The Godfather Game
Games and Stickers
App
For the first time ever, The Godfather officially comes to you as a brand new mobile game in an...
The Sweeney Sisters
Book
"This is a big-hearted belly-laugh of a book, told with wit and poignancy. Family secrets, laughter...
Lee (2222 KP) rated The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) in Movies
Nov 12, 2018
First things first, this movie is just beautiful to look at. Such attention to detail, with vibrant sets and costumes throughout. Mackenzie Foy is wonderful as Clara, dealing with grief while coming to terms with trying to live up to her mothers legacy. Keira Knightley is good, if a little annoying at times, and Helen Mirren is also reliably interesting. And Morgan Freeman is just.... Morgan Freeman!
It's all very Alice in Wonderland or The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. Despite their faults though, the Narnia movies always seemed to explore the vast world introduced to us, taking the time to meet many of it's inhabitants. While this movie introduces us briefly to the realms as part of a wonderful ballet sequence, only to not show any of it again for the rest of the movie. Instead, the plot all seems very contained and all over far too quickly. I liked what I saw, it just didn't really leave much of a lasting impression at all. Nor did it leave me feeling very magical or festive.
The Communist and the Communist's Daughter: A Memoir
Book
In a letter to his baby grandson, Bill Lazarre wrote that "unfortunately, despite the attempts by...
Modernity Britain: Book Two: A Shake of the Dice, 1959-62: Book 2
Book
David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain has so far taken us from the radically reforming Labour...
William Hunter and His Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The Anatomist and the Fine Arts
Book
The eminent physician and anatomist Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) made an important and significant...
A Medieval Woman's Companion: Women's Lives in the European Middle Ages
Book
What have a deaf nun, the mother of the first baby born to Europeans in North America, and a...
The Privileges of Wealth: Rising Inequality and the Growing Racial Divide
Book
The American Dream is under assault. This threat results not from a lack of means, but from an...
Clara's Legacy
Book
One September day in New York, Clara Reinecke gives her grandson, Jonathan, a composer and lecturer...
Liberty Boston (93 KP) rated Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel in Books
Mar 15, 2021
Then.
Now.
Then is a novelization of the movie which I very much enjoyed. 90 percent of the dialogue is taken directly from the movie while there's just enough added detail to give the characters some new depth and set up for the second half of the book.
Now: the second half of the book, the sequel was...
well, It was disappointing.
How?
First, there's the bizarre jump from third person to first and later second POV.
It just throws you into Poppy's world with minimal backstory on who she is and why we should like her or her friends, Travis and Isabella.
Secondly, the characters are STUPID!
Stupid choices left, right, and, center.
As a writer, I understand there needs to be some way to kickstart the conflict but going to the Sanderson house has danger written all over it.
Oh, let's talk about the Sandersons,
The witches are back in all their evil glory with added sister Elizabeth who turned her back on the family legacy of darkness.
Then there's their mother. Their mother who they could not shut up about. Mother this and Mother that.
All the hype got me excited about Sanderson's sister's flashbacks. Backstory. Entire chapters dedicated to them.
it didn't happen.
I was treated to brief remembrances but no backstory.
Then the Mother who was so hyped up made a one chapter appearance before going kersplat.
WHAT WAS THE POINT??
You don't hype a character that much for them to do NOTHING.
The book gets by on nostalgia alone.
Don't even get me started on the bizarre and unneeded cliffhanger.
Very sad.