I'm finding it impossible to keep up with all the various sites and blogs I maintain. Therefore, from now on I will be posting reviews on my author site PepperWords. Everything that is here will remain here as an archive, but for anything at all new, hop on over to my author site. That's also where you'll continue to find my monthly IWSG posts and any information about my books or writing in general. One stop shopping as they say!
I'll be posting a review of Mary Poppins Returns soon, so don't miss it.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
12.22.2018
10.16.2016
Movies: Snowden
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Rhys Ifans, Zachary Quinto
Directed By: Oliver Stone
Written By: Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone, from the books by Luke Harding and Anatoly Kucherena
Endgame Entertainment, 2016
R; 134 minutes
3.75 stars (out of 5)
_______________________________________________________
I know I should probably be more outraged than I am about the NSA culling private emails, phone calls, etc., but it's never fazed me. Still, I was glad to get a bigger sense of what was going on and how Snowden came to do what he did. Of course, with a movie like this, I kept asking myself what had been regrouped, so to speak, to make it easier to follow. What had been changed for dramatic effect. It can be difficult, after all, to make a bunch of computer stuff compelling for two hours.
They did a nice job of weaving Snowden's personal life into his career. I think this is largely done to make him sympathetic and personable. Otherwise Snowden would just be a weirdo. But while Shailene Woodley worked her tail off in this, I didn't feel the chemistry I needed to feel in order to buy in to the relationship. Maybe I'm supposed to read this as there being a barrier there put up by Snowden's secretive work, but it just came off as flat.
Still, that didn't mar the movie. There was a fun time of saying, "What's Nicolas Cage doing here?" and "What's Tom Wilkinson doing here?" because I didn't read anything about the film before going to see it. And then I had a great, "Look! Nicholas Rowe!" moment, which made me stupid happy and probably biased me for the rest of the film.
It's a good film. Nothing special in my book, but solid. Not the action-packed kinds of stuff audiences are used to these days, but . . . It gives a concise account of what happened, which I suppose is the point.
Directed By: Oliver Stone
Written By: Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone, from the books by Luke Harding and Anatoly Kucherena
Endgame Entertainment, 2016
R; 134 minutes
3.75 stars (out of 5)
_______________________________________________________
I know I should probably be more outraged than I am about the NSA culling private emails, phone calls, etc., but it's never fazed me. Still, I was glad to get a bigger sense of what was going on and how Snowden came to do what he did. Of course, with a movie like this, I kept asking myself what had been regrouped, so to speak, to make it easier to follow. What had been changed for dramatic effect. It can be difficult, after all, to make a bunch of computer stuff compelling for two hours.
They did a nice job of weaving Snowden's personal life into his career. I think this is largely done to make him sympathetic and personable. Otherwise Snowden would just be a weirdo. But while Shailene Woodley worked her tail off in this, I didn't feel the chemistry I needed to feel in order to buy in to the relationship. Maybe I'm supposed to read this as there being a barrier there put up by Snowden's secretive work, but it just came off as flat.
Still, that didn't mar the movie. There was a fun time of saying, "What's Nicolas Cage doing here?" and "What's Tom Wilkinson doing here?" because I didn't read anything about the film before going to see it. And then I had a great, "Look! Nicholas Rowe!" moment, which made me stupid happy and probably biased me for the rest of the film.
It's a good film. Nothing special in my book, but solid. Not the action-packed kinds of stuff audiences are used to these days, but . . . It gives a concise account of what happened, which I suppose is the point.
3.06.2016
Movies: Spotlight
I lived in Boston from 1999 to 2006, then in the Greater Boston area until 2012. So I remember when this was happening. I remember the names and the headlines. Though it's funny, you know, how quickly you forget when it doesn't directly impact you. Watching Spotlight and hearing those names again only served to show me how I'd shelved it all in the back of my head once the headlines stopped.
My parents were Catholic, but it meant something different where Dad came from; the Catholics were the upper class rather than the lower class. That's the French thing versus my mother's Scottish roots. But it didn't matter much to me because I was only Catholic until I was about seven or eight, and then my mother became a born again Christian and, well, church got a lot louder for one thing.
I have my own personal issues with religious institutions, Catholic and otherwise, but that's neither here nor there except to reinforce the idea that I was not directly invested in or impacted by the goings on in Boston at the time the story broke. But I worked with a lot of people who were.
As for Spotlight, it is a remarkable movie. Not for the subject matter, despite its heft and importance, but because they were able to keep something like investigative journalism visually interesting. Not an easy thing to do. The score was at times intrusive and over the top, but the acting was good and everything was paced well. Good editing, too. It moved right along.
My only concern might be that people who weren't already familiar with the actual events might get lost in all the names being tossed around. There are a lot of them.
I don't cry easily, but tears pricked me a bit by the end of the movie. It was amazingly well done. We need more movies like this and fewer of these tentpole flash-bang Marvel circuses. Variety recently ran a piece about how the movie industry is coming down to just a few studios and their big pictures (sorry, can't find the link), and I really hope we can put a stop to that. A broader base of a wider variety of films would be much more stable than a narrow base of one kind of movie, right? It's better for everyone if we keep making a lot of different things rather than an assembly line of more of the same.
Ah, well, that's a whole other argument. In short, I enjoyed Spotlight, and not just because I was there when it happened. Kudos to it and its entire cast and crew.
My parents were Catholic, but it meant something different where Dad came from; the Catholics were the upper class rather than the lower class. That's the French thing versus my mother's Scottish roots. But it didn't matter much to me because I was only Catholic until I was about seven or eight, and then my mother became a born again Christian and, well, church got a lot louder for one thing.
I have my own personal issues with religious institutions, Catholic and otherwise, but that's neither here nor there except to reinforce the idea that I was not directly invested in or impacted by the goings on in Boston at the time the story broke. But I worked with a lot of people who were.
As for Spotlight, it is a remarkable movie. Not for the subject matter, despite its heft and importance, but because they were able to keep something like investigative journalism visually interesting. Not an easy thing to do. The score was at times intrusive and over the top, but the acting was good and everything was paced well. Good editing, too. It moved right along.
My only concern might be that people who weren't already familiar with the actual events might get lost in all the names being tossed around. There are a lot of them.
I don't cry easily, but tears pricked me a bit by the end of the movie. It was amazingly well done. We need more movies like this and fewer of these tentpole flash-bang Marvel circuses. Variety recently ran a piece about how the movie industry is coming down to just a few studios and their big pictures (sorry, can't find the link), and I really hope we can put a stop to that. A broader base of a wider variety of films would be much more stable than a narrow base of one kind of movie, right? It's better for everyone if we keep making a lot of different things rather than an assembly line of more of the same.
Ah, well, that's a whole other argument. In short, I enjoyed Spotlight, and not just because I was there when it happened. Kudos to it and its entire cast and crew.
2.25.2016
7.01.2014
Television: Catching Up
Sorry for my silence the past week; I was away at a family reunion. I do plan to begin catching up on 24 and trying The Leftovers and Tyrant, all of which are waiting for me on my DVR. I managed to watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver at least; I love that show. Ages ago, before I had kids, I would stay up and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report . . . Maybe I should go back to those. But in the meantime, I wait all week for John Oliver. Maybe righteous anger at the U.S. comes across better from a transplanted Brit.
Of course the other big news is Community will have a 13-episode sixth season thanks to Yahoo! That's pretty stellar. I'm finding it more and more difficult to locate decent comedies, so I'm glad Community will be around to make me laugh a little longer.
And Doctor Who has a premiere date of 23 August. I'll be away on a writing retreat that weekend but at least one of the other writers I'll be hanging with is a big DW fan, so maybe we can schedule in a viewing break.
I did watch the second part of The Escape Artist and very much enjoyed it. But then I liked it when it was Cape Fear, too.
Of course the other big news is Community will have a 13-episode sixth season thanks to Yahoo! That's pretty stellar. I'm finding it more and more difficult to locate decent comedies, so I'm glad Community will be around to make me laugh a little longer.
And Doctor Who has a premiere date of 23 August. I'll be away on a writing retreat that weekend but at least one of the other writers I'll be hanging with is a big DW fan, so maybe we can schedule in a viewing break.
I did watch the second part of The Escape Artist and very much enjoyed it. But then I liked it when it was Cape Fear, too.
1.11.2013
Victory Lap
Stage 32 did a little write-up about the Table Read My Screenplay contest. Look! That's me in that picture (wearing my famous "M" necklace).
I have to give some credit to Stage 32, though, because if not for them I wouldn't have known about TRMS in the first place. Sometimes I start to think all these social networks are just so much useless shouting into various voids, no one listening, but then something good comes of it now and again, so . . .
St. Peter in Chains will get its table read at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, January 25, at the Waldorf Astoria. Looking forward to, er, hearing it.
I have to give some credit to Stage 32, though, because if not for them I wouldn't have known about TRMS in the first place. Sometimes I start to think all these social networks are just so much useless shouting into various voids, no one listening, but then something good comes of it now and again, so . . .
St. Peter in Chains will get its table read at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, January 25, at the Waldorf Astoria. Looking forward to, er, hearing it.
12.23.2012
Amazon Book Reviews
There's been a lot of chatter over this NYT article about how Amazon has been deleting reviews. I'll put in that one or two reviews of my books have mysteriously disappeared, though it's not clear why since none of them were written by anyone I know, so I'm not sure what metric they're using to determine these things.
"Everyone's a critic," the old saying goes. But whether they're all honest critics seems to be the core question. And an honest opinion doesn't appear to be what some authors really want.
As a writer, I'll admit it's always a blow to see a bad review. No one wants to hear (read) that someone didn't like what they worked so hard to produce. And some reviewers are needlessly cruel. I think if Amazon really wants to police reviews, they should consider culling the personal attacks and only keep the reviews that say, if not something nice, at least something constructive. Go ahead and say what you don't like about the story, the writing, etc. That's fair. But "this writer is an idiot," is not a helpful comment.
But in equal measure, keep the reviews that mention what's good (or great) about the book in question. It's hard enough for us little indie writers to get any traction, so pulling the rug out from under us is kind of mean. At least give us a warning first. And do make an effort to truly establish whether there is real cause to remove the review. I have friends who like my writing; why shouldn't they be allowed to say as much? I have fans, too. Shouldn't they be permitted to write reviews for works they enjoy? It's a slippery slope.
Certainly there are red flags. When a book has dozens—hundreds, even—of reviews, all of them five star, I immediately assume this is too good to be true. No writer pleases every reader all the time. So I automatically figure the author has friends doing all the reviews. (It doesn't really cross my mind that the author has paid for reviews, though apparently this happens?) So I'm actually proud that my books aren't perfect fives. That shows, I think, that my reviewers are honest and the ratings more trustworthy.
And really, therein lies the issue. Amazon must know that, with potentially fake and questionable reviews rampant on their site, their credibility is on the line. Which is why they have begun slashing and burning. But I'm just not convinced this is the best way to fix the problem. I can't say I have some better solution—how can one hope to police so much information? But cutting suspect reviews won't restore the site's reputation. In fact, it only makes everything less reliable. And for those of us relying on those reviews to help our books along, those of us too small for the big sites and magazines to bother with, it's as much a problem for us as for Amazon. Because Amazon will lumber along, behemoth that it is, but we indie authors are likely to get squashed between its toes.
"Everyone's a critic," the old saying goes. But whether they're all honest critics seems to be the core question. And an honest opinion doesn't appear to be what some authors really want.
As a writer, I'll admit it's always a blow to see a bad review. No one wants to hear (read) that someone didn't like what they worked so hard to produce. And some reviewers are needlessly cruel. I think if Amazon really wants to police reviews, they should consider culling the personal attacks and only keep the reviews that say, if not something nice, at least something constructive. Go ahead and say what you don't like about the story, the writing, etc. That's fair. But "this writer is an idiot," is not a helpful comment.
But in equal measure, keep the reviews that mention what's good (or great) about the book in question. It's hard enough for us little indie writers to get any traction, so pulling the rug out from under us is kind of mean. At least give us a warning first. And do make an effort to truly establish whether there is real cause to remove the review. I have friends who like my writing; why shouldn't they be allowed to say as much? I have fans, too. Shouldn't they be permitted to write reviews for works they enjoy? It's a slippery slope.
Certainly there are red flags. When a book has dozens—hundreds, even—of reviews, all of them five star, I immediately assume this is too good to be true. No writer pleases every reader all the time. So I automatically figure the author has friends doing all the reviews. (It doesn't really cross my mind that the author has paid for reviews, though apparently this happens?) So I'm actually proud that my books aren't perfect fives. That shows, I think, that my reviewers are honest and the ratings more trustworthy.
And really, therein lies the issue. Amazon must know that, with potentially fake and questionable reviews rampant on their site, their credibility is on the line. Which is why they have begun slashing and burning. But I'm just not convinced this is the best way to fix the problem. I can't say I have some better solution—how can one hope to police so much information? But cutting suspect reviews won't restore the site's reputation. In fact, it only makes everything less reliable. And for those of us relying on those reviews to help our books along, those of us too small for the big sites and magazines to bother with, it's as much a problem for us as for Amazon. Because Amazon will lumber along, behemoth that it is, but we indie authors are likely to get squashed between its toes.
3.03.2009
Music: Rob Thomas' Cradle Song
drop date: June 30
atlantic records
________________________________________________
Although Thomas' initial intention was to write an album full of Latinesque music à la Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, he admits that what was coming out of him didn't all fit that bill. Various tracks have been labeled "Tom Pettyish" and "in the vein of INXS." While that second one gives me pause, the first doesn't at all; Thomas has shown those particular roots before--I recall a very good live cover of Petty's "American Girl" that I witnessed during the Mad Season tour. Thomas could do far worse than to produce this generation's Full Moon Fever, after all. (Aside: wasn't 1989 just the BEST year?)
Of course I'll buy the album. My three-year-old will surely insist upon hearing it multiple times, as he does all "Uncle Rob" music. Still, if I'm being entirely honest, I only enjoy about 2/3 of Something to Be . . . ; the rest I generally skip the tracks on, which is something I can't say of the matchbox twenty albums, of which I enjoy every cut. I realize it's only one solo effort, but I find StB uneven, and I'm hoping the sophomore outing will have a bit more confidence behind it, be more of a straight-shot arrow than a meandering smoke cloud.
atlantic records
________________________________________________
Although Thomas' initial intention was to write an album full of Latinesque music à la Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, he admits that what was coming out of him didn't all fit that bill. Various tracks have been labeled "Tom Pettyish" and "in the vein of INXS." While that second one gives me pause, the first doesn't at all; Thomas has shown those particular roots before--I recall a very good live cover of Petty's "American Girl" that I witnessed during the Mad Season tour. Thomas could do far worse than to produce this generation's Full Moon Fever, after all. (Aside: wasn't 1989 just the BEST year?)
Of course I'll buy the album. My three-year-old will surely insist upon hearing it multiple times, as he does all "Uncle Rob" music. Still, if I'm being entirely honest, I only enjoy about 2/3 of Something to Be . . . ; the rest I generally skip the tracks on, which is something I can't say of the matchbox twenty albums, of which I enjoy every cut. I realize it's only one solo effort, but I find StB uneven, and I'm hoping the sophomore outing will have a bit more confidence behind it, be more of a straight-shot arrow than a meandering smoke cloud.
2.25.2009
Movies: Clue Remake?!
Or not necessarily a "remake" but a new movie based on Hasbro's boardgame. Why? The 1985 film was incredible; what need is there for anything more? Or different? The script was tight and perfect (particularly in its humor), the cast had all possible chemistry. And yet Gore Verbinski (of Pirates of the Caribbean distinction) has been asked to make another Clue. This is just an utter waste of time, money and energy. If you want to remake a movie, pick something that was just awful the first time and make it better. Otherwise you're setting yourself up for failure.
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