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The Story of the Stone: Volume 1: Golden Days
The Story of the Stone: Volume 1: Golden Days
Xueqin Cao, David Hawkes | 1973 | Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"Five volumes of sheer bliss. There’s almost nothing fiction can offer that isn’t in this book: an 18th Century, post-modern, Zen, worldly, otherworldly, gorgeous, funny, sorrowful, gripping, saga of a large, staggeringly wealthy Qin Dynasty family. Stunningly well translated, (the first three volumes by David Hawkes, the final two by John Minford, Hawkes’ son-in-law). It takes a while (or it did me) to keep the many, many characters straight, but it’s definitely worth the trouble."

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
2017 | Comedy, Crime, Drama
Three Billboards is a fricking masterpiece, and another home run from Martin McDonagh.

The cast is stacked to say the least. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both give a career best performance. The supporting cast is made up of the likes of Woody Harrelson, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, John Hawkes, Clarke Peters, Samara Weaving, and Peter Dinklage - all who are just great. McDonagh's screenplay is fantastic as per usual, and the runtime is filled with his token dark humour, as well as plenty of emotionally charged events. The narrative is sort of all over the place, with several plot strands all running alongside and throughout eachother, but it's messiness adds to the whole experience, almost like a sort of controlled chaos. All of this is backed by a truly wonderful music score by Carter Burwell.

Three Billboards is just one of those movies that springs off the screen and sticks in your head for all the right reasons.