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Lauren and I went to the movies over the holidays with her brothers, and since Lauren’s brothers love football, a movie about football seemed the logical choice. I’m not much of a football man myself. I like the sport; I just don’t like it enough to make time for it. At any rate, I was up for a football movie.

We Are Marshall is the true story of the death and rebirth of the Marshall University football team. In 1970, following a game with ECU, the Marshall team flew back to West Virginia in a chartered plane. Practically everyone was aboard: the coaching staff, the players themselves, other school personnel. Tragically, the plane went down just before landing, killing everyone aboard. The subsequent fire was so severe that six of the players were burned beyond recognition and now lie together in six unmarked graves by a monument honoring the dead.

For a small town, it was a terrible, crippling tragedy. Children lost their fathers. Wives lost their husbands. Young, starry eyed girls lost their fiancés. It was awful. So awful in fact, that the school decided to suspend the football program altogether. And there is where the real story begins.

Four team members survived the tragedy. They weren’t on the plane. They had missed the game and flight because of injury or oversleeping. And the only member of the coaching staff who survived, played wonderfully by LOST star Matthew Fox, was supposed to be on the plane but did another coach a favor by taking a car instead. His survival was an ironic twist of fate that left the man consumed with guilt and nearly broken.

When the school decides to suspend the football program, three of these four remaining players rally the other students and convince the administrative council to reconsider. Enter Matthew McConaughey. To resurrect the program, Marshall needs a new head coach, and McConaughey plays the coach of a rather obscure school in Ohio who volunteers for the job. As it turns out, he’s a delightfully down-to-earth, somewhat eccentric character, and McConaughey plays him proud and loud, talking out of the side of his mouth – as the real character must have done – walking in a slightly stooped fashion, and cracking odd jokes that make him adorably weird.

The rest of the cast was equally amazing. David Strathairn was great as the kindly university president clearly over his head after the tragedy. Ian McShane (Deadwood) was appropriately stiff and immovable as a father grieving the loss of his only son. But the actor who surprised me the most was Anthony Mackie, the team captain who survived the original crash because of a shoulder injury and who now feels the weight of the world upon him as he struggles single handedly to restore the team to its former glory. The locker-room scene in which McConaughey informs Mackie — despite Mackie’s objections to the contrary — that he’s too injured to play in the upcoming game is electric. Powerful stuff. Real, from-the-gut performance. I was floored and moved.

But what I loved most about the film was how incredibly honest it felt. It didn’t sugar coat the team’s awful record that followed the tragedy. It didn’t lead us to believe that all was right in the world at the film’s conclusion. The bereaved father was still bereaving in the end. The broken assistant coach was still, for the most part, broken. And the university president, who lost his job for his decisions, was NOT restored to his position and showered with apologies as Hollywood contrived stories would have done.

Again, another movie based on a book I haven’t read. Lauren, on the other hand, did read Memoirs of a Geisha (pronounced gay-shu, not ghee-shu or guy-shu as I have pronounced it before) and enjoyed it very much. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I don’t think I’d find the book as satisfying as she did.

To be blunt about it, Memoirs of a Geisha would have been much more enjoyable if it had been in Japanese with English subtitles. Instead, it’s a lot of non-Americans trying to speak English and only succeeding 80% of the time. Nothing is more frustrating when watching a movie than to have to stop the movie, rewind, and listen again to what’s being said in an attempt to decipher poorly spoken dialogue. This gets old very quickly. What were supposed to be touching moments became frustrating moments as Lauren and I tried to figure out what the heck the characters were saying. Clint Eastwood did it right; his film Letters from Iwo Jima, which hits theaters soon, is in Japanese, the language the characters portrayed in the film would speak. It feels more authentic this way. Memoirs should have done the same.

I suppose I could have turned on the subtitles for the film, but frankly I didn’t think of it at the time, and besides, I think I would have found it equally annoying; hearing and reading the same language would get confusing. My mind wouldn’t know what to pay attention to. Had the characters spoken in Japanese, my mind would note the inflection in the voice, the emotion behind the words, while ignoring the words themselves completely, allowing the rest of my mind to read the subtitles and understand everything I needed to about the character and scene. As it is, Memoirs was hard to follow.

Of course, what I propose would never have worked since the actors in the film are not Japanese, at least not all of them. They’re Chinese. They speak neither English nor Japanese. Ken Watanabe is Japanese, but his English wasn’t all that bad. It was the Chinese characters who were hard to follow. Were I a kinder person I’d be applauding the cast, since, if I’m not mistaken, some of them spoke no English at all prior to the film. They learned to speak it on the job, with the camera there rolling in their faces. But I’m not kinder than I am because I don’t think they should have been cast in the first place.

Visually, the film is stunning. The town in which it is set was spectacular. I’m sure it was all CGI and Hollywood set, but it appeared authentic, pre-war Japan in all its homes-clustered-together glory. In that sense, Memoirs was like watching a National Geographic documentary on urban life in Japan in the 40s. I enjoyed that aspect of the film very much. And credit is due to the other technical aspects as well: the costumes were beautiful; the cinematography, beautiful; the cast, beautiful. I just wish they spoke Japanese.

I haven’t read the novel by Lauren Weisberger upon which the film is based, but I think I’ll give it a go if ever I get my hands on it. It’s a fun story, and, if I’m not mistaken, is based loosely on Weisberger’s own experience as an assistant to the chief editor at Vogue magazine, who, like Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada, was apparently a self-absorbed tyrant.

When I saw the trailer for the movie, I laughed myself silly. Rather then show us all the big plot points of the film – as so many trailers wrongfully do and thereby divulge the plot from beginning to end – we see a two minute clip from the beginning of the film when the young, naïve journalist-to-be, played by Anne Hathaway, meets the dragon lady that is Meryl Streep. It was hilarious. Stanley Tucci was spot on as Streep’s lieutenant, and Hatheway did her Princess Diaries thing, which is to stand there shoulder slumped with that sweet smile, looking as innocent as possible.

When Lauren and I rented the DVD, we watched the first half one night and the second half the next. Sadly, the second half didn’t measure up to the first. The reason the filmmakers made the trailer they did, I realized, was because the beginning of the film is so much more enjoyable than the rest of it.

Lauren and I quickly tired of Hatheway’s charcater. We stopped caring about whether she’d survive her year at Runway, the fictional magazine, or not. She became one of those characters that tinkers with the dark side before learning in the end that she was all right to begin with. She makes this realization, however, after making some rather stupid mistakes and silly wardrobe selections.

What annoyed me most about the film was the character played by Emily Blunt. She was Streep’s other assistant, one corporate ladder rung above Hatheway. It wasn’t Blunt’s performance that bothered me; she was fantastic. The writing that was to blame. Blunt’s character was simply too mean, too icy. And even more puzzling was how forgiving Hatheway seemed to be toward her. Hatheway continued to talk to her as if they were best buds, as if Blunt’s iciness were nothing at all, really. It didn’t work. If someone is that mean to you, you don’t talk to them; you avoid them. Why risk getting yelled at again, or chastised, or have eyes rolled at you? No, Hatheway’s treating Blunt as a friend was dumb, one of those unforgivable writing errors that you just can’t get over.

As for Meryl Streep, she was fabulous, even allowing herself to go on camera sans makeup for one pitiful little scene. I suppose that seems a trifle thing, to go on camera without makeup, but in the world of Hollywood where looks rule, it seemed a brave thing to me. Sure actresses become ugly occasionally, as Nicole Kidman did for The Hours. But in those instances we see a “made up” ugly; the ugly part is fake, fabricated. We never forget for an instant that beneath that false nose, Kidman is as gorgeous as ever. And so we see past it; we forgive. Not the case with Streep. Streep showed her own ugly, her true self not made up, and that’s different. That takes an extra measure of guts.

Overall, it was worth the rent but certainly not a movie we’ll be adding to our library.

I’ve been a fan of Orson Scott Card ever since I picked up a copy of Ender’s Game in middle school. Like everyone else who has read it, I dreamed of being summoned up to Battle School and shooting and soaring my way to the top of the Battle Room scoreboard. I would be a toon leader, second in command to the great Ender Wiggin. And when the hour of his greatest need arrived, he would call upon me to fight at his side as a member of his jeesh.

Ah to be young again, to dream.

The fact is, Card is a master storyteller. My experience with Ender’s Game is not unique. Novel after novel, story after story, Card creates characters who are so memorable, so original, so full of heart, that you embrace them as soon as you meet them and beg them to never leave. Ender, Valentine, Alvin, Sarah, Mack Street, Jason Worthing, and more, all have permanent residents in my mind.

Since reading Ender’s Game, I’ve read nearly everything Card has written. And that’s saying a lot. Small libraries could be built that hold only his work. I love his fantasy, his science fiction, his biblical fiction, his short fiction, his contemporary fantasy (yes, that’s different, in my opinion, from traditional fantasy), his plays, his comics … goodness, even his poetry. Even the stories he’s written that he doesn’t like or that he thinks are flawed are favorites of mine.

So it should be noted that I approached Empire not as an objective reader, as someone ignorant of the author’s talents and mildly skeptical of his abilities to entertain me. No, sir. I came as a diehard fan. I knew this book was going to be good. And I was right.

Empire is a pulse-pounding military thriller that demands to be made into a film. It’s so cinematic, in fact, that if it ISN’T made into a film, it’s only because the Hollywood Liberal Left can’t stand the idea of any liberal being portrayed negatively on screen. Villains, you see, must be the conservative right, the “oppressive” Christian majority.

The truth is, Empire is wonderfully nonpartisan. Card doesn’t choose sides. There are good guys and there are bad guys. Card does not (as one review I read insinuated) vilify Blue States and wave a flag for the Red States.

The premise of the novel is this: in the near future, America experiences a second civil war after the president, the vice president, and secretary of defense are assassinated. The army special-ops officer who was assigned to think up presidential assassination attempts — so that such attempts could be thwarted — discovers that his plan was used to do the dirty deed. In other words, he’s been unknowingly helping the bad guys all along.

The bad guys turn out to be members of the “Progressive Restoration,” a group of rebels who believe that the White House was stolen from the rightful party and who now feel it their duty to take it back. The action cranks into high gear when tall, bulletproof machines roll into New York City and begin shooting everyone wearing a uniform. Chaos ensues and readers will find that a long, sleepless night lies ahead. Once the action starts, you can’t put this book down.

What’s most amazing about Empire is its believability. The notion of another civil war at first seemed unlikely to me. We’re so much more advanced and educated as a nation than we were back in the 1860s. Times have changed. War means guns, Americans killing Americans. And so much has happened since the Civil War to unite us as a nation, that the idea of picking up arms against each other once again seemed implausible.

But by golly if Card hasn’t done it! The case was made, and once the shooting started, it all felt real. A second civil war no longer feels like such an unlikely occurrence. Empire is a dark look into what could happen if the political divide continues to divide.

If you’re a lover of thrillers — and even if you aren’t — you must read Empire. It’ll stir you, sober you, and motivate you to put your hand over your heart. A wonderful read.

I should also mention that Card shares some of novel’s success with the guys at Chair Entertainment, who approached Card with the idea in hopes of collaborating with him on a game/novel/movie franchise centered around the same idea.

I’m not a gamer, but Empire was so engrossing and so full of action that it might make a gamer out of me when the game is finally completed.

No one would argue that M. Night Shyamalan, the director of The Sixth Sense, stole the idea for his film from the Dean Koontz’s novel Odd Thomas. The film came years before the novel. If anyone unconsciously copied it was Koontz, right? Well, knowing Shyamalan’s penchant for copying, I’d side with Koontz. Shyamalan must have got his hands on a time machine back in 1998, jumped into the future, read Odd Thomas, then jumped back to 1998 and sold his movie. Koontz, in my mind, can do no wrong.

He certainly does no wrong here. Odd Thomas, which if you haven’t already guessed, is about someone who can see dead people, is masterful. Odd — that’s the character’s true given name — is not an eight-year-old like Haley Joel Osment. He’s a twenty-year-old short-order cook living in the fictional town of Pico Mundo, California, right on the sweltering Mojave Desert.

Unlike the ghosts of The Sixth Sense, the dead in Odd Thomas can’t speak. But like the film, only Odd can see them and only until they choose to move on to the hereafter. Since Odd grew up in Pico Mundo and knows many of its residents, the ghosts are generally people he knew in life, like an English teacher from high school. The one exception is Elvis Presley, who for some reason unknown to Odd has made Pico Mundo his waiting room to the after life.

Besides seeing and avenging the dead, Odd also possesses a psychic magnetism, the ability to find the villain without really looking for him, like a bloodhound led to his prey without following a scent. Odd merely pictures the person’s face in his mind, drives around at random, and then finds the person he’s looking for.

Because he’s had this gift, or curse, of seeing the dead for so long, and successfully used his instinctual magnetism on so many occasions, Odd is fearless. Or I should say, he’s uninfluenced by his fear. He does get afraid; he just doesn’t let it stop him from plunging into danger and tearing after the bad guy.

Within Pico Mundo (Spanish for Little World) is a special circle of friends who know about Odd’s abilities. They comfort him, console him, and in the case of the town’s police chief, rely on him to catch the bad guys.

Koontz is a master creator of vivid, endearing characters, people who in their own world would get no special notice, but who are, in fact, extraordinary. In the case of Odd’s friends, they’re people who are kind and beautiful and simple and exactly the type of people you wish YOU had as friends. I fell in love with them immediately.

Rather than give away the plot, suffice it to say that Odd Thomas is a book that demands to be read quickly. Koontz knows the meaning of narrative drive. He hints at impending danger and the foreboding big event just enough to keep us reading.

It’s a wonderful, frightening, imaginative, heart-braking story. But a warning: if you try to avoid stories that involve truly evil people, skip this one. Evil is abundant. But in Koontz’s mind, evil needs to be present. Otherwise how would we recognize and appreciate the good? Simply put, Koontz is a story teller who shines light into the darkest places, not to show us the dark, but to make the light all the more discernible.