Author Archives: Duff

Big Screen: Redbelt

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A David Mamet script PLUS Jujitsu? Come on now, people, you can’t go wrong with that one. Really compelling interesting story. Really cool fights (woot).

A lot of good performances here (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen (unexpected), Alicia Braga), including one from Emily Mortimer (whose character undergoes one of the biggest transitions), and a really great one from Max Martini (yum), whom you may recognize from The Unit.

I’ll tell you what. He, Dean Winters and Tahmoh Penikett need to do some kind of brothers/mafia/cops movie together. Ah, that would be wonderful.

Big Screen: Iron Man

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A full Family Reaction even featuring the extremely rare MomReaction!! (No, we did not see it together.)

DadReaction: Eye popping effects, but with a lot of character. And not so effect heavy that you lose the humor as in some action movies. Downey is really great here. He’s a stronger character as an actor and so much more entertaining than, say, Spiderman. Christian Bale brought a lot of grimness to Batman but Downey is very funny, lively and self deprecating. Really uses his wise ass attitude so well here, and it makes the idea of a superhero movie so much cooler. His and Paltrow’s characters attraction feels very real, even though it’s an under the table sort and they dance around it. Jeff Bridges was good too.

MomReaction: There’s a really topical social edge to this movie about collateral damage and what you do to the world, what weapons do to the world. They don’t hide behind the story: War is bad. Guns are bad.

GirlReaction: Fanfuckingtastic. Everything you could want in an action movie AND MORE. Lovedlovedloved it.

Mystery: One False Move, by Harlan Coben

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Burning through mysteries in the offhours while reading this month’s challenge book.

The next in the Myron Bolitar series (after these). Still enjoying these, but not quite as much thanks to throwaway paragraphs with pedantic tones like this one:

“Win waited by Myron’s car. He was bent slightly at the waist, practicing his golf swing. He did not have a club or a ball, of course. Remember blasting rock music and jumping on your bed and playing air guitar? Golfers do the same thing. They hear some internal sounds of nature, step on imaginary first tees, and swing air clubs. Air woods usually. Sometimes, when they want more control, they take air irons out of the air bags. And like teens with air guitars, golfers like to watch themselves in mirrors…”

Seriously? Do tell. Who is the audience for that? Or, better yet, who does the writer think his audience is that he needs to write that? You can, indeed, take dumbing down a bit too far.

Dear Harlan Coben,
There aren’t that many Myron Bolitar books after this one. So I’m sure I’ll keep reading them up until the end. Because I like Myron. And I love Win, despite the fact that he’s a raving psychopath. (He makes Joe Pike look well adjusted.) But seriously? You can do better than that.
Sincerely,
who would’ve thought golf could be made more boring than it actually is,
Duff

Fantasy: Dragon Bones, by Patricia Briggs

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Burning through fantasy in the offhours while reading this month’s challenge book.

I’ve recommended her modern day fantasy to you before. Now I can highly recommend her more traditionally set (you know that whole medieval-type, middle age-sort of world that so much fantasy is set in; similar to the worlds of Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, among others) fantasy as well.

LOVED this book. Absolutely loved. In love with Ward, with Oreg, completely sucked in by the myth and the magic. Beautiful. Some kinda icky torture (physical and psychological), that just makes you care even more deeply about these characters. Wow.

Mystery: Just One Look, by Harlan Coben

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Since this month’s challenge is back to short stories, I find myself breaking it up a bit with short&sweet mystery novels. I know, right? Bizarre.

Anyways….I was reading for the next Myron Bolitar book but couldn’t find it on my way to the airport, so had to settle for a non-Myron Bolitar, the first stand-alone Coben I’ve read.

I liked some of the characters, I liked the “figuring it out” stuff. But I thought the main mystery was both too convoluted and too improbable to really work. Too many moving parts. Still kept you intrigued…but like an badly plotted action movie that wows you while you’re IN IT, but is too easy to pick apart afterward.

Mystery: Fade Away and Back Spin, both by Harlan Coben

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Books 3 and 4 in the Myron Bolitar series (1, 2). Still enjoying these.

In some ways, Win’s character makes these much more violent than your average mystery (is that why I like them?). And the ongoing confusion of the Jessica situation also adds an intensity. But I’m not sure why temptation always has to be a part of it. The come-back scenario in Fade Away was really bittersweet.