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Deep Calleth Upon Deep by Satyricon

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Album Watch

Only one duo is able to evoke sinister settings like the world of bleak woods lurking behind...

metal

Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated The Box (2009) in Movies

Aug 9, 2019

The Box (2009)

2009 | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

6.8

(11 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) and her husband, Arthur Lewis (James Marsden), are having a bad day. She just found out her educational scholarship will be ending and he is not going to become an astronaut even when he fits the bill. It is on this particularly challenging day that a mysterious box arrives on their doorstep. The package contains a button which when pressed is worth a million dollar payout but also will kill a random person unknown to the button pusher. Should they push the button and what happens if they do?

Based on the short story Button, Button by Richard Mathason, “The Box” stays true to Mathason’s one of a kind style. It is an interesting premise, and would make an interesting television episode, but falters as a full-length film.
“The Box” gives almost nothing to viewers, running so far off the original ‘push the button, don’t push the button’ issue as to baffle audiences. The more time goes on the more ridiculous the plot becomes and as a viewer you begin to wonder if the movie will ever end.

Furthering the joylessness of “the Box” is the overabundant use of 1970s décor and objects. Not at all subtle, the film’s need to beat you over the head with the time period is distracting from the plot of this already shaky film. Far to blatant to be unnoticeable, you leave the film not entirely sure what has happened but very sure it happened in the 1970s.

This is not to say that the film doesn’t offer some satisfaction, but the work put into stretching this short story into a full-length feature film leaves many lingering questions for the viewer.

So if you really enjoy a yellowish tint to your film going experience or overly blatant references to the 1970s you should definitely go see “The Box” but if you lack these offbeat qualities I suggest quickly reading the short story.

Kudos

Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot

Mark Vanhoenacker

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Book

It is Sunday Times Bestseller. It is Book of the Week on Radio 4. "A beautiful book about a part of...

BookInspector (124 KP) rated The Distant Dead in Books

Jul 1, 2021

The Distant Dead

Lesley Thomson | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry

6.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

The protagonist in this novel is Stella, but there are multiple storylines going on in this book. Stella is a quite complicated character, she has a lot of things going on in her life. It does not help that while running from her past life she stumbles onto a murdered true-crime podcaster. And once again she gets involved with another investigation. The characters of this book are very interesting personalities, and I was very curious to know more about them. And there is a very wide variety of characters, so sometimes it can be a little difficult to remember who is who.

The beginning of the book was quite slow and confusing for me. This book carries two separate investigations, the one going on in 1940 during WWII, and another investigation happening at the present day. I would have liked more suspense in this book, the culprits were quite easy to guess, but I enjoyed the interactions between the characters while solving both of the crimes. I especially liked the investigation that happened in the 1940ies, I loved reading about that era and the description of West London was very intriguing and educational to me. Also, I really liked to see how different police work was compared to the present day, and I did feel annoyed with the police ignoring the obvious. 😀

The writing style of this book was very enjoyable and well researched. I liked the different settings and atmospheres as well. The chapters have medium length, but it did not leave me bored. As I mentioned before, the ending of the book was quite predictable, but I liked how this book was rounded up. Even though this book was part of the series, I was able to read it as a stand-alone.

So, to conclude, it was a cleverly written crime story, filled with a very wide variety of different and intriguing characters as well as the murder stories that were different but very entwined.