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Daniel Radcliffe: The Biography
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Daniel Radcliffe went from shy schoolboy to the world's most famous boy wizard overnight. Aged just...
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TravelersWife4Life (31 KP) rated Stork Bite in Books
Feb 24, 2021
Stork Bite by L.K. Simonds was one of the most deeply layered books I have ever had the privilege of reading before, and it emphasized how the small choices we make in life can have huge ripple effects that last generations.
This book is divided into two separate, yet connected stories. In the first “book” L.K. Simonds immediately immerses you into deep south life Louisiana. With vivid descriptions of local wildlife, scenery, and murder (really vivid). It was a great hook, and I could not put it down to see what happened next. L.K. Simonds did a great job making me feel like I was right there with David exploring all the options available to me. The people David meets on his journey were interesting and showed a real glimpse of life at that time, and the hardships that many people went through. I LOVED how David emphasized the need for education as being a founding block for a better life, and his selfless actions were remarkable. This “book” was my favorite as it really engaged me, and I enjoyed the ebb and flow of the author’s voice.
The second “book” introduces a completely new cast of characters, and as you will find out when you read the book, all the characters are interconnected in a remarkable way that is not obvious upon first reading the second “book”. While David seems to disappear from the story altogether, we meet Cargie and Mae two women from very different walks of life and who make very different life choices. I was fascinated by L.K. Simonds look into the 1920-1930s era of mobs, bootlegging, and the choices of people. It made for an interesting storyline. What really helped make this story interesting for me was not just the story itself, but the way L.K. Simonds rounded out the seemingly not connected stories into one overarching story.
Overall, I think that L.K. Simonds did a great job layering her characters, giving a good mystery that left you scratching your head for a while, and showing how one man’s choice can affect a multitude of people. One thing I wish was done differently, would have been the first book characters remaining as background characters in the second “book” so that I was not completely at a loss on how the two stories fit together until the last 50 or so pages. But Stork Bite did have a good conclusion that wrapped everything up nicely and gave me the pieces I needed to feel like David’s story ended. I give it 4 out of 5 stars for the accurate historical details, the stretched-out mystery, and for being able to layer so many characters and have the story come out richer because of it.
*I will advise that this story does include some mild swearing
**I volunteered to read this book in return for my honest feedback. The thoughts and opinions expressed within are my own.
This book is divided into two separate, yet connected stories. In the first “book” L.K. Simonds immediately immerses you into deep south life Louisiana. With vivid descriptions of local wildlife, scenery, and murder (really vivid). It was a great hook, and I could not put it down to see what happened next. L.K. Simonds did a great job making me feel like I was right there with David exploring all the options available to me. The people David meets on his journey were interesting and showed a real glimpse of life at that time, and the hardships that many people went through. I LOVED how David emphasized the need for education as being a founding block for a better life, and his selfless actions were remarkable. This “book” was my favorite as it really engaged me, and I enjoyed the ebb and flow of the author’s voice.
The second “book” introduces a completely new cast of characters, and as you will find out when you read the book, all the characters are interconnected in a remarkable way that is not obvious upon first reading the second “book”. While David seems to disappear from the story altogether, we meet Cargie and Mae two women from very different walks of life and who make very different life choices. I was fascinated by L.K. Simonds look into the 1920-1930s era of mobs, bootlegging, and the choices of people. It made for an interesting storyline. What really helped make this story interesting for me was not just the story itself, but the way L.K. Simonds rounded out the seemingly not connected stories into one overarching story.
Overall, I think that L.K. Simonds did a great job layering her characters, giving a good mystery that left you scratching your head for a while, and showing how one man’s choice can affect a multitude of people. One thing I wish was done differently, would have been the first book characters remaining as background characters in the second “book” so that I was not completely at a loss on how the two stories fit together until the last 50 or so pages. But Stork Bite did have a good conclusion that wrapped everything up nicely and gave me the pieces I needed to feel like David’s story ended. I give it 4 out of 5 stars for the accurate historical details, the stretched-out mystery, and for being able to layer so many characters and have the story come out richer because of it.
*I will advise that this story does include some mild swearing
**I volunteered to read this book in return for my honest feedback. The thoughts and opinions expressed within are my own.
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Navigation and Travel
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Explore, Plan and Navigate in real time and outstanding high-resolution with the latest Digital...
Gareth von Kallenbach (965 KP) rated Lockout (2012) in Movies
Aug 7, 2019
In the later part of the 21st-century the worst criminals the planet has to offer are kept safely away from public in stasis aboard an orbiting prison known as MS: One. Although it is never explained in the film, it does not take a rocket scientist to guess that “MS” stands for Maximum Security and much like the rest of the movie “Lockout”, this is a film that does not aspire to be more than the sum of its heavily borrowed parts.
The film stars Guy Pearce as Snow, a special agent who has been wrongly accused in the killing of a high-ranking operative. Railroaded through the system, Snow is looking at a lengthy sentence.
At the same time, the presidents daughter Emily (Maggie Grace), has visited MS: One on a goodwill tour. One of her special causes is to confirm the truth that long-term stasis has damaging psychological and neurological effects for the prisoners. Since the prison is funded by a deep space research development she definitely sees conflict of interest in how prisoners are being treated.
Things take a turn for the worse when a violent prisoner goes off during his interview and proceeds to release pent-up inmate population and take the crew hostage. The prisoners run amok and for the time being are unaware that they had president’s daughter in their midst. Snow was given an ultimatum that the successful retrieval of the first daughter will help him avoid becoming a future resident of the orbiting prison.
Despite his misgivings, Snow accepts the assignment as he learns that one of his friends is incarcerated on board. This friend holds valuable information that can exonerates Snow from his charges. Once on board the station, Snow must battle mobs of psychopaths as he attempts to locate and rescue Emily.
While one would think this premise would hold plenty of excitement, thrills, and suspense, the film is essentially undone by its inability to sustain any real momentum for any developed and real tension.
While the prisoners do a great job of appearing menacing, torturing and killing the hostages, we really never learn of their true objective. At no time do they really make any serious demands for freedom, material goods, and so on which basically leaves them vulnerable to an all-out attack from the amassing forces around the prison.
One would think they would’ve asked for something as simple as pardons but they seem more interested in glaring threats to the president and the authorities via videoconference, not truly grasping the magnitude of their situation.
Pearce does a good job as the gruff Snow but sadly the script gives him very little to do other than smug one-liners and occasionally shoot the bad guys. Smith does show some spark and personality in her performance but she is given little to do aside from playing the damsel in distress although she doesn infuse the role with some strength and humor.
What really surprised me about the movie was even though it borrowed very heavily from Fortress 1 & 2 as well as an escape from New York, and have surprisingly little new to offer. It was clear that the intention was to create a diehard style film in space but unfortunately it fell relatively flat.
This was a huge surprise to me as one would think that Luc Besson and many of the creative talents that made “Taken” such a thrilling smash would have been able to come up with a better action film.
This is not to say that “Lockout” is a bad film more than it is a disappointment considering the premise, cast, and the potential that it had going for it.
I can certainly overlook plot holes, thinly crafted stock characters, and run-of-the-mill action sequences in my action films as long as they can get me some solid entertainment.
Sadly this is not the case and it plays out more like a direct to DVD release that’s certainly would be extremely welcome us and Netflix are red box rental but for my taste thanks to the lo-res and dated special effects did not warrant a major theatrical release.
The film stars Guy Pearce as Snow, a special agent who has been wrongly accused in the killing of a high-ranking operative. Railroaded through the system, Snow is looking at a lengthy sentence.
At the same time, the presidents daughter Emily (Maggie Grace), has visited MS: One on a goodwill tour. One of her special causes is to confirm the truth that long-term stasis has damaging psychological and neurological effects for the prisoners. Since the prison is funded by a deep space research development she definitely sees conflict of interest in how prisoners are being treated.
Things take a turn for the worse when a violent prisoner goes off during his interview and proceeds to release pent-up inmate population and take the crew hostage. The prisoners run amok and for the time being are unaware that they had president’s daughter in their midst. Snow was given an ultimatum that the successful retrieval of the first daughter will help him avoid becoming a future resident of the orbiting prison.
Despite his misgivings, Snow accepts the assignment as he learns that one of his friends is incarcerated on board. This friend holds valuable information that can exonerates Snow from his charges. Once on board the station, Snow must battle mobs of psychopaths as he attempts to locate and rescue Emily.
While one would think this premise would hold plenty of excitement, thrills, and suspense, the film is essentially undone by its inability to sustain any real momentum for any developed and real tension.
While the prisoners do a great job of appearing menacing, torturing and killing the hostages, we really never learn of their true objective. At no time do they really make any serious demands for freedom, material goods, and so on which basically leaves them vulnerable to an all-out attack from the amassing forces around the prison.
One would think they would’ve asked for something as simple as pardons but they seem more interested in glaring threats to the president and the authorities via videoconference, not truly grasping the magnitude of their situation.
Pearce does a good job as the gruff Snow but sadly the script gives him very little to do other than smug one-liners and occasionally shoot the bad guys. Smith does show some spark and personality in her performance but she is given little to do aside from playing the damsel in distress although she doesn infuse the role with some strength and humor.
What really surprised me about the movie was even though it borrowed very heavily from Fortress 1 & 2 as well as an escape from New York, and have surprisingly little new to offer. It was clear that the intention was to create a diehard style film in space but unfortunately it fell relatively flat.
This was a huge surprise to me as one would think that Luc Besson and many of the creative talents that made “Taken” such a thrilling smash would have been able to come up with a better action film.
This is not to say that “Lockout” is a bad film more than it is a disappointment considering the premise, cast, and the potential that it had going for it.
I can certainly overlook plot holes, thinly crafted stock characters, and run-of-the-mill action sequences in my action films as long as they can get me some solid entertainment.
Sadly this is not the case and it plays out more like a direct to DVD release that’s certainly would be extremely welcome us and Netflix are red box rental but for my taste thanks to the lo-res and dated special effects did not warrant a major theatrical release.
Gareth von Kallenbach (965 KP) rated the PlayStation 3 version of Deadpool in Video Games
Jun 19, 2019
Marvel comics classic antihero Deadpool has made a jump to the big leagues as the star of his own videogame by high Moon Studios. For those unfamiliar with the character, Deadpool is a mentally unstable mercenary who is deadly efficient with all manner of weaponry and takes delightful glee and dispensing violence. As the game opens, dead pool breaks down the fourth wall and openly speaks to the players often chiding them for their performance as well as cracking several raunchy one-liners and quips in the process. In his rundown apartment, we learn the dead pool has coursed through the use of high explosives the creation of a videogame written by and starring himself.
At numerous times throughout the game Deadpool will open the script to offer his creative input and decide to go off script and make some very creative and often bloody changes to the storyline which often causes the unseen but often heard studio exec complain about the budget of the game being surpassed.
While this is a very interesting set up and does add a lot of unique new wrinkles to a game of this type, at its heart Deadpool is simply an action adventure game in a style that we have seen many times before often in better games.
In pursuit of a contract, Deadpool graphically dispatches waves of enemies using his signature swords and guns which allow him to do all manner of complicated and impressive combat moves. As enemies are dispatched, players can earn the ability to purchase and equip new weapons such as shotguns, bear traps, grenades, dual machine guns, and more as well as have the ability to upgrade some of Dead pools abilities such as his healing speed. Like fellow mutant Wolverine, who briefly shows up the game, Deadpool is capable of regenerating health, so when combat becomes too intense it is often advisable for players to retreat to heal before wading back into the never-ending siege of enemy opponents.
Deadpool can also do some very creative stealth kills such as coming up behind an opponent and decapitating them or dispatching them with a quick shot to the head. This does have its own risks as excessive noise tends to attract large mobs of enemies and even as good as Deadpool is there comes a point where discretion is the better part of valor. Thankfully Deadpool has the ability to teleport away from danger and this comes exceptionally handy during the games numerous and at times frustrating jump sequences when a jump goes wrong.
There are elements of the game that are frustratingly hard but then there are moments that are absolute delight for fans of action games as well as, book heroes. The bawdy and over-the-top humor was excessive at times but was also entertaining and the character animations were true delight especially when Deadpool became a spinning dervish of death and dismemberment courtesy of his bladed weapons and guns.
Many of the enemies though became highly redundant and some did require a considerable amount of effort to dispatch so it is important that players conserve their ammunition as much as possible as running dry often required a hasty retreat rather than staying and finishing the job.
There were several clever cameos in game which I do not want to spoil and it was really nice to step into the bizarre and mayhem filled world in which the title character lives. My biggest issues with the game were that the gameplay became very repetitive after a while and the timed jumps and certain fights became extremely frustrating. If I want to do precision jumps from platform to platform to accomplish a goal, I will fire up the Wii U and play a game of Mario brothers.
I also had issues with some glitches in the game such as weapons animations disappearing and one extremely annoying sequence where the control systems on the PC version of the game went haywire and the character started to move on his own without any input from the controls. There were also some problems with the camera angles which in the heat of pitched battles became highly frustrating as I found myself boxed in and unable to see which way to go.
The graphics and sound in the game were solid but to control systems did have an element of frustration to them. While you are able to customize the controls on the PC version of the game, I did have to wonder how much easier the game would be on a console as it seems as if this wasn’t the intended platform of choice as it is a button mashers dream which is very conducive to a game control but not as friendly to a keyboard and mouse combination.
If you can look past the frustrations of the game, there is a lot to like here. Specifically the character, the action, and the ability to play as a truly demented individual who writes his own rules and does not care what anyone else has to say.
In the end the game is entertaining though nothing spectacular and while it may appeal mainly to hard-core fans of the character, I cannot help but think that the game could’ve been so much more.
http://sknr.net/2013/06/28/deadpool/
At numerous times throughout the game Deadpool will open the script to offer his creative input and decide to go off script and make some very creative and often bloody changes to the storyline which often causes the unseen but often heard studio exec complain about the budget of the game being surpassed.
While this is a very interesting set up and does add a lot of unique new wrinkles to a game of this type, at its heart Deadpool is simply an action adventure game in a style that we have seen many times before often in better games.
In pursuit of a contract, Deadpool graphically dispatches waves of enemies using his signature swords and guns which allow him to do all manner of complicated and impressive combat moves. As enemies are dispatched, players can earn the ability to purchase and equip new weapons such as shotguns, bear traps, grenades, dual machine guns, and more as well as have the ability to upgrade some of Dead pools abilities such as his healing speed. Like fellow mutant Wolverine, who briefly shows up the game, Deadpool is capable of regenerating health, so when combat becomes too intense it is often advisable for players to retreat to heal before wading back into the never-ending siege of enemy opponents.
Deadpool can also do some very creative stealth kills such as coming up behind an opponent and decapitating them or dispatching them with a quick shot to the head. This does have its own risks as excessive noise tends to attract large mobs of enemies and even as good as Deadpool is there comes a point where discretion is the better part of valor. Thankfully Deadpool has the ability to teleport away from danger and this comes exceptionally handy during the games numerous and at times frustrating jump sequences when a jump goes wrong.
There are elements of the game that are frustratingly hard but then there are moments that are absolute delight for fans of action games as well as, book heroes. The bawdy and over-the-top humor was excessive at times but was also entertaining and the character animations were true delight especially when Deadpool became a spinning dervish of death and dismemberment courtesy of his bladed weapons and guns.
Many of the enemies though became highly redundant and some did require a considerable amount of effort to dispatch so it is important that players conserve their ammunition as much as possible as running dry often required a hasty retreat rather than staying and finishing the job.
There were several clever cameos in game which I do not want to spoil and it was really nice to step into the bizarre and mayhem filled world in which the title character lives. My biggest issues with the game were that the gameplay became very repetitive after a while and the timed jumps and certain fights became extremely frustrating. If I want to do precision jumps from platform to platform to accomplish a goal, I will fire up the Wii U and play a game of Mario brothers.
I also had issues with some glitches in the game such as weapons animations disappearing and one extremely annoying sequence where the control systems on the PC version of the game went haywire and the character started to move on his own without any input from the controls. There were also some problems with the camera angles which in the heat of pitched battles became highly frustrating as I found myself boxed in and unable to see which way to go.
The graphics and sound in the game were solid but to control systems did have an element of frustration to them. While you are able to customize the controls on the PC version of the game, I did have to wonder how much easier the game would be on a console as it seems as if this wasn’t the intended platform of choice as it is a button mashers dream which is very conducive to a game control but not as friendly to a keyboard and mouse combination.
If you can look past the frustrations of the game, there is a lot to like here. Specifically the character, the action, and the ability to play as a truly demented individual who writes his own rules and does not care what anyone else has to say.
In the end the game is entertaining though nothing spectacular and while it may appeal mainly to hard-core fans of the character, I cannot help but think that the game could’ve been so much more.
http://sknr.net/2013/06/28/deadpool/