Eric S notapenguin's blog: "Movies and other reviews - most brief"

Thought I reviewed this already - maybe I did. I saw it in the theaters, last year, then again today on television (taped). Bruce Willis plays a police detective asked to transport a witness, well, 16 blocks from holding to the jury- to give evidence in a major corruption case... It's a very eventful trip. Enjoyed it a whole lot the first time, and even more this time. (Suspense, not a comedy, but very good writing and acting- together with "Nobody's Fool" - and yes, I have read the book, in that case - very much one of the better acting jobs I recall from Bruce Willis... which is not at all meant to damn with faint praise. This was -good- - though admittedly there have been only a few movies I've wanted to pan, one of them an independent production I've kept silent about since it hasn't come out yet and may still not- and I only saw less than half of that film.)

This received stunning reviews and deserved them. Bardem's portrayal of an imaginative, determined tracker-murderer stole the show, though (at least) much of the other acting was on a very high level also. (It was definitely gory and frightening- moreso anyway than many films that I watch- though not pointlessly.)

Just saw a 2-hour episode of this show; I should try to catch it more often. Was good.

or the first four episodes of its first season for now, from Netflix (my parents did, anyway). Watched the first three... Most impressive, and surprising, and well-done; besides that, not saying a word... well... will watch more later. :)!!!

This deserves a longer review than I have the energy to write, just now. (And "Drive to the East" is the second of four books, not the most recent, in fact, in a series...) ... What it's about and is: Turtledove's recent writing has focused on alternate history. (Not "alternative history" after the model of A People's History of the United States, which I think very well of by the way, but history as it might have unfolded if a few things had gone differently at important moments; speculative fiction/history- something on that order.) "Settling Accounts" is the latest of several series, given the name "Timeline-191" by fans, which started with the stand-alone novel "How Few Remain" (in 1997) and has continued with a few trilogies since (and now, this series of four books). The Southern United States stayed independent, the Union fractured, after some minor but crucial battlefield mishaps went tailspin; How Few Remain recounts an equivalent of the wars of the 1880s (just as his next novels in the series recount the alliances of the Great War of the 1910s, its immediate aftermath (a "Versailles"-like peace imposed by the North and its allies - Germany, etc. on the South and its- Britain, France, ... - you did know that if it hadn't been for circumstances, Britain might have joined the South in the Civil War despite its opposition to slavery, such was its need for cotton, yes? Circumstances were- in the end- mostly that Britain did find another source of cotton :) ... )- and this series, of which "Drive to the East" is the second of four books, is something of a mirror of World War II - but with a charismatic and neurotic man rising to the top spot in the Confederacy, starting another war and while doing so (and for reasons of his own, though the propaganda he puts out -is- eerily like that one hears about from the Nazi era, yes...) - puts in a plan to rid of the black population, slowly than more quickly. (Well, the exact details he leaves to trusted others, and despite parallels military and otherwise this novel isn't a point-by-point mirror of World War II... though it is interesting when, as in many of his semi-historical novels, historical characters turn up in unexpected but true-to-well-researched-life roles. There are gripes to be made - and yes, this is the _brief_ review... - but I enjoyed this a whole lot... and will be looking for volumes 3 and 4 which are already out, just apparently not at my library, or not in. (Will have to check the catalog :) )

brief review right now. Alan Dean Foster has written several short stories and released a collection set in the "Montezuma Strip" before - an area of the Southwest as projected about 80? years into the future (it's been described as a nightmarish future ("first world tech, third world wages" - those parts seem accurate; his politics are -somewhat- more similar to mine than, say, Robert Heinlein's are...) - but based on this novel set in the Strip, anyway... if anything, Foster seems optimistic- and his Inspector likable for much, including his refusal to be cynical about the prospects of the people on his beat. (This isn't at all a political tract masquerading as a novel; those are qualities I noticed, though.) For the plot - the wife and daughter of a murder victim not only don't want to be found (to identify the body), but are - demonstrative about it. :) (Well... view the back cover sometime.) A review here - though I think differently than the reviewer about one or two things, would check that, since by now I'm sleepy enough "and have not the time to make this briefer" (to paraphrase.) (now anyway)

Fun Rob Reiner-directed movie inspired by the book and movie "The Graduate". A woman and her fiancé travel in from New York to Pasadena to meet her family- and she begins more and more to wonder why certain quiet family facts seem to have been taken, names changed, from the pages of that book.

Well, I have to love a movie in which two characters fall in love while practicing a Schubert Fantasy :) Ralph Fiennes plays, in this movie written and generally put together by Istvan Szabo, three roles (Ivan, before that Ivan's father Adam, before that, Ivan's grandfather Ignatz) - in three generations of Jews in Hungary, spanning about 1880-1970, or so. (Not too many other actors or actresses here whose names I recognized- save William Hurt and a few others - but very fine throughout, acting included, and if I thought I knew where it was going, I did not.) Edit: 1999 film, not 2001, apparently. Whoops.

2006 novel by Elizabeth George. The usual cast of characters of her Scotland Yard novels (Thomas Lynley, Barbara Havers, Winston Nkata...) make but the briefest appearance in it- well, one "usual" character (the "Her" of the title) and one other do make a somewhat longer appearance. Only somewhat. This novel is the story of the lives of two brothers and a sister (the oldest about fifteen, the main character, Joel, twelve) after their grandmother receives- very happily- the news that she's being deported from the UK to Jamaica- and decides to leave the three grandchildren with their unsuspecting aunt- and how the dreams of two of them slowly grow (... and what happens then... unfortunately.) Saddening enough but intended to be (I expect) because sympathetic enough, very well done as I expect from this author, very worth reading especially if one already likes the series itself of course.