Movies and Books

Journalist Jim Cazaviel learns about THE STONING OF SORAYA M (2008) while visiting post-revolutionary Iran and hearing Soraya’s sister explain how her refusal to give her husband a divorce led to a kangaroo court proving that she was sleeping with the man she cleaned house for. This is competently executed, but too predictable and too heavy on the message to work for me. “Muzzles should be for women, not dogs.”
SALT (2010) would have been a good one to work into Screen Enemies of the American Way with CIA agent Angelina Jolie pitted against a decades-old network of Soviet sleeper agents about to launch their plans for Day X. A lively actioner with a good turn by Liev Schrieber as Jolie’s partner. “Mecca?”

THE TRIADS OF IRELAND is a 1906 collection of Irish sayings (though as the compiler notes, nowhere near a complete one), emphasizing less of the legendary material I’m familiar with (such as the Three Dreadful Uncoverings) in return for more folksy data such as the Three Impudent Ones (“The young who mock the old, the healthy who mock the sick and the wise man who mocks a fool.”) and the Four Deaths of Judgment (lack of precedent, lack of knowledge, lack of forfeiture and the presence of falsehood). Interesting, if hardly essential.
PRESIDENT FU MANCHU makes me wonder if Richard Condon is a Rohmer fan, since The Manchurian Candidate uses the same scheme the Devil Doctor does here (brainwashed assassin kills candidate, second in-command steps in), leaving special federal agent Nayland Smith increasingly worried that the next president will be Fu Manchu’s puppets. A friend of mine has told me that Rohmer found the political situation in China increasingly difficult to work with as he went along (eventually convincing him to replace Fu Manchu with Sumuru, a female schemer with no national ties), which may explain why Fu Manchu’s stated goal here is a utopian one-world government rather than his usual Chinese imperialism; I imagine that would be a rather implausible goal with Manchuria under Japan’s heel at this point, unless Fu wanted to operate out of Tokyo.
WAR WITHOUT MERCY: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John S. Dower is an excellent look at how both the Japanese and Americans stereotyped the Other during WW II as (at various points) subhuman, superhuman, morally bankrupt and totally inscrutable. Dower discusses both sides racial beliefs and propaganda (Japan generally had a mystical vision of racial superiority coming closer to German “volk” than American pseudoscientific rationales) and how it threatened to undercut both sides’ claims to be fighting for a Greater Good (American claims of Equality For All and Japan’s Asia for Asians) and the brutality which developed in the field. Dower also ponders how the same stereotypes may have helped our amicable postwar relationship (the stereotype of Japanese as childlike easily shaded into America as the “big brother”) only to see old issues flare up again when Japan started outpacing us economically in the 1980s. Very good.
Mary Gentle’s ILARIO: THE GOLDEN LION—A Story of the First History, Part One is set in her ongoing fantasy world where Carthage never fell (though it is under some sort of a curse) thanks to Hannibal forging peace with Rome; this particularly story focuses on Ilario, a Frankish hermaphrodite embroiled reluctantly in court politics (“The duke must either acknowledge fathering a monster or that his wife put the horns on him.”) before becoming entangled in the schemes of a spy for the Egyptian government-in-exile and a painter’s efforts to found a new school. A bit too rambling, but still quite good (and she manages to keep from confusing me, despite my never dipping into her works before)
PATRIOT WITCH by C.C. Finlay is the first in a trilogy wherein a Massachusetts farmer at the start of the Revolution finds himself dragged into a struggle between a coven of American witches and an international cabal putting its weight behind the Redcoats (“It’s not in our interest for the British Empire to grow weaker.”) which forces him to develop the latent powers he inherited from his Salem ancestors. Not bad, but it didn’t hook me enough as either fantasy or historical novel to work for me.