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Dr Seuss' The Lorax (2012)
Dr Seuss' The Lorax (2012)
2012 | Animation, Family
Everyone who claims the weird Once-ler fandom from 2012 died don't realize that it simply morphed into all those people who want to fuck that TikTok Willy Wonka dude tbh. Another aimless round of empty visual inertia from Illumination which painfully crawls at hardly 87 minutes in length. How you all feel about š˜”š˜Ŗš˜Æš˜Ŗš˜°š˜Æš˜“ (which I think is just mediocre) is how I feel about this - an endurance test to see how long the human brain can tolerate such abominable annoyances without snapping like a twig. I fucking loathe those dumbass fish that wouldn't shut the fuck up or those sickly-sweet bears. Somehow not even the worst Seuss adaptation from this company though, the Lorax's design and choice of DeVito for voice actor is essentially a dead-ringer. Not to mention how impressed I am with Ed Helms' multifaceted voice performance and some stuff in the last thirty minutes is kind of half-decent too. It also doesn't exactly have the wrong aesthetic, either - but it's in service of such thorough vapidity, I mean what an aggressive non-story going on here. Plus - surprise - it's totally performative; you know those marketing execs would have happily chopped down a million of those forests to make some Illumination-brand Lorax plushies. Tried so hard to be 'in the now' that it features side-banged fedora hipster twinks with emo hair and ends with nasty-ass amounts of early-2010s autotune you'd already forgotten existed. Not only a fundamental misunderstanding of Seuss but a pathetic excuse for a movie as well.
  
13 Reasons Why  - Season 1
13 Reasons Why - Season 1
2017 | Drama
Deep personal story, gripping drama
On the surface this series looks to be all angsty teen drama. However from fairly early on, we see how a few instances of a nice sensitive person being slighted by the wrong people, or by those she trusts, can start to snowball.
Some of the "reasons" may seem fairly small and on their own not a reason for someone to take their own life. However, as the series tries to say, we never know what someone else is thinking or feeling. Without knowing that, and without true care over our own actions and interactions, small things can easily build up.
Small actions can have larger consequences and can make other people do things they wouldn't otherwise have done.
The cast are superb with all the main sterotypes of school personae covered (the rich kid, the poor but gifted kid, the nerd, the bookish girl, the talented jock etc). However, these aren't cartoon versions of those and are portrayed in a more human way than I've seen before. They all have their failings and in one way or another let someone down and resulted in them killing themselves.
  
An Unwanted Guest
An Unwanted Guest
Shari Lapena | 2018 | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
8
6.4 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
A complete and utter mystery to me!
A group of people who have no prior knowledge of one another, end up stranded in the middle of nowhere in a hotel when some extreme weather comes in (snow and ice) and cuts them off. It also cuts off the electricity and phone lines (most conveniently!). Then people start dying under suspicious circumstances.
I honestly had no idea whatsoever who the murderer was. The perpetrator covered their tracks really well (although not so well that the crime scene investigators couldn't work it out pretty quickly at the end). I really enjoyed the character descriptions: there were those that were easy to empathise with and those that I thoroughly disliked.
This was very 'Agatha Christie', even down to the part where everyone is gathered in the same room by request of the investigator so that they could go through who they thought had 'dunnit'!
Very entertaining and I had fun trying to work out who the killer was and their reasons why (with no success whatsoever!).
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the publisher and the author who read along and commented on our comments!
  
PokƩmon: Detective Pikachu  (2019)
PokƩmon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
2019 | Animation, Comedy, Fantasy
Right from the start this movie feels like something made by people who know, and love Pokemon, and their love shines through in the quality of production. The movie is perfectly balanced in terms of exposition for those who have barely heard of Pokemon, and those (probably smaller) people who've dragged them along to watch it.

The start is a little slow and the lead character Tim (Justice Smith) starts the movie very much not wanting to be there, which turns out to be a fantastic complement to Ryan Reynold's Pikachu when he eventually turns up, very much a kid friendly Deadpool pushing his unwilling accomplice into investigating the mysterious circumstances of Tim's dad.

The CGI representations of Pokemon was spot on, they move naturally and look just the right side of realistic.

Also as a side note the movie very nicely ties up all the loose ends in the movie, there was no cliff hanger or set up for a sequel, and no massive gaping plot holes to endlessly niggle at your conscience.

Well worth a watch, especially if you, or your kids, are Pokemon fans.
  
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Biff Byford recommended Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin in Music (curated)

 
Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin
1969 | Rock
9.0 (4 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I was playing guitar when this came out and I tried to learn all the riffs. I loved that idea of transforming the blues into heavy rock ā€“ taking blues classics and giving them a twist. A lot of the music was traditional blues songs, but the Stones had done the same thing in taking them and twisting them. So many British bands took blues songs and made them famous ā€“there are people who think ā€˜Roll Over Beethovenā€™ was written by the Beatles, and a lot of people didnā€™t know who BB King was until Zeppelin made him famous. When I was young my friendā€™s brother played guitar. He was really into blues, playing Chuck Berry, and he would play all these old recordings, so I knew all of them. All those licks I heard, I would then hear Clapton and all those guys play. I saw Zeppelin at Bath Festival [in 1970] from a long way off ā€“ the violin bow solo with the echo chamber went on for hours, but they were great. Iā€™d never been to anything like a festival before, and that was the first real one, I was on awe."

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