Monthly Archives: November 2010

Sci Fi/Fantasy: Ice Song, by Kirsten Imani Kasai

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This book was SO GOOD, I find myself very reluctant to return it the library. What if I NEED to read it again, some more, incessantly, every night?!?! The lead character, Sorykah, is a mother of two kidnapped babies, an ice-drilling engineer…and a Trader who can switch back and forth between genders. Her world is also populated by Somatics, people who are part human/part animal, and her search for the twins finds her making unexpected alliances.

As with so many books I love, it was rich in detail to the point of tactility; the characters were heartbreakingly real in all their aches and pains and loves and hates. I believed in the world and the story and the quest and the emotions. It all came alive.

Apparently there is a sequel coming out in July. Maybe I’ll just read this a few more times before then.

DVD: Taking Chance

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Calm. Slow. Elegaic.

I cried approximately 100 times during the 78 minutes it took to watch this flick.

I would say this movie* should be required viewing for those deciding to send our young’uns off to war…if I didn’t think those people were 90% jerks who don’t care about anyone but themselves and even seeing this couldn’t move their stonecold hearts.

*Along with others, like In the Valley of Elah, Hurt Locker, and Stop Loss–just to name movies made about THIS war. There are of course many other great movies made about other wars. They should get them all in a pack like Oscar voters. “Before making a really bad decision, take a minute and attempt to understand what these movies have to say about war.”

À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for October.

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Bought:

  • Clockwork Angel (Infernal Devices, bk 1), by Cassandra Clare (free!*)
  • School of Fear, by Gitty Daneshvari ($4 at Marshall’s!)

Read:
  • Ravenheart, by David Gemmell
  • Stormrider, by David Gemmell
  • Clockwork Angel (Infernal Devices, bk 1), by Cassandra Clare
  • The Skin I’m In, by Sharon G. Flake (borrowed from Natalie’s classroom)
  • The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, by Tom Angleberger (borrowed from Natalie’s classroom)

*I returned another book that cost more, and then used a 33% off coupon–so I got both this book AND my lunch for free! Yay! 🙂

Big Screen: The Town

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LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE does not even begin to describe how I feel about this flick. This is some EXCELLENT moviemaking, y’all, and I encourage you to get yourself to a theater to see it. Now. Before I buy all the tickets. (I’ve seen it three times already.) It’s my #1 movie for 2010, edging Inception aside. I loved that flick, but I became much more emotionally involved with this one.

I was on the edge of my seat, spellbound, from beginning to end. Great performances, great mood, great settings. So well done. Serious kudos to Ben Affleck on becoming such a great director after such an oddly varied acting career. He also does some great acting in this and he’s totally rocking the Mark Messier skeletor look btw. Jeremy Renner is great; Jon Hamm is great; the gray-haired dude whose name I can never remember even tho he’s on my favorite show Sons of Anarchy is great (this dude); Blake Lively blows the roof off, her performance is a stunner and what a surprise.

Great car chases on one-way cramped up streets in Boston. Great performances by the neighborhood gangster thug florist and his right-arm: the feelings of menace are just so well done here. Hamm’s last line of dialogue: SUCH a great threat. I want to have a reason to use that line. Fun to see so many people from Affleck’s previous directing flick (Gone Baby Gone) popping up again here in very different roles.

SO steeped in its time and its place and its smalltown-in-the-big-city focus. SO many randomly great moments: the nuns getting out of the car and the cop turning his head; the hand on the tattoo when leaving the table; the pictures at the barbecue; the late-night walk to the AA meeting; the “CSI. All the CSIs. Bones.”… I could go on and on.

A heist movie that feels so original and so beyond the constraints of a heist.

I just loved it. Obv. Anyone need someone to go see it with them? 🙂

[p.s. quick DadReaction: pretty well done heist movie, but he hated the ending and thought one thing specifically was just “nope! wouldn’t happen!”]

Big Screen x2: Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1

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(en français)

Based on the true life of French gangster Jacques Mesrine, sometimes compared to Dillinger.

These are gritty violent and nasty movies. They’re not stylized glamour pieces AT ALL*. I liked the first one better. You could see the evolution from a frustrated angry young guy into a vicious gangster. Not excusing it at all, but you could sort of see where he got set on his path. By the second movie, he is far too into his legend and convinced that people see him as a folk hero** while much of his violence is the result of his inability to control his own anger.

Vincent Gallo is really great in this role…and really horrifying. Although repellent at times to a degree that it was hard to believe that woman after woman would agree to be involved with him. But I partially have a rough time with that actor due to Irreversible, a movie I hope none of you are ever forced to watch. Horrifying.

These were both good, both were seeing. But be prepared.

*i.e., this ain’t no Public Enemies.
**He broke out of a prison that had insanely inhumane conditions (later closed on that account) and then went back and tried to help others escape.