and I'm really glad I went to see it.  I loved it.

Reviews:  AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY tells the dark, hilarious and deeply touching story of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose lives have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Midwest (actually, Oklahoma plains, which I don't really consider midwest) house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them. Letts' play made its Broadway debut in December 2007 after premiering at Chicago's legendary Steppenwolf Theatre earlier that year. It continued with a successful international run

54. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith

J. K. Rowling writing a Robert Galbraith
Cormoran Strike #1
audio read by Robert Glenister
13 unabridged cds  (16:00)
2013 Mulholland Books/Hachette Audio
455 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery (Private Investigator)
TPPL
Finished Sat. 12/14/2013
Goodreads rating: 3.85 (8,321 reviews)
My rating: 4
Setting: 2010 London, England
1st sentence/s:  "The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies.  Photographers stood behind barriers patrolled by police, their long-snouted cameras poised, their breath rising like steam.  Snow fell steadily onto hats and shoulders, gloved fingers wiped lenses clear."

My reaction:  Cormoran Strike is quite an interesting character.  Illegitimate son of a famous rocker and long-dead groupie mother; very, very large; a prosthetic instead of a foot and lower leg; quite self-conscious; and very, very smart, he runs a detective agency that hasn't much business. The mystery itself is interesting with a smooth somewhat-of-a-surprise ending, and the relationship that unfolds between Cormoran and his temp, Robin, is really nicely done.  The story was a little longer than it had to be, with repetition of facts in a number of places that could have been lessened.  I enjoyed listening to it, the reader's British accent which added reality to the setting and situation.  I'll happily read another about this interesting character if and when it appears.

Goodreads:  A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.
     Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
     You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

19. Hush - Eishes Chayil

Walker & Co., 2010
for: young adults and adults
HC $16.99
360 pgs.
Rating: 4

Eishes Chayil is a pseudonym. This book is written by a member of the Hassidic community in New York, and is an eye-opening page-turner. The first half of the book flips back and forth between 2000, when Gittel was nine, and 2008, when she was 17. The second half of the book is set a bit later, after Gittel is out of high school, 18, and hoping to find a husband and marry. This is what her whole life has built towards, marriage, and children. A family of her own. We watch her become engaged....married....pregnant. But as this all happens, she is becoming more frequently visited by a ghost from her past, a ghost who won't let go until Gittel does something to help her.

This is the premise of the story. Gittel is haunted by the best friend who committed suicide when they were 9. Devory had been sexually abused by her brother. The biggest problem - her community's "hushing up" of this sort of event. There are lots of great reviews out there in cyberspace, lots of raves for this book. I'll add a few links below.

I was, of course, appalled and upset by the premise of the book. But I was more distressed by the things I learned about the Hassidic community. The extreme hatred of "goyim." The absolute lack-of-knowledge about sex and sexuality. And the place of the female in this culture. More than extreme. Racism. Hatred. I realize that this sect of Judaism is very small, but it quite freaked me out.

Here's a review from a Jew in her blog, Bad for Shidduchim (and I learned, from reading Hush, the Shidduch means an engagement) I don't think she's an orthodox Jew, though. And then there's the review in The Curious Jew. And here's a third, from The Velveteen Rabbi.

51. Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Penguin, 2007
HC $16.99
paperback at $9.99 will be out on Oct. 1, 2010
288 pages
for: YA
Rating: 5

This was an extraordinary, powerful book. It was also written in an extremely interesting -- and different -- way.

Two weeks after Hannah Baker commits suicide, Clay Jensen receives an anonymous shoebox in the mail with 13 cassette tapes inside. When he listens to the first tape, he discovers that these are recordings that Hannah made just before her death, and the tapes are being sent to the 13 people who played a part in her decision.

The book is told in two voices, but they are intertwined with each other. The words that Sarah is saying on the tapes are in italics. The words that Clay is thinking or saying, as he listens, are in regular font:

"I slide across the bench to the aisle, then stand up in the moving bus.

The first to drop out was Alex. We were friendly when we saw each other int he halls, but it never went beyond that.
At least, with me it didn't.

Bracing my hands against the backrests, I make my way to the front of the shifting bus.

Now down to the two of us, Jessica and me, the whole thing changed pretty fast. The talks became chitchat and not much more.

"When's the next stop?" I ask. I feel the words leave my throat, but they're barely whispers above Hannah's voice and the engine.
The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror.

Then Jessica stopped going, and though I went to Monet's a few more times hoping one of them might wander in, eventually I stopped going, too.
Until..."

It's a heartbreaking story. I can't imagine a reader not shedding at least one silent tear here or there. But it's a powerful one, and extremely interesting. I started it this afternoon and read nonstop until I was finished. I haven't done that in one heck of a long time. Wow.