Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used multiple literary techniques in his most famous speech. Repetition, mostly, metaphor, and ethos (appealing to a person’s morals) and pathos (appealing to emotions) were all very prominent aspects of his Dream speech, and he used each of these to carefully persuade his audience towards his goals for society: more racial equality and, also, to keep hope that, one day, things would be better for everyone. Less outstandingly, King used minor scare tactics and keywords to evoke certain emotions.

Dr. King repeats time frames to chart the progression of the racial equality movement, starting at Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, then backtracking to the Declaration of Independence, where blacks were counted as 3/4 a white person, and on from there. On keeping with the American system theme, King created a banks-and-checks metaphor (“We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.”) to illustrate the way society treated black Americans, and how, after all the years of war for human rights, true equality was still being fought for. He kept up this metaphor throughout the speech. Also, the word “we” is used many times throughout the speech, to indicate that “Negro” is a collective term; one man’s suffering is every man’s suffering, and one man cannot fight oppression and unfairness alone.

As the speech goes on, King starts to get really into his Dream, elaborating and adding onto it until his audience can clearly see what exactly he wants, reform-wise, and can start to make it real in their heads. He crescendos his Dream until it’s larger than life, until his Utopian world becomes almost real for his crowd, and he continues to reference back to his original Dream statement as he winds his speech up. Dr. King’s Dream is almost a type of ethos in itself, because it is designed to appeal to his audience, to make them yearn for what he sees, because it is morally right and because it is what is absolutely needed.

Masterful persuasion in the form of pathos, especially, is used, such as King’s many references to his audience’s presumed struggles and tribulations. Dr. MLK Jr. brings up these struggles to allow the audience to reflect on personal injustices that they themselves have been subjected to, which strengthens the want and need to fight for their rights.

I never read nonfiction books. Ever. Generally speaking, I just don’t like them. They don’t interest or entertain me, and they’re often presented in a very boring, pompous manner, like, “blah blah blah, I know this and you don’t so therefore I have the liberty to preach this information to you,” and I just really don’t liked getting preached at.

I mean, I’m not gonna lie, if I want to read about the life and times of Tsar Nicholas II, or somebody, I’m probably going to mosey on over to Wikipedia, where the information is clean-cut and concise, and where I still learn something.

But, every now and again, there comes along a nonfiction book that’s actually fascinating. And, of course, this has something to do with the subject-matter and everything, but it also has A LOT to do with the way it’s written. Personally, I like it when the author sort of still gives you the information, but he (or she) kind of. Doesn’t strive to remain all-the-way objective, I guess. I like it when the author doesn’t necessarily shove their opinion down your throat and make the information come second, but it’s nice to have someone there to show you both sides of the story, and then what THEY think laced throughout.

Jon Krakauer, I feel, does just that in Into the Wild, a nonfiction story revolving around the short life and death of Christopher McCandless.

McCandless as a young adult, having graduated from Emory University, is written as having a very strong and aware personality. He has definite ideals that he strives to live by, abandoning his upper middle-class life in Virginia, burning his social security card and his life savings, and becoming a tramp, a traveler, heading towards his ultimate goal: the Alaskan interior. He is strongly guided by writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London, and he goes so far as to idolize what they write about, dreaming of a world away from man’s selfishness, all to himself, where he is left absolutely alone to rely on his own wit and skill to survive.

Along his way to Alaska, McCandless adopts a new name, Alexander Supertramp, which he introduces himself as to all of the outstanding and personality-rich people he happens upon as he hitchhikes and bums his way farther north. He forms relationships with theses people, staying with them for a couple of weeks at the most, and then up and leaves as out-of-the-blue as he came, expressing a growing longing to be alone and to make it to Alaska as soon as he possibly can.

Chris finally gets there after almost a month of tramping, where he finds an abandoned bus and survives on a bag of rice that he brought with him from civilization and any game he manages to shoot and preserve. He keeps a journal, and graffitis the bus with his rambling thoughts, eventually remarking in the former that his rice supply is getting low, and that he is having trouble getting meat. Christ dies in the bus from starvation after living in it for three months.

Krakauer would be a Good Writer by anyone’s definition, I think. He uses appropriate language to describe what he’s writing about, and he makes his subject interesting to the reader, getting very in-depth at points, and then reeling himself back and letting his nonfiction work wander like it was fiction. He speculates where it is needed, and presents fact where it is present, and, overall, makes a nonfiction work a very enjoyable read indeed. I would recommend Into the Wild to any skeptic of nonfiction.

I consider myself fairly well-versed in film; I haven’t seen everything, but I’ve seen a lot of things. That said, I think I can pronounce pretty confidently that, of all the movies I’ve seen, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the absolute best. Watching it was one of those Affecting experiences, you know? I mean, not affecting on a personal level, but, just, the act of sitting through the film was kind of an Experience.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a modern fairy tale, taking place in Spain during World War II. It’s in Spanish, with English subtitles, and, though this is a very skin-deep reason for enjoying the film, I must say, the Spanish was beautiful to listen to, really creating a great mood and kind of psyching me out for what was to come. (And, fun fact: in my cursory research, I discovered that del Toro actually wrote the subtitles himself, in order to veer away from the stilted, awkward lines that often plague foreign films that are translated. I thought that was way cool, because, man, a bad script can really, really subtract from a great movie.)

The story is told from the eyes of a young girl, Ofelia, who is sent far into the mountains with her very pregnant mother upon command from her new stepfather, Captain Vidal. Vidal, who is leading a military effort to wipe out guerrilla revolutionaries, situates his stepdaughter and wife in comfort, providing a room for them to share whilst carrying out his duties in the surrounding forest, waging a small war against the anti-Franco guerrilla troops.

In Ofelia is this magical sense of wonder, and, even living in an area where there is warfare going on, she goes about her day enchanted by much that she comes across. As soon as the film starts, when her mother is forced to stop traveling because of morning sickness, Ofelia demonstrates how observant and curious she is by wandering away from her mother and exploring the forest. Also, I should mention, in her roaming, she comes upon a stick bug that she believes to be a fairy, and that follows her and her mother as they get deeper into the mountains. That’s a pretty major plot point.

Starkly contrasting Ofelia’s character is the Captain. He was, by far my least favorite character, as I’m sure he was designed to be. Hateful, brutal, distrusting, a warmonger, the list goes on and on (and on.) The most graphic and violent scenes in the movie involved him, and, honestly, the thing that bothered me most was that he was such a jerk to his family. He was absolutely using Ofelia’s mother to get a son; there was no love in their relationship, except maybe a well-meaning try from Carmen. And, man, I don’t even know why he was trying to have a child anyway. His first sentence directed towards Ofelia was an insult, for god’s sake! But, I will say this for him: he did show some small hint that he wasn’t such a one-dimensional asshole at the end of the film, and I really did like that, that the director didn’t make him just the villain.

When Ofelia and Carmen arrive at the house in the mountains, and Carmen is quickly taken inside in order for her to deal with her illness, Ofelia immediately starts to explore the surrounding areas. A woman working for the house named Mercedes takes interest in Ofelia, I guess, and follows her into the woods. As Ofelia strolls around outside, she comes across a stone labyrinth that Mercedes says has been there forever. Ofelia is captivated by the maze, and, later, when all are asleep, she ventures outside again and begins to wind her way through, finally reaching an open area with a large well-like region in the middle. She climbs down a long, spiraling flight of stairs until she gets to this kind of dark, wet, earthy place. There, she meets a faun, who tells her that she is the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, who, long ago, went into the realm of the humans and lost her memory, becoming very ill and dying. The faun informs her that, in order to prove herself, she must perform three tasks before the full moon comes, and gives her a book to instruct her on her way.

One of the things that I really loved about Labyrinth was that the protagonist and focal point of the film was a little girl. Many (serious) films tend to focus on more adult problems, and, I guess, the filmmakers conclude that in order to tell an adult story, the main characters must be adults. Now, I must stress, Pan’s Labyrinth is not in any way, shape, or form a children’s movie. The director classifies it as a “parable, influenced by fairy tales,” but that does not mean that this is a film suited for kids. There’re some pretty graphic (gore-wise) scenes, and some genuinely “scary images,” as the MPAA would say. But, that being said, there is certainly palpable wonder impregnated in this film, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that it was seen from a child’s point-of-view. Ofelia, still very much a kid, is really into magic and fairy tales, and, as such, she attacks each problem presented to her [by the faun] with aggressiveness and a desire to succeed, two attributes that, I think, she would not possess in such stock if she were a different age.

I watched the movie twice before writing this review, and, though I noticed the camera work a little the first time, it was more pronounced on the second go. I almost never pay attention to the actual way whatever movie I’m watching was filmed, because it’s usually not that outstanding to me, an admittedly untrained eye. But, jeez, some scenes were just so well put together. Like, for instance, there was a really, really intense scene (with almost no talking) where, upon the order of the Faun, Ofelia is sent to the realm of the Pale Man, a horrific but visually-bland man-like creature who eats children. In front of the Pale Man, an enormous and delicious looking feast is laid out. Ofelia goes about her business with three fairies in tow, exploring the room in which the Pale Man sits, seemingly petrified. As Ofelia gets to one wall with three small locked doors in it, the camera focuses on a wonderful juxtaposition of characters: the Pale Man in the background, and Ofelia taking up most of the screen in the foreground. The scene was already pretty frightening, because, hello, Ofelia is, like, eleven, and classifies as a child, which seems to be the Pale Man’s sole form of sustenance, and he’s just sitting there, unmoving, apparently waiting for his time to strike as Ofelia heedlessly wanders about. But, man, this one shot absolutely pushed me over the edge. You know how, sometimes, you just want to SCREAM at the character to get the hell out of whatever predicament they’re in? Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was doing. And this was such an understated scene, too! No explosions, no shouts for help, no dark, slimy room. But it was spectacular, and scary as all get-out. I breathed a sigh of relief when she finally escaped.

Also, I must address what, in retrospect, was one of the most captivating things about the movie. There was this really neat contrast going on between the real world and Ofelia’s magical realm; both were absolutely terrifying, in my opinion, but it was interesting what Ofelia thought of each. Often bored with the violence and war of her normal life in the mountains, and scared to death of the Captain, she retreated into the faun’s world, where she was, yes, speculated to be the re-embodiment of a Princess, and that was probably nice for her, but, man, she seriously had to deal with some wicked stuff. Those tasks assigned by the faun were… well, they weren’t something that I would want to do. And, again, let me reiterate: she’s tiny. The actress was eleven when she was casted for the role. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to finish (let alone, start) the chores she had to get done at her age. But, she honestly copes quite well. She and the faun slowly bond (though, he’s creepy, too, but in kind of a soothing way), and she continues to be delighted by the presence of the fairies. It’s incredible, I think, that she could find this sort of escape from her real-life problems in such a scary place.

Pan’s Labyrinth absolutely gets five stars, two thumbs raised, and a standing ovation from me. I think I can safely say that, when next I walk out of a disappointing film, I can pop in Pan’s Labyrinth when I get home and hunker down to a good movie.

I honestly thought that To Kill A Mockingbird would be a dry, boring read when I picked it up off of a friend’s recommendation. She had had to read it for school, as an over-the-summer book from a few years before, and she said that she had enjoyed it, but I was still a little skeptical; it’s one of those things that I just tend to assume with “classics.”

I didn’t immediately realize that Mockingbird was an exception to the Famous-But-Boring Book rule. Beginning in a small southern town in the ’30s, during the Depression, Lee creates a very real sense of the era and the Deep South, through a specific vernacular that almost all characters speak, and a lazy, churchy feel present throughout the entire novel. The story follows Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the six-year-old narrator, as she slowly grows up in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, alongside her older brother, Jem, and their friend Dill, who comes into town during the summer to stay with his Aunt.

The progression in this book made it really enjoyable and real to me. Scout, Jem, and Dill spend their first summers together obsessively researching and tormenting the ghostly recluse family living in the house down the street, but they gradually grow up and out of playing pretend. Jean Louise starts to mention how sulky Jem is suddenly, how he wants to spend time on his own and how he ignores her at school, and it’s evident from the dialogue shared between the characters and from Scout’s maturing thought-process and ideas that she herself is growing up. The pacing in this story is just masterful, I think; it seems like you’re actually observing people you’ve known all your life change and grow.

Scout and Jem’s father, Atticus, a lawyer in Maycomb and the person assigned to defend a black man accused of the rape of a white woman, was probably one of the most enjoyable characters to read. Lee crafted a unique speech pattern for Atticus, a more refined and learned one, and his character depth was just staggering. Atticus is written as having very radical views on old standbies like racism and sexism, and, though not particularly outspoken or rude, he voices them often to his children, so that they don’t grow up to be as ignorant as some of the inhabitants (namely, the family who’s daughter was supposedly raped) of Maycomb.

To Kill A Mockingbird, I thought, was a largely enjoyable read, if not a little slow at times. The action is staggered and has that seemingly inescapable lazy feel even while it is occurring (though, I do not think this is a bad thing. It fits in well with the rest of the story, with the coming down and rising actions.) I would give this book maybe a 7 out of 10, because I did lose interest a couple of times, but the book successfully won me back in the end. Also, a PG-13 rating would not be out of order, I don’t think. There are some “adult themes” and very minimal language used. Overall, nothing too offensive, though.

Rob Marshall’s Chicago was a re-watch for me, and an enjoyable one at that. The film is a remake of the Broadway play of the same name, and, unlike some of it’s more unfortunate brethren, Chicago does not disappoint. I would expect that even fans of the original show would not find too many flaws in the film adaptation.

Chicago is a satirical view of prohibition-era Chicago, Illinois, with a focus on on the Vaudeville scene. It’s a glamourous romp, to be sure, and two hours of razzle-dazzle glitz, one would assume, would get old after a while. Not the case. Catherine Zeta-Jones as lead murderess and performer Velma Kelly is perfect opposite Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere (my favorite) as aspiring vaudevillian performer, Roxie Hart and successful but sleazy defense attorney, Billy Flynn, respectively.

The story revolves around Hart as she tirelessly works towards her ultimate goal: fame. An unhappy housewife, she commits adultery and, subsequently, murders her lover as he tries to leave her. She is sent off to the Cook County Jail, and, under the supervision of the corrupt Matron Mama Morton (Queen Latifah), she continues to toil for her cause. She is placed in the “Murderess’ Row” wing of the jail, where she meets Kelly and a myriad of other women, each of whom was sent to the jail for the murder of her husband or boyfriend.

Enter Billy Flynn, whom Hart’s husband hires to defend her. Flynn is famous in his own right for his unique brand of lawyering, a mix of over-the-top in-court defense of his (all female) clientèle and the method’s he uses to get the public interested in his case. Roxie achieves her well-anticipated 15 minutes of fame through Billy, as he warps her story to appeal to society’s sentiments.

Both the acting and the musical performances were stellar, I thought, and all the characters were absolutely captivating, but very selfish, each working for his own singular needs and not caring whose feet they stomped on on the way to achieving them. The only exception to this rule was Roxie’s schlub of a husband, Amos, who works, instead of for himself, for his wife, whom he loves dearly, though she does not reciprocate this love. Amos (played by John C. Reilly) was another of my favorite characters, next to Flynn. He was the only truly endearing one of the bunch, and his character was just such a sweetheart. Plus, Reilly did an exceptional job at playing well-meaning-but-dim Amos Hart.

There were definitely some small flaws in the film, but, overall, I really liked it. It captivated my attention, and I think it was entirely deserving of its one Oscar and six Academy Awards.

I don’t think there’s any particularly concise way to summarize this novel. Despite its being written in a highly simplistic style, there are layers upon layers of carefully-thought out detail and the characters are far beyond three-dimensional. (Though, strangely enough, a common trait they share is a cripplingly shallow personality.)

Invisible Monsters makes its start by thrusting the reader headfirst and without a parachute into a disaster of a wedding scene. The guests are standing on the lawn, gifts in hands, as the house goes up in Chanel no. 5-initiated flames. Dress and hair burned clean off, the bride, still inside, is leaning heavily on a shotgun with two other main protagonists standing below her- one bleeding to death from a bullet wound, the other huddling over her with scarves wrapped all the way around her face to hide the fact that she’s missing a jaw. (“Birds ate my face.”)

The story revolves around a former model and her (for lack of a better word) friends’ lives, and the entire novel is written as a non-linear recount of a Miss Brandy Alexander’s (“Queen Supreme’s”) life as she’s bleeding on the ballroom floor. I think that the skewed fashion of the writing style adds a lot to the overall appeal of the book, not that the storyline itself is in any way lacking. The extreme plot and the intensely IN YOUR FACE aspect of the novel, however, is at times starkly contrasted with the narrator’s occasional spouts of mocking clarity.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this book, especially the style in which it was written. Chuck Palahnuik, any criticisms aside (I’ve seen anything from “he’s just trying too hard” to “beyond pretentious”, though I disagree with both), truly is an incredible writer and story crafter, and this can be clearly witnessed in Invisible Monsters.

One downside to this novel is that it is certainly not an all ages-appropriate sort of book. A fair few scenes get… Pretty graphic, to say the least, and there’re a lot of curse-heavy bits all throughout the book. I’d say hard PG-13 to R, probably.

All in all, I thought that Invisible Monsters was a wonderful (if not somewhat disturbing, at times) novel, and I would recommend it to anyone who I thought could get past the “adult themes”. It’s an eye-opener and, if nothing else, a highly entertaining read.

Let me start this out saying that Synecdoche (pronounced sin-ECK-doh-kee), New York was probably one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen, and that, I think, is saying quite a bit; depending on the friend you ask, the labeling of my taste in movies is generally something along the line of “weird indie crap that nobody has ever heard of.”

The film revolves around a New York playright by the name of Caden Cotard (heh heh, get it? Like the disorder? Clever, right?) who is extremely depressed. (Note that I do not use the term “depressed” lightly. Look up the dictionary definition of it, and multiply it times twenty. You’ll get the character that Charlie Kaufman was going for.) Caden suffers from a whole boatload of terrible physical problems, and, wait for it, the cherry topper: his wife and daughter leave him for a new life in Germany without warning in the beginning.

Then, Caden receives a MacArthur Genius Grant that will allow him to make an “artistic piece of brutal realism and honesty.” He gets straight to work, casting actors as people in his real life to act out the extraordinarily mundane day-to-day happenings of the world outside of the warehouse where the entire thing is taking place. But then! Then, he casts other people to play the people who are playing the people in his life and the entire thing just got so confusing and convoluted that my attention kind of lapsed for a bit. (I have to say that I don’t find this hard to believe, in retrospect; the film was nearly two-and-a-half hours of plodding plot.)

Basically, you follow Caden’s middle-aged life as it spirals downward and as the years fly by. He absolutely pours himself into his play, and his real life relationships suffer, causing him more depression.

Personally, I really did not enjoy this movie at all. As I mentioned, it was very slow-moving, and Caden is a huge asshole that I wanted to slap silly half the time. It was, God, so depressing, too. At the end of it, I swear, I just wanted to keel over and die. I sat there afterward and just thought, Jeez, did I just not get this? Am I too dumb? Not creative enough? I mean, granted, it made me think, but it was in this self-analytical way that was 1) not constructive, and 2) I still hated the movie, even after all that self-loathing. And the oddest thing is that, when I heard about this movie, it sounded completely awesome. It really sounded like something that I would like, but the overall effect of it did not dazzle me.

Christopher’s walking, stumbling just like his cousin Blake after he had eaten too much Thanksgiving dinner.
He hasn’t sat with the family for Sunday football in over a year,
And he can’t recall his sister’s face.
She’s a blur in the windswept clouds
That fog his weary, wandering mind.