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Books & Movies, Jan-March 2013
Books Read:
3/10 Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment
2/28 Cory Doctorow: Homeland
2/23 The Hobbit
1/27 Susan Collins: Mockingjay
Movies Seen:
3/16 The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
3/2 Die Hard 4
2/17 Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
2/9 Warm Bodies
2/7 Life of Pi
2/2 Parker
1/30 The Sessions
1/8 Les Miserables
1/5 Django Unchained
Monstrous Regiment. I was in Phoenix in January to do some work on my car with my dad before the start of the semester and a friend of mine called to say that he was going to run a Three Musketeers RPG session. My first thought was to do a woman posing as a man in the musketeers, so I ran out and bought a copy of Terry's book based on that subject. I ended up re-reading some Dumas for the game, ran a man as a man, and had a huge amount of fun. The game system was Fortune's Fool, which uses a tarot deck instead of dice for all conflicts, and I'm a little ticked at myself because if I had used my special ability I might have been able to kill a dragon. Oh, well. Anyway, Monstrous Regiment was a very interesting read. I got it when it first came out, and to my memory, I wasn't too thrilled with it, I thought it one of the weaker Disc World books. But re-reading it I liked it a lot. It had some very interesting cultural observations that plainly did not stick in my memory on my first read of it. Recommended.
Homeland. Cory Doctorow's successor to the YA novel Little Brother. It's a return to M1k3y and his friends, and time has passed and they have changed and matured, at least some. The economy has tanked and Marcus can't find or keep a job then has an unusual encounter at Burning Man and gains possession of a flash drive that has more destructive documents than Bradley Manning's Wikileaks releases. The woman who gave it to him, former friend/enemy Mashs, tells him that if she disappears, publish the documents. Naturally she is abducted moments later. This time Marcus isn't up against the government, he's up against a private Blackwater-ish mercenary corporation that has a lot to lose. Doctorow has an interesting way of making his characters face tough decisions. While I liked it and it had lots of cool things in it, such as the Maker revolution, I thought Little Brother was maybe the better of the two. Perhaps I'll read them back to back and see what I think then. Like all of Doctorow's books, it's available free off his web site.
The Hobbit. I picked this up while in Phoenix in January. I had been intending to re-read it before the movie released last December, but that didn't happen. I finally finished it, mainly to get more of the story refreshed in my head, also because my wife is writing an extremely good slash fanfic that fills in some of the holes in the movie, and she's talking about things that I just didn't remember. The book has a very different feel from the movie, it's much less epic and a lot more child-oriented. You can sort of feel Tolkien developing it as a story that he read to his kids, which he did. It's kind of odd comparing the tone of the original book to the written Lord of the Rings trilogy to the (now) four movies, lots to think about and discuss.
Mockingjay. The final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy. The series takes a very grim turn as the revolution goes in to full swing. Katniss has a lot of problems, and I like the way Collins has her wrestling with them. I quite liked the ending and am really looking forward to seeing how the next two movies deal with the books.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Another movie that my wife just wasn't interested in, I really like the fact that she works nights and I can go off and see movies like this without feeling guilty. I LOVED this film! Lots of good stuff, starting with an amazing cast: Steve Carrell, Steve Buscemi (who, since this wasn't a Coen Brothers film, doesn't die), Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, and Jim Carrey. It's the story of two magicians, Carrell & Buscemi, who met as kids and started doing magic to try and, more or less, gain some leverage over bullies. They make it big, get a huge show in Vegas, and are doing well until along comes Carrey who is doing sort of a Chris Angel: Mind Freak act. They have a blow-up after a stunt goes wrong and Buscemi is badly injured, they break up, and Carrell can't maintain the act on his own. It's a buddy flick, a redemption flick, and lots of silly fun with some good magic thrown in. David Copperfield makes an appearance. I was pleasantly surprised by Jim Carrey: in the past I didn't like him overall, but he seems to be maturing and taking on much more interesting roles. I look forward to seeing him in Kick Ass 2.
Die Hard 4(?). At least I think it's the fourth movie, I could have missed one. I saw this because I have a certain fondness for the first movie, and it looked interesting. Yes, it's just another shoot-'em-up, but this one's different: it's set in Russia! Yippee. The visuals were very neat, and I think they might have set a record for the most cars destroyed in a movie. There was a lot more to the story than I expected, and they did a fairly good job of developing it. But it's still just an excuse for good guys shooting bad guys. I think the best thing about this movie was the preview for Red 2, which I really liked, and it looks like the original cast is returning sans Morgan Freeman.
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. It's interesting how some old literature is gaining a second life through TV series like Grimm and Once Upon A Time and Lost Girls. I knew this was going to be a bad movie, just based on the masks and the over the top stunt work, but it looked like it would be a bit of fun so we went and saw it. Like Die Hard, it's a pure fluff/popcorn movie, check your brain at the door before entering. The movie was somewhat predictable: I don't purposely set out to figure out what's coming next, I think script writers are weaker of late. The one thing that really bugged me was the age difference between Hansel and Gretel: when you see them as kids when their father takes them in to the woods, they looked like they were within a couple of years of each other, and I seemed to think that Gretel was older than Hansel. Then, as adults, Hansel is a good decade older and they don't bother trying to explain why he's so much older than his sister. Pure fluff, but decent as B movies go.
Warm Bodies. My wife and I LOVED this movie, definitely one of the better ones that we've seen of late. Definitely a date movie/chick flick, but a quite nice romance/zombie movie. I loved the fact that the main zombie, R, has this really rich internal dialogue talking about his life and what he's thinking, but then all he can normally articulate is the typical zombie groans. Features straight lifts from Romeo & Juliette, and who can fault John Malkovich as the President/Zombie Hater In Chief. Quite a good little redemption movie.
Life of Pi. We missed this when it first came out, and following a doctor appointment in El Paso it happened to be showing there before the Academy Awards, so we were finally able to catch it on the big screen. This was a very impressive movie with great visuals and a complex story that you're never really able to say "this was the reality and that was the fantasy", which I liked. I liked it, but for me, it has pretty much zero repeat value.
Parker. I hate to say *meh* about a Jason Statham movie, but, *meh*. A revenge flick about a crook with a code of honor who is almost killed by former associates when they try to force him to violate said code, he then must hunt them down and make them pay the price. Frankly, I think I would have been happier staying home, making popcorn, and re-watching The Transporter (the first one) for the umpteenth time. The Transporter was a much more interesting character, definitely a rogue but a much more focused one and it wasn't just shooting/beating people up. But Luc Besson is, IMHO, one of the best filmmakers out there.
The Sessions. Like Warm Bodies, my wife and I LOVED this film. It's a biopic about a man who had polio, is very weak, and sleeps in an iron lung. He's a writer, and is brought in on a series of articles about handicapped people and their sex lives, and he decides to see a sex therapist/surrogate to lose his virginity. Excellent and touching story, and William H. Macy as a long-haired Catholic priest in whom the main character confides is absolutely brilliant. While this is not a movie I would watch often, it's definitely one that I can see buying as an impulse purchase if I came across a used copy.
Les Miserables. I've never read the book or seen previous adaptations, but my wife has, so we caught it. I won't bother with describing the details as it's a fairly well-known work, but we liked it. I thought the singing and visuals were very good, and they seemed to pay attention to period details. After the movie we went to the local book store which happened to have a copy of the 1998 Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush version, which we watched that night. It was interesting seeing the two versions back-to-back and comparing the subtle differences in the stories. I think the musical was much more emotionally tugging, simply because of the evocative power of music and singing. But both were quite good.
Django Unchained. I freely admit I have a soft spot for Tarrantino, and I was not disappointed. I thought it was an excellent revenge flick, and it covered a lot of ground and twisted a lot of tropes throughout the film. I saw it without my wife, and it's one that I'll ultimately buy and shelve next to Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction and occasionally watch when my wife is at work. If you like QT's work, you'll probably like it if you haven't seen it yet.
3/10 Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment
2/28 Cory Doctorow: Homeland
2/23 The Hobbit
1/27 Susan Collins: Mockingjay
Movies Seen:
3/16 The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
3/2 Die Hard 4
2/17 Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
2/9 Warm Bodies
2/7 Life of Pi
2/2 Parker
1/30 The Sessions
1/8 Les Miserables
1/5 Django Unchained
Monstrous Regiment. I was in Phoenix in January to do some work on my car with my dad before the start of the semester and a friend of mine called to say that he was going to run a Three Musketeers RPG session. My first thought was to do a woman posing as a man in the musketeers, so I ran out and bought a copy of Terry's book based on that subject. I ended up re-reading some Dumas for the game, ran a man as a man, and had a huge amount of fun. The game system was Fortune's Fool, which uses a tarot deck instead of dice for all conflicts, and I'm a little ticked at myself because if I had used my special ability I might have been able to kill a dragon. Oh, well. Anyway, Monstrous Regiment was a very interesting read. I got it when it first came out, and to my memory, I wasn't too thrilled with it, I thought it one of the weaker Disc World books. But re-reading it I liked it a lot. It had some very interesting cultural observations that plainly did not stick in my memory on my first read of it. Recommended.
Homeland. Cory Doctorow's successor to the YA novel Little Brother. It's a return to M1k3y and his friends, and time has passed and they have changed and matured, at least some. The economy has tanked and Marcus can't find or keep a job then has an unusual encounter at Burning Man and gains possession of a flash drive that has more destructive documents than Bradley Manning's Wikileaks releases. The woman who gave it to him, former friend/enemy Mashs, tells him that if she disappears, publish the documents. Naturally she is abducted moments later. This time Marcus isn't up against the government, he's up against a private Blackwater-ish mercenary corporation that has a lot to lose. Doctorow has an interesting way of making his characters face tough decisions. While I liked it and it had lots of cool things in it, such as the Maker revolution, I thought Little Brother was maybe the better of the two. Perhaps I'll read them back to back and see what I think then. Like all of Doctorow's books, it's available free off his web site.
The Hobbit. I picked this up while in Phoenix in January. I had been intending to re-read it before the movie released last December, but that didn't happen. I finally finished it, mainly to get more of the story refreshed in my head, also because my wife is writing an extremely good slash fanfic that fills in some of the holes in the movie, and she's talking about things that I just didn't remember. The book has a very different feel from the movie, it's much less epic and a lot more child-oriented. You can sort of feel Tolkien developing it as a story that he read to his kids, which he did. It's kind of odd comparing the tone of the original book to the written Lord of the Rings trilogy to the (now) four movies, lots to think about and discuss.
Mockingjay. The final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy. The series takes a very grim turn as the revolution goes in to full swing. Katniss has a lot of problems, and I like the way Collins has her wrestling with them. I quite liked the ending and am really looking forward to seeing how the next two movies deal with the books.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Another movie that my wife just wasn't interested in, I really like the fact that she works nights and I can go off and see movies like this without feeling guilty. I LOVED this film! Lots of good stuff, starting with an amazing cast: Steve Carrell, Steve Buscemi (who, since this wasn't a Coen Brothers film, doesn't die), Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, and Jim Carrey. It's the story of two magicians, Carrell & Buscemi, who met as kids and started doing magic to try and, more or less, gain some leverage over bullies. They make it big, get a huge show in Vegas, and are doing well until along comes Carrey who is doing sort of a Chris Angel: Mind Freak act. They have a blow-up after a stunt goes wrong and Buscemi is badly injured, they break up, and Carrell can't maintain the act on his own. It's a buddy flick, a redemption flick, and lots of silly fun with some good magic thrown in. David Copperfield makes an appearance. I was pleasantly surprised by Jim Carrey: in the past I didn't like him overall, but he seems to be maturing and taking on much more interesting roles. I look forward to seeing him in Kick Ass 2.
Die Hard 4(?). At least I think it's the fourth movie, I could have missed one. I saw this because I have a certain fondness for the first movie, and it looked interesting. Yes, it's just another shoot-'em-up, but this one's different: it's set in Russia! Yippee. The visuals were very neat, and I think they might have set a record for the most cars destroyed in a movie. There was a lot more to the story than I expected, and they did a fairly good job of developing it. But it's still just an excuse for good guys shooting bad guys. I think the best thing about this movie was the preview for Red 2, which I really liked, and it looks like the original cast is returning sans Morgan Freeman.
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. It's interesting how some old literature is gaining a second life through TV series like Grimm and Once Upon A Time and Lost Girls. I knew this was going to be a bad movie, just based on the masks and the over the top stunt work, but it looked like it would be a bit of fun so we went and saw it. Like Die Hard, it's a pure fluff/popcorn movie, check your brain at the door before entering. The movie was somewhat predictable: I don't purposely set out to figure out what's coming next, I think script writers are weaker of late. The one thing that really bugged me was the age difference between Hansel and Gretel: when you see them as kids when their father takes them in to the woods, they looked like they were within a couple of years of each other, and I seemed to think that Gretel was older than Hansel. Then, as adults, Hansel is a good decade older and they don't bother trying to explain why he's so much older than his sister. Pure fluff, but decent as B movies go.
Warm Bodies. My wife and I LOVED this movie, definitely one of the better ones that we've seen of late. Definitely a date movie/chick flick, but a quite nice romance/zombie movie. I loved the fact that the main zombie, R, has this really rich internal dialogue talking about his life and what he's thinking, but then all he can normally articulate is the typical zombie groans. Features straight lifts from Romeo & Juliette, and who can fault John Malkovich as the President/Zombie Hater In Chief. Quite a good little redemption movie.
Life of Pi. We missed this when it first came out, and following a doctor appointment in El Paso it happened to be showing there before the Academy Awards, so we were finally able to catch it on the big screen. This was a very impressive movie with great visuals and a complex story that you're never really able to say "this was the reality and that was the fantasy", which I liked. I liked it, but for me, it has pretty much zero repeat value.
Parker. I hate to say *meh* about a Jason Statham movie, but, *meh*. A revenge flick about a crook with a code of honor who is almost killed by former associates when they try to force him to violate said code, he then must hunt them down and make them pay the price. Frankly, I think I would have been happier staying home, making popcorn, and re-watching The Transporter (the first one) for the umpteenth time. The Transporter was a much more interesting character, definitely a rogue but a much more focused one and it wasn't just shooting/beating people up. But Luc Besson is, IMHO, one of the best filmmakers out there.
The Sessions. Like Warm Bodies, my wife and I LOVED this film. It's a biopic about a man who had polio, is very weak, and sleeps in an iron lung. He's a writer, and is brought in on a series of articles about handicapped people and their sex lives, and he decides to see a sex therapist/surrogate to lose his virginity. Excellent and touching story, and William H. Macy as a long-haired Catholic priest in whom the main character confides is absolutely brilliant. While this is not a movie I would watch often, it's definitely one that I can see buying as an impulse purchase if I came across a used copy.
Les Miserables. I've never read the book or seen previous adaptations, but my wife has, so we caught it. I won't bother with describing the details as it's a fairly well-known work, but we liked it. I thought the singing and visuals were very good, and they seemed to pay attention to period details. After the movie we went to the local book store which happened to have a copy of the 1998 Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush version, which we watched that night. It was interesting seeing the two versions back-to-back and comparing the subtle differences in the stories. I think the musical was much more emotionally tugging, simply because of the evocative power of music and singing. But both were quite good.
Django Unchained. I freely admit I have a soft spot for Tarrantino, and I was not disappointed. I thought it was an excellent revenge flick, and it covered a lot of ground and twisted a lot of tropes throughout the film. I saw it without my wife, and it's one that I'll ultimately buy and shelve next to Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction and occasionally watch when my wife is at work. If you like QT's work, you'll probably like it if you haven't seen it yet.