Labyrinth Times

On a lark, I watched this movie, “Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman”, thinking it might be weird and campy – but it turned out painfully stupid and boring.  You’ll get most of it by fast forwarding to the 58:00 minute mark and catching the “50 Ft. Woman”  in the last five minutes of the film.

John Barth’s first novel, The Floating Opera may seem like a warm-up to the author’s later “post-modernist meta-fictions,” On re-reading, I see a model of what a novel can be – a new vision of everyday life, imbued with love and delight at all the world’s absurdities and pleasures.

Well-written, deliberately nuanced perspective on male sexual exploitation of vulnerable, ambitious women in a high-pressure news corporation modeled on NBC. Identifies with the victims – at last! – but how about the the poor and powerless around the world, victims of American policies left out of  the “news”?

The story of a whimsical but charming nihilist seeking revenge.  Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) works as a “consultant” for the FBI, but is perfectly candid that his real mission is to find and kill  the serial killer who murdered his family, legal procedures be damned.