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Sausage Party (2016)
Sausage Party (2016)
2016 | Animation, Comedy
7
5.8 (37 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Utterly Ridiculous
Just when Sharknado: the 4th Awakens made you think film-making couldn’t get any more ridiculous, a movie like Sausage Party comes along to remind you that Hollywood can always go that one step further to mind-boggling peculiarity.

Of course, that’s not always a bad thing, there have been countless weird and wacky films over the years that have gone on to become cult classics – look at Kick-Ass or even Pulp Fiction for examples of that. But for every Pulp Fiction there’s a Sharknado. So is Sausage Party good weird or as stale as a month-old bagel?

From the mind of Seth Rogen, Sausage Party is a strictly adults only animation that combines hugely offensive language and racial stereotypes with surprisingly meaningful religious undertones. And do you know what? It’s a breath of fresh air.

Life is good for all the food items that occupy the shelves at the local supermarket. Frank (Seth Rogen) the sausage, Brenda (Kristen Wiig) the hot dog bun, Teresa Taco and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton) can’t wait to go home with a happy customer. Soon, their world comes crashing down as poor Frank learns the horrifying truth that he will eventually become a meal. After warning his pals about their similar fate, the panicked perishables devise a plan to escape from their human enemies.

Directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan take Rogen’s intriguing premise and inject a warmly familiar animation style, distancing itself just enough to make any comparisons simply inconceivable. Sausage Party is like nothing you will have ever seen.

The voice-acting is great too. Rogen plays his usual film staple – in sausage form – with the spicy Salma Hayek outdoing everyone else as a lustful taco. Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill also lend their familiar voices to a hot-dog bun, a bottle of spirit and two other frankfurters respectively.

Elsewhere, the comedy, for the most part, hits the spot. As dreadful as it sounds, the racial stereotyping works incredibly well in food form. British tea, Mexican taco shells and German sauerkraut will have you rolling about the aisles with their outrageous vulgarity, but everyone needs to release their inner teenager once in a while.

Unfortunately, the films standout sequence has already been shown in the trailer – a side-splitting food-eye view of a normal kitchen, before every edible item is butchered; that poor Irish potato didn’t stand a chance. This is a real shame as the rest of the film doesn’t quite match up to the standard of that scene.

Nevertheless, there’ll be chuckles throughout as numerous celebrities are parodied in food form. One in particular, immortalised in chewing gum, is incredibly well thought out.

And that’s where Sausage Party succeeds the most. Underneath the polished animation and crude humour, this film is actually kind of clever. It tackles religion, war, race, sexuality and food waste very well indeed and that’s something the genre doesn’t ask for. It’s just unfortunate that it’s not quite as funny as the trailer would have you believe.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2016/09/03/utterly-ridiculous-sausage-party-review/
  
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Zuky the BookBum (15 KP) rated Siren in Books

Mar 15, 2018  
S
Siren
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Read my review here: https://bookbumzuky.wordpress.com/2017/02/22/review-siren-by-annemarie-neary/

<b><i>Don’t play the hero, Roisin. Make sure you have your back covered. But when the moment’s right, make your move.</i></b>

This is a bit different to the sorts of thrillers I’m used to reading. With a lean towards politics, this feels a little more highbrow than the normal the-boyfriend-did-it kind of books I’m used to. I don’t know anything about about the Northern Ireland Troubles, so it was interesting to get a glimpse into the history of it in this novel.

I liked our characters in this novel. It was nice to have someone like Boyle in this. Homeless, stinky and a bit of a pervert, yet still kind of likable. Though I felt like his story wasn’t told all that well. Roisin was a well built out character and Neary was really good at making us empathise with her the whole way through.

The plot, overall, was good. As some other reviewers have stated, the thrill subsides a little bit towards the middle and end, but I was still interested in knowing what was going to happen to really take much notice at the slowing pace. When we’re flashbacked to Roisin’s past, I was initially interested, but then things got a little drawn out. I felt like that section of the novel could have easily been shortened so we could have gotten back to the current day situation and learnt a bit more about Boyle and the Dutchman, but, hey.

One of my issues with this novel was the situation between Roisin and The Dutchman. Considering she was so wary of everything and kept completely to herself, it didn’t make much sense to me, that she let herself get so close to The Dutchman and so quickly. That part of the story felt very inaccurate to how it would have really played out, had this been a true story.

The writing in this novel is well done, with good descriptive imagery, believable dialogue and well developed characters. There are quite a number of Irish terms used that I’m not used to, but they’re easy to get. A thing not so well done in this novel was the layout. Within each chapter, we are presented with several POV’s that aren’t very well separated. The only suggestion that our character perspective has changed is a paragraph break, but then sometimes there are paragraph breaks that will carry on with the same character as before. I’m hoping it’s only this confusing as I’ve received an ARC copy from Netgalley, because if not, it’s a major flaw in the editing.

I’m a bit miffed at the ending, to be honest. It seemed abrupt and it was unsatisfying after all we went through with Roisin and her story.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.</i>
  
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Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Joyce Girl in Books

Dec 14, 2018  
TJ
The Joyce Girl
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
<i>I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.</i>

Winner of the Impress Prize for New Writers 2015, Annabel Abbs creates a fantastic work of historical fiction based upon the life of Lucia Joyce. Although the titular character may be unheard of within the general public, her father will be known amongst the majority of readers. James Joyce, the eccentric author of<i> Ulysses</i> and <i>Finnegan’s Wake</i>, travelled around Europe with his family until settling in Avant-garde Paris, 1928. His daughter, Lucia, an ambitious, talented dancer describes the unconventional life as a child of Mr. Joyce, its ups and downs, and inevitable ruinous breakdown.

<i>The Joyce Girl</i> begins in Küsnacht, Zurich where Lucia is receiving treatment from Dr. Carl Jung – another well-known name; this novel is full of them. Struggling to come to terms with her current mental ill health and supposed repressed memories, Jung encourages Lucia to write her memoirs in order to learn of the events that led to this current predicament. Starting from 1928, aged 21, Lucia describes her life to Jung and the reader in brutally honest detail.

The unusual Irish family went through various successes and traumas in the intervening years, creating a humorous and emotional story. Lucia’s brother, Giorgio, caused the family enough problems without adding in the devastating heartache Lucia suffers from men who do not reciprocate her love. One of these lovers is the famous Samuel Beckett (<i>Waiting for Godot</i>, 1952), the first man Lucia falls for. It is fascinating to learn of the multiple connections these notable names had with each other. Although in retrospect it makes sense that the literary and artistic crowds would stick together.

From Lucia’s memoirs Jung formulates that the Joyce parents were extremely controlling, not giving Lucia the opportunity to live her own life – particularly within her dancing career. However, Jung still maintains that Lucia experienced emotional trauma and is insistent on retrieving those memories. What he eventually discovers will shock and possibly sicken the reader.

Through enormous amount of research, Annabel Abbs has put together a likely account of the Joyce family, particularly Lucia’s life. Using existing biographies, original letters and professional opinion, Abbs devises a logical narrative for the unfortunate dancer. Drawing upon knowledge of other literary greats and artists of the era, <i>The Joyce Girl</i> can be easily believed to be a true account, although doubtlessly some scenes must be based upon imagination.

<i>The Joyce Girl</i> will attract historical and romantic novel enthusiasts, providing an enjoyable, thought capturing story, as well as an opportunity to learn. Whether you are aware of James Joyce’s works, or even Lucia herself, <i>The Joyce Girl</i> is bound to capture your attention and draw your mind into the European life during the early 1930s. Although only her debut novel, Annabel Abbs comes highly recommended and it will be interesting to see what direction she has decided to take in her shortly expected second novel.
  
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