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    m48 is an emulator for the famous HP48GX scientific calculators. Carry your favorite calculator...

Den Of Thieves (2018)
Den Of Thieves (2018)
2018 | Action, Crime, Drama
Heist films are typically filled with tropes and clichéd action sequences. Den of Thieves offers a new perspective on crime action films. The film stars O’Shea Jackson Junior (Straight Outta Compton) and Gerard Butler (300) on opposite sides of the law. Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr) is a new member of a bank heist crew focused on robbing the Federal Reserve in Los Angeles. Gerard Butler heads up a special division of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department that is determined on stopping this crew.

The film delves deeper than typical films of this genre. Instead of having one-dimensional characters who are either career criminals or law enforcement officers seeking to be heroes, we find characters that are much more than their description. The criminals are cerebral and men of action. We see them as flawed beings who have families, friendships, and goals of eventually leaving crime.

For those on the side of the law, we witness how these heroes are only valiant on the outside. We see them as vulnerable, overzealous, and skirting the law as they view themselves as the embodiment of the law.

Den of Thieves demonstrates that crime action films can have well-developed storylines that don’t rely on the action to carry the film forward. The film will have audiences speculating about the next move and progression of the stories and crimes in a way that would make Ocean’s Eleven envious in its creativity. The characters have you confused and conflicted as who to pull for as they make the criminals relatable and sympathetic.

Den Of Thieves raises the bar for the genre of heist movies.
  
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ClareR (5911 KP) rated The Gloaming in Books

May 2, 2018 (Updated May 2, 2018)  
The Gloaming
The Gloaming
Kirsty Logan | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, LGBTQ+, Science Fiction/Fantasy
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
A grown up fairy tale
This is a story which weaves the fantastical and the real together so well. It's set on a small, remote Scottish island, where the people there believe in selkies and turn to stone on a cliff top looking out to the ocean, when they die.
Mara Ross and her family live in a run down castle, that they never quite manage to repair. After her little brothers death, Mara leaves the island with Pearl, who she often refers to as a mermaid or a selkie (it's her job, actually).
This is a story of love, loss, hope, return and growing up. Fairy tales are used as a way of illustrating gender roles and how they have changed. This all sounds far too 'dry' though. This story is written in such lyrical, wistful language. It's beautiful. I could carry on reading it for another 200 pages. You're never quite sure what's real and what's fairy tale - and that's O.K.
And for the record, I like that there's no definite ending. I think that works really well with the rest of the novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.
  
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Ross (3284 KP) rated One Word Kill in Books

Dec 4, 2019  
One Word Kill
One Word Kill
Mark Lawrence | 2019 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
7
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Nothing original but a good read
Mark Lawrence has stepped out of the fantasy bubble into this loosely sci-fi trilogy set in the 1980s. 15 year old Nick is diagnosed with cancer and while undergoing chemotherapy starts to have strange visions and deja vu. A mysterious figure seems to be stalking him and his D&D friends, and he ends up planning a siege to help this person from the future.
The story is very short (a little over 200 pages on kindle), but is quite heavy on the 80s references and D&D gameplay. The story itself is nothing new but with a little more head-scratching time travel/parallel universe pseudo-science crammed in. The twists throughout the story are fairly predictable and cliched.
The dialogue also doesn't feel like authentic 80s teenager speech to me, a few too many Americanisms ("hey" instead of "hi", "do it, already" etc).
A reasonably enjoyable short book, but a little Stranger Things bandwagon-jumping to me. I'm not sure whether the other two books carry on the story or how, so I will be interested to see where they go from here.