Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (3549)

Content

ClareR (5716 KP) rated The Pumilio Child in Books

Apr 6, 2018

The Pumilio Child

Judy McInerney | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Ya Ling is kidnapped from her well-off Chinese family and sold in to slavery in 15th century Italy. Mantegna, a Renaissance artist, buys her with money that he can't really afford to spend, and takes her home to a very disapproving wife and household.
Ya Ling is admirable calm and stoic through all of her trials and tribulations, and eventually work as a respected healer, as her family taught her back in China.
The author really makes you feel for the characters in her novel - pity and later pride for Ya Ling, and hatred for some of the less virtuous male characters. It's a book that reflects the times very well: men, and men in the church especially, hold all the cards. Women are held in very low esteem. And women who are in any way different from the accepted norms are in danger of the ecclesiastical courts.
I read this on 'The Pigeonhole', a social reading platform, and really enjoyed the whole experience.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) in Movies

Apr 9, 2019

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

1997 | Action, Drama, Mystery

7.3

(20 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Umpty-tumpth Bond film rests on the laurels of GoldenEye perhaps just a bit too much. Evil media magnate Carver tries to orchestrate a war between the UK and China so he can sell more papers and grab a satellite TV franchise; British intelligence decides to disrupt his scheme by sending James Bond to have sex with his wife.

Well-mounted set pieces, and plenty of them, plus Michelle Yeoh gets an eye-catching role as the 'Oh, James!' character, but the problem is that the rest of it feels like karaoke Bond, without the self-awareness or attempts to move the franchise on that lifted GoldenEye somewhat - plus, it's just not as well written. The result is a mid-range entry in the series, assuming one overlooks the schoolboy error of Bond not being able to read Chinese (as any fule kno, he got a First in Oriental Languages at Cambridge). This still equates to an entertaining movie, just not an exceptional one.