Bian Cheng Lang Zi/Bordertown Wanderer

("Bordertown Wanderer", aka "The Black Sabre" and "A Warrior's Tragedy")

I originally saw the movie version of this ("A Warrior's Tragedy"), which
piqued my interest enough to hunt down the books it was based on.
After I read the books, I tracked down the TVB serialization of the story
and watched that.

The books: A three volume set by Gu Long, set as a sequel about a generation
after his "Duo Qing Jian Ke, Wu Qing Jian" ("Romantic Swordsman, passionless
sword") (featuring Flying Dagger Li, Li Xun Huan, and the swordsman
A Fei). As I can barely read Chinese at all, I won't attempt to
critique the writing style, except to say that it's rather choppy and
distinctive to read.

It features the usual convoluted plots and crazy characters. Fu Hongxue
is kicked out of his home with only one purpose: revenge! His mother has
raised him to pursue and kill his father's killers. Apparently, his father
and his entire family (Fu Hongxue's mother was a lover, not the wife, and
Fu Hongxue himself only an infant when his father died) were murdered by
a group of masked assassins. Fu Hongxue, trained in the use of his father's
famous black sabre, now has to figure out who the assassins were and kill
them all. He seems to have one lead, which takes him to the Bordertown
and the local lord there, Ma Kongqun, of Ten Thousand Horse Hall.

Things get violent very quickly. Fu Hongxue is not the only martially
inclined visitor: there is also Yue Kai (who claims not to need a sword),
a famous thief "Flying Spider", an arrogant young lordling, a hunchbacked
assassin, and many others. When people start dying at Ten Thousand Horse
Hall, everyone is a suspect.

As for the women...there's Shen San Niang, Ma Kongqun's mistress. Ma Fang Lin,
his daughter. Cui Nong, a local prostitute. Ding Lin Ling, who's in love
with Ye Kai. Fu Hongxue ends up in a tragic relationship with Cui Nong...

Once they leave the Bordertown, Fu Hongxue starts coming across evidence
that perhaps his quest is not as black-and-white as he once thought. Maybe
there was a good reason so many people ganged up to kill his "heroic"
father? Thick-headed and gullible he may be at times (a contrast to the
quick-witted, smooth-talking Ye Kai), Fu Hongxue doggedly pursues truth
and revenge.

The most annoying thing (for me) was probably the preachiness (especially
towards the end) and the hero-worship of Li Xun Huan. While the parable-like
encounter with the Guo family was amusing in taking the inherited vengeance
obligation to ridiculous extremes (in lining up the whole family, grandparents
and grandchildren alike --- if we're going to feud, let's get it all over
with once and for all!), the lectures got old quickly, and the ending
felt cheap.

Movie: maybe 50-60 % accurate to the books.

Someone wanted more chariot chases, guns, and explosions.
The golden armor vest seems to be taken from the prequel novel series.
The cloak of invisibility...I have no idea. Maybe it really was in one
of Gu Long's other novels. The stories of the women was probably the most
mangled, followed by the Lu Xiaojia storyline (they didn't even give him
his trademark peanuts!)

I'm really very fond of the movie, actually. (Despite a few silly bits,
and the unfortunate moustache on Ye Kai.) Just watched it again. Ti Lung
as Fu Hongxue is awesome. The man has charisma.

And compared to, say, Tsui Hark's adaptation of Jin Yong's "Smiling Proud
Wanderer" (the "Swordsman" trilogy of movies), this is totally faithful
to the original story. (Why quibble about relatively minor changes, heh.)

TVB series: maybe 80-90% accurate.

Looked cheap! Ten Thousand Horse Hall looked like any other TVB "ancient"
rich guy's house. The wilderness sets and cave sets looked ridiculously
fake. Costumes on the drab side, too, and the Spiderman costume for the
"Flying Spider" takes the cake for sheer silliness. Didn't like Fu Hongxue's
hairstyle. And I watched the Mandarin dub, which in TVB serials, usually
lacks somewhat. Ha.

All those interpolated scenes! They take away from the mystery, although it
may make things easier to understand (and avoid too many scenes where
Ye Kai explains what's going on). And they often use the actual dialogue
from the books, but change the context (and the speakers, sometimes!)
which can be irritating.

Both movie and TV series made drastic changes to the ending.
In this case, I felt they made the right decision. I didn't like the book's
ending very much myself. And the story started with Fu Hongxue and his
mother. I'm glad they let him have some sort of "closure" with her.
They treated Ma Fangling a bit more sympathetically in the series, too,
and I liked the way they concluded her storyline.

Bottom line: enjoyable, but rarely brilliant, and sometimes annoying

The Prestige (book and movie)

This was a novel by Christopher Priest which was later adapted into a movie, directed by Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins", which I didn't like, and "Memento" , which I did).


It's not the secret. The secret is trivial. It's how you use the secret that's important. It's how the secret contorts your life around it. It's how the secret affects those around you. THAT matters. Deeply. That's why it doesn't matter if you know the "twist" or not. It's still a great
story. For the same reason, it doesn't matter (to the meaning of the story) that a device that works in the story might not be possible in reality.

We have two young stage magicians in Victorian England. One way or the other, they end up as bitter rivals, constantly provoking each other and spying on each other to learn the other's secrets. In the book, it starts when Borden attempts to expose Angier as a fraud (when Angier performs as a spiritualist). In the movie, the two are initially friends under the same mentor. Borden is perhaps guilty in the death of Angier's wife.

Either way, it's bound to end in tragedy.

Now add in the magic and mystique of Nikolai Tesla! It's the dawn of the modern age, and where does science begin and magic end? Which is the true performance? The man onstage, or the
man offstage? Are you watching closely? Do you see what you see or what you expect to see? Illusion, deception, obsession.

I thought the movie was a very good adaptation. It dropped most of the framing devices (with the modern-era man who finds out about the past by reading diaries and so on), but still keeping some of the diary/journal idea by having the two rivals read each other's diaries instead.

In fact, this is one of the few cases where I felt the movie version was a bit stronger!
In the book, the ending just made me go "eh? what was that? why end it that way?" (But then, I thought that about Christopher Priest's The Glamour, too.)

The movie, of course, Hollywoodized it with extra doses of drama, but that isn't always a bad thing (for a movie!). Nolan did that "end where we started, except this time the same scene means something different". Perhaps he tried a little too hard (making the movie seem pretentious or heavy-handed at times, especially the very end), but it was still excellent. I really felt for the characters, even though they were not very likeable as people. Talk about making sacrifices for your art!

Since I'd read the book first, it wasn't really a surprise. The changes weren't quite what I expected. They made the character's choices scarier, I think, and the tone as a whole was perhaps darker/more violent. And Angier's machine...I felt it made more sense for it to work (if such a thing was possible at all!) the way it did in the movie rather than the way it did in the book. It felt as if Christopher Priest wimped out on it,
and went the less troublesome path with it.

Memorable novel, memorable film!

Iconic image (movie): a bunch of Victorian top hats strewn in the woods...
(And the rows and rows of birds in cages...very unsettling. Strips the humor
away when it's birds rather than hats.)

Alien life forms! Well, aquatic insects...

A Walk around the Pond: Insects in and over the Water

by Gilbert Waldbauer

As the title says, it's a tour of life as an aquatic insect, written by an
entomologist. Beautifully illustrated (I only wish there were more! A few
diagrams might have been useful) by Meredith Waterstraat. Most aquatic insects
live in freshwater (or salt marshes near the ocean) rather than in the oceans,
where the ecological niches seem to be filled by crustaceans and such, so
it's really a walk around the pond, streams, swamps, rivers, tree holes,
puddles, inside water-filled plants, and other spaces one might not immediately
think of.

Insects live on such a different scale from humans that they are almost an
alien life form, as far as our intuitions and expectations are concerned.
The water is less turbulent, and surface tension is a major factor.
Everything: how they move, how they breathe, and how they eat, hunt,
and reproduce is strange (from the human point of view).


Waldbauer has a chapter on each aspect of aquatic insect life, starting
with a "cast of characters" introducing us to each of the orders found
in the water. Many insects only live in the water for one phase of their
existence (usually the larval and nymphal stages). The discrete changes
in insects from one form to another is in itself startling to a human. (We
keep our infants close by, and feed them our food!)

Highly recommended.

Animals are autistic?

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior

by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

Very interesting book from a different point of view than the evolutionary biologists and so on I've read more often. Temple Grandin has years of knowledge as a scientist working in the livestock industry. It's a different perspective than someone who spends her time in the field observing wild animals, or someone who conducts experiments on them. I don't necessarily agree with all her speculations and theories, but they're good ideas and worth thinking about.

People are constantly trying to find something that makes humans unique among animals. It's like a Holy Grail (and like the Holy Grail, probably a mythical object: whatever humans have, some animals out there have it too, if not to the same degree.) Here, Grandin suggests that autism in humans may point to one of those differences. "Normal" humans are blind in ways that "animals" (here meaning mostly mammals and birds) are not. Interestingly, this blindness extends to the human scientists studying animals! Autism may be a help in overcoming that blind spot, as autistic humans may lack (to a greater or lesser degree) the same types of mental abstraction that animals lack, enabling the autistic human to perceive things better from the animal's
point of view. This also helps in understanding the talents that an animal may have which humans don't.

Highly recommended. Great insights and examples. VERY sensible approach to regulating meat-packing plants. Keep it simple, focus on the goal (humane treatment of the animals) by having a short, easily quantifiable checklist, rather than drowning the issue with complicated 100-item forms and administrivia and detailed regulations, which only causes people to ignore
the whole thing. Regulate the results (unstressed animals), and let the plant take care of the implementation. The speculations about the co-evolution of humans and dogs is also fascinating. Definitely worth further research!

Animal trainers in training!

Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers
by Amy Sutherland

This book is pretty much about what it says in the title and subtitle. The
premier school referred to is the Exotic Animal Training and Managemet
program (EATM) at California's Moorpark Community College. An
interesting topic, marred by the annoying (to me) "journalistic" style of the
writing. I.e., skip about from one "character" (usually a student or
a teacher) to another, telling a bit about each with some quotes and some
background, summed up with the writer's impression of each. Here and there
she marvels at this or that, and intersperses vignettes of life at the school
with some infodumps about this or that animal or school program.

Sounds like a fascinating place, and it's interesting to read about how the
humans and animals interact and influence each other, as well as the culture
of the "hard core" animal trainers. I would have preferred a more
in-depth view, something with more focus, perhaps a book written by someone
who WAS a student there, rather than someone following them around for a
year. At the end of the book, you still feel like a tourist.
Fun but superficial.