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Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Hierarchy in Tabletop Games
Oct 1, 2019
It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the next installment in the Button Shy wallet series is here! *Crowd roar* After my discovery of Button Shy through their Kickstarter for Sprawlopolis, I have actively been on the lookout for their games. When I saw the call for reviewers for their newest card game, I knew I wanted to be involved! So how does Hierarchy hold up compared to their other wildly successful wallet games? Keep reading to find out!
Hierarchy is an abstract strategy game of perfect information for 2 players. Comprised of a mere 14 playing cards (excluding title and reference cards) it is quite the compact game – as is to be expected from the Button Shy crew. In a game of Hierarchy, players take turns playing cards from their open hand (no hidden information here!) on top of the last card played by their opponent, per the placement restrictions. To win, you must be able to play a card on top of which your opponent is unable to play a card – effectively ‘checkmating’ them and claiming victory for yourself!
DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. As this is a preview copy of the game, I do not know if the final rules or components will be similar or different to what we were provided. -T
Here’s how it works in detail. Each player first receives a Quick Reference Card, and is then dealt half of the deck (7 cards). The cards are double-sided to represent the two player colors – purple and gold – so each player flips their 7 cards to show their chosen color. Since this is a game of perfect information, all cards are laid out on the table, so each player always knows what cards their opponent has available to them. The player who was dealt the ‘Imposter’ card goes first. Each card has a specific number, ranging from 1 to 13, as well as a specific ability. To play a card, its number must be higher than that of the card below it, unless the card’s specific ability says it can be played otherwise. For example, if I play the Queen (#12), Travis could play the King (#13, numerically higher) or the Assassin (#1) since its power allows it to be played atop any card except for the Tower and Leper. Don’t be worried about having to memorize all the card abilities – they are all detailed on the Quick Reference Cards (see photo below). Play continues back and forth until one player is unable to play a card, either because they have no cards left at all or because they have no valid cards left to play. That player loses the game, and the remaining player is the top of the Hierarchy! (Roll credits)
Let’s talk components first. They’re excellent, which is no surprise coming from ButtonShy. Of course, we just have a preview copy of the game, so I can only imagine that the card quality might be up for improvement during the Kickstarter. That being said, the cards we received are nice and sturdy, as is the tell-tale wallet of a ButtonShy game. The text on the cards is a good size, and the font is easy to read. The artwork is fine, but quite honestly not something I looked at in depth until Travis mentioned the style. I think that’s because the cards are all monochrome, the art just didn’t really draw my eye. Not a knock on the game, just something I noticed! Speaking of color, I personally love the player color choices of Purple and Gold – the school colors of my Alma Mater ((the University of Northern Iowa, go Panthers!)(also of the Alma Mater of the rest of us – Western Illinois University – GO NECKS! -T)). Maybe I’m biased, but I think those two colors are a great combination 🙂
And how about the gameplay? I think it’s excellent. For such a compact and ‘light’ game, the strategy required for success keeps the game extremely engaging. You always know the cards your opponent has, and you’ve got to be thinking at least several turns in advance to try to back them into a corner while not letting yourself fall victim to an unnoticed strategic play. Another neat thing about Hierarchy is how quickly it plays – typically in 20 minutes or less. You might have to devote a decent amount of brainpower to outwitting your opponent, but you definitely don’t need to devote hours of time during your game night for this game, and I love that. Gamers who enjoy games like Citadels or Love Letter might enjoy the familiarity of Hierarchy’s gameplay coupled with the intimacy of a strictly 2-player game. The final verdict from me is that Button Shy has another hit on their hands with Hierarchy. I am very much looking forward to following the campaign, and definitely plan to pull this game out many times in my future!
Hierarchy is an abstract strategy game of perfect information for 2 players. Comprised of a mere 14 playing cards (excluding title and reference cards) it is quite the compact game – as is to be expected from the Button Shy crew. In a game of Hierarchy, players take turns playing cards from their open hand (no hidden information here!) on top of the last card played by their opponent, per the placement restrictions. To win, you must be able to play a card on top of which your opponent is unable to play a card – effectively ‘checkmating’ them and claiming victory for yourself!
DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. As this is a preview copy of the game, I do not know if the final rules or components will be similar or different to what we were provided. -T
Here’s how it works in detail. Each player first receives a Quick Reference Card, and is then dealt half of the deck (7 cards). The cards are double-sided to represent the two player colors – purple and gold – so each player flips their 7 cards to show their chosen color. Since this is a game of perfect information, all cards are laid out on the table, so each player always knows what cards their opponent has available to them. The player who was dealt the ‘Imposter’ card goes first. Each card has a specific number, ranging from 1 to 13, as well as a specific ability. To play a card, its number must be higher than that of the card below it, unless the card’s specific ability says it can be played otherwise. For example, if I play the Queen (#12), Travis could play the King (#13, numerically higher) or the Assassin (#1) since its power allows it to be played atop any card except for the Tower and Leper. Don’t be worried about having to memorize all the card abilities – they are all detailed on the Quick Reference Cards (see photo below). Play continues back and forth until one player is unable to play a card, either because they have no cards left at all or because they have no valid cards left to play. That player loses the game, and the remaining player is the top of the Hierarchy! (Roll credits)
Let’s talk components first. They’re excellent, which is no surprise coming from ButtonShy. Of course, we just have a preview copy of the game, so I can only imagine that the card quality might be up for improvement during the Kickstarter. That being said, the cards we received are nice and sturdy, as is the tell-tale wallet of a ButtonShy game. The text on the cards is a good size, and the font is easy to read. The artwork is fine, but quite honestly not something I looked at in depth until Travis mentioned the style. I think that’s because the cards are all monochrome, the art just didn’t really draw my eye. Not a knock on the game, just something I noticed! Speaking of color, I personally love the player color choices of Purple and Gold – the school colors of my Alma Mater ((the University of Northern Iowa, go Panthers!)(also of the Alma Mater of the rest of us – Western Illinois University – GO NECKS! -T)). Maybe I’m biased, but I think those two colors are a great combination 🙂
And how about the gameplay? I think it’s excellent. For such a compact and ‘light’ game, the strategy required for success keeps the game extremely engaging. You always know the cards your opponent has, and you’ve got to be thinking at least several turns in advance to try to back them into a corner while not letting yourself fall victim to an unnoticed strategic play. Another neat thing about Hierarchy is how quickly it plays – typically in 20 minutes or less. You might have to devote a decent amount of brainpower to outwitting your opponent, but you definitely don’t need to devote hours of time during your game night for this game, and I love that. Gamers who enjoy games like Citadels or Love Letter might enjoy the familiarity of Hierarchy’s gameplay coupled with the intimacy of a strictly 2-player game. The final verdict from me is that Button Shy has another hit on their hands with Hierarchy. I am very much looking forward to following the campaign, and definitely plan to pull this game out many times in my future!
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated Black Adam (2022) in Movies
Oct 25, 2022
About As Middle-Of-The-Road As You Can Get
The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has been criticized by many (including the BankofMarquis) for being too dark, dour and somber. The powers-that-be at DC clearly have heard that criticism and with their latest installment - BLACK ADAM - they ditched that grim tone.
If only they would have spent time on character and plot development instead of blowing things up and dispatching nameless/faceless henchmen.
Based on a DC Comics character the BankofMarquis knew nothing about - and featuring SOME characters from DC that the BankofMarquis had heard of (o’k, one character, Hawkman), BLACK ADAM stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the titular anti-hero who comes out of hibernation after about 5,000 years to exact vengeance on those who wronged him.
It’s a tricky line to walk when you are working with an anti-hero bent on death and destruction, but it can be done if you bring some humanity and humility to the character and have this anti-hero character go on some sort of journey of discovery along the way.
While this film succeeds for the most part in bringing a lighter tone and some fun to the proceedings, it seems that Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) and the trio of writers that penned this weak script opted to play it safe and didn’t go too dark (at the beginning) or too “Super-Heroey” (if that is a word) at the end, so what you get is a safe, middle-of-the-road entertainment that is “good enough” and (this is damning with faint praise), one of the better offerings in the DCEU.
Let’s start with the Johnson in the titular role. The film (and film-makers) play down Johnson’s inherent charm throughout the film - to the detriment of all. Johnson plays Black Adam with a focus of purpose and a lack of awareness and humor. While this could have been played with great effect neither Johnson nor Director Collet-Serra leans into this enough to make it a strong part of the offering. True, Johnson’s inherent charisma and screen presence shines through no matter how much it is attempted to be tamped down, but the character just comes off as plain vanilla.
Of course, Johnson’s physical form has never looked better and he excels in the action sequences - which are plentiful and full of explosions and destruction (destruction that is never commented on). These scenes overwhelm the story and the plot - and is one of the reasons that this film doesn’t rise above decent. It has lots of blowing things up and SuperHeroes going “smashy-smashy” with no real emotional resonance or consequence to them.
As for the other actors in this film, Aldis Hodge (ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI) is strong as the only DC Character previous known to the BankofMarquis - Hawkman. He is a welcome addition to this universe and it would be great if he showed up in more DCEU films - including adding him to any Justice League films.
Sarah Shahi (PERSON OF INTEREST on TV) is always a welcome sight in a film - and she more than capably fills in as the representative of the filmgoing audience as the human who is wrapped up the proceedings of these SuperHeroes while Mohammed Amer (the TV series RAMY) provides strong comic relief as Shahi’s brother.
Unfortunately, the film felt the need to put in 2 teenage Superheroes (I guess to appeal to their target audience) in the guise of Atom Smasher, Noah Centineo (THE PERFECT DATE) and Cyclone, Quintessa Swindell (the TV Series IN TREATMENT). These are both decent enough - and good looking enough - performers to put on screen, and they both would look good in a CW TV Series like THE FLASH, but their characters are pointless in this film. They are add-ons that don’t really add anything to the events.
And then there is good ol’ former James Bond Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate, a character the BankofMarquis knew nothing about before this film, but now am clamoring for a standalone movie for Brosnan and this character. He was the best thing in this move and this veteran actor understood the assignment, bringing humor and gravitas when needed while doling out sage advice - Obi-Wan style - to both Hawkman and Black Adam throughout the film.
All-in-all, a decent time at the theater (the DCEU has certainly done worse), but, in the end, BLACK ADAM is as disposable as Cotton Candy, fun while it lasts, but not anything that will stay with you for any length of time.
Letter Grade: B (the most solid “B” that a film can have).
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
If only they would have spent time on character and plot development instead of blowing things up and dispatching nameless/faceless henchmen.
Based on a DC Comics character the BankofMarquis knew nothing about - and featuring SOME characters from DC that the BankofMarquis had heard of (o’k, one character, Hawkman), BLACK ADAM stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the titular anti-hero who comes out of hibernation after about 5,000 years to exact vengeance on those who wronged him.
It’s a tricky line to walk when you are working with an anti-hero bent on death and destruction, but it can be done if you bring some humanity and humility to the character and have this anti-hero character go on some sort of journey of discovery along the way.
While this film succeeds for the most part in bringing a lighter tone and some fun to the proceedings, it seems that Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) and the trio of writers that penned this weak script opted to play it safe and didn’t go too dark (at the beginning) or too “Super-Heroey” (if that is a word) at the end, so what you get is a safe, middle-of-the-road entertainment that is “good enough” and (this is damning with faint praise), one of the better offerings in the DCEU.
Let’s start with the Johnson in the titular role. The film (and film-makers) play down Johnson’s inherent charm throughout the film - to the detriment of all. Johnson plays Black Adam with a focus of purpose and a lack of awareness and humor. While this could have been played with great effect neither Johnson nor Director Collet-Serra leans into this enough to make it a strong part of the offering. True, Johnson’s inherent charisma and screen presence shines through no matter how much it is attempted to be tamped down, but the character just comes off as plain vanilla.
Of course, Johnson’s physical form has never looked better and he excels in the action sequences - which are plentiful and full of explosions and destruction (destruction that is never commented on). These scenes overwhelm the story and the plot - and is one of the reasons that this film doesn’t rise above decent. It has lots of blowing things up and SuperHeroes going “smashy-smashy” with no real emotional resonance or consequence to them.
As for the other actors in this film, Aldis Hodge (ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI) is strong as the only DC Character previous known to the BankofMarquis - Hawkman. He is a welcome addition to this universe and it would be great if he showed up in more DCEU films - including adding him to any Justice League films.
Sarah Shahi (PERSON OF INTEREST on TV) is always a welcome sight in a film - and she more than capably fills in as the representative of the filmgoing audience as the human who is wrapped up the proceedings of these SuperHeroes while Mohammed Amer (the TV series RAMY) provides strong comic relief as Shahi’s brother.
Unfortunately, the film felt the need to put in 2 teenage Superheroes (I guess to appeal to their target audience) in the guise of Atom Smasher, Noah Centineo (THE PERFECT DATE) and Cyclone, Quintessa Swindell (the TV Series IN TREATMENT). These are both decent enough - and good looking enough - performers to put on screen, and they both would look good in a CW TV Series like THE FLASH, but their characters are pointless in this film. They are add-ons that don’t really add anything to the events.
And then there is good ol’ former James Bond Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate, a character the BankofMarquis knew nothing about before this film, but now am clamoring for a standalone movie for Brosnan and this character. He was the best thing in this move and this veteran actor understood the assignment, bringing humor and gravitas when needed while doling out sage advice - Obi-Wan style - to both Hawkman and Black Adam throughout the film.
All-in-all, a decent time at the theater (the DCEU has certainly done worse), but, in the end, BLACK ADAM is as disposable as Cotton Candy, fun while it lasts, but not anything that will stay with you for any length of time.
Letter Grade: B (the most solid “B” that a film can have).
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
Mothergamer (1580 KP) rated the PC version of Dead Island in Video Games
Apr 3, 2019
I really wanted to love Dead Island. After seeing many fantastic pictures and reading up about the game months before it came out, I was excited. Friends and family know I am very much a zombie fan. Ever since that Halloween night when I was 12, and watched Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, I have genuinely enjoyed all forms of zombie multimedia. Some of it has been great, some of it filled with schlock, and some of it just plain fun. So I was excited about Dead Island and had high hopes for it. Some of my expectations were met, but others not so much. This included the discovery that the game is in the first person view (I have issues with vertigo and first person view games), but I found that I could play the game for short periods of time because the camera did not bounce around the way it does for so many other first person games I've experienced. There are good things about this game, but there are bad things as well.
Welcome To Paradise!
You start the game with the setting of what appears to be a tropical island paradise, Banoi. However, if you look closer, you'll notice the blood on the walls, in the sand, and in the swimming pools. Look even closer, and you'll see the zombies munching on corpses. Dead Island while appearing to be a first person shooter, is more than that. Sure there is shooting in it, but there are also a myriad of other weapons such as oars, cars, and molotov cocktails. Dead Island is more of a schlock filled action role playing game that plays heavily on grisly melee combat. The resort is not the only place you explore. You can go even further inland into city and jungle settings, while doing favors for survivors on the island. The maps are excellent and there is even a handy shortcut function, where you can click on the map and go back to a previous location without having to run through a zombie horde. There are also plenty of weapons that you can improvise, making them quite deadly to the zombie menace. The four player online co-op is pretty good and gives you a chance to survive a zombie horde fight for the more difficult quests.
Just a girl and her axe, waiting for some zombies.
The majority of your time on Banoi is spent exploring and foraging for items for weapons and supplies. In co-op mode, this can work very well with a couple of people fighting off the zombies, while the others get things like fuel for the vehicles. You can also have fun with the leveling grind, running zombies over with various automobiles and watch the points tally up. You can easily put twenty hours into this game with all the questing, exploring, and zombie slaying and it is fun trying all the different melee choices out. My personal favorite was driving a big truck and running zombies over.
Hungry Tourists.
Now we get to the bad. While there are only a few minor flaws with the game, it definitely made a difference in the game play and the story. Now I'm not saying for a fun schlock zombie game I need a gripping emotional story, but the story must be good. Dead Island gives you a very threadbare story and the characters backgrounds are rather weakly written. This is a reflection on the writers. They could have written the characters better and fleshed out the story more, but they chose to do it this way although I am not sure why. The voice acting is also not great, with monotone emotionless voices. Do the characters even care that they could get eaten by zombies? I get the impression that they don't with that flat tone in their voice acting. Clunky controls and awkward combat can make you frustrated. It can be off putting when you're fighting off a wave of zombies and trying to make the camera turn the way you want it to so you can at least see what you're fighting. The game would also benefit from a better block and dodge option during combat. The quality of the visuals isn't even. The environmental graphics on the resort are great and the jungle environments as well, but the character and npc animation is poor and as you progress towards the end of the game it comes across as the bare minimum at best.
The last issue I have with Dead Island is the lack of regard for the solo player. There isn't an offline co-op option so you can play with friends you have over. It's as if they didn't even consider the possibility that people would want to play offline with friends and only have the online option. While I appreciate their reliable system for online play, I still would have liked the option to play offline with others if I chose.
Overall, Dead Island is a good game, but not a perfect one. It had a lot of potential, but the execution of those ideas was severely lacking. You're better off just waiting for it to go on sale really cheap or just rent it.
Welcome To Paradise!
You start the game with the setting of what appears to be a tropical island paradise, Banoi. However, if you look closer, you'll notice the blood on the walls, in the sand, and in the swimming pools. Look even closer, and you'll see the zombies munching on corpses. Dead Island while appearing to be a first person shooter, is more than that. Sure there is shooting in it, but there are also a myriad of other weapons such as oars, cars, and molotov cocktails. Dead Island is more of a schlock filled action role playing game that plays heavily on grisly melee combat. The resort is not the only place you explore. You can go even further inland into city and jungle settings, while doing favors for survivors on the island. The maps are excellent and there is even a handy shortcut function, where you can click on the map and go back to a previous location without having to run through a zombie horde. There are also plenty of weapons that you can improvise, making them quite deadly to the zombie menace. The four player online co-op is pretty good and gives you a chance to survive a zombie horde fight for the more difficult quests.
Just a girl and her axe, waiting for some zombies.
The majority of your time on Banoi is spent exploring and foraging for items for weapons and supplies. In co-op mode, this can work very well with a couple of people fighting off the zombies, while the others get things like fuel for the vehicles. You can also have fun with the leveling grind, running zombies over with various automobiles and watch the points tally up. You can easily put twenty hours into this game with all the questing, exploring, and zombie slaying and it is fun trying all the different melee choices out. My personal favorite was driving a big truck and running zombies over.
Hungry Tourists.
Now we get to the bad. While there are only a few minor flaws with the game, it definitely made a difference in the game play and the story. Now I'm not saying for a fun schlock zombie game I need a gripping emotional story, but the story must be good. Dead Island gives you a very threadbare story and the characters backgrounds are rather weakly written. This is a reflection on the writers. They could have written the characters better and fleshed out the story more, but they chose to do it this way although I am not sure why. The voice acting is also not great, with monotone emotionless voices. Do the characters even care that they could get eaten by zombies? I get the impression that they don't with that flat tone in their voice acting. Clunky controls and awkward combat can make you frustrated. It can be off putting when you're fighting off a wave of zombies and trying to make the camera turn the way you want it to so you can at least see what you're fighting. The game would also benefit from a better block and dodge option during combat. The quality of the visuals isn't even. The environmental graphics on the resort are great and the jungle environments as well, but the character and npc animation is poor and as you progress towards the end of the game it comes across as the bare minimum at best.
The last issue I have with Dead Island is the lack of regard for the solo player. There isn't an offline co-op option so you can play with friends you have over. It's as if they didn't even consider the possibility that people would want to play offline with friends and only have the online option. While I appreciate their reliable system for online play, I still would have liked the option to play offline with others if I chose.
Overall, Dead Island is a good game, but not a perfect one. It had a lot of potential, but the execution of those ideas was severely lacking. You're better off just waiting for it to go on sale really cheap or just rent it.
Mayhawke (97 KP) rated I am No One in Books
Feb 13, 2018
Intriguing but ultimately disappointing
Written in the first person I Am No One is the account of recent events in the life of the fictional NY academic, Jeremy O'Keefe. O'Keefe, ironically an expert in surveillance, finds himself the subject of apparent scrutiny by unknown observers, a discovery that propels him into paranoia and pushes him to the boundaries of sanity. As the story is unpacked, page by page, it becomes clear that O'Keefe's paranoia is not unfounded, and that his initial confusion as to why anyone would want to bother observing the behaviour of a mundane and only moderately successful Professor actually belies a deeper understanding of the cause and his actions that precipitated it.
O'Keefe is a difficult character to really sympathise with. Whilst his ideology is admirably egalitarian he falls into that bracket of slightly stuffy, middle-class liberals who take themselves too seriously and fail to practise what they preach. In fairness to O'Keefe he largely has the grace and self-awareness to question the rationality of his fears and accidental moments of prejudice (though he is of the very typical male Liberal variety that doesn't seem to recognise the contradiction of professing himself feminist whilst watching porn): slightly pompous, slightly too much self-regard slightly too much sense of victimhood, he is not unlikeable just a bit of a non-entity. Whilst this is clearly intentional it makes his narrative stodgy. Not unreadable, but at the same time easy to put down for a week whilst a more engaging book is read. This is either a spectacularly adept piece of characterisation or an unfortunate reflection of the author, Patrick Flanery. I do hope it is the writing because if not then all the peculiar, inaccurate and unlikely observations made by O'Keefe onbehalf of his character regarding differences between the British and Americans are likely also Flanery's:. For example the breath-taking assertion that socio-economic failure is treated more harshly in the UK than in the US, when any basic knowledge of sociology in the two countries shows that the criteria for failure is a) much broader in the US and b) responded to far more harshly, e.g.: "if you don't earn enough from your three jobs to afford medical insurance to pay for your cancer treatment, you clearly haven't worked hard enough. The fault is yours , you are a failure and the punishment is premature death.". It is also difficult to accept that Flanery is regularly treated with distrust and dislike by bank cashiers for his Irish name. Quite aside from anything else most bank cashiers in this country now aren't old enough to remember the Irish troubles, and the bigots-for-bigotry's-sake have long since transferred their angst from the Irish to the Poles and the Muslims.
Flanery is also an academic, something that is abundantly obvious from the highly structured writing method he employs in this book. The reader is left with the impression that where other novelists write books to be read as stories Flanery has written a text with an eye to future deconstruction by English Lit students. That is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but occasionally one wishes he could have been a little less concerned with construction in the minutiae and more concerned with crafting a story with a complete beginning, middle and end. And therein lies one of the greatest failings of this book: it has no real conclusion. Questions are raised that go unanswered. In particular, there are issues with characters, whose true identity may never be elaborated upon or, in the case of his girlfriend who makes a sudden, poorly explained behavioural volte-face that is entirely out of character but provides Flanery with a device to enable his protagonist take the critical closing step to the tale.
It seems that Flanery has written this book as a parable on the dangers of unfettered digital surveillance: how easy it is for those who wish to to access all our personal data and how very quickly and efficiently lives can be subverted. Whilst this may be a revelation to a few it has to be said that there is nothing revealed in this book about the scope and methods of data collection that anyone who has even a small amount of technical savvy won't already know, which rather undermines it as an expose. The book also attempts to portray how easy it is to suddenly and unintentionally find oneself on the wrong side of the law. Unfortunately in this story the actions which purport to have landed O'Keefe in possible criminality are so ridiculous and far-fetched that only the most paranoid would ever see an offence in them. Contrary to highlighting the ease with which the well intentioned can unwittingly find themselves in need of lawyers it suggests that all the peripheral characters are actually far more paranoid and delusional than O'Keefe will ever be.
All that aside this was an intriguing and mildly engaging story. Largely well-written but let down by a an unsatisfactory conclusion and a failure to induce the kind of fear that was intended.
O'Keefe is a difficult character to really sympathise with. Whilst his ideology is admirably egalitarian he falls into that bracket of slightly stuffy, middle-class liberals who take themselves too seriously and fail to practise what they preach. In fairness to O'Keefe he largely has the grace and self-awareness to question the rationality of his fears and accidental moments of prejudice (though he is of the very typical male Liberal variety that doesn't seem to recognise the contradiction of professing himself feminist whilst watching porn): slightly pompous, slightly too much self-regard slightly too much sense of victimhood, he is not unlikeable just a bit of a non-entity. Whilst this is clearly intentional it makes his narrative stodgy. Not unreadable, but at the same time easy to put down for a week whilst a more engaging book is read. This is either a spectacularly adept piece of characterisation or an unfortunate reflection of the author, Patrick Flanery. I do hope it is the writing because if not then all the peculiar, inaccurate and unlikely observations made by O'Keefe onbehalf of his character regarding differences between the British and Americans are likely also Flanery's:. For example the breath-taking assertion that socio-economic failure is treated more harshly in the UK than in the US, when any basic knowledge of sociology in the two countries shows that the criteria for failure is a) much broader in the US and b) responded to far more harshly, e.g.: "if you don't earn enough from your three jobs to afford medical insurance to pay for your cancer treatment, you clearly haven't worked hard enough. The fault is yours , you are a failure and the punishment is premature death.". It is also difficult to accept that Flanery is regularly treated with distrust and dislike by bank cashiers for his Irish name. Quite aside from anything else most bank cashiers in this country now aren't old enough to remember the Irish troubles, and the bigots-for-bigotry's-sake have long since transferred their angst from the Irish to the Poles and the Muslims.
Flanery is also an academic, something that is abundantly obvious from the highly structured writing method he employs in this book. The reader is left with the impression that where other novelists write books to be read as stories Flanery has written a text with an eye to future deconstruction by English Lit students. That is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but occasionally one wishes he could have been a little less concerned with construction in the minutiae and more concerned with crafting a story with a complete beginning, middle and end. And therein lies one of the greatest failings of this book: it has no real conclusion. Questions are raised that go unanswered. In particular, there are issues with characters, whose true identity may never be elaborated upon or, in the case of his girlfriend who makes a sudden, poorly explained behavioural volte-face that is entirely out of character but provides Flanery with a device to enable his protagonist take the critical closing step to the tale.
It seems that Flanery has written this book as a parable on the dangers of unfettered digital surveillance: how easy it is for those who wish to to access all our personal data and how very quickly and efficiently lives can be subverted. Whilst this may be a revelation to a few it has to be said that there is nothing revealed in this book about the scope and methods of data collection that anyone who has even a small amount of technical savvy won't already know, which rather undermines it as an expose. The book also attempts to portray how easy it is to suddenly and unintentionally find oneself on the wrong side of the law. Unfortunately in this story the actions which purport to have landed O'Keefe in possible criminality are so ridiculous and far-fetched that only the most paranoid would ever see an offence in them. Contrary to highlighting the ease with which the well intentioned can unwittingly find themselves in need of lawyers it suggests that all the peripheral characters are actually far more paranoid and delusional than O'Keefe will ever be.
All that aside this was an intriguing and mildly engaging story. Largely well-written but let down by a an unsatisfactory conclusion and a failure to induce the kind of fear that was intended.
Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated V for Vendetta (2005) in Movies
Aug 14, 2019
On a dark and silent night, a young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman), treads carefully through the streets of London unaware of the direction her life is about to take. As an attractive young lady, sneaking out of her home after curfew is filled with peril, especially when she is confronted by a gang of local thugs who happen to work for the government. Despite her protests, the men set up Evey only to be confronted by a masked figure.
The masked figure quickly dispatches the assailants and offers to escort Evey to safety. Despite being scared, Evey does accompany the figure to a rooftop where she is treated to a spectacular explosion set to music.
Thus begins V for Vendetta a film that mixes “The Phantom of the Opera” “Beauty and the Beast” and ?” to create a gothic love story and biting social commentary about the dangers of governmental control and censorship in a society gone awry.
In London of the near future, it is learned that a series of terrorist attacks have left thousands dead which resulted in stricter governmental controls and intrusions into privacy and lifestyles. Those who did not conform nor meet expectations often vanished never to be heard from again. Such was the case of Evey’s parents who decided to protest governmental policies and soon found themselves beaten and whisked away in the night.
Behind all of the oppression is a man named Adam Sutler (John Hurt), a monomaniacal leader who rules with an iron fist and an extreme agenda that he has manipulated to make himself and unopposed ruler of the nation.
While most of the population lives in fear of Sutler and his men, there is one who does not, a mysterious masked figure named V (Hugo Weaving), who dons a Guy Fawkes mask in tribute to the man who centuries ago attempted to destroy Parliament. When V is able to temporarily gain control of the television network for the government, he is able to broadcast his message to the people that the time has come to take back their lives and society and stop living in fear. Towards this end, V pledges to the masses that he will destroy Parliament in 1 year and that the people should gather to watch the destruction unfold.
This bold proclamation causes Sutler to stop at nothing to capture V and he tasks his Chief Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea), to locate V. Since Evey worked at the television station and was observed helping V on a security monitor, Finch decides to locate Evey and force her to reveal the locale of the mysterious vigilante.
This task proves difficult as V has taken Evey into his protection and forces her to live in his luxurious yet secluded home in order to avoid the police forces.
It is during this time that Evey learns that V is a study in contrast. On one hand he is a very sophisticated person with a taste for the arts, culture, and a desire to see people free to live their lives as they desire.
During this time V also kills top members of the political party and with the discovery of each new victim, he becomes an even bigger target of a very irate Sutler.
All of which culminates in a race against the clock for V to complete his plan and exact his revenge for past wrongdoings done to him which propels the film to its climatic finale.
While the film is an interesting and at times enjoyable film it is hampered in some ways by a marketing program where early trailers showed the film to be an action filled romp. The truth is there is about 15-20 minutes of action in the films nearly 2hr and 10 minute run time which allows the majority of the film to be spent on the interaction between V and Evey.
While this is interesting and does bring in elements of “Phantom” and “Beauty” as I mentioned earlier, it is at the sacrifice of what I think are important factors. For example we learn a bit about why V is on his vendetta but serious questions from that are not answered. We do not learn the full what, where and why, on his situation. I am trying hard to avoid spoilers here so suffice it to say there are some very important questions about what was done to him, how he survived and so on that need to be answered but are not.
The action sequences though few and far between are well staged and Weaving and Portman have a great chemistry with one another and do make interesting and compelling characters.
The main strength of the film is the message that people need to be aware of what is going on around them and not be so willing to accept everything they are told at face value. There is a real sense of counter-culture with the film as the prevalent theme of question and if needed defy authority permeates the film.
The script written by the Wachowski brothers of The Matrix trilogy fame has chosen to tone down the gimmicky of bullet time effects and instead focus on a character driven drama with a message and it is one that resounds loudly and clearly.
The masked figure quickly dispatches the assailants and offers to escort Evey to safety. Despite being scared, Evey does accompany the figure to a rooftop where she is treated to a spectacular explosion set to music.
Thus begins V for Vendetta a film that mixes “The Phantom of the Opera” “Beauty and the Beast” and ?” to create a gothic love story and biting social commentary about the dangers of governmental control and censorship in a society gone awry.
In London of the near future, it is learned that a series of terrorist attacks have left thousands dead which resulted in stricter governmental controls and intrusions into privacy and lifestyles. Those who did not conform nor meet expectations often vanished never to be heard from again. Such was the case of Evey’s parents who decided to protest governmental policies and soon found themselves beaten and whisked away in the night.
Behind all of the oppression is a man named Adam Sutler (John Hurt), a monomaniacal leader who rules with an iron fist and an extreme agenda that he has manipulated to make himself and unopposed ruler of the nation.
While most of the population lives in fear of Sutler and his men, there is one who does not, a mysterious masked figure named V (Hugo Weaving), who dons a Guy Fawkes mask in tribute to the man who centuries ago attempted to destroy Parliament. When V is able to temporarily gain control of the television network for the government, he is able to broadcast his message to the people that the time has come to take back their lives and society and stop living in fear. Towards this end, V pledges to the masses that he will destroy Parliament in 1 year and that the people should gather to watch the destruction unfold.
This bold proclamation causes Sutler to stop at nothing to capture V and he tasks his Chief Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea), to locate V. Since Evey worked at the television station and was observed helping V on a security monitor, Finch decides to locate Evey and force her to reveal the locale of the mysterious vigilante.
This task proves difficult as V has taken Evey into his protection and forces her to live in his luxurious yet secluded home in order to avoid the police forces.
It is during this time that Evey learns that V is a study in contrast. On one hand he is a very sophisticated person with a taste for the arts, culture, and a desire to see people free to live their lives as they desire.
During this time V also kills top members of the political party and with the discovery of each new victim, he becomes an even bigger target of a very irate Sutler.
All of which culminates in a race against the clock for V to complete his plan and exact his revenge for past wrongdoings done to him which propels the film to its climatic finale.
While the film is an interesting and at times enjoyable film it is hampered in some ways by a marketing program where early trailers showed the film to be an action filled romp. The truth is there is about 15-20 minutes of action in the films nearly 2hr and 10 minute run time which allows the majority of the film to be spent on the interaction between V and Evey.
While this is interesting and does bring in elements of “Phantom” and “Beauty” as I mentioned earlier, it is at the sacrifice of what I think are important factors. For example we learn a bit about why V is on his vendetta but serious questions from that are not answered. We do not learn the full what, where and why, on his situation. I am trying hard to avoid spoilers here so suffice it to say there are some very important questions about what was done to him, how he survived and so on that need to be answered but are not.
The action sequences though few and far between are well staged and Weaving and Portman have a great chemistry with one another and do make interesting and compelling characters.
The main strength of the film is the message that people need to be aware of what is going on around them and not be so willing to accept everything they are told at face value. There is a real sense of counter-culture with the film as the prevalent theme of question and if needed defy authority permeates the film.
The script written by the Wachowski brothers of The Matrix trilogy fame has chosen to tone down the gimmicky of bullet time effects and instead focus on a character driven drama with a message and it is one that resounds loudly and clearly.
Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) in Movies
Jun 20, 2020
Why is this even prefaced everywhere with Fast & Furious? Apart from a couple of characters and the fact there are cars with a crapload of action they aren't really the same thing.
Hattie Shaw and her MI6 team have secured a virus that could threaten everyone if it gets into the wrong hands. In a surprise attacked by Brixton, an enhanced "bad guy", her entire team is killed and she has to make a quick decision.
As the story of the missing vial gets out handlers call in their top assets to retrieve it. The trouble is that they hate each other and working together isn't something that's going to work. Hobbs goes looking for Hattie on the streets and Shaw heads to her flat, both set some action they weren't expecting to, highlighting just what they're up against.
As an offshoot from the Fast & Furious franchise you expect the action, but Hobbs & Shaw takes a much bigger step towards comedy, which thankfully both Johnson and Statham are good at. Individually they'll get me to see a film, I might wish I hadn't when I come out of it, but you can pretty much guarantee that they'll give you a consistent result when it comes to the acting.
The two of them together are fun and they bounce off each other with impeccable timing, but there might be just a little bit too much insulting back and forth thrown into this one. It's not that it's bad, it's just that when it happens it can occasionally feel too long. It's almost as if they told them to improvise and they'd cut out a whole load of it and then never did. [One of my favourite bits of them together in the film is at the beginning of the trailer above.]
Vanessa Kirby as Shaw's sister Hattie is a bit more sensible than the leading men, that doesn't mean she's any less engaged in the action though. Right from the off they're showing her as tough and no-nonsense which fits in with the family characteristics. You get some great glimpses of the Shaw kids showing shared traits and it's really nice to see that link on the screen. Outside of the action and the family moments she sadly doesn't feel like a very well-formed character, there are several inconsistencies in her that I found to be confusing. You'd think one of those would be the age gap between her and Deckard, but honestly, until I saw some people mention it online I hadn't noticed it... it's a summer blockbuster... who's watching for those sorts of technicalities?!
Our bad guy Brixton, portrayed by Idris Elba is... yummy. I don't feel like there's much to say about Brixton, he kicks ass, he's got great tech and there's a good history with Shaw... but... he didn't really feel like a bad guy. Eteon certainly felt like an evil empire, but Brixton is just a minion in the grand scheme of things. I have my theories about Eteon, but that would mean major spoilers I'm afraid. I imagine we'll see more of them in the next one.
We get another wonderful pop up from Helen Mirren. Yeeeeeess, Queen! She's brilliant as always. There are a few cameos, and I'm impressed they managed to keep them secret. It was a fun discovery and definitely added to the humour of the whole thing, had you taken them out of the mix then you would have been left a much more "sensible" action film, but they went with it and it was certainly entertaining.
Obviously there's a lot of action, in a lot of different scenes. As ridiculous as it is, I did like the London chase that happens shortly after the jog down the building that you see in the trailer. It includes some good jaw-dropping moments and ends with a particularly satisfying moment. As fun as this sequence was, it does include the most dubious bit of CGI in the whole film... watch for that bike.
My other favourite scene is the finale, the whole thing is kind of long but specifically I'm thinking about Hobbs, Shaw and Brixton facing off. Even before going into the film you know exactly what needs to happen to get to the resolution, so when they get to that point you're sat going "about time!" As the storm sets in we get an amazing sequence with slow-mo of the three of them fighting in the rain. It was immense... some may say daft, but that's totally why I turned up for it. There's also some great glitching of Brixton's tech that I thought worked really well with everything. My only issue is that there's one moment where Jason Statham appears to genuinely smile and it feels completely out of character.
There are some things I want to mention before I finish.
- There feels like a lot of product placement happening throughout, including for things that aren't even real products.
- You do not... I repeat... DO NOT drive by a Greggs without stopping for a chicken bake.
Let's face it, if you even remotely enjoy action and comedy together then you're going to be enjoying this movie. You don't need to switch your brain on to watch this, it's just pure entertainment.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2019/08/hobbs-shaw-movie-review.html
Hattie Shaw and her MI6 team have secured a virus that could threaten everyone if it gets into the wrong hands. In a surprise attacked by Brixton, an enhanced "bad guy", her entire team is killed and she has to make a quick decision.
As the story of the missing vial gets out handlers call in their top assets to retrieve it. The trouble is that they hate each other and working together isn't something that's going to work. Hobbs goes looking for Hattie on the streets and Shaw heads to her flat, both set some action they weren't expecting to, highlighting just what they're up against.
As an offshoot from the Fast & Furious franchise you expect the action, but Hobbs & Shaw takes a much bigger step towards comedy, which thankfully both Johnson and Statham are good at. Individually they'll get me to see a film, I might wish I hadn't when I come out of it, but you can pretty much guarantee that they'll give you a consistent result when it comes to the acting.
The two of them together are fun and they bounce off each other with impeccable timing, but there might be just a little bit too much insulting back and forth thrown into this one. It's not that it's bad, it's just that when it happens it can occasionally feel too long. It's almost as if they told them to improvise and they'd cut out a whole load of it and then never did. [One of my favourite bits of them together in the film is at the beginning of the trailer above.]
Vanessa Kirby as Shaw's sister Hattie is a bit more sensible than the leading men, that doesn't mean she's any less engaged in the action though. Right from the off they're showing her as tough and no-nonsense which fits in with the family characteristics. You get some great glimpses of the Shaw kids showing shared traits and it's really nice to see that link on the screen. Outside of the action and the family moments she sadly doesn't feel like a very well-formed character, there are several inconsistencies in her that I found to be confusing. You'd think one of those would be the age gap between her and Deckard, but honestly, until I saw some people mention it online I hadn't noticed it... it's a summer blockbuster... who's watching for those sorts of technicalities?!
Our bad guy Brixton, portrayed by Idris Elba is... yummy. I don't feel like there's much to say about Brixton, he kicks ass, he's got great tech and there's a good history with Shaw... but... he didn't really feel like a bad guy. Eteon certainly felt like an evil empire, but Brixton is just a minion in the grand scheme of things. I have my theories about Eteon, but that would mean major spoilers I'm afraid. I imagine we'll see more of them in the next one.
We get another wonderful pop up from Helen Mirren. Yeeeeeess, Queen! She's brilliant as always. There are a few cameos, and I'm impressed they managed to keep them secret. It was a fun discovery and definitely added to the humour of the whole thing, had you taken them out of the mix then you would have been left a much more "sensible" action film, but they went with it and it was certainly entertaining.
Obviously there's a lot of action, in a lot of different scenes. As ridiculous as it is, I did like the London chase that happens shortly after the jog down the building that you see in the trailer. It includes some good jaw-dropping moments and ends with a particularly satisfying moment. As fun as this sequence was, it does include the most dubious bit of CGI in the whole film... watch for that bike.
My other favourite scene is the finale, the whole thing is kind of long but specifically I'm thinking about Hobbs, Shaw and Brixton facing off. Even before going into the film you know exactly what needs to happen to get to the resolution, so when they get to that point you're sat going "about time!" As the storm sets in we get an amazing sequence with slow-mo of the three of them fighting in the rain. It was immense... some may say daft, but that's totally why I turned up for it. There's also some great glitching of Brixton's tech that I thought worked really well with everything. My only issue is that there's one moment where Jason Statham appears to genuinely smile and it feels completely out of character.
There are some things I want to mention before I finish.
- There feels like a lot of product placement happening throughout, including for things that aren't even real products.
- You do not... I repeat... DO NOT drive by a Greggs without stopping for a chicken bake.
Let's face it, if you even remotely enjoy action and comedy together then you're going to be enjoying this movie. You don't need to switch your brain on to watch this, it's just pure entertainment.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2019/08/hobbs-shaw-movie-review.html
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated The Hate U Give (2018) in Movies
Sep 28, 2021
It’s a turf war on a global scale.
I saw this as part of a “Secret Cinema” event by Cineworld cinemas in the UK. That’s where you go to see a pre-release movie without knowing what it is going to be. It’s an interesting litmus test for a) a movie’s upfront marketing appeal (how many people get up and walk out when the BBFC title appears) and b) the “grab ’em early” appeal of the movie itself (how many people get up and walk out during the first 20 minutes of so).
I’m afraid this movie didn’t do very well on either a) or b) at my showing: about 20 people left immediately, and more tellingly about another 20 people left in the first half hour. There’s a reason for that: the first half hour of this film is goddamn awful!
Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is a sixteen year-old resident of Garden Heights, a black neighbourhood in a US city, where she lives with her younger brother and step-brother. Their parents Maverick (Russell Hornsby, “Fences“) and Lisa (Regina Hall) are devoting all of their energies to “break the cycle” and get their kids out of the neighbourhood and off to college and better futures. As such, the kids attend not the rough-house local school but a much more upper-class establishment: there Starr has to play a different role, with links to her origins being kept hidden even from her white boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa).
But all that changes when her boyhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) is shot and killed in a police stop-and-search. As the only witness, and with Khalil linked to local gang lord King (Anthony Mackie), Starr’s anonymous world is about to get a national focus shone onto it.
Man… I hate voiceovers in films and always have. So I really hated the start of this film which has Starr narrating ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING (“Blah, blah, blah..”): no audience discovery is required. It also starts with a sort of highschool romance vibe, but not one that’s well done with kissing (“Blah, blah, blah..”) while the local Mean Girls look on (“Blah, blah”) then with Starr’s friends trying to act street (“blah, blah”) while Starr tries not to be street, all to the constant droning of Starr’s voiceover (“Blah, blah, blah..”). (I never walk out of movies…. but I can kind of understand the rationale of those who did).
Fortunately the voiceover then largely recedes (it only pops up with occasional staccato “thoughts”, before storming back for a “blah, blah” finale). And with the shooting, the film takes on a much more interesting slant, giving Amandla Stenberg a chance to really shine.
I have commented on Ms Stenberg before: she was the only really good thing in the recent “The Darkest Minds“. Here she exhibits a tremendous range from the delighted (her smile is radiant and seems astonishingly unforced) to the heartbroken and furious. There’s also a really strong supporting cast with great turns from Hornsby, Hall, Mackie and Smith. Hornsby in particular I found great as the Dad desperately tutoring his kids in military (but loving) fashion to avoid his mistakes.
For me, this seemed to be a surprisingly atypical view of a black ghetto-living family. A scene set in a diner is genuinely touching at emphasising the loving and close-knit nature of the Carter family.
Where I will struggle here is in trying to interpret my overall feelings about the film. As a white, older male person I have three degrees of separation from Starr’s perspective. And these are undoubtedly difficult issues to juggle with. The riots that happened recently in towns like Ferguson ape the activities on screen uncomfortably. Your sympathies might lie to some degree with the unfortunate white police officer (Drew Starkey); sympathies supported by the views of Starr’s police officer uncle Carlos (Common): until Starr points out via a punchy question that you REALLY shouldn’t feel like that… and your views are brought up with a jolt.
Aside from the rights and wrongs of the incident, there’s a frustrating dichotomy at play in the film with black and white communities wanting to be treated equally but never wanting to be treated the same. “You don’t SEE me” wails Starr. “I see you” replies Chris (as if James Cameron was directing!) But does he really? Without colour, I do not consider myself to be remotely capable of fully understanding Starr’s perspective on life. It made me want to read the source novel by Angie Thomas to try to get better insight.
Directed by George Tillman Jr., it’s undoubtedly a mixed bag, but I came down in the end on the side of it being good rather than bad… it has certainly had me thinking for a couple of days. The clumsy voiceovers and story elements in the opening and closing scenes mask a number of parallel and interesting story strands that generate conflicting thoughts about the state of race relations in today’s America. Jackson sang “It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white”: and it really shouldn’t, but actually in some quarters, it clearly still does.
I’m afraid this movie didn’t do very well on either a) or b) at my showing: about 20 people left immediately, and more tellingly about another 20 people left in the first half hour. There’s a reason for that: the first half hour of this film is goddamn awful!
Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is a sixteen year-old resident of Garden Heights, a black neighbourhood in a US city, where she lives with her younger brother and step-brother. Their parents Maverick (Russell Hornsby, “Fences“) and Lisa (Regina Hall) are devoting all of their energies to “break the cycle” and get their kids out of the neighbourhood and off to college and better futures. As such, the kids attend not the rough-house local school but a much more upper-class establishment: there Starr has to play a different role, with links to her origins being kept hidden even from her white boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa).
But all that changes when her boyhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) is shot and killed in a police stop-and-search. As the only witness, and with Khalil linked to local gang lord King (Anthony Mackie), Starr’s anonymous world is about to get a national focus shone onto it.
Man… I hate voiceovers in films and always have. So I really hated the start of this film which has Starr narrating ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING (“Blah, blah, blah..”): no audience discovery is required. It also starts with a sort of highschool romance vibe, but not one that’s well done with kissing (“Blah, blah, blah..”) while the local Mean Girls look on (“Blah, blah”) then with Starr’s friends trying to act street (“blah, blah”) while Starr tries not to be street, all to the constant droning of Starr’s voiceover (“Blah, blah, blah..”). (I never walk out of movies…. but I can kind of understand the rationale of those who did).
Fortunately the voiceover then largely recedes (it only pops up with occasional staccato “thoughts”, before storming back for a “blah, blah” finale). And with the shooting, the film takes on a much more interesting slant, giving Amandla Stenberg a chance to really shine.
I have commented on Ms Stenberg before: she was the only really good thing in the recent “The Darkest Minds“. Here she exhibits a tremendous range from the delighted (her smile is radiant and seems astonishingly unforced) to the heartbroken and furious. There’s also a really strong supporting cast with great turns from Hornsby, Hall, Mackie and Smith. Hornsby in particular I found great as the Dad desperately tutoring his kids in military (but loving) fashion to avoid his mistakes.
For me, this seemed to be a surprisingly atypical view of a black ghetto-living family. A scene set in a diner is genuinely touching at emphasising the loving and close-knit nature of the Carter family.
Where I will struggle here is in trying to interpret my overall feelings about the film. As a white, older male person I have three degrees of separation from Starr’s perspective. And these are undoubtedly difficult issues to juggle with. The riots that happened recently in towns like Ferguson ape the activities on screen uncomfortably. Your sympathies might lie to some degree with the unfortunate white police officer (Drew Starkey); sympathies supported by the views of Starr’s police officer uncle Carlos (Common): until Starr points out via a punchy question that you REALLY shouldn’t feel like that… and your views are brought up with a jolt.
Aside from the rights and wrongs of the incident, there’s a frustrating dichotomy at play in the film with black and white communities wanting to be treated equally but never wanting to be treated the same. “You don’t SEE me” wails Starr. “I see you” replies Chris (as if James Cameron was directing!) But does he really? Without colour, I do not consider myself to be remotely capable of fully understanding Starr’s perspective on life. It made me want to read the source novel by Angie Thomas to try to get better insight.
Directed by George Tillman Jr., it’s undoubtedly a mixed bag, but I came down in the end on the side of it being good rather than bad… it has certainly had me thinking for a couple of days. The clumsy voiceovers and story elements in the opening and closing scenes mask a number of parallel and interesting story strands that generate conflicting thoughts about the state of race relations in today’s America. Jackson sang “It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white”: and it really shouldn’t, but actually in some quarters, it clearly still does.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Life (2017) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
Life after Gravity.
Mankind is on the verge of a major milestone. The “Pilgrim” probe is returning from Mars containing soil samples that might spell the discovery of the first palpable evidence of life beyond earth. Proving that earth scientists are not completely incompetent, the probe is being returned not to earth but to a lab on the International Space Station where strict quarantine can be maintained. This key mission requirement is the responsibility of Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson, “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”). Supporting her is an international crew including fellow doctor David Harris (Jake Gyllenhaal, “Source Code”), professional astronaut Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds, “Deadpool”) and Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare), the lead scientist studying the samples. Needless to say, the soil samples yield more promise than Derry could have ever hoped for (or North could have feared). A crisis of growth and death ensues in a manner that fans of “Alien” will be suitably familiar with. Can the crew survive against all the odds?
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favourite actors with a raft of quality films in his CV such as “Nightcrawler” and last year’s hugely underrated (and almost Oscar-ignored) “Nocturnal Animals”. Rebecca Ferguson is also a class act and one of my favourite actresses of the moment. Here they are starring together for the first time and they don’t disappoint. Whilst neither gets enough quality screentime to really hammer their roles home, both connect to the audience in different ways: Harris is heading for an ISS endurance record, and starting to mentally disconnect from earthly connections as his body also starts to atrophy. North, with a clear attraction to him, tries to hold both him and everything together with steely determination, while carrying more knowledge of the mission directives than anyone else has.
The supporting ensemble cast also work well, portraying a real mixture of nationalities from the cock-sure American played by Reynolds to the sultry Russian commander Golovkina, played by the lovely Olga Dihovichnaya. A special note should also be added in the margin for one of the most surprising portrayals of a disabled character in a recent film.
Unfortunately the material the actors get to deliver, by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (co-writers of “Deadpool” and “Zombieland”) doesn’t match their ability. The first 30 minutes or so of the film I found to be totally gripping, but even here some of the dialogue is sufficiently clunky to distract you from the ongoing narrative. Some of the rest of the dialogue becomes head-in-the-hands awful in places: a scene during a de-pressurization episode being particularly painful.
Some dodgy dialogue might be forgivable in an action movie if supported by a strong story. Unfortunately, while the premise of the film is sound (if not original), the story leaps from inconsistency to inconsistency from beginning to end. The writers never seem to settle on whether the ‘being’ needs oxygen, likes oxygen, likes hot, likes cold, etc. and this lack of credibility distracts from the whole film. While the screenplay delivers some seriously suspenseful moments, and some decent jump scares, this is not satisfactory enough to serve up a cohesive movie meal.
This is not helped by ‘bad science’. As I have commented upon before, I’m a physicist by training and unscientific scenes annoy me to distraction. I’ve had to learn to live with the basics of explosions and other ‘noise’ in space (something “Star Wars” started 40 years ago, damn those TIE fighters). But there is a scene in “Life” involving an airlock breach that just completely beggers belief, acted out as if it’s a stiff breeze on the front at Skegness! It’s almost – (almost) – as bonkers as the ‘reactor venting’ scene with Chris Pratt in “Passengers“.
However, the film has its strong points too. Like “Gravity”, this is another special effects triumph with the scenes outside the ISS being gorgeously rendered. “Gravity” was a clear 10/10; this is probably at least a 7, and a reason for seeing the film on the big screen. A key question though is why there wasn’t a 3D version of the film released? Heaven knows I’m no fan of 3D, but “Gravity” was one of the few films that was genuinely enhanced by the format: in fact it is currently the only 3D Blu-ray that I own!
In general, the whole film seems a little half-cocked and lacking in its own conviction. You wonder whether the production company (Skydance) got rather cold-feet about the film in releasing it when it did. Yes, “Deadpool” did very well with its February release, but this is a much more suitable film for a summer audience than a release in this post-Oscars doldrums.
In summary, its a moderately entertaining watch, but at heart just another retelling of the old ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ yarn that we’ve seen played out countless times before. Here though the swanky setting and special effects are diminished by a lack of credibility and consistency in the storytelling. Redemption was on hand though, for while it was heading for a middling 3-Fad rating, it managed to salvage another half Fad in the final 60 seconds: a memorable movie ending that might prove hard to beat during 2017.
Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favourite actors with a raft of quality films in his CV such as “Nightcrawler” and last year’s hugely underrated (and almost Oscar-ignored) “Nocturnal Animals”. Rebecca Ferguson is also a class act and one of my favourite actresses of the moment. Here they are starring together for the first time and they don’t disappoint. Whilst neither gets enough quality screentime to really hammer their roles home, both connect to the audience in different ways: Harris is heading for an ISS endurance record, and starting to mentally disconnect from earthly connections as his body also starts to atrophy. North, with a clear attraction to him, tries to hold both him and everything together with steely determination, while carrying more knowledge of the mission directives than anyone else has.
The supporting ensemble cast also work well, portraying a real mixture of nationalities from the cock-sure American played by Reynolds to the sultry Russian commander Golovkina, played by the lovely Olga Dihovichnaya. A special note should also be added in the margin for one of the most surprising portrayals of a disabled character in a recent film.
Unfortunately the material the actors get to deliver, by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (co-writers of “Deadpool” and “Zombieland”) doesn’t match their ability. The first 30 minutes or so of the film I found to be totally gripping, but even here some of the dialogue is sufficiently clunky to distract you from the ongoing narrative. Some of the rest of the dialogue becomes head-in-the-hands awful in places: a scene during a de-pressurization episode being particularly painful.
Some dodgy dialogue might be forgivable in an action movie if supported by a strong story. Unfortunately, while the premise of the film is sound (if not original), the story leaps from inconsistency to inconsistency from beginning to end. The writers never seem to settle on whether the ‘being’ needs oxygen, likes oxygen, likes hot, likes cold, etc. and this lack of credibility distracts from the whole film. While the screenplay delivers some seriously suspenseful moments, and some decent jump scares, this is not satisfactory enough to serve up a cohesive movie meal.
This is not helped by ‘bad science’. As I have commented upon before, I’m a physicist by training and unscientific scenes annoy me to distraction. I’ve had to learn to live with the basics of explosions and other ‘noise’ in space (something “Star Wars” started 40 years ago, damn those TIE fighters). But there is a scene in “Life” involving an airlock breach that just completely beggers belief, acted out as if it’s a stiff breeze on the front at Skegness! It’s almost – (almost) – as bonkers as the ‘reactor venting’ scene with Chris Pratt in “Passengers“.
However, the film has its strong points too. Like “Gravity”, this is another special effects triumph with the scenes outside the ISS being gorgeously rendered. “Gravity” was a clear 10/10; this is probably at least a 7, and a reason for seeing the film on the big screen. A key question though is why there wasn’t a 3D version of the film released? Heaven knows I’m no fan of 3D, but “Gravity” was one of the few films that was genuinely enhanced by the format: in fact it is currently the only 3D Blu-ray that I own!
In general, the whole film seems a little half-cocked and lacking in its own conviction. You wonder whether the production company (Skydance) got rather cold-feet about the film in releasing it when it did. Yes, “Deadpool” did very well with its February release, but this is a much more suitable film for a summer audience than a release in this post-Oscars doldrums.
In summary, its a moderately entertaining watch, but at heart just another retelling of the old ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ yarn that we’ve seen played out countless times before. Here though the swanky setting and special effects are diminished by a lack of credibility and consistency in the storytelling. Redemption was on hand though, for while it was heading for a middling 3-Fad rating, it managed to salvage another half Fad in the final 60 seconds: a memorable movie ending that might prove hard to beat during 2017.
Sass Perilla (36 KP) rated The Master and Margarita in Books
Aug 9, 2019
Worth a read? Yes. Worth a reread? Maybe not.
Contains spoilers, click to show
The Master and Magarita: Mikhail Bulgakov
Firstly, I didn’t intend to write an essay on this novel. However, once started I found I had a lot to say, and the more I thought about the plot and characters, the more ideas and parallels were sparked, so I am hopeful that the verbosity of this review can be forgiven.
At the risk of sounding both ignorant and uncultured, I found this novel (at least at first) bloody hard slog; not least because the Russian characters have three names, plus a nickname, plus a pun on their name (none of which work particularly well in translation and all of which sound rather similar to the English untrained ear). As an example- Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (who seems to be referred to by any and all of these names) is also known as “Homeless” and “the poet” is a key character in the opening section of the novel. To further demonstrate: there are 17 different names that start with A that are used to refer to 15 different characters with Andreyevich used as the middle name of a bereaved uncle, who makes a journey from Kiev after his nephew is beheaded in a freak tram accident- and Andrey the buffet manager at a Moscow theatre. Clear as mud right? And that is before starting on similarly named characters with the initials M, P, L and S! At my last count there were 45 distinct characters, and I am fairly sure there will be some that I have missed. Hence, I did a lot of re-reading to work out exactly who was doing what to whom.
Additionally, I would suggest you need to be wary of the different translations. The distinct changes in meaning are subtle but important. To triangulate I had three versions at my disposal: Hugh Aplin’s translation (available for free on Kindle), the audiobook version translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (which I listened to simultaneously when reading the book to come to my own interpretation, and the subtitles for the Russian TV miniseries from 2005 when I gave up trying to work out who was who from name alone!
So those were my “technical” issues (if you like) with engaging with this novel, and this lack of clarity and understanding (and my own lack of contextual knowledge of Stalinist Russia) meant I missed many of the (what I am sure are hysterically funny to those in the know) satirical jokes in the opening section. That said, the random action and quick changes of focus, undercurrent of chaos in Moscow despite entrenched hierarchal structures and clear threat that (any) one could go missing at any time, for an unclear reason gave a clear insight into the mind and fears of a 1930s Russian citizen. No wonder it was available only in censored form for so long.
Despite these hardships, there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments in the first Moscow based part of the novel. The citizens have not lost their individuality, as they scrabble and fight for bank notes in the theatre, which are later revealed to be worthless. Nor have they lost their sense of pride and vanity, which we see in the female theatre goers, so desperate to attain the fashionable French couture (which later literally disappears from their bodies leaving semi-naked citizenesses desperately trying to cover themselves in a scene reminiscent of “Allo Allo” meets “Benny Hill”). When Professor Woland says his show will “expose” what the locals have failed to realise is that it is their (moral) shortcomings that are about to be revealed. The message is clearly, that no government can successfully legislate against human nature.
Oooh- and another fun fact, apparently Woland (later revealed- or perhaps is implied- to be Satan) was the inspiration to the Rolling Stones 1968 hit “Sympathy for the Devil”, well at least that is what my Google-Fu tells me.
Obviously, there were substantial hurdles to leap, however, I found by the second half of the novel, when we finally meet the eponymous characters, I had got in to the swing of things and begun to embrace the farcical surrealism of the novel.
The second “book” marks a change in tone, although it continues to cut away to scenes of Jesus’ sentencing by Pilate and execution (here known in the Aramaic form Yeshua). Ironically it is these scenes that are the most “real” and substantially human, as Pilate’s decision weighs head achingly heavily on him throughout. The Master and Margarita seem to be the only two characters fully invested in the authenticity of literature, and serve as a counterpoint to the heavily censored “monstrous” writing of Ivan and the rest of the writers’ union Massolit, more interested in fine dining and what their positions can do for them then the production of quality writing.
And it is Margarita’s journey of discovery and liberation from the stodgy, miserable societal expectations of that leads her back to her Master. Bulgakov mixes classical myth, Russian folklore and Bible stories to give us an impression of the timelessness of the central romance. As the worlds of communist Moscow and the inner worlds of the Master and Margarita collide, we are informed of the former’s desire to excuse all magic (and mischief) as the product of mass hypnosis, when the latter (and the reader) are fully aware of the spiritual significance and dimension of the events.
Clever, astute and in places laugh out loud funny, this novel none-the-less requires a level of dedication from the non-Russian speaking reader. Worth a read? Yes. Worth a re-read? Maybe not.
Firstly, I didn’t intend to write an essay on this novel. However, once started I found I had a lot to say, and the more I thought about the plot and characters, the more ideas and parallels were sparked, so I am hopeful that the verbosity of this review can be forgiven.
At the risk of sounding both ignorant and uncultured, I found this novel (at least at first) bloody hard slog; not least because the Russian characters have three names, plus a nickname, plus a pun on their name (none of which work particularly well in translation and all of which sound rather similar to the English untrained ear). As an example- Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (who seems to be referred to by any and all of these names) is also known as “Homeless” and “the poet” is a key character in the opening section of the novel. To further demonstrate: there are 17 different names that start with A that are used to refer to 15 different characters with Andreyevich used as the middle name of a bereaved uncle, who makes a journey from Kiev after his nephew is beheaded in a freak tram accident- and Andrey the buffet manager at a Moscow theatre. Clear as mud right? And that is before starting on similarly named characters with the initials M, P, L and S! At my last count there were 45 distinct characters, and I am fairly sure there will be some that I have missed. Hence, I did a lot of re-reading to work out exactly who was doing what to whom.
Additionally, I would suggest you need to be wary of the different translations. The distinct changes in meaning are subtle but important. To triangulate I had three versions at my disposal: Hugh Aplin’s translation (available for free on Kindle), the audiobook version translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (which I listened to simultaneously when reading the book to come to my own interpretation, and the subtitles for the Russian TV miniseries from 2005 when I gave up trying to work out who was who from name alone!
So those were my “technical” issues (if you like) with engaging with this novel, and this lack of clarity and understanding (and my own lack of contextual knowledge of Stalinist Russia) meant I missed many of the (what I am sure are hysterically funny to those in the know) satirical jokes in the opening section. That said, the random action and quick changes of focus, undercurrent of chaos in Moscow despite entrenched hierarchal structures and clear threat that (any) one could go missing at any time, for an unclear reason gave a clear insight into the mind and fears of a 1930s Russian citizen. No wonder it was available only in censored form for so long.
Despite these hardships, there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments in the first Moscow based part of the novel. The citizens have not lost their individuality, as they scrabble and fight for bank notes in the theatre, which are later revealed to be worthless. Nor have they lost their sense of pride and vanity, which we see in the female theatre goers, so desperate to attain the fashionable French couture (which later literally disappears from their bodies leaving semi-naked citizenesses desperately trying to cover themselves in a scene reminiscent of “Allo Allo” meets “Benny Hill”). When Professor Woland says his show will “expose” what the locals have failed to realise is that it is their (moral) shortcomings that are about to be revealed. The message is clearly, that no government can successfully legislate against human nature.
Oooh- and another fun fact, apparently Woland (later revealed- or perhaps is implied- to be Satan) was the inspiration to the Rolling Stones 1968 hit “Sympathy for the Devil”, well at least that is what my Google-Fu tells me.
Obviously, there were substantial hurdles to leap, however, I found by the second half of the novel, when we finally meet the eponymous characters, I had got in to the swing of things and begun to embrace the farcical surrealism of the novel.
The second “book” marks a change in tone, although it continues to cut away to scenes of Jesus’ sentencing by Pilate and execution (here known in the Aramaic form Yeshua). Ironically it is these scenes that are the most “real” and substantially human, as Pilate’s decision weighs head achingly heavily on him throughout. The Master and Margarita seem to be the only two characters fully invested in the authenticity of literature, and serve as a counterpoint to the heavily censored “monstrous” writing of Ivan and the rest of the writers’ union Massolit, more interested in fine dining and what their positions can do for them then the production of quality writing.
And it is Margarita’s journey of discovery and liberation from the stodgy, miserable societal expectations of that leads her back to her Master. Bulgakov mixes classical myth, Russian folklore and Bible stories to give us an impression of the timelessness of the central romance. As the worlds of communist Moscow and the inner worlds of the Master and Margarita collide, we are informed of the former’s desire to excuse all magic (and mischief) as the product of mass hypnosis, when the latter (and the reader) are fully aware of the spiritual significance and dimension of the events.
Clever, astute and in places laugh out loud funny, this novel none-the-less requires a level of dedication from the non-Russian speaking reader. Worth a read? Yes. Worth a re-read? Maybe not.
Lottie disney bookworm (1056 KP) rated Rebel Rose (The Queen's Council #1) in Books
Dec 29, 2020
Contains spoilers, click to show
Set against the backdrop of revolutionary France, ‘Rebel Rose’ continues the story of Beauty and the Beast after the curse is broken. Belle and her Prince now have to find a way to navigate married life, rank, politics and explain a 10-year absence from the French Court of Versailles.
Controversially, Emma Theriault baits the hardcore Disney fans straight out of the gates by naming her Prince Lio (Lio, Lion, beast, gettit?) rather than Adam. In the grand scheme of things this can easily be forgiven but it still seems a strange choice. Maybe Adam was too English for a French Prince?
However, the use of first person perspective ensures that our protagonist remains firmly in Belle. Belle has refused the title of Princess upon marriage in order to stay true to her roots but is constantly hiding her true self: even referring to a trip around Europe as “one last adventure before the walls of the castle close around her”. When Belle witnesses the revolutionary sparks within the city this divides her further: how can she be part of the nobility these people rally against and an avid “commoner” at the same time?
In truth, Belle as a character divided me as well. Belle has always been my favourite Disney Princess (possibly to do with that massive library) and, in the most part, I feel Theriault wrote her well and stayed true to the character. However, in the early pages Belle felt very spoilt and selfish to me: preferring to disguise herself and explore Paris rather than support Lio in explaining his decade-long disappearing act to King Louis.
I was intrigued to know what my fellow reviewers thought and was unsurprised to see a LOT of criticism of our heroine, her shunning of the title of Princess and her lack of enthusiasm to be a leader. However, I almost felt that this made the story more realistic. Just because she broke a curse and married a Prince doesn’t mean she can automatically feel ready and comfortable leading a kingdom! Maybe she just has a fondness for hairy men?
Belle’s reluctance and tentativeness to lead also fed very nicely into her passion to improve the lives of the residents of the kingdom of Aveyon. This is common sense to her and therefore doesn’t feel like ruling. Indeed, it is not seen by any of the main characters as ruling but in the end it saves them all from a revolution of their own.
I would have liked Lio to be a little bit more developed than he was. The fact that he harboured an element of PTSD from the curse was really interesting but not explored any further than his nightmares and aversion towards roses. There was undoubtedly chemistry between him and Belle but it was just a bit lacklustre in my opinion. This may be due to his absence for a lot of the book but I felt the reader could have loved him a lot more than we did.
Lio’s cousin Bastien is the slimy villain of the tale and I would have liked a bit more mystery and suspense within his character. I appreciated that Belle didn’t like him initially as he was a powdered, wig wearing noble who was close to King Louis, basically as far away from Belle as possible. Bastien is also quite snobby towards Belle in his earliest chapters so you can’t blame her for disliking him.
However, by using language to plainly show that Belle distrusts her husband’s cousin, Theriault instantly creates a flashing neon “villain” sign above his head. This would have been fine in a middle-grade book but within YA I think the reader could have been afforded to be misled a couple of times before uncovering Bastien’s real intentions.
**This section contains spoilers**
I also believe that Bastien’s eventual story arc was a tad unbelievable. At first I thought his revolutionary sympathies and further plots with various goons was a ruse in order to gain the throne for himself, particularly once he had established himself firmly with the advisory. Emma Theriault’s decision to keep Bastien true to the revolution seemed rushed, and a bit odd to be honest. This is a noble who lives in the lap of luxury and attends to King Louis himself but who then turns on his own kind after basically forcing the kingdom of Aveyon to break away from France? It didn’t seem plausible to me.
Rebel Rose is an easy to read continuation of one of our favourite Disney tales. It reintroduces us to old favourites such as Mrs Potts and Lumiere as well as introducing new characters such as Marguerite and Bastien. Belle’s journey to staying true to herself and following her gut is one anyone can empathise with and her discovery that she does not have to appease to outsider’s expectations will never cease to be important.
The magic contained within this novel is a perfect springboard for the rest of the novels within the Queen’s Council series: the next one is based on Mulan and will be written by Livia Blackburne before Jasmine’s story by Alexandra Monir follows in 2022. The majority of the action within this novel does take place towards the end so it can be a little slow paced and politics focused but I enjoyed seeing Belle and Lio break free of their fairytale life and become a little more real.
Although this isn’t my favourite Disney novel, I do appreciate the break away from the retelling genre and the move towards bringing these well-known characters into the real world. For a debut novel I think Emma Theriault should be immensely proud: the research for the historical context alone must have been a mission!
Controversially, Emma Theriault baits the hardcore Disney fans straight out of the gates by naming her Prince Lio (Lio, Lion, beast, gettit?) rather than Adam. In the grand scheme of things this can easily be forgiven but it still seems a strange choice. Maybe Adam was too English for a French Prince?
However, the use of first person perspective ensures that our protagonist remains firmly in Belle. Belle has refused the title of Princess upon marriage in order to stay true to her roots but is constantly hiding her true self: even referring to a trip around Europe as “one last adventure before the walls of the castle close around her”. When Belle witnesses the revolutionary sparks within the city this divides her further: how can she be part of the nobility these people rally against and an avid “commoner” at the same time?
In truth, Belle as a character divided me as well. Belle has always been my favourite Disney Princess (possibly to do with that massive library) and, in the most part, I feel Theriault wrote her well and stayed true to the character. However, in the early pages Belle felt very spoilt and selfish to me: preferring to disguise herself and explore Paris rather than support Lio in explaining his decade-long disappearing act to King Louis.
I was intrigued to know what my fellow reviewers thought and was unsurprised to see a LOT of criticism of our heroine, her shunning of the title of Princess and her lack of enthusiasm to be a leader. However, I almost felt that this made the story more realistic. Just because she broke a curse and married a Prince doesn’t mean she can automatically feel ready and comfortable leading a kingdom! Maybe she just has a fondness for hairy men?
Belle’s reluctance and tentativeness to lead also fed very nicely into her passion to improve the lives of the residents of the kingdom of Aveyon. This is common sense to her and therefore doesn’t feel like ruling. Indeed, it is not seen by any of the main characters as ruling but in the end it saves them all from a revolution of their own.
I would have liked Lio to be a little bit more developed than he was. The fact that he harboured an element of PTSD from the curse was really interesting but not explored any further than his nightmares and aversion towards roses. There was undoubtedly chemistry between him and Belle but it was just a bit lacklustre in my opinion. This may be due to his absence for a lot of the book but I felt the reader could have loved him a lot more than we did.
Lio’s cousin Bastien is the slimy villain of the tale and I would have liked a bit more mystery and suspense within his character. I appreciated that Belle didn’t like him initially as he was a powdered, wig wearing noble who was close to King Louis, basically as far away from Belle as possible. Bastien is also quite snobby towards Belle in his earliest chapters so you can’t blame her for disliking him.
However, by using language to plainly show that Belle distrusts her husband’s cousin, Theriault instantly creates a flashing neon “villain” sign above his head. This would have been fine in a middle-grade book but within YA I think the reader could have been afforded to be misled a couple of times before uncovering Bastien’s real intentions.
**This section contains spoilers**
I also believe that Bastien’s eventual story arc was a tad unbelievable. At first I thought his revolutionary sympathies and further plots with various goons was a ruse in order to gain the throne for himself, particularly once he had established himself firmly with the advisory. Emma Theriault’s decision to keep Bastien true to the revolution seemed rushed, and a bit odd to be honest. This is a noble who lives in the lap of luxury and attends to King Louis himself but who then turns on his own kind after basically forcing the kingdom of Aveyon to break away from France? It didn’t seem plausible to me.
Rebel Rose is an easy to read continuation of one of our favourite Disney tales. It reintroduces us to old favourites such as Mrs Potts and Lumiere as well as introducing new characters such as Marguerite and Bastien. Belle’s journey to staying true to herself and following her gut is one anyone can empathise with and her discovery that she does not have to appease to outsider’s expectations will never cease to be important.
The magic contained within this novel is a perfect springboard for the rest of the novels within the Queen’s Council series: the next one is based on Mulan and will be written by Livia Blackburne before Jasmine’s story by Alexandra Monir follows in 2022. The majority of the action within this novel does take place towards the end so it can be a little slow paced and politics focused but I enjoyed seeing Belle and Lio break free of their fairytale life and become a little more real.
Although this isn’t my favourite Disney novel, I do appreciate the break away from the retelling genre and the move towards bringing these well-known characters into the real world. For a debut novel I think Emma Theriault should be immensely proud: the research for the historical context alone must have been a mission!