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Spree (2020)
Spree (2020)
2020 | Comedy, Thriller
5
6.1 (10 Ratings)
Movie Rating
I honestly can't figure out if I thought this was good or not...

Starting with the positives then. I thought the premise was decent. An amateur streamer who has spent the best part of a decade failing to gain numbers via his social media accounts, embarks on a killing spree during his day job as a taxi driver, whilst simultaneously live streaming the whole thing. Stranger Things' Joe Keery plays the killer in question, and does a pretty decent job at portraying an unhinged, isolated young adult who is just obsessed with fame.
I also enjoyed both Sasheer Zamata and David Arquette in supporting roles.
It's a very styalised movie - the whole runtime is shown through streaming mediums, essentially being a semi found footage horror, and it works for the most part.

However, I've never been the biggest fan of this particular sub genre, and I found myself losing interest now and again. It's trying very hard to be modern and relevant, which it sort of is, but I'm not sure how far it will go in resonating with a younger generation. A lot of the script is cringey in it attempts to throw current slang terms in at every given moment. I've even heard Spree described as "Taxi Driver for the Instagram generation", a bold claim that falls way short in reality, even if that was Eugene Kotlyarenko's intention.

All in all, Spree manages to remain entertaining enough to warrant sitting through it, and that's mainly thanks to Joe Keery's weirdly uncomfortable performance. Maybe knock back a beer or two at the same time for good measure.
  
The Change 1: London: Orbital
The Change 1: London: Orbital
Guy Adams | 2017 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Intriguing but short
The world as we know it has pretty much ended. One day in the recent past, something appeared in the sky and anyone who saw it, or subsequent recordings of it, either died instantly or went mad gradually.
We meet Howard, who seems to have no memory prior to page 1 of the book, which serves nicely to give us an introduction to how the world changed in ... The Change. He assumes his name is Howard because it is written in the front page of a notebook he finds on his person.
He is moving around the M2 motorway that surrounds London, full of stationary cars (good to see some things didn't change when the world ended) and dead bodies, very reminiscent of early scenes in the Walking Dead.
He soon finds himself taken in by a biker gang who have made themselves a community in a former Welcome Break service station.
The community is attacked by an unusual monster and we follow him and his new best friend, Hubcap, as they try to survive.
The story is intriguing, but quite what happened with The Change, is barely touched on, and neither is Howard's strange amnesia and what he feels he needs to do (travel into London).
The action is exciting, the dialogue well written and the cast of bikers and hangers-on are well crafted. However, the book is so short and largely has no real plot as such, just a series of things happening, and the reader is left wanting more.
Not a childrens book as such, but safely young adult.
  
The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
1973 | Rock
9.6 (22 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I still hadn’t really bought a record, so I was still listening to things mainly on the radio, but also watching the chart rundown on “Top of the Pops.” That’s when I became aware of more grown-up music. I liked glam-rock; we’re not allowed to mention his name now, but Gary Glitter’s music was quite good. “Blockbuster!” by Sweet really takes me back to that time because that song starts with a siren. Whenever I hear that record, it immediately transports me back to being on the bumper cars at fun fair. It’s perfect music for that. I was into music like that, but my mum would still get babysitters, because my sister was 8 at the time. So we would have teenage girls come around the house, and one of them had a copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The record was broken—apparently, she had left it on the radiogram and somebody had sat on the lid—so you couldn’t play the first track on side one or side two. But she still brought it around. I had to go to bed for school the next day, but I listened to that record through the floorboards. I was actually quite frightened by the bits and bites of deranged laughing, and I wished that I had not listened to it. But I started to realize that music wasn’t just things that you listen to at fun fairs, that there was a more adult side to music. I think Pink Floyd’s music still stands up, actually. Still don’t like The Wall, though. Animals is as far as I got."

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