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Magic Mike (2012)
Magic Mike (2012)
2012 | Comedy, Drama
4
5.9 (7 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Depending on what you are looking for and what your expectations are going into it, the movie Magic Mike will either satisfy you or dissapoint you entirely.

Bad news first: If you are looking for a great plot, great storyline and phenomenal acting you will undoubtedly leave the theater disappointed.

Good news: If you are looking for a movie full of ‘good views’, some decent laughs, and men with rock-hard bodies with ripped muscles, you’ll get what you were looking for.

The movie Magic Mike, produced by Channing Tatum is loosely based on Tatum’s own experience before his acting career took off, when he spent a period of time earning a living as a male stripper. While working a roofing construction job, Mike (Tatum) meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer) and despite his young age, Mike befriends him and takes him out partying and, unbeknownst to Adam, to the strip club where Mikr works as a stripper. Mike introduces Adam to Dallas (Mathew McConaughey), the owner of the strip club, as The Kid.
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During one of the club’s shows, one of the other strippers, “Tarzan” (Kevin Nash) passed out, and Mike pushes The Kid out on stage. It’s an awkward, unpolished performance, as one would expect from someone brand new to that particular scene, but The Kid proves to be a hit. When Adam realizes the income potential and allure of life as a stripper, he expresses interest in joining Magic Mike’s crew, and Mike and Dallas take him under their wings and teach him everything he needs to know to be successful in the business. They share tips, tricks, and outfit him with appropriate costumes. He quickly learns the dance moves and the importance of perfect timing when it comes to the pelvic thrust.

While the ‘main’ story line unfolded pretty well and the dancing and on-stage portion of the male revue club scenes were rather riveting, the attempt at bringing a romance into the story – first between Mike and Joanna (a Sociology student played by Olivia Munn) then Adam’s sister Brooke (Cody Horn) fell flat. It seemed awkward and forced, and there was no chemistry whatsoever. With a cast of stars such as McConaughey and Channing, one would expect a higher level of performance, but apparently the writer was counting on the sex appeal and dance scenes to carry the film. Instead, the audience was left with a series of awkward silences and uncomfortable, choppy dialog. Magic Mike left those in the audience that were looking for more than a two-hour male revue sadly disappointed.

We agreed that if you go wanting to see a ‘real’ movie with a ‘real’ storyline, Magic Mike rates 2 out of 5.
If you go with the expectations of ‘sex on a screen’ we rate this 4 of 5. And only 4 of 5 because we both felt uncomfortable with the ‘crotch in the face scenes’. But if you’re into that kinda thing, then by all means, 5 of 5.
  
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Faris Badwan recommended track Corpus Christi Carol by Jeff Buckley in Grace by Jeff Buckley in Music (curated)

 
Grace by Jeff Buckley
Grace by Jeff Buckley
1994 | Alternative, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
8.7 (7 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Jeff Buckley’s vocal range is staggering. He’s basically a classical singer, he’s so technically gifted. When I was on tour as Cat’s Eyes a lot of the singers that sing with us are classical singers, and on tour this year we were discussing who you think has the best musicality – and Jeff Buckley was one of the people that we mentioned. I don’t know much about his life other than who his Dad was, but I think it’s actually really rare to hear a singer within guitar music that has such musicality. I don’t think it can be taught either, I think it’s just something he has innately. His tone is incredible on this, it’s unreal. This is something you can’t copy, it’s only something you can appreciate. As someone who learnt to sing really late in life, it’s interesting to me. I learnt from scratch, just from playing. At the beginning of The Horrors it was a lot more shouting, spontaneous and came out of nowhere, just raw expression. I feel like none of us really knew what we were doing. In a way I think just reacting instinctively is the best way to get into things that you love, but I learnt a lot from Rachel (Zeffira) of Cat’s Eyes. She was an opera singer originally, before we met. Singing with her I was able to access my own musicality, which is a hard thing to do. What’s really great about this song is that Jeff Buckley chose to do it in the first place. If you listen to the whole of Grace, this song comes out of nowhere. The fact that he was brave enough to choose a classical piece and put it on his record, and for it to work as well – the bravery of it is inspiring. There’s a vulnerability to this song that you don’t hear in a lot of male singers. It’s easy for someone in the charts like Sam Smith to portray ‘emotion’, but to me his voice transmits no emotion because I feel like its trained emotion. They’re worlds apart. Maybe it’s too easy to target these artists because their songs are made for a purpose, but ‘Corpus Christi Carol’, and Jeff Buckley’s voice in general, has a vulnerability to it that first of all, male singers are afraid to show, and second of all, they wouldn’t be able to do it because they don’t have the soul or technique – and it’s not something male singers aspire to either. I have no idea when I first heard this song. A lot of people at school liked Jeff Buckley but this song was kind of tucked away in the record. It took me a while to find the song and hear it, but I heard it on its own one night and hearing it like that I could really appreciate how totally unique it is"

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Star Wars: Bloodline
Star Wars: Bloodline
Claudia Gray | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
4
8.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
By and large, most of the Star Wars books to date (including in the old EU), have pretty much belonged to the 'boys club', dfocusing more on the male characters (Han, Luke, the X-Wing pilots, etc) than on their female contemporaries.

I think that's to be expected, given the predominantly male targer audience of the film series - an expectation that Disney themselves are trying to shake up, both in the new films (both of which - The Force Awakens and Rogue One - , so far, have female leads), and in the wider media, as can be shown by their 'Princess Leia' series of comics.

This follows(?) (or did it come first?) in the latter footsteps, with nary a sign of Luke and Han only popping in to give Leia a hand towards the climax of the novel.

Set in the period between the end of 'Return of the Jedi' and the start of 'The Force Awakens', this also seeks to bridge the gap between those two films, providing a bit of background to the history of The First Order and explaining why, if Leia was part of the Rebellion which toppled the Empire, just why she is now a key member in The Resistance - the Resistance to what, I hear you ask? This answers that question.

It's not a bad read by any strecth of the imagination - according to Goodreads own rating system, 2 stars is a 'I liked it'; I just personally found this a slower, somewhat heavier read than [a:Claudia Gray|1192311|Claudia Gray|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1234643683p2/1192311.jpg]'s other Star Wars title: '[b:Lost Stars|25067046|Lost Stars (Star Wars Journey to the Force Awakens)|Claudia Gray|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462731623s/25067046.jpg|44751860]';. And yes, I'm aware that this is aimed at a different audience.

How best to put it? I didn't find myself reading this quite so much in my spare time on the bus on the way to work!
  
Samson & Amish Delilah
Samson & Amish Delilah
Thomas Nye | 2019
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I love stories with horses!

I have worked with horses for most of my life and I am always looking for ways to be around them. In this book Thomas Nye shows his love of horses in this book quite well, I love his descriptions of the big draft horses and what they can do. I hope to own a pair of draft horses like them someday too!

Samson and Delilah’s story was an interesting tale and not really what I expected. This book had a couple of firsts for me. One I have never read an Amish book by a male author, and male authors have very different writing styles then females and that makes books interesting. Second, I have never read a book about Sampson and Delilah. Most people don’t write about them, I am not sure why. However, this book is very loosely related to their story, as in if you didn’t know their names to be looking for that specific storyline you probably wouldn’t notice it. I loved the twists in this book and thought It was a great ending to the story… or a possible lead into the next book in the series?

For me, the start of this book was quite slow, and I had a lot of trouble following the story and getting engaged with the characters. There seemed to be a lot of over expressed emotions and things repeated (which is somewhat understandable with the characters reading a book that closely follows what is happening in the book). I was very excited to read this book based off the description; however, the story fell short on what I expected and hoped for. Based on the overall book I give this story a 3 out of 5 stars for the creativity of Thomas Nye in crafting a dual storyline, for the interesting premise, and the great ending… or beginning?
  
    Beat Time!

    Beat Time!

    Music and Entertainment

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    Beat Time plays audio & video and can change the tempo (time stretch) and/or pitch and does note &...