Author Archives: Duff

Big Screen: The Company Men

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Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as February. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…

This is a bad movie in many, MANY ways, but perhaps worst of all in its timing. These are not the people to feel sorry for in a depression / recession / whatever this is. Some idiot who makes six figures but spends so much that when he’s out of work, he is losing his house within three months? There are honest, hard-working, NON-slimeballs out there who’ve been laid off solely due to the economy and looking for jobs for forever and I don’t know WHO the producers of this movie thought could POSSIBLY have been an audience for this. But the fact that they have all gone off and started a new business together by the end? COME ON.

Almost ALL the characters in this movie are complete jerks. I love you, Ben Affleck, for giving me The Town but whatever made you think this movie was a good choice? Not only is it an ill-timed movie about jerks but your character is the biggest jerk of all. His KID is more in tune with the reality of the situation and he completely blows him off.

Also some of the non-Boston actors in this movie have The Most Ridiculous Overwrought Boston Accents you have ever heard (Kevin Costner, Rosemarie DeWitt, I’m looking at you two in particular).

The only thing I unequivocally liked about this movie was Rosemarie DeWitt’s wardrobe. (Mostly jeans, cute boots, snug sweaters.) That is IT.

Tommy Lee Jones played the most interesting character…but being the most interesting of this bunch is not saying much.

Bad, bad, and hey, bad.

Big Screen: The Mechanic

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Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as February. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…

The people who made this movie seemed to have missed a very important element here: ladies do not go to Jason Statham movies to see him wearing a buttoned-up cardigan the entire time. He is shirtless once, maybe twice, IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE.

They so missed the boat on that one.

Some fun fight scenes. But you know, it’s not his best movie. (I recommend The Bank Job over all others, of course.)

Big Screen: The Tourist

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Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as January. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
This wasn’t much of a movie, I was really surprised to see it up for awards. Sure, Angelina was pretty and Depp played bedfuddled nicely… But the twist at the end was SO OBVIOUS and there wasn’t all that much that was very interesting about it. I’d see it for free, on a plane maybe. But I wouldn’t go out of my way. I cetainly wouldn’t pay $ for the DVD.

Big Screen: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part 1

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Yes, it is June and I am posting about movies I saw as far back as January. Trying to get caught up this weekend! We shall see…
I had just watched 1-6 on DVD as I had only seen the first couple long ago… I thought this was by far the best film. But it is also the one I wasn’t quilting through the watching of, so… I liked when they were out camping on their own.

Some derivative moments though. Maybe it’s the movies moreso than the book, but there were so many times when all I could think about was Lord of the Rings.

I still prefer the Pullman books (His Dark Materials trilogy) to these, as I have all along– especially after watching these movies. These are entertaining, but seem much more formulaic to me and the story/ideas/execution seem less original than Pullman.

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

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Bought:

  • Blameless, by Gail Carriger (kindle/iPhone)
  • Relentless, by Lauren Dane (kindle/iPhone)
  • Trust No One, by Gregg Hurwitz (kindle/iPhone sale!)
  • Insatiable, by Lauren Dane (kindle/iPhone)

Read:
  • The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch (library)
  • Blameless, by Gail Carriger (kindle/iPhone)
  • Carry Me Down, by M.J. Hyland
  • Relentless, by Lauren Dane (kindle/iPhone)
  • Blackout, by Connie Willis (re-read)
  • All Clear, by Connie Willis (gift)
  • Trust No One, by Gregg Hurwitz (kindle/iphone)

Fantasy: His Dark Materials (trilogy) by Philip Pullman.

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The Golden Compass, The Amber Spyglass and The Subtle Knife. Our August 2010 challenge book. Re-reads for both of us.

SPOILERS BELOW. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

It was such a joy to re-read these. They’re all splendid novels in their own right, as well as building on each other in really great ways. Neither one of us could put them down. We were also both happy to find so much fresh about them–so many little things that we had forgotten and thus could enjoy anew–apparently we had left just the right amount of time between re-reads!
DadReaction: I couldn’t put it down. I loved the way he played off the three books, tacking a different tack each time, especially saving our world for the middle one.

GirlReaction: Yeah there were so many cool ideas in each one. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten in the third book.

DadReaction: Yeah those two angels–I had blanked those guys out completely and really forgotten about some of the supernatural stuff. Loved the witches. Lee Scoresby’s death is just so wild. It’s funny how fantasty can just take you down as bad as anything. Even when his rabbit daemon dies…OW. It’s like your dog dying. Or when Lyra leaves Pan on the Wharf? That was almost enough to make me pitch the book out the window!

GirlReaction: Ugh, those scenes were horrible. But how amazing is just the idea of the daemon? How perfect it seems, and how after reading them, you wish you had one, you wonder what yours would be, you think about that bit of yourself that the daemons represent.

DadReaction: Yeah like when she meets Will and he doesn’t have one…but then they switch worlds and he does. And there’s the the fact that you could actually have a conversation with the daemon, that other part of yourself. Also very cool how he works in the idea that they solidify their form later: as you become your real self. They’re something beneath who you think you might want to be, and it becomes a real partnership.

They’re really novels of curiosity: Lyra, Will, the Scientists, everybody experimenting and discovering. And how spooky were the parents? I really liked how complex they were: not just bad or good. They sort of act for good in the end, after letting loose all this mayhem. So much is the kids trying to understand them, and getting foiled by both of them really.

I had forgotten that whole journey through the underworld–kind of like Dante in Hell. I did, however, remember that horrifying part where the teacher got lost in the other world. You know, I really hate abandonment stories, or stories where people can’t get home, so the first read that was really harrowing for me–like watching Alice in Wonderland. I was able to enjoy those people a lot more this time around because I knew she would get out of there.

GirlReaction: Oh and how cool are those animals with the wheels? Pullman has so many ideas around the edges of this story that could be entire fantasy worlds in and of themselves.

DadReaction: Yeah I also loved those little waspy spies!

Two thumbs way up. 🙂

Fiction: Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

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Our July 2010 challenge book. A re-read for both of us.

GirlReaction: I only got partway through before I had to set it aside (I was in the middle of summer classes) but of course Dad finished. My thoughts were really that I did not remember at all how hilariously funny some of the beginning is.

DadReaction: I can’t wait to read it again! To setout after the Pequod with crazy captain Ahab. You get bogged down a bit in the middle, with ALL the detail about how to actually kill whales, slice them up, et cetera…but at the end, you feel like you know what these guys do all the time.

There was a critic, Hugh Kenner maybe?, who had a quote about how all great American novels are really like instruction manuals. Hemingway: how to order a drink, what to look for in a bullfight, how to fish. Moby Dick: how to kill a whale.
But at the end, it really takes off. And the hunt when they actually spot Moby Dick, just sweeps you up.

GirlReaction: In one of my summer classes, there was a girl with the last name Melville, and EVERY WEEK during attendance, the professor would make some cracks about Moby Dick. Usually something along the lines of “They call it the greatest American novel. I don’t know if it’s the greatest, but it was really the first.” I wasn’t sure that was really true though.

DadReaction: You could probably call it the first American novel of stature.

Then we wandered off topic a bit and landed on the subject of Sir Walter Scott (thanks, I think, to Michelle’s blog post) and on to Last of the Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper, which while a romantic novel, and of less stature, was around before Melville.

DadReaction: The thing about Last of the Mohicans is people think of it along the lines of the movies. But the screenplay from the ’30s really streamlined a bad book with lots of idiot characters. The movies make him into more of a Hemingway-type hero.

And then somehow we came around again to Moby Dick and a bonus recommendation…

DadReaction: Did you ever read “The Great American Novel by Philip Roth? It’s about baseball, but based on Moby Dick (“Call me Smitty.” is the first line). There’s a pitcher named Gilgamesh who never loses a game, but then one day he throws a ball right at the ump’s throat. There’s a team in it called the Ruppert Mundys who have to play 163 away games. The league is so rift with problems that they just write it out of baseball history and all the towns that were in the league change their names. Hilarious.

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

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Bought:

  • Changeless, by Gail Carriger (iphone/Kindle)
  • Ash, by Malinda Lo*
  • Enclave, by Ann Aguirre*
  • Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, by Christine Sneed (short stories)*

Read:
  • Soulless, by Gail Carriger (iphone/Kindle)
  • The Berrybender Narratives, Book 1: Sin Killer, by Larry McMurtry
  • Changeless, by Gail Carriger (iphone/Kindle)
  • Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White (library) (re-read)
  • Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson
  • The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
  • 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (library)
  • Killbox, by Ann Aguirre (library)

*All in the same trip to Women & Children First. I blame Natalie for suggesting we go to the bookstore. I can’t be going to bookstores! Books are irresistible! Especially in bookstores!