Buddha Mantra, buddha Chant for Meditation and Prayer
Health & Fitness and Lifestyle
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Mantras are words or phrases that are chanted out loud or internally as objects of meditation. Often...
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) in Movies
Aug 19, 2019 (Updated Oct 25, 2019)
I'm going to get straight to the main flaw with this one - I'm not sure how someone can really mess up Apocalypse so bad - he is a great X-Men villain. I remember watching the cartoon as a kid, being enamoured whenever Apocalypse turned up. The first mutant, practically a god, terrifying voice etc.
The Age of Apocalypse story arc is also a great comic - one where we see just how dangerous Apocalypse can be.
But instead of this classic villain, we get, well whatever the hell this is.
Oscar Isaac is give or take in other films I've seen him in, he just sort of exists to me, but I'm sure he did the best he could with what he was given.
But the character we're presented with in X-Men: Apocalypse is a mutant that isn't particularly terrifying, whose motives aren't very clear, and who speaks in a goddam normal human voice for the entire movie.
He looks, ok I guess, a little Ivan Ooze-ish at times, and there is a (very) brief moment where his voice goes all demonic and his eyes turn white, which offers a tiny glimpse of what could have been.
Elsewhere, the still awesome Michael Fassbender is relegated to a sidekick character, new cast members such as Psylocke, Angel, and Storm are there just to strike poses to edgy rock music, and Quicksilver gets a re hash of his great scene from DOFP that just doesn't quite hit the mark this time round.
The introduction of Sophie Turner as Jean Grey is fine, and it's nice to see a young Cyclops, Nightcrawler etc, but they're not given too much to do. It all just feels like one big wasted opportunity.
The film would have been much better and ballsier had it ended with Apocalypse winning, and ushering a full on Age of Apocalypse scenario for a sequel, but instead, he is dispatched with not too much trouble, as the writers poorly shoehorn in a segue for Dark Phoenix (for the second time in this franchise)
It's not all bad, there are times where I felt I was watching the cartoon come to life. The opening scene in ancient Egypt was pretty fun, and I actually quite enjoyed the brief Wolverine scene - those few minutes were way more entertaining to me than the entirety of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Overall though, this one had me wanting the rights to return to Marvel Studios.
Ross (3284 KP) rated Dark Forge (Masters & Mages #2) in Books
Jan 30, 2019
Dark Forge follows on from Cold Iron and sees the hero, Aranthur, travelling through the desert-lands battling against "The Pure", a group of magikal fundamentalists that believe access to the world's magik should be restricted to those of noble birth.
As a rare treat, the book starts with a lengthy prologue telling of a group of mercenaries working for the Pure attempting to storm an ancient site and gain ownership of a magical artefact. A few dozen pages break from Aranthur was welcome and this was an exciting part of the story. As with the first book, the narrative style is something of a barrier to me, all the mundane details of clothing, horses, weapons are expounded ad nauseum, but when something important happens, or some new magik is used suddenly it's all very vague and hand-wavey.
That brings us back to Aranthur. We pick up with him and his crew acting as messengers for the General's army, relaying messages back and forth across the divisions of the forces. At times this changes to acting as advance scouts, other times running messages through the middle of battles. Given the rest of the story is told from Aranthur's PoV alone, this means we can see a great deal of the action through his eyes.
At long last we are treated to something of an inventory from Aranthur, as he goes over the magik he currently knows and their purpose. This felt like a brilliant improvement over book 1, where he just did a magik thing somehow. However this is short lived as over the course of the book odd words are used, with little explanation (and always in italics, suggesting they are important words but for the life of me I couldn't remember what most of them were).
A major failing for this book for me was that despite all being from one character's PoV, and we hear plenty of his thoughts and feelings, we are not privy to his experimentation with magik or some of his suspicions and theories (he suddenly in the heat of battle tries something he had been thinking about and it works - would have been so much more effective if there had been any hint of this previously). Similarly, so much of it is all metaphysical nonsense which I can't stand and can only see it as a cheap way out for an author as you don't have to explain things if they're all mystical.
The book reads like maybe the 5th in a series, where all the magical aspects and parts and peoples of the world have been solidly embedded, rather than book 2 where the world-building is being done almost real-time and there is something of a making-it-up-as-he-goes-along feel.
The overarching plot of the book is solid, and while I would have liked to see more traditional combat like the first book, and less magical/mystical stuff the action was plentiful and reasonably well told.
As with the first book, its only about 400 pages but felt like so much more to me, and it really was a bit of a slog at times.
I will finish this series with the conclusion when it is released but have enjoyed other series a lot more.
Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations
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With over 25,000 quotations from over 4,000 sources, The Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations is...
Alto's Adventure
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Above the placid ivory snow lies a sleepy mountain village, brimming with the promise of adventure. ...