Winegarden
Book
Winegarden recounts episodes in the life of Jacob Winegarden, an agnostic Jewish professor of...
Romps, Tots and Boffins: The Strange Language of News
Book
Financial Times Gift Books of the Year; Sunday Times Books of the Year - Humour Roundup; Spectator...
Servitization in Industry
Book
This book summarizes the "interim result" of the servitization activities in manufacturing...
Ross (3284 KP) rated Just Mercy (2019) in Movies
Jun 15, 2020
Jordan plays young lawyer Bryan Stevenson who moves to Alabama to fight for justice for death row convicts. Among many cases he meets Jonny D (Foxx), who initially refuses to fight any more despite the paper-thin conviction he received. Persuaded, the pair start their fight against the system, met time and time again with prejudice, injustice and an unfair system that is unwilling to review past cases.
The irony of this unfolding in the town that is so proud to have been where Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a black man facing an unfair trial accused of crime against a young white female, was not lost on me. This wasn't made much of in the film, I would guess out of respect for the family of the actual murder victim here, and not wanting to suggest a parallel with the false crime in the book.
The film does well to portray the racial injustice, unbalanced legal system and prejudice experienced by the authorities and smalltown America, but not overdo it. This leaves the viewer to mull it on their own, which is especially important to do in the current climate.
An excellent film that gets the balance right between story, faithfulness to the facts and sewing thoughts and parallels with modern day life.
Harold Innis and the North: Appraisals and Contestations
Book
Harold Innis is widely understood as the proponent of the "Laurentian school" of historiography,...
Practical Household Uses of Salt: Home Cures, Recipes, Everyday Hints and Tips
Book
This title offers home cures, recipes, everyday hints and tips. It is a celebration of one of...
Human Rights and Common Good: Collected Essays: Volume III
Book
This central volume in the Collected Essays brings together John Finnis's wide-ranging contribution...
John Lasseter recommended Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) in Movies (curated)
Leanne Crabtree (480 KP) rated Hidden Power (Academy of Elemental Magic, #1) in Books
Jan 6, 2021
This starts with Avaline doing her job as a lifeguard at the lake when she is attacked with magic by two assailants who know her name. She wakes up a month later to learn she, too, has magic. A dangerous magic. She has two choices and decides to stay at the school to learn how to control her vox magic.
I can't decide whether I liked this or not.
Everything was happening so quickly in it. She meets the guys, she lusts after them, she sleeps with one of them very quickly. She gets to lessons and on her second try ever she manages to make fire. I just expected things to take time...for her to initially struggle considering she didn't even know she had magic until a day or two ago.
I struggled to connect with the characters and wasn't really convinced by their relationships. I didn't feel any real sort of chemistry going on between any of them. Once again, I feel like this bit was rushed. I get lust but... I wasn't a fan of how the author wrote the romance parts.
This story had a lot of promise but we don't really learn much of anything. Ava learns about magic in lessons but we don't get to hear it. To me it feels like a bit of paper that's been scrunched into a ball and then flattened causing creases and ripples that means some details in the story have been glossed over. It could do with expanding a little with more details on certain aspects.
At this point I don't believe I'll be reading more of this series.




