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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Robert Bird

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If it is true that great art comes from great suffering, then the art of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 -...

And the Monkey Learned Nothing: Dispatches from a Life in Transit

Tom Lutz

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Tom Lutz is on a mission to visit every country on earth. And the Monkey Learned Nothing contains...

Can These Bones Come to Life?: Historical European Martial Arts: Volume 1: Historical European Martial Arts

Ken Mondschein

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Understanding the past takes more forms than historiography. Since 2005, professional and amateur...

LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) in Movies

Nov 27, 2020

This second outing for the full Avengers ensemble is a bit messier than the confident and tight first film, but still manages to be fun and exciting in spite of its flaws.

Once again, the huge positive is the great cast, and the chemistry they all share. The core six Avengers return, and provide the films humour (rightfully scaled back from the all out comedy tone of Guardians) and generally remind everyone why they're the solid backbone of this mammoth franchise.
There are plenty of new faces joining them, most notably Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and all integrate smoothly.
The villain is the titular Ultron (voiced by James Spader), a classic Marvel Comics villain that unfortunately ends up being another one-and-done MCU antagonist. This films main focus is the relationships between the Avengers, and sewing seeds for Civil War, and sadly, Ultron sort of gets pushed aside for this. It's a shame because Spader does a great job of making Ultron a sinister presence, but he ends up being little more than a CGI commander, of a CGI robot army.
Some of the set pieces are great though, particularly the Hulk vs Hulkbuster scene, and the climactic finale, and the child me who grew up reading these comics was nothing short of thrilled to see Vision in action.

Age of Ultron is somewhat underwhelming for a full blown Avengers entry, but still manages to be entertaining. Hopefully, we will see Ultron return in a future installment that has some more depth to it.

Kudos

Eleanor Luhar (47 KP) rated BZRK (BZRK, #1) in Books

Jun 24, 2019

BZRK is a unique, action-packed story about the war taking place "down in the meat", the war that could determine the fate of the human race.

Sadie McLure, daughter of billionaire Grey McLure, is horrified when she witnesses the death of her father and brother. This was no mere accident, and Sadie is determined to discover the truth behind their deaths.

And Noah Cotton is desperate to find out the cause of his brother's madness. He was an army recruit, Alex. But then something happened, something that drove him so insane that he was sent to live out his days in an asylum, screaming about Bug Man and repeating the word "nano". It has to mean something, doesn't it?

These two teens are joined in extraordinary circumstances, and thrown into the deep end of a major battle. A battle that is too small to be seen by the human eye. A battle between biots and nanobots. A battle that leads to multiple deaths, and could alter humanity entirely.

I loved the concept of this book. I've never read anything like it, about tiny bug-like robotic creatures and people who are linked to that are linked to their biots in such a way that they risk their sanity with every mission. But personally, I found it all somewhat... overwhelming. I wanted to enjoy it but I just got lost and, frankly, kind of bored. It improved again further on but I'm only going to give BZRK 3 stars.