Surrender to the Cyborgs (Interstellar Brides: The Colony, #1)
8.0
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Wrongly imprisoned whistle-blower Rachel Pierce would rather take her chances with her court appeal...
A Dog Called Dez
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When John Tovey lost his sight at the age of 42, he thought his life was over. But he was wrong - it...
After I'm Gone
8.0
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New York Times best seller Laura Lippman returns with a classic story of murder and mystery, in...
The Moth Catcher
9.0
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The Moth Catcher is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - now the major ITV...
Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated Mr. Vampire (1985) in Movies
Jul 24, 2020
Mr vampire is a Chinese horror/comedy and a breakthrough 'Jiangshi' (Rotting Copse) movie due it's mixing of slapstick comedy, kung-fu, Chinese folklore and western vampire myth and has a number of sequels.
The humour is very slapstick, with people getting hit with furniture or getting their head stuck in prison cell bars and the horror level is quite low and most of the effects are quite cheesy.
The Kung-Fu aspect makes the fight scenes entertaining and both the vampire and the ghost have to be dealt with slightly differently..
The image of the living corpse, be it vampire or zombie, being controlled by a yellow paper talisman stuck to it's head is though to have come from Mr Vampire and has been used in many subsequent Jiangshi film as well as many other shows, including the recent Netflix show 'Kingdom' where we see a scene of villagers selling the talismans when the zombies are threatening their village.
Mr Vampire manages to pull off Horror comedy in a way that is watchable by almost anyone. The film has a 15 (UK) rating and does contain vampires and ghosts but neither are overly frighting, partly due to the effects of the time.
ClareR (5716 KP) rated Her Last Holiday in Books
May 16, 2021
Fran, a 50-something single, teacher, is roped into attending a Wellness retreat by her mother - a retreat run by the same man who ran the one in Gozo where Fran’s sister, Jenna, went missing two years previously. The male counsellor, Tom, has just served two years in prison for the deaths of two other people on the retreat, and his wife wants him to get back to work as soon as possible. This may not have been a wise move.
I liked the flashbacks to Jenna’s retreat - there was as much tension in these parts as in her sister Frans present day parts. Neither past events or the present day make it any easier to guess what might have happened to Jenna, but there’s definitely something fishy going on in both timelines.
There were parts where I felt it best to leave my rational thoughts at the door - but hey, this is fiction. If I wanted real life, I’d read a newspaper (ahem. Or something). Many was the time over the 10 day period of reading this, where I was so frustrated at the end of the stave - I just wanted to read on. It’s definitely a book written for a day long binge read!!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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If it is true that great art comes from great suffering, then the art of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 -...
Going to Extremes: The Adventurous Life of Harry de Windt
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Harry de Windt (1856-1933) was a man who, by any standards, was a personality, a marked presence in...
Because of Sex
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The 1964 Civil Rights Act is best known as a monumental achievement of the civil rights movement,...
LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated The Lie (2020) in Movies
Nov 18, 2020
This recent thriller from Blumhouse, based on 2015 German film Wir Monster, has a lot of good ingredients, and some decent performances but there's just so much that bogs it down.
First off, the lead cast here are great. Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos in particular are heart wrenchingly believable as two parents desperately trying to protect their teen daughter (Joey King) who has confessed to impulsively murdering one of her friends. It's a slow burn of a plot, and Sarsgaard and Enos do a hell of a lot to make it watchable.
Joey King's character is stupidly unlikable however. I got the feeling that we as the audience were supposed to be on her side, hoping that she wouldn't get caught - like the filmmakers we're going for a Psycho vibe or something, but her character is so obnoxious and spoilt, that all I wanted was for her to go to prison. It's a big hiccup considering the narrative centres around her so severely.
Then there's the twist - no spoilers here, but fuck me, it's stupid. All good thrillers need a good twist to round things off, but the one we're subjected to here requires a huge suspension of disbelief on the viewers part. It asks too much, and ruins what is otherwise a fairly tense and minimalist thriller.
The snowy setting adds some beauty to the films aesthetic, but it's not enough to detract from everything that makes The Lie more unenjoyable than it should be.