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Gruff Rhys recommended Crab Day by Cate Le Bon in Music (curated)

 
Crab Day by Cate Le Bon
Crab Day by Cate Le Bon
2016 | Alternative, Pop, Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This is another record that has taken up my time over the past decade or so and I think this is her best album. I can't wait for the next one. She's been brilliant in forging her own path and it's really exciting. She played with us on the Neon Neon stuff but she was releasing records, mostly in the Welsh language, for a few years before then. I think she's on a really interesting musical journey. She is an amazing songwriter, a very natural songwriter who could write anything. She was in LA but she's been in the Lake District for a couple of years now. With this record in particular, there are some incredibly profound songs and she makes experimentation and improvisation extremely palatable to the ears which is very hard to do. Just to be able to make really unique pop music is also incredibly hard to do!"

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The African Queen (1951)
The African Queen (1951)
1951 | Drama, Romance, War

"A romance between a beat up, tired, old, raggedy-ass drunkard hanging on by a thread and one last hurrah. There’s a theme in the film that I love. To see the two of them [Humphrey Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn], the chemistry was so magical. It was so easy and fun. They were having so much fun. Clearly. It was like watching a tennis match between two of the best players of all time. Just effortless. And they tell this phenomenal story. I’m a sucker for those. [Hepburn] had a similar chemistry with lots of people, with Spencer Tracy in the Pat and Mike film, it was just sparkle and fun. Going back and forth between her and Bogie and they let Bogie play this guy, this stumbling bumbling [does impression “Well, Ma’am”] which was great, he just went there. John Huston did a brilliant job with that thing."

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John Lydon recommended Tago Mago by Can in Music (curated)

 
Tago Mago by Can
Tago Mago by Can
1971 | Psychedelic, Rock
10.0 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I always wanted to get back to what we did with PiL [Publice Image Ltd], but I got caught up in other things. The Sex Pistols were back on the road and no regrets: those people are my mates. Then it was all the TV work, which I loved. I discovered that nature is not something to be scared of, and best of all, that animals seem to like me! They don’t want to put me on the menu.” Lydon reflects on his not-so-punk appearance on the reality TV show ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of here’ He continued: “But hearing this absolutely brilliant record, in particular Halleluhwah, which lasts an entire side, reminds me of what we were trying to do with PiL. Can is its own thing and so is PiL. The only way to file these records is alphabetically.”

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Minari (2020)
Minari (2020)
2020 | Drama
10
8.7 (3 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Minari is a wonderfully realised and fleshed out tale of family, failure, hope, aging, faith, and gender expectations.
It has excellent sprinklings of humour throughout its very human and often crushing narrative, and is backed by one of the most beautiful music scores I've ever heard.
The entire cast is superb, especially Yuh-Jung Youn, who essentially plays two characters to great effect, and then of course to Alan Kim, quite possibly the most adorable kid in the history of film, and who puts in one hell of a performance. This is all complimented by some seriously stunning cinematography, which manages to achieve an almost dream like quality amongst all the realism.

Minari is a triumphant piece of cinema, that managed to absolutely break me and had me on the verge of tears for most of the second half. Thanks a lot Minari you emotional, brilliant bastard.
  
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Anohni recommended Warzone by Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band in Music (curated)

 
Warzone by Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band
Warzone by Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band
2018
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Almost everything I have tried to say, Yoko Ono was saying over 30 years ago. For half a century, she has been a prophet in our midst. On WARZONE, producer Thomas Bartlett sets her sage voice amid the barest of arrangements, shining a light once and for all on the essence of Ono’s legacy.A recent Netflix film revealed that Yoko cowrote the words for “Imagine,” one of the songs for which John Lennon was deified. It is pure Yoko that she would sit silently next to John as he sang it, knowing the world would listen to her message if it seemed to be from the perspective of her partner, a white, male English megastar. Yoko Ono has given and given to us. She is one of the most brilliant and generous artists of the 20th century, and the public record now reflects this."

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Tom Turner (388 KP) rated The Humans in Books

May 23, 2021  
The Humans
The Humans
Matt Haig | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.6 (10 Ratings)
Book Rating
I have to admit, the question of how an entity foreign to this planet would view certain things has occupied my thoughts on more than one occasion. This is pretty much what is at the centre of The Humans by Matt Haig, and he pulls it off amazingly. The thing is, it's pretty mind blowing to think exactly how much would be foreign, strange and unusual to something that isn't used to it. Even the way we behave, so managing to get us to feel that way is quite an accomplishment! Yes, I'm sure if you study it carefully there will be a few things where you would go 'How would an alien know about that?' but I'm pretty sure you'd have to go looking for them.

Ultimately Haig has written a convincing story that makes you truly think about your own existence, and that's a brilliant achievement.
  
Matter of Life and Death (1981)
Matter of Life and Death (1981)
1981 | Drama
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"I think A Matter of Life and Death is one of the great works of imagination in cinema. It’s a brilliant story. David Niven could not be more charming in it if he tried. He starts off, you know, as a World War II pilot about to crash his plane whilst quoting Andrew Marvell down the phone to the mayday operator, who he then falls in love with. There is one shot in it, actually, of the heavenly court before it goes into session, which we absolutely — and I haven’t actually spoken to Mike Newell about this — but we lifted almost identically for the start of the Triwizard tournament in Potter, in the fourth film. There is one shot — because I think I watched Matter of Life and Death shortly after we finished that film — which I watched and went, “Oh my god, we’ve just stolen that!”"

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Kristina (502 KP) rated The Quickie in Books

Dec 7, 2020  
The Quickie
The Quickie
James Patterson | 2007 | Crime, Fiction & Poetry, Philosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences, Travel
8
7.3 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
BookReporter.com says, "Action? Check." Very true. It was pretty action packed. "Suspense? By the carload." Fact, the suspense, twists, and turns just kept coming. "Romance? Yes." Now I know why their answer is so vague and only one word - anything that could be considered romance occurs before the 11th chapter (and these were some short chapters!). "Erotica? Let's just say that it's not limited to the cover." Error, error! What Patterson has written couldn't even touch the average erotica novel - I've written more erotic scenarios. I know erotica isn't James' forte and it didn't take away from the story, I was just disappointed in this part of BookReporter's review. I can tell you I never would have predicted the ending and there was no way I could have foreseen some of the shocking revelations within the book. It's shocker after shocker. Once again, Patterson has managed to write another brilliant suspense!
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Queen's Gambit in TV

Jan 20, 2021  
The Queen's Gambit
The Queen's Gambit
2020 | Drama
Lavish drama based on Walter Tevis' novel about a female chess prodigy. What sounds like fairly unpromising material - a young orphan discovers an immense talent for chess and rises to take on the world champion in Moscow, confronting her personal demons along the way - is elevated to something really special by the simple method of having a fantastic script, direction, acting and production values.

Looks fantastic, and Anya Taylor-Joy deserves all the accolades coming her way, but the show's real achievement for me is that it manages to capture the excitement and fascination of chess without becoming bogged down in details like the difference between the Orangutan and the Grob openings. The chess sequences are genuinely thrilling: you almost get a sense of what it feels like to have that kind of effortless talent in something. Brilliant TV aimed at people with brains.