Search

Search only in certain items:

40x40

Al Reinert recommended Sid and Nancy (1986) in Movies (curated)

 
Sid and Nancy (1986)
Sid and Nancy (1986)
1986 | Drama, Musical
7.0 (5 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"I was at the last Sex Pistols show (in San Antonio) and lived for months at the Chelsea Hotel, so this was nearly my story."

Source
  
DO
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
When a friend's granddaughter goes missing, Henrie O. heads to San Antonio to find her. The plot was decent if slow, but the characters were hard to keep straight.

Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-review-death-on-river-walk-by.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.
  
40x40

Erika (17788 KP) rated Undone - Season 1 in TV

Sep 21, 2019  
Undone - Season 1
Undone - Season 1
2019 | Animation, Fantasy
I really liked this show. For one, it takes place in San Antonio, which I immediately recognized. The episode were the perfect length 21-25 minutes. The animation was so cool, and I thought it was pretty innovative.
The story line was really interesting, and it was a very interesting, and respectful way to deal with schizophrenia. I really, really hope there's a 2nd season, since it was left on such a cliffhanger.
  
Show all 3 comments.
40x40

Erika (17788 KP) Sep 21, 2019

@Lee It was on my watch list, but I was feeling meh about watching it until I saw your review! I'm so glad I watched it!

40x40

Lee (2222 KP) Sep 21, 2019

Oh wow, happy to have helped 😊

The First Emma
The First Emma
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
4.5/5 stars

If you've never heard of Emma Koehler, then you know nothing about the beer industry in San Antonio Texas. But even if that subject matter doesn't interest you, Emma should, because she had both a fascinating and tragic life. Camille Di Maio does a lovely job of taking little to no information about this real-life personality and turning it into a biographical, historical, women's fiction novel. Read more about it in my #bookreview here https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2020/05/08/lady-bastion-of-beer/
  
40x40

Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post

Dec 15, 2021  
The special guest author today on my blog is Florence Byham Weinberg with a fascinating interview. Learn more about her historical fiction novel BEFORE THE ALAMO: A TEJANA'S STORY, and enter the giveaway to win signed copies of that book and her other historical fiction novel APACE LANCE, FRANCISCAN CROSS.

https://alltheupsandowns.blogspot.com/2021/12/book-blog-tour-and-giveaway-before.html

**BOOK SYNOPSIS FOR BEFORE THE ALAMO**
Emilia Altamirano, half Otomí Indian, half pure Spanish, is born in 1814, the year after the Battle of the Medina River, where her father fought as an officer in the Mexican Royalist Army. She grows up in Bexar de San Antonio unacknowledged by her father, raised by her Otomí Indian mother, and “adopted” as an unofficial ward by José Antonio Navarro, hero of the Texas fight for independence from Mexico. She learns to read, write, and acts as a page for the Ayuntamiento (City Council). She learns nursing during a cholera epidemic and later tends the wounded on both sides during and after the Battle of the Alamo. She survives, but as a Tejana, Spanish-speaking, and a loyal citizen of Mexico, she faces an uncertain future.
     
MS
Maggots Screaming
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
104 of 220
Booksirens Arc
Maggots Screaming
By Max Booth III
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THE FAMILY THAT DECAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

On a hot summer weekend in San Antonio, Texas, a father and son bond after discovering three impossible corpses buried in their back yard.

This book had me thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading it, to the point I’ve talked my husband into reading it and he doesn’t read. I’ve given it the full 5 stars simply because my god this had me never wanting to dig up the garden and to never watch the Simpsons again in the same way. The writing was so good it had my skin itching and crawling, I now have a new phobia decomposing while alive. It’s super graphic but put in a way that you actually feel it happening to this family. So entertaining but don’t read while eating or if you have a weak stomach!!

I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
  
40x40

Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post

Apr 3, 2022  
Sneak a peek at the literary fiction novel ODD BIRDS by Severo Perez and read a deleted scene from the book on my blog. Enter the giveaway for a chance to win your own autographed copy of the book - 2 winners!

**BOOK SYNOPSIS**
The year is 1961. Seventy-year-old Cosimo Infante Cano, a Cuban-born artist in need of inspiration, follows his lover to Texas in what was to be a temporary sabbatical from their life in France. Unexpectedly, he finds himself stranded in San Antonio, nearly penniless, with little more than the clothes on his back and an extraordinary pocket watch. His long hair and eccentric attire make him an odd sight in what he has been told is a conservative cultural backwater.

Cosimo’s French and Cuban passports put a cloud of suspicion over him as events elsewhere in the world play out. Algeria is in open revolt against France. Freedom Riders are being assaulted in Mississippi, and the Bay of Pigs debacle is front-page news. Cosimo confronts nightmares and waking terrors rooted in the horror he experienced during the Great War of 1914–1918. His friends—students, librarians, shopkeepers, laborers, lawyers, bankers, and even a parrot—coalesce around this elderly French artist as he attempts to return to what remains of his shattered life.

His new friends feel empathy for his impoverished condition, but his unconventional actions and uncompromising ethics confuse them. He creates charming drawings he refuses to sell and paints a house simply for the pleasure of making a difference. In the process he forever alters the lives of those who thought they were helping him.
     
40x40

Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post

Feb 25, 2022  
Sneak a peak at the Christian romantic suspense novel TRUST ME by Kelly Irvin, Author on my blog. Be sure to read Kelly's fantastic guest post of how "adopted hometown offers perfect setting for crime fiction—good and bad", and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a signed copy of the book - 3 winners total!

https://alltheupsandowns.blogspot.com/2022/02/book-blog-tour-and-giveaway-trust-me-by.html

**BOOK SYNOPSIS**
When her best friend is murdered the same way her brother was, who can she possibly trust?

A decade ago, Delaney Broward discovered her brother’s murdered body at the San Antonio art co-op he founded with friends. Her artist boyfriend, Hunter Nash, went to prison for the murder, despite his not-guilty plea.

This morning, Hunter walks out of prison a free man, having served his sentence.

This afternoon, Delaney finds her best friend dead, murdered in the same fashion as her brother.

Stay out of it or you’re next, the killer warns.

Hunter never stopped loving Delaney, though he can’t blame her for not forgiving her. He knows he’ll get his life back one day at a time, one step at a time. But he’s blindsided to realize he’s a murder suspect. Again.

When Hunter shows up on her doorstep, asking her to help him find the real killer, Delaney’s head says to run away, yet her heart tells her there’s more to his story than what came out in the trial. An uneasy truce leads to their probe into a dark past that shatters Delaney’s image of her brother. She can’t stop and neither can Hunter—which lands them both in the crosshairs of a murderer growing more desperate by the day (hour?).

In this gripping romantic suspense, Kelly Irvin plumbs the complexity of broken trust in the people we love—and in God—and whether either can be mended.
     
Network of Deceit
Network of Deceit
Tom Threadgill | 2021 | Crime, Mystery
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Great Deductive Reasoning
Detective Amara Alvarez from the SAPD (San Antonio Police Department) Homicide brings us a great new case in Network of Deceit. From the first page, I was hooked on this story. I was a big fan of Collision of Lies the first book in this stand-alone series, for the character development Tom Threadgill uses, and how he walks us through the case just as if we were there asking the questions to figure out the case right along Detective Alvarez. Detective Alvarez has a light sense of humor, and she is a bit of a quirky character take this for instance: “[Detective Alvarez] heading home to Larry, her three-foot-long pet iguana”. I also love Tom Threadgill’s use of dry sarcastic humor and wit in the conversations between Detective Alvarez and Detective Jeremiah “Starsky” Peckham is it fun to read and adds another layer to the story.

This particular case was rife with speculation, suspense, and unanswered questions that left me guessing until the end. A true mystery in every sense of the word. We are shown every step in the case and it is not tv fast paced, it is realistic. Tom Threadgill gives accurate timelines for the turnaround on things like autopsy reports and toxicology reports, unlike most tv shows. I also really enjoyed the cybercrime aspects of the story and I thought that it was explained in an easy-to-understand way for anyone, even if you do not have any previous knowledge of cybercrimes.

I would suggest that you go back and read Collision of Lies before this one as it gives you more background on the characters and you would have a better understanding of the case the previous book covers that is mentioned a few times in this one. But this one can be read as a stand-alone since the whole case is started and wrapped up in this book. Overall, I truly loved this book, and the way Tom Threadgill moved the case along, and I am looking forward to what other adventures that Detective Alvarez takes me on. 5 out of 5 stars.
  
Hot Pursuit (2015)
Hot Pursuit (2015)
2015 | Comedy, Crime
4
5.6 (10 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Combining various formulas is nothing new in Hollywood and the new film “Hot Pursuit”, tries very hard to be successful at doing so but has mixed results. The film stars Reese Witherspoon as Cooper, a police office in San Antonio who is trying to grow into the shoes her late father left behind. The fact that he was not only a great cop, but that Cooper is fairly small in stature has caused her to overcompensate through the years. So much so that she has had an epic blunder named after her and is relegated to the evidence room of her station. Cooper is a by the book cop whose social skills are very lacking as is proven by a recent dating disaster. Cooper is given the chance to redeem herself by travelling to escort the wife of a money launderer to court so they can both testify against a notorious drug lord.

When Cooper first meets her assignment Daniella (Sofia Vergera), they do not mix at all. Daniella is annoyed by Cooper’s by the book attitude and Cooper sees her task as nothing more than escorting a gold digging criminal to Dallas. When things go very wrong, the two end up framed and on the run with only each other for company and support. Naturally the duo begin to thaw to one another and there are a few good laughs along the way as they race to clear their names and stay ahead of the dangerous people chasing after them. The film has some fun moments, but the formula of the film can become a bit familiar.

We have seen this played out in numerous road trip and buddy cop segments so many times before that there is very little in the way of drama or surprise moments with the script. Witherspoon does well with her role and does take it away from being overly one dimensional but the jokes run a bit thin after a while. Vergera is good in small doses for me as she is very much the Charo of this generation. I am still wondering if she has been typecast in these shrill roles or if she is simply playing herself, but the over the top performance and her voice works better for me in smaller doses in Modern Family than it does over a full length feature. That being said, the two work well with one another and their scene with Jim Gaffigan is one of the funnier moments of the film. The pacing of the film is brisk, as Director Anne Fletcher has made a film that moves nicely and does not overstay its welcome. The biggest issue is a feeling that we have seen this all many times before and often in better movies, so despite the best efforts of those involved, this is one that never really gels the way that you would want a film to.

http://sknr.net/2015/05/08/hot-pursuit/