Smashbomb

"Next to The Wizard of Oz, it’s my favorite movie of all time. The most honest on-screen depiction of mental illness ever. Cassavetes perfectly nails the heartbreak and frustration that eclipses a family when a loved one’s sanity slips away. It’s at times both gut-wrenching and oddly hilarious, and Cassavetes manages to make gorgeous cinema with colors and composition. Besides the impeccable, monumental performances of Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, the supporting cast is flawless, including both Cassavetes’s and Rowlands’s own real-life mothers, Katherine and Lady, and in particular George Dunn in his role as Mabel’s one-night stand Garson Cross. In any other film the character would be played as a cad the audience would be rooting against. Not so in a Cassavetes film, where the roles of hero and villain shift moment to moment."

Source

Kudos

Leanne Crabtree (480 KP) rated Twenty-Nine and a Half Reasons in Books

Jan 6, 2021

3 stars.

The first 40% of this took me a long time to get into. I don't know why. Maybe it was the trial, maybe it was the lack of Joe, but after Mason was introduced I became more intrigued with what his role would be in the series (although I've read reviews by friends of future books in the series, so I guess I already know) and by the end, I think I was starting to prefer him to Joe (Joe's jealousy in relation to Mason was starting to do my head in) and I want to read future instalments in this series to see what happens next with this threesome.

I feel I have to add something about Miss Mildred! What a, erm...strong-willed old lady. That bit at the end almost had me crying with laughter.

Kudos

David McK (3557 KP) rated Moving Pictures in Books

Jul 11, 2021

Moving Pictures

Terry Pratchett | 2005 | Fiction & Poetry

8.0

(9 Ratings)

Book Rating

Discworld Industrial Revolution #1

<2021 update>

I hadn't realised that this book had the first appearance(s) of Ponder Stibbons, Arch-Chancellor Mustrum Ridcully alongside that of Gaspode the Wonder Dog! (well, maybe I knew the latter)

<original review>

Book #10 in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which (for my money) stands alongside Soul Music as one of his best works, perhaps because these are the two books it is easiest to catch the many allusions in!

This is the one where Discworld discovers the magic of the Motion Picture, culminating in a not-quite-right scene of a giant lady carrying a screaming ape up a tall building (Ankh-Morpork's Tower of Art in the Unseen University), and is also, perhaps, the only book where CMOT Dibbler is actually a major character rather than an extra.

Kudos

Joe Goodhart (27 KP) rated Lady Mechanika Vol. 2: The Tablet of Destinies in Books

Nov 30, 2020

Lady Mechanika Vol. 2: The Tablet of Destinies

Joe Benítez | 2015 | Comics & Graphic Novels, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)

5.5

(2 Ratings)

Book Rating

So, yeah, bit of a snoozer this one! Art was fab tho'! I find Joe Benitez J. Scott Campbell, no contest. Benitez brings the same gorgeous detail to this volume as he did for the first one. No character, not even Lady Mechanika, is "sexed up", allowing for character development and depth.

The story, unfortunately, did not hold as well as expected. I was great through the first two issues, feeling like I was witnessing an Indiana Jones-esque adventure. However, by the fourth issue, I felt the series had tanked. And the reveal (no spoilers, promise) of who the villains were made it seem like a cheap-ass SyFy Channel movie!

I have the third volume in my queue to read. Hopefully, it will not disappoint, as the first volume was all aces! My advice: skip it!

Kudos

David McK (3557 KP) rated Excalibur (1981) in Movies

Aug 4, 2020

Excalibur (1981)

1981 | Action, Sci-Fi

7.7

(10 Ratings)

Movie Rating

John Boorman's utterly mad retelling/adaptation of the Arthurian legends (specifically Malory's The Morte d'Arthur), hitting all the key points of the tales:

Arthurs parentage via Uther and Ygraine
The whole 'Sword in the Stone' business
Merlin
Guinevere
Arthur's marriage
Lancelot
The Lady of the Lake (Listen, just 'cos some watery tart chucked a sword at you ...)
Guinevere And Lancelot's, ummm, dalliance
Morgana
The Search for the Holy Grail ("there's some lovely mud over here ...")
Mordred
Arthurs death
Avalon

(I'm not sure I've got all those in the right order)

Also starring some then up-and-coming but now well-known faces in Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson, this is also surprisingly brutal, with some full-on nudity scenes, with the entire film acting as a counterpart (of sorts) to the Monty Python version - parts of which I've quoted above.