Search
The Times of London: World News, Sports & Election
News and Magazines & Newspapers
App
Enjoy The Times of London quality journalism anywhere with one app, 7 days a week. Download the app...
Time Magazine Europe
News and Magazines & Newspapers
App
TIME Magazine Europe is the go-to news magazine for what is happening in the world of politics,...
Doctor Prepper's Critical Preparedness Radio Talk Show
4.0
Rate It
Podcast
Doctor Prepper's C.P.R. Talk Show is the premier Internet source for information related to...
The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Sustainable Patriarchy
Book
Leading feminist analyst Cynthia Enloe asks why patriarchy is proving to be such a sustainable...
Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart
6.5
Rate It
Book
Since his arrival at The Daily Show in 1999, Jon Stewart has become one of the major players in...
Biography TV Personality Comedian
Periódicos Bolivianos
News and Entertainment
App
Bolivian Newspapers is an application that groups all news of the most important newspapers and...
Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Vice (2018) in Movies
Jun 22, 2019 (Updated Sep 25, 2019)
Honestly Christian Bale should probably get an award for his commitment to a role. Gaining weight, doing exercises to get a thicker neck as well as studying up on all the policies and things so that he could ad-lib in character... just wow. This guy might just be a couple of parts crazy.
Being relatively fresh out of The Front Runner I was wondering how I was going to fair with another American political film. The two are very different beasts, The Front Runner is generally inoffensive and consistent drama while Vice tends to sway wildly between scenes of drama and some comedy.
Vice uses a lot of different ways to convey the story, it bleeps and blurs faces, it uses shots that avoid faces and candids with voiceovers, there are moments that go from 0-60 in no time at all. Visually as well as audibly it's chaos, and the timeline jumps around a fair bit, but at least that was easy to follow given the ageing that the characters go through.
As well as Bale's incredible performance a shout out has to go to Sam Rockwell. From Justin Hammer and Dixon in Three Billboards to Zaphod Beeblebrox he has a great range as a supporting actor.
I did like that at the beginning with regards to having to fill in the blanks of the story it said... "but we did our f***ng best." I'm sure it won't stop people saying that the film isn't accurately depicting history but I appreciate the fact it tries to stop them.
Vice is a crazy concotion of things and an assault on the senses, it has the wow factor though. Overall there are a lot of characters to follow. Some portrayed with stellar performances and others that fall by the wayside and left me confused about who they actually were. I think this just missed the mark for me, my knowledge of US politics being limited to what makes the news and social media means that again this is probably a film better suited for politics buffs and the American audiences.
There's a mid-credit scene which I did not stay for, I think this was probably a benefit to this review as by the sounds of it I would have left more confused after seeing it.
What you should do
If politics is your thing then you should definitely give it a go, you might have more luck with it than I did.
Being relatively fresh out of The Front Runner I was wondering how I was going to fair with another American political film. The two are very different beasts, The Front Runner is generally inoffensive and consistent drama while Vice tends to sway wildly between scenes of drama and some comedy.
Vice uses a lot of different ways to convey the story, it bleeps and blurs faces, it uses shots that avoid faces and candids with voiceovers, there are moments that go from 0-60 in no time at all. Visually as well as audibly it's chaos, and the timeline jumps around a fair bit, but at least that was easy to follow given the ageing that the characters go through.
As well as Bale's incredible performance a shout out has to go to Sam Rockwell. From Justin Hammer and Dixon in Three Billboards to Zaphod Beeblebrox he has a great range as a supporting actor.
I did like that at the beginning with regards to having to fill in the blanks of the story it said... "but we did our f***ng best." I'm sure it won't stop people saying that the film isn't accurately depicting history but I appreciate the fact it tries to stop them.
Vice is a crazy concotion of things and an assault on the senses, it has the wow factor though. Overall there are a lot of characters to follow. Some portrayed with stellar performances and others that fall by the wayside and left me confused about who they actually were. I think this just missed the mark for me, my knowledge of US politics being limited to what makes the news and social media means that again this is probably a film better suited for politics buffs and the American audiences.
There's a mid-credit scene which I did not stay for, I think this was probably a benefit to this review as by the sounds of it I would have left more confused after seeing it.
What you should do
If politics is your thing then you should definitely give it a go, you might have more luck with it than I did.
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House in Books
Mar 22, 2018
It took me a while to get my hands on this one - I was watching the scandal around its release, and laughed my butt off when the publisher scorned Trump's threats and published it early instead. My copy finally came in at the library, and I've been reading it off and on for the last couple of weeks. I normally read books far faster than that, and it's not a long book, but I kept having to set it aside for numerous reasons.
It could have benefited from more thorough editing - between a couple of typos, some odd grammar, and a phrase being repeated twice in the same sentence (I think the sentence may have originally been broken across two pages, so no one realized, and then in the final formatting it was all together) - it definitely had some technical problems.
It was also just infuriating. Especially the beginning, where so many of the campaign staffers don't think Trump SHOULD be president, but still campaign for him because it's impossible that he could win, so what does it matter if they don't think he should? That was incredibly frustrating to read.
Honestly there wasn't a lot in this book that I didn't already know, but I've been following politics pretty closely since early 2016. If you haven't, and you're looking for a good way to get up to date on current American politics, this could be a pretty good place to start. (Don't stop at this book, though, there's a lot that it doesn't cover.)
I can't say that anything really surprised me. Everything sounds like what I've come to expect from this administration. The book is decent, but anything terribly salacious from it has been pulled out and splashed across the news at this point, so if you've been paying attention, I don't actually think it's worth spending your time on. It's certainly not the groundbreaking INSIDE LOOK THAT NO ONE'S SEEN HURRY AND READ IT that it was advertised as.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
It could have benefited from more thorough editing - between a couple of typos, some odd grammar, and a phrase being repeated twice in the same sentence (I think the sentence may have originally been broken across two pages, so no one realized, and then in the final formatting it was all together) - it definitely had some technical problems.
It was also just infuriating. Especially the beginning, where so many of the campaign staffers don't think Trump SHOULD be president, but still campaign for him because it's impossible that he could win, so what does it matter if they don't think he should? That was incredibly frustrating to read.
Honestly there wasn't a lot in this book that I didn't already know, but I've been following politics pretty closely since early 2016. If you haven't, and you're looking for a good way to get up to date on current American politics, this could be a pretty good place to start. (Don't stop at this book, though, there's a lot that it doesn't cover.)
I can't say that anything really surprised me. Everything sounds like what I've come to expect from this administration. The book is decent, but anything terribly salacious from it has been pulled out and splashed across the news at this point, so if you've been paying attention, I don't actually think it's worth spending your time on. It's certainly not the groundbreaking INSIDE LOOK THAT NO ONE'S SEEN HURRY AND READ IT that it was advertised as.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2269 KP) rated Fake Truth in Books
Jun 5, 2020
The Truth is I Wish More of This Book Were Fake
Writer Ian Ludlow is stuck. Despite his most recent exploits as an off the books CIA agent, he can’t come up with anything worthy of his next book. So when his CIA partner, Margo French, throws a newspaper at him, he picks a couple of articles at random and they begin to investigate as if Ian’s writer’s imagination was right and there is a connection between them. The scary thing is, they might have stumbled upon something that way, with tentacles that spread from Russia to the US-Mexico border with the news media in between. But what exactly have they found?
I’ve enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this one was a disappointment. While we see the various threads involved in this plot early on, the story still moves too slowly for the first half. Once it does start, we get plenty of action and a great climax. Since this is a loving spoof of the spy genre, I definitely enjoyed some laughs. The characters can be a bit thin, but that’s part of the genre. Unfortunately, so is sex, and there are several sex scenes I really could have done without. The author stages his story in such a way that very thinly disguises his politics, which really pulled me out of the story. I pick up fiction to escape politics, not to have one point of view shoved down my throat. I realize both of the things that bothered me might be selling points to others, but to me, they kept me from fully enjoying the book. I enjoyed the first two books in this series (and the books should be read in order since this one has some spoilers for previous adventures), so hopefully the series will be back to entertaining for the next in the series.
I’ve enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this one was a disappointment. While we see the various threads involved in this plot early on, the story still moves too slowly for the first half. Once it does start, we get plenty of action and a great climax. Since this is a loving spoof of the spy genre, I definitely enjoyed some laughs. The characters can be a bit thin, but that’s part of the genre. Unfortunately, so is sex, and there are several sex scenes I really could have done without. The author stages his story in such a way that very thinly disguises his politics, which really pulled me out of the story. I pick up fiction to escape politics, not to have one point of view shoved down my throat. I realize both of the things that bothered me might be selling points to others, but to me, they kept me from fully enjoying the book. I enjoyed the first two books in this series (and the books should be read in order since this one has some spoilers for previous adventures), so hopefully the series will be back to entertaining for the next in the series.