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Kevin Phillipson (10072 KP) rated Doctor Who - Season 14 in TV

May 4, 2020

Tom baker (4 more)

Elizabeth sladen

Louise Jameson

Robots of death

Talons of Weng

Probably the best classic season of doctor who ever and also tom Bakers best season it has everything Sarah Jane Smith in her last two stories the introduction of Leela new TARDIS console room wood paneling classic episodes robots of death deadly assassin talons of Weng chiang the doctor dressed as Sherlock Holmes I could go on with this boxset but I won't. hopefully getting the brand new blu ray boxset soon in the post

Kudos (1)

Erika (17789 KP) rated Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup in Books

Feb 14, 2021

This excellent non-fiction book is about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. This company was touting that it could run 100s of tests on just a drop of blood. If you know ANYTHING about laboratory tests, or watched CSI and was exposed to GC/MS, you would know it is completely impossible to do tests off of a finger puncture.
Holmes is described as brilliant, and was the darling of Silicon Valley. Yes, she was brilliant, a brilliant dirtbag. Everyone was fooled by her initially (some still are), to include the author of this book, John Carreyrou, who initially wrote a glowing article about her.
However, it was all fake, as proven by various whistleblowers. This was such a good read, and pairs really well with the HBO documentary movie, The Inventor. I highly recommend this book if you like books written by journalists, the downfall of dirtbags, and stories about fraud.

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Nicole Hadley (380 KP) rated The Great Shelby Holmes (The Great Shelby Holmes, #1) in Books

Jun 18, 2018

The Great Shelby Holmes by Elizabeth Eulberg was a wonderful story that I enjoyed. At the beginning of the story the reader is introduced to John Watson who recently moved with his mother to 221 Baker Street in Harlem, New York. John's parents recently divorced. John's mom finished her tour of duty as a military doctor and is recovering from a wound she received in Afghanistan. Mrs. Hudson, new landlady, introduced John to the girl, Shelby, who lives in apartment 221B. John is use to moving around and making friends easily as a military brat but this is the first non-Army post. John's mom selected an apartment to move to in order to be near her new john and a great school for John.

School has not started yet and John does not know anyone or his way around the neighborhood. However, with Shelby as his guide, John learns his way around town soon. He discovered that Shelby knows everyone in their area. Shelby is a talented child who solves mysteries around the neighborhood, but this is an annoyance to Detective Lestrade for the NYPD. John and Shelby friendship causes the reader to be pulled into the story. I could not turn the pages fast enough to find out the answers to my questions and the mysteries.

I give this book a 4 out 5 stars.

I received this book from Bloomsbury USA Children's Books via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kudos

Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Cold Pursuit (2019) in Movies

Mar 15, 2020

Cold Pursuit (2019)

2019 | Action, Drama, Thriller

5.9

(29 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Entertaining Neeson revenge-porn offering (0 more)

Bonkers and nonsensical at times plotting. (0 more)

Comments on revenge are best kept on the screen.

I'd completely forgotten the furore about Liam Neeson's comments back last February during the press-tour preceding the film's release. In discussing the destructive feelings of revenge experienced by his character, Nels Coxman, Neeson revealed something he did 40 years ago: after the rape of a friend by "a black man", Neeson went out on the streets to find another "black man" and do them harm. (As a fellow Ballymena-born man, David Moody (from the "Mark and Dave" blog) has an interesting theory about this... that it was not a "rascist" statement in the true sense, but something else entirely. See here -

).

The comments undoubtedly impacted the movie at the box office. Which is a shame. Because in his catalogue of bonkers and violent revenge-porn flicks, this is one of Neeson's more entertaining ones.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. And where colder to serve it than in the ski-resort of Kehoe where Nels Coxman is the local snowplow operative and "man of the year" for his services to the community. But the tracks are about to fall off his orderly life. For his son Kyle (Micheál Richardson) winds up dead through a drugs overdose and his strained marriage with wife Grace (Laura Dern) disintegrates. (One of the most cutting and best-written "Bye" notes ever seen in the movies).

With revenge in mind, Coxman pursues the Denver-based drugs lord Trevor Calcote (Tom Bateman) who dished out the drugs to his son. But he inadvertently manages to stay just below the parapet as he sets in train a gang war between Calcote and a Kehoe-based native-American drugs gang led by White Bull (Tom Jackson). The snow turned progressively pinker as the body count rises.

Calcote (aka "Viking") is painted as a colourful family man, with an annoyingly bright son Ryan (Nicholas Holmes) that he controls with a rod of iron. Viking is estranged from wife Aya (Julia Jones), who seems completely unafraid of him and happily embarrasses him in front of his men. This relationship never really works. Since given all the terrible and irrational things Viking does to people, whether they obstruct him or help him in equal measure, putting a quiet bullet into Aya's head seems to be to least he could do!

Where there is fun to be had is in the "Stockholm syndrome" linkage between young Ryan and Coxman. When his father insists on controlling his diet, feeding him the same insipidly healthy meals morning, noon and night, the alternative of being kidnapped and fed burgers seems eminently more preferable!

The film is at times really difficult to follow. There are lots of inexplicable leaps of logic and really inexplicably bonkers scenes that you can only patch together later. It's as if the filmmakers randomly filmed 5 hours of footage and then tried to edit it all into a cohesive plot!

As one example of this, the relationship between Coxman and "Wingman" (William Forsythe) was poorly introduced such that I was left baffled by a later plot twist.

In another scene, Neeson smashes the head of enforcer "Santa" (Michael Adamthwaite) into his steering wheel, but in the next scene collapses with him utterly exhausted in the snow. There was clearly a significant fight here that was cut out of the finished cut. But as a result the final cut makes no sense at all!

Of course, the local law enforcement team are average at best. Average because although young and keen-as-mustard detective Kim Dash (Emmy Rossum) is hot on the trail of the truth, her partner Gip (John Doman) is f*ckin' useless... wanting to do nothing but drink coffee and eat donuts in true Simpsons style.

Normally with these sort of films, it's difficult to keep track of the body count. No such problem here. Every death is celebrated with a tombstone graphic so it's easy to keep count! Needless to say, there are a lot of tombstones registered.

Directed by Norwegian Hans Petter Moland, it's all good violent cartoonish fun, that keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek for most of the running time. The snowy setting, the partly native-American cast and the presence of Julia Jones brings to mind the truly excellent Jeremy Renner / Elizabeth Olsen movie "Wind River". But there the similarities (and quality levels) definitely stop. It's not a clever movie; it's borderline bonkers for most of its running time (never more so than with a totally bizarre "joke" final shot); but it is entertaining. As a 'park brain at door' action comedy it just about makes the grade.

(For the full graphical review, please check out One Mann's Movies here - https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2020/03/15/one-manns-movies-dvd-review-cold-pursuit-2019/. Thanks.)