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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2389 KP) rated What Comes Around in Books

May 22, 2025 (Updated May 22, 2025)  
What Comes Around
What Comes Around
Annette Dashofy | 2024 | Mystery
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
We’ve Been Waiting for This
This book opens just days after book twelve ended, which makes sense. Helpless ended with Zoe deciding to finally stand up to Dr. Charles Davis publicly. But before she can line everything up to fire him, Pete and Zoe are called to scene of a homicide. A woman has been brutally murdered in a hotel room. The surprise is that the victim was Davis’s ex-wife who came to the area to tell Zoe something. What was it?

Because this storyline has been brewing in the background for multiple books now, I was hooked from the moment I picked up this one, always have a hard time putting it down. I didn’t expect the ending, but it made perfect sense when Zoe figured it out. As always, the characters are entertaining, new and old alike. Zoe and Pete split the point of view character duties, and the shifts are always clear. This series is darker than the cozies I often read, but don’t let that stop you from reading these books. Sadly, this is the final book (sob!), at least for now. Fortunately, the author is working on other things to entertain us. If you are already a fan of Zoe and Pete, you’ll love this book. If you aren’t yet a fan, dive in today. You’ll be hooked in no time.
  
A Monster Calls (2016)
A Monster Calls (2016)
2016 | Drama, Fantasy
Heartwrenching
Anyone who’s read my reviews on here knows I very rarely like film adaptations of books, but for this one I make an exception. The book is excellent, and the film is not only as good as the book, but possibly slightly better.

This is a heartwrenching story about grief, and doesn’t shy away about being stark and honest about a very brutal and difficult subject. And it deals with this subject matter in such an elegant way. The film really surpasses the book when it comes to the visuals. The monster looks and sounds amazing, and is sinister looking without being too scary, and the stories he tells are animated brilliantly - looking very similar to the Deathly Hallows animation. The colours and effects are truly impressive. And it helps that the film sticks very true to the book.

Conor is a relatable young character and is played brilliantly in this. The rest of the supporting cast are also excellent, although one of my few criticisms is that Toby Kebbell is underused. He’s a fantastic actor and I appreciate that there isn’t much room to include his character more, I just always wish to see him more no matter what film he’s in.

This is a beautifully made heartwrenching film, that deals with a very difficult subject in a fitting matter. I can’t find anything bad to say about this Not a dry eye around when it got to the ending.
  
Show all 5 comments.
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Vee5000 (5 KP) Jan 2, 2019

It's a really good film, not a good idea to watch just after losing a family member unless you want a good sob

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Lee (2222 KP) Jan 2, 2019

Yeah, it probably didn't help that I'd lost my brother to cancer the year before it came out! ?

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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Two Popes (2019) in Movies

Dec 6, 2019 (Updated Dec 6, 2019)  
The Two Popes (2019)
The Two Popes (2019)
2019 | Biography, Comedy, Drama
'And it's in nomine patris from me...' '...et in spiritus sancti from him.' Slightly oddball true-life drama doesn't go quite as far as that, but is still much funnier and lighter than it sounds from the capsule synopsis - any film which sees the college of cardinals going into conclave while Dancing Queen plays on the soundtrack, and droll enough to show the two pontiffs watching the World Cup final together (Germany-Argentina, of course) obviously has something to say for itself.

The question is what that is. No doubt the decision to make the film a comedy-drama was partly inspired by concerns it could be offputtingly talky, but the talk works when it's delivered by two actors like Pryce and Hopkins, working with a very good script. The film is arguably biased in favour of Jorge Bergoglio, who is presented as warm, human, and compassionate; his life story is explored in much more detail than that of Joseph Ratzinger - but then again you could say the film does Ratzinger a big favour by largely ignoring the elephant in the room and his role in covering it up. Most of the film is very plausible, and it's only near the end that you begin to suspect how much of it is complete fiction. Still, it's engaging and plausible fiction, and - some distracting hand-held camerawork aside - mostly very well played and filmed.
  
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Elizabeth (1521 KP) rated Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Shows

Jul 20, 2020 (Updated Jul 20, 2020)  
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
1979 | Drama, Musical
9
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Show Rating
Immersive (2 more)
Songs
Performances
Food distribution (1 more)
Limited set
Immersive theater at its best
Another show that my daughter and I saw as it was on its way out. It was our first time seeing an immersive show so I made sure to get us tickets at the tables rather than the stadium seating.

It was a tiny little theater with a stage smaller than I've seen in some schools so you couldn't help but feel like you were part of the show. Because of its small size, it was a fixed stage, with no room for set changes. There were different sections of the stage to make it feel as though you were in the pie shop or the barber shop.

During some of the dance numbers, the cast would dance on the tables we were seated at. Even if you opted for the stadium seats, there was some movement of the cast through those seats as well.

When buying the tickets, you had the option to purchase tickets with or without pies. They had both meat pies and vegetarian pies. When we arrived, they had run out of pies even though we'd purchased ahead. Instead of being able to eat them prior to the show, we had to pick them up after the show was over. It wasn't a huge deal, but when you're hungry and can smell other people's pies, it can be a bit distracting.
  
The Rite Of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
The Rite Of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
2012 | Classical
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I thought we ought to have one classical album as I do play a lot of classical music at home. I thought about Chopin’s Nocturnes but they didn’t change anything. The Rite Of Spring really was, for me, the first punk album. It was the most uncompromising vision. In the period it was done, no one was doing anything like Stravinsky. He was writing parts for instruments that didn’t have those notes, so they had to have new ones made with extra notes so the orchestra could play that piece. That’s forward thinking. The whole story of the making of the album is so fantastic – that Stravinsky has no money and Coco Chanel comes along and invites him to live at his house and Stravinsky sits in a room alone writing all these parts for all these instruments. It’s extraordinary and a remarkable achievement. Then, the fact that on the opening night in a swishy Parisian theatre the audience hated it. They think it is the most terrible row and now it is acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. It’s too good a story and I admire his commitment and his inventiveness and his absolute passion to making that record work. You listen to it and think "how did anyone ever do that?" Anyone who hasn’t heard The Rite Of Spring and likes music should really take a listen."

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