Favorites of 2016

Ed Ruscha at the de Young, Seonna Hong at Hashimoto Contemporary,
Yuri on Ice, All My Puny Sorrows, The Makropulos Case 

It's no secret that 2016 wasn't great. But here are the pieces of art and entertainment, from an ice skating anime to paintings in Milan, that I loved in this crazy year. 

Books

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews: One of my favorite books and one of my favorite movies this year are about suicide, but both in an oddly hopeful way. In All My Puny Sorrows, two middle-aged Mennonite sisters - struggling writer Yolandi and renowned pianist Elfreida - grapple with Elfreida's suicidal ideation and their family's long history of mental illness. This sounds like a dreary premise, but Toews's novel is full of warmth, humor, and fierce love. In a highlight, Yolandi furiously gives her sister the kind of defense most depressed people long for, but never get.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood: As a The Tempest superfan, I was excited for Margaret Atwood's novel take on the Shakespeare play. The resulting work, Hag-Seed, is inventive and entertaining (if not terribly deep). When a smarmy board member removes egotistical but dedicated Felix from his role as artistic director of a theatre festival, Felix goes into hiding. But when he finds a job teaching Shakespeare to inmates at a local prison, he realizes how he could have his revenge.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray: Set seven-ish years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this eerily topical Star Wars novel captures, from Senator Leia Organa's point of view, the political tensions and escalating disasters that make way for the rise of the First Order.

Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie: A spaceship trapped in a human body teams up with a drug-addicted former colleague in a quest for revenge: this is the story Ann Leckie tells in three beautiful page-turners. The trilogy is a masterclass in world-building; a breath-taking tour of imaginary planets, space stations, and cultures. Characters like measured, compassionate, quietly determined Breq; the sometimes heroic, sometimes a hot mess Seivarden; and zany, endlessly curious Translator Zeiat become quick favorites.

After dutifully carrying out a devastating order she wishes she hadn't and then losing her omniscience in a betrayal, former spaceship artificial intelligence system Breq tirelessly plots a course that will take her to the evil leader of the empire she once served. Along the way she gains companions and rights various social justice wrongs. The vision Leckie presents of a compassionate, justice-focused way of governing is enticing and needed, but her didactic impulse can get distracting as the trilogy continues (even on the climactic brink of a potentially existence-ending war, a lot of time and energy is devoted to browbeating an emotionally unstable character over a microaggression, for example).

Older Books I Read or Re-Read

Grace Marks (L), the subject of Atwood's novel

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood: One of Atwood's finest, Alias Grace is based on real murders that happened near Toronto in 1843. Told by various narrators, newspaper clippings, and even some poetry, Atwood imagines the build-up to the crimes; the lengthy aftermath; and most importantly, the precarious and complicated lives of female servants.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: I revisited this classic on a whim, and got a little obsessed. (Bonus: on Halloween, I scored a reduced price ticket to San Francisco Ballet's forthcoming production of a ballet based on the novel!)

The Debacle (Le Debacle) by Emile Zola: Something I'm writing has required me to do a lot of research on the Franco-Prussian War, which lead to Zola's The Debacle. Because of this research I already knew the novel's ending, but I got so invested in the characters involved that I hoped I had misread it. I hadn't. :( The translation I read, by Leonard Tancock, was distracting (he makes the French peasants talk like English cockneys for some reason, like with them saying "tuppence" and everything), but the story of two Frances represented by two men who form an unlikely friendship on the battlefield is still powerful.

Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre and The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole: I read Zofloya for the Venetian setting when gearing up for a trip to Venice, and had no idea going in just how bonkers the 1806 Gothic novel would be. It is very bonkers, with murders, affairs, magic, kidnappings, and lovers clasping each other on top of a mountain while lightning flashes around them. But then I went back to what is considered the first Gothic novel, the 1764 The Castle of Otranto, which starts with a teenager getting killed on his wedding day by a giant flying helmet. That definitely takes the bonkers gold. Reading these made me better understand Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, her 1817 novel in which a teenage heroine who devours these types of books sees Gothic drama in everything around her.

Movies

Arrival

Swiss Army Man: This bizarre, gross-out indie about a depressed man and a corpse is also deeply affecting.

Moonlight: "That shit was perfect," announced a man behind me when the end credits started to roll. It's hard to argue with that assessment of Barry Jenkins's reflective portrait in three acts of a gay boy growing to manhood in Miami's mix of drugs, danger, and beauty.

Arrival: I was a bigger mess during this movie than in 50/50, The Fault in Our Stars, or Liz in September, and cancer wasn't even mentioned. I cried at the beginning of the movie. I cried in the middle of the movie. I cried at the end of the movie. This film about a linguist hired to communicate with recently landed, cephalopod-like aliens is based on the Ted Chiang short story, "The Story of Your Life," and I'd suggest avoiding spoilers.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople: New Zealand director Taika Waititi, unlike many people, presumably had a good 2016. Not only was he filming Thor: Ragnarok, a hopefully lighter addition to the increasingly bogged-down MCU, but his adventure-comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople was released. When it looks like Ricky - a city-raised foster kid who has finally found home at a rural farm - will be returned to the system, he and his cantankerous foster parent go on the run in the New Zealand bush.

Midnight Special: I am going to be totally honest and admit that I 100% saw this because Adam Driver is in it. He plays an awkward, studious government agent who is tracking down a boy, Alton, rumored to have strange powers. Also looking for the boy are representatives from the cult in which Alton was raised. Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst are Alton's parents, and chameleonic Joel Edgerton is a friend helping them flee. Like other artsy sci-fi films Arrival and Under the Skin, Midnight Special spends long moments lingering on its Earthen landscapes, in this case the American South at night. The shots of headlight-filled highways and glowing gas stations reminded me a lot of the Ed Ruscha show held at the de Young this year (below).

TV

Yuri on Ice: I'm not a big TV watcher, but I watched my usual stuff this year: South Park, Gotham, Drunk History, hours of HGTV in the background, etc. But what completely captured my heart (and judging my twitter feed, the hearts of girls from Japan to Mexico)? Ice skating anime Yuri on Ice.

Theater

Morfydd Clark and Janet McTeer in Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Donmar Warehouse: Josie Rourke and the Donmar Warehouse are British national treasures we're sometimes allowed access to via National Theatre Live. I loved Rourke's take on Coriolanus a few years back, and her production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel, was another stunner. (The show eventually made it to Broadway, but I saw it via telecast at the Lark Theater in Larkspur.) My favorite aspect of this production was how Rourke made use of what we know but the characters and Laclos did not: that in just a few years, the upper class's lives of luxurious boredom and bored excess would be upended by the French Revolution. As the play progresses, the sumptuous set is stripped bare, mirroring the protagonists' pretense and foretelling the storm to come. 

Much Ado About Nothing - Cal Shakes: This gender-bending, cater-waiter take on one of my favorite Shakespeare plays worked marvelously. 

King Lear - PacRep: I had no idea what to expect when my family decided to see some local theater while on a trip to Monterey, and was blown away by the caliber of acting and set design in this King Lear. 

The Makropulos Case - San Francisco Opera: The image of Nadja Michael in a Pierrot costume was enough to get me through the door for this 1926 Czech opera about a 300-year-old superstar looking to further extend her life. Michael's charisma makes the piece work, but I also truly touched by the story of the jaded diva and the everyday people who have been embroiled in a generations-long legal conflict partly of her making. 

Art

Detail from Seonna Hong's "Brotherhood of Men"

Musee Massena - Charlotte Salomon: Vie? Ou theatre?: The Musee Massena in Nice, France, celebrated the work of a young artist who once sought refuge nearby from Nazism.

Palazzo Reale - Simbolismo: When my sister and I stopped in Milan for the night on our way from Nice to Venice, we didn't do much research beforehand and didn't know what to expect. Along with the Duomo and finding the perfect duck umbrella, this exhibition of the beauty, weirdness, and sometimes gaudiness of the Symbolism movement was a highlight.

Fine Arts Museums San Francisco - Ed Ruscha and the Great American West & Wild West: Plains to the Pacific: The de Young's Ruscha show focused on the artist's work capturing both the sprawl and emptiness of the American Southwest. Its sister exhibition at the Legion of Honor was a clear-eyed survey of the West through many artists.

Hashimoto Contemporary - Seonna Hong, In Our Nature: I was immediately taken by Hong's intriguing images of youths exploring minimalist landscapes in pinks, greens, and grays. I even ended up buying a 2.5 x 2.5" painting - an addition to my tiny collection of tiny original art.

Ancillary Mercy, Swiss Army Man, Bloodline,
Moonlight, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Previous Favorites:
Favorites of 2015
Favorites of 2014


Images:
Header and footer collages made in LiveCollage
Grace Marks: Murderpedia 
Les Liaisons Dangereuses: photo by Johann Persson
Seonna Hong: my photo of Hong's painting "Brotherhood of Men"

Bloodline by Claudia Gray: a Star Wars Novel

I needed this. 

Semi-official Star Wars holiday May 4th (May the Fourth be with you) was celebrated in its earliest hours by me by reading. I bought Claudia Gray's Bloodline on May 3rd, the day it came out, and read it in more or less one sitting. I started the book on the bus ride home, went straight from the bus stop to bed to read, and stayed in bed until finished. Clearly I was quite swept up!

Ok, I did pause to check the news; the big story was that Ted Cruz had dropped out of the race and the GOP was in chaos, which was a little surreal considering the book's material.

Now that I've had some time to reflect on this political thriller centered on Princess/Senator/General Leia Organa and its drastic reframing of the perceived pre-The Force Awakens timeline, I have some vaguely organized thoughts.

Warning: everything beyond "basic summary" is 100% spoilers.

Basic Summary

The government the Rebellion risked everything for has created a few decades of peace, but since the illness and retirement of leader Mon Motha, it has descended into indulgence, inaction, and partisan politics. It seems impossible to find a system of government that can continuously serve everyone well - just like real life!

Middle-aged Senator Leia Organa is disillusioned and plans to quit. But before she leaves government, she agrees to investigate a lead about a possible new crime boss. Soon she realizes that this new organization goes far beyond gambling and racketeering. Leia must assemble a team of her own staff and across-the-aisle allies to identify and stop this new threat - all while being haunted by memories of her villainous birth father, Darth Vader, and her noble adopted father, Bail Organa.

The novel by Claudia Gray takes ideas and guidelines from Lucasfilm creative executive Pablo Hidalgo and his team, senior editor Jennifer Heddle, and upcoming Episode VIII director Rian Johnson.

Spoilers ahead!

Politics and Characters

Leia: Gray has received lots of kudos for her characterization of Leia, and with good reason. Leia in Bloodline is a character we don't see often: a middle-aged, female action hero. She's tough, caring, but tired - she's been working for the good of the galaxy since her teen years, and has persevered in spite of multiple, devastating losses. Gray truly puts the destruction of Alderaan in its horrific context. She also makes clear how and why Leia and Luke share such different feelings regarding their late birth father, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker.

And Gray's take on the infamous "slave Leia" scene and Jabba the Hutt's death is amazing. It involves the nickname "Huttslayer" and the space version of "the weird part of YouTube."

The Senate: The politics in Bloodline are very on-point and believable. Reading about the partisan gridlock in the first few pages immediately brought John Boehner's teary face to mind, but the two "factions," the Centrists and Populists, aren't exactly carbon copies of America's Republicans and Democrats. The Centrists, while more Republican in nature (they love the military industrial complex and the death penalty), also want a strong central government. Meanwhile the Populists, although liberal, have more of a Republican "states' rights" stance.

Ransolm Casterfo: The snazzily dressed young Centrist and collector of Imperial artifacts strikes up a rivalry - and then friendship - with mature Populist Leia. While they never cross into "affair" territory, certain scenes had "Mrs. Robinson" playing in my head - especially their late-night video chat when Leia's in her housecoat and Ransolm's in his sweaty gym clothes. Hot damn. But seriously, although Ransolm was apparently cut from The Force Awakens, Gray has made him a breakout character here.

Here's to you, Senator Organa.

Lady Carise: Royalty-obsessed senator Lady Carise Sindian is gradually revealed to be the book's true villain, but even Leia doesn't know how far her scheming goes. A Centrist, Carise goads Ransolm into publicly revealing that Leia's father is Darth Vader (a fact not even Leia's son Ben knew), then has Ransolm disposed of. We learn that she is the senate contact for the First Order, the shadowy organization rising from the ashes of the Empire.

Will we eventually see Carise in the movies? Ben/Kylo Ren working alongside her biggest political enemy would definitely be another twist of the knife for Leia.

Korrie: Did you care about Korr Sella, the politician we saw two seconds of in The Force Awakens right when General Hux of the First Order blows up Hosnian Prime? Well, now you've gotten to know her as an optimistic teen intern. And she's dead. :(

Everyone is dead: And guess who else is dead by The Force Awakens? Pretty much everyone new you met in this book! The only pilots we see in both Bloodline and The Force Awakens are old-timer Nien Nunb and newbie "Snap" Wexley, so it seems safe to say that terminally ill Greer and wet-behind-the-ears Joph are both dead following some sort of The Fault in Our Star Wars romance. 

Unless scapegoated senator Ransolm escaped the death penalty he himself signed into law, he's dead too. Also gone with Hosnian Prime: all of Leia's politician friends and the statue of Bail Organa she was so proud of.

Dammit, Hux!

Timeline

Bloodline, which is set 6-7 years before The Force Awakens, really shook up the timeline fans had generally assumed from the small hints the movie gave us. Here are the biggest revelations.

The marriage: Han and Leia are living apart, but still married and in love in Bloodline. So when they reunite in The Force Awakens, they haven't actually been separated for too long. Leia stating in the film that she lost both Han and Ben when she sent Ben away had audiences thinking their relationship had gone south much earlier.

Nobody likes you when you're 23: Most surprising to me was that at around age 23, Ben Solo is still Ben Solo - not Kylo Ren. We know Snoke has been "watching" Ben since birth, and most had assumed Ben had left his family for Snoke and led the second Jedi massacre in his teens. But no, in his early twenties, he's still safely with Uncle Luke - either because he actually came to like living with Luke, is waiting to betray Luke on Snoke's orders, or is under some sort of space conservatorship like a space Britney Spears.

Han and Leia asked me to babysit. Said they'd be back by 10.

What's in a name: That Ben has possibly been under Luke's guardianship from childhood (the script, novelization, and YA novelization of The Force Awakens all mention that the first time Han sees Ben grown up is on Starkiller) all the way to young adulthood got me thinking about his name. In the now-scrapped "Expanded Universe," Luke (and Mara Jade) had a son, Ben Skywalker, so it was surprising when that name was given in this new story to Han and Leia's son (who is basically Jacen Solo from the EU). Maybe the name Ben reflects that Luke has raised him?

Sorry, Crylo: Because really, Han and Leia have pretty much moved on from Ben by Bloodline. It's unclear when exactly things went wrong (we learn that Ben was once a happy, normal child with friends), but at some point Leia and Han decided that they "couldn't" parent Ben, sent him to Luke, and filled the hole by mentoring other kids (politics-minded youth for Leia, young pilots for Han). Communication with their son is sporadic, and they rarely discuss him even with each other. He's with Luke, and that's that.

If you see our son...ask him what his name is again.

The Jedi: There's zero mention of the Jedi Order we learned Luke created and Kylo Ren destroyed in The Force Awakens. We know Luke and Ben are traveling during Bloodline, but they seem to be on their own. Has Luke not started his new Jedi academy yet?

New possible order of events: Ben learns from the damn news that his grandpa was Darth Vader, freaks out because he links his parents' fear of his powers and sending him away with his heritage (he's not wrong), runs away from Luke to Snoke, becomes Kylo Ren, and returns briefly to destroy Luke's new Jedi school. And meanwhile, Rey...

Rey: We get nada on Rey, which actually tells us a lot about Rey. This book throws a huge wrench in the "Rey is Luke's daughter" idea. Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed on twitter that Rey has been on Jakku for awhile during Bloodline, so she wasn't brought there in the aftermath of the Jedi massacre and wasn't even ever at Luke's Jedi academy. Unless Rey is a daughter Luke doesn't know about, she's someone else's kid.

Although we now know (I think?) nothing like this speculated scene by Jenny Dolfen ever happened, it's still frickin' gorgeous.

TFW your parents don't want you and you learn your grandpa was evil from
space twitter but then Andy Serkis gives you your dead grandpa's head and
puts you in mangement. 

So, those are my thoughts and speculations. We only have to wait until December 2017 to maybe find out the answers to our questions! >:(

My childhood music box with two childhood treasures it stores
Not pictured: plastic horse with missing tail, Ben

Image info:
Note: promotional material
Ackbar: StarWars.com
Leia: Wookieepedia
Korrie: Wookieepedia
Luke: Geek
Leia and Han: Disneyexaminer
Knights of Ren: ScreenRant
Leia and Han on lovely fairy music box: my own pic