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Ready Player One
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline | 2011 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.9 (161 Ratings)
Book Rating
<2021 update>

Have also seen the movie mentioned below. It was just OK; not great.

<original 2016 review>

Prior to reading this, I'd heard good things about it, and was aware that - like seemingly nearly all of the current Young Adult Dystopian novels - there was a movie for it in the pipeline, by none other than Spielberg himself.

Set in the near-future, I found this to be like a cross between the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates (in that nearly everybody seems to live their life vicariously through other means), The Matrix (cyber reality) and maybe even a bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the MacGuffin that gets the plot rolling). it probably helps that - unlike the characters - I actually *was* a kid in the 80s, and so get plenty of the various pop-culture references made.

Plenty, but not all - this, remember, is set in America, so leans more towards the American or Japanese spectrum of popular culture than European.
  
Darth Vader.

Both legs chopped off.

Only one arm.

Left on the lave beds of Mustafar.

No, we're not talking about the end of 'Revenge of the Sith' here, but about part of what happens to Vader in this, the second compilation of Greg Pak's run on the Darth Vader series of graphic novels (here, comprising issues 6 through 11), at the behest of The Emperor, who has found out about Vader's previous 'failings' from Volume 1 (Star Wars: Darth Vader by Greg Pak, Vol. 1: Dark Heart of the Sith in which he allowed his personal feelings to get the better of him.

This run also introduces Ochi of Bestoon - who The Emperor has sent to kill Vader - and actaulyl makes a better attempt at tying together the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy (with Vader discovering about, and travelling to Exegol and encountering the Sith Eternal) than any of those latter movies did!
  
40x40

David McK (3562 KP) rated Sharpe's Honour in TV

Nov 14, 2021 (Updated Nov 14, 2021)  
Sharpe&#039;s Honour
Sharpe's Honour
1994 | Action, Adventure, Drama
6
7.0 (2 Ratings)
TV Show Rating
The fifth episode in the TV adaptations of the novels by Bernard Cornwell (which are well worth a read), based on the book of the same name.

I say 'based on' as, because while the main thrust of the storyline is the same, the TV movie of necessity abbreviates the novel somewhat: most noticeably (I felt) watering down quite substantially the role of El Matarife in the proceedings.

As this starts, Sharpe is still mourning the death of his wife Teresa, while Napoleon - in his first appearance in the series - is in retreat from Russia, and with Major Pierre Ducos hatching a plan to drive a wedge between the Spanish and British allies while also getting his revenge on Sharpe by provoking a duel between Sharpe and a Spanish nobleman who he (Ducos) later murders, with Sharpe then taking the rap for said murder (until he is later able to prove his innocence).