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Trigger Mortis: A James Bond Novel
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Literary legend James Bond returns to his 1950s heyday in this exhilarating thriller by Sunday Times...
Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight
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Rockets and Revolution offers a multifaceted study of the race toward space in the first half of the...
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging
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The daughter of a Burmese mother and a white American father, Alex Wagner grew up thinking of...
Car Camera DVR. Pro
Auto & Vehicles, Navigation and Utilities
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Turn your iPhone or iPod touch into a full featured Car DVR recorder at a fraction of the cost of...
Into The Churn
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Seventeen-year-old Ezren Hart interns in her mother’s terraforming lab, studying Belethea’s...
Young Adult Science Fiction Adventure Action Romance
Lee (2222 KP) rated Ford v Ferrari (aka Le Mans '66) (2019) in Movies
Nov 5, 2019 (Updated Nov 5, 2019)
Anyone who knows me knows that I have pretty much zero interest in cars. As long as they can get me from A to B, reliably and comfortably, then that's good enough for me. I have even less interest in watching cars race round and round and round at high speeds for hours on end too - if I wanted to watch that, then I'd just go and stand on a bridge overlooking the M25 for a while. So, a movie about a determined team of American engineers and designers looking to build a Ford racing car with the potential to finally beat Ferrari in the 1966 Le Mans race in France? Well, that doesn't immediately sound like my kind of movie. But, a great looking trailer and an interesting cast got me interested, and in the end I am so glad that I saw it.
Le Mans ‘66 (or Ford v Ferrari as it is known elsewhere - much better name, no idea why it needed to be changed) stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale (once again going through some weight loss for a movie role) as Carroll Shelby and his engineering partner Ken Miles. Shelby was the first American to win Le Mans, the 24 hour race held in France, in 1959, but has since retired from racing due to a heart condition. These days, Shelby designs and sells souped-up cars as well as running the racing team Cobra, along with British racing driver Ken Miles. Shelby is calm, very clever and extremely determined and Miles knows everything there is to know about cars, but isn’t exactly what you might call a good ‘people person’. Together they have a wonderful friendship and partnership, the highs and lows of which form the basis and heart of the movie.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor company is suffering from poor sales and Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) is looking to his workforce to come up with the next big idea in order to try and boost the Ford name. One of the many corporate suits we see during the movie, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) proposes that Ford buy into Ferrari in order to create a winning sports car that will make Ford cool again with the kids, so they head to Italy for a meeting with Enzo Ferrari. The meeting doesn't really go according to plan though, and the suits return home with their tails between their legs, and a strong desire to go to war with Ferrari and teach them a lesson.
Ford puts its money where its mouth is, pretty much writing a blank cheque for Shelby to come up with a car worthy enough to defeat Ferrari and win Le Mans ‘66, and we then follow Shelby, Miles and their team as they struggle to make it happen. Problems arise when Shelby is repeatedly put under pressure by the corporate suits at Ford to ditch Miles, feeling that he doesn’t quite fit with the Ford image, and this puts strain on both the project and the friendship between Shelby and Miles, eventually resulting in a comedy brawl reminiscent of the one involving Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones Diary!.
Caitriona Balfe plays Miles' wife, Mollie, and it’s great to finally see her out of period costume and outside of TV show Outlander. It’s a role that could easily have been relegated to the usual, long-suffering spouse, sitting at home watching hubby race with baited breath, and while there is a fair bit of that, she does prove to be a strong and worthy addition to the cast. As does Josh Lucas, one of the dastardly, clueless suits who thinks he knows best. It’s a fantastic, jam-packed cast, but never detracting from the central Shelby/Miles friendship and dynamic.
I’ve come this far without talking about the race itself. There are a number of enjoyable, smaller races throughout the movie, giving us a taste of the high energy, intense camerawork to come, but that’s nothing compared to the 24 hours of racing we get when the team eventually arrive in France. As Shelby and his team look on in the pits, watched over in the stands above by the suits from Ford, and by team Ferrari in the stand next to them, Miles takes it in turns with other drivers to try and win the race, through the night and in heavy rain, dealing with car problems already experienced and worked upon throughout the movie, as well as yet more meddling from those pesky suits.
The pacing of the race is perfect. Putting you right in the heart of the action, occasionally cutting to the drama in the pits and between the team, all the while desperate to get one over on the all powerful Ferrari. This is a movie that can be enjoyed by petrol heads, and non enthusiasts like me, in equal measure, and I had an absolute blast watching it. Highly recommended.
Le Mans ‘66 (or Ford v Ferrari as it is known elsewhere - much better name, no idea why it needed to be changed) stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale (once again going through some weight loss for a movie role) as Carroll Shelby and his engineering partner Ken Miles. Shelby was the first American to win Le Mans, the 24 hour race held in France, in 1959, but has since retired from racing due to a heart condition. These days, Shelby designs and sells souped-up cars as well as running the racing team Cobra, along with British racing driver Ken Miles. Shelby is calm, very clever and extremely determined and Miles knows everything there is to know about cars, but isn’t exactly what you might call a good ‘people person’. Together they have a wonderful friendship and partnership, the highs and lows of which form the basis and heart of the movie.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor company is suffering from poor sales and Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) is looking to his workforce to come up with the next big idea in order to try and boost the Ford name. One of the many corporate suits we see during the movie, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) proposes that Ford buy into Ferrari in order to create a winning sports car that will make Ford cool again with the kids, so they head to Italy for a meeting with Enzo Ferrari. The meeting doesn't really go according to plan though, and the suits return home with their tails between their legs, and a strong desire to go to war with Ferrari and teach them a lesson.
Ford puts its money where its mouth is, pretty much writing a blank cheque for Shelby to come up with a car worthy enough to defeat Ferrari and win Le Mans ‘66, and we then follow Shelby, Miles and their team as they struggle to make it happen. Problems arise when Shelby is repeatedly put under pressure by the corporate suits at Ford to ditch Miles, feeling that he doesn’t quite fit with the Ford image, and this puts strain on both the project and the friendship between Shelby and Miles, eventually resulting in a comedy brawl reminiscent of the one involving Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones Diary!.
Caitriona Balfe plays Miles' wife, Mollie, and it’s great to finally see her out of period costume and outside of TV show Outlander. It’s a role that could easily have been relegated to the usual, long-suffering spouse, sitting at home watching hubby race with baited breath, and while there is a fair bit of that, she does prove to be a strong and worthy addition to the cast. As does Josh Lucas, one of the dastardly, clueless suits who thinks he knows best. It’s a fantastic, jam-packed cast, but never detracting from the central Shelby/Miles friendship and dynamic.
I’ve come this far without talking about the race itself. There are a number of enjoyable, smaller races throughout the movie, giving us a taste of the high energy, intense camerawork to come, but that’s nothing compared to the 24 hours of racing we get when the team eventually arrive in France. As Shelby and his team look on in the pits, watched over in the stands above by the suits from Ford, and by team Ferrari in the stand next to them, Miles takes it in turns with other drivers to try and win the race, through the night and in heavy rain, dealing with car problems already experienced and worked upon throughout the movie, as well as yet more meddling from those pesky suits.
The pacing of the race is perfect. Putting you right in the heart of the action, occasionally cutting to the drama in the pits and between the team, all the while desperate to get one over on the all powerful Ferrari. This is a movie that can be enjoyed by petrol heads, and non enthusiasts like me, in equal measure, and I had an absolute blast watching it. Highly recommended.
tarabu42 (7 KP) rated The Transatlantic Conspiracy in Books
Nov 2, 2017
Exciting, fast-paced, no fluff
Classic conflicts of child/parent, friend/(boy)friend, working/privileged classes, come to a head with a brutal murder, pre-WWI industrial espionage, and a race to survive the crossing.
The publisher classes it as YA, but it is suitable for a well-read late middle grader as the murder is neither gory nor superfluous to the plot. The language is clear and direct, the dialogue natural, and the settings imaginative.
The publisher classes it as YA, but it is suitable for a well-read late middle grader as the murder is neither gory nor superfluous to the plot. The language is clear and direct, the dialogue natural, and the settings imaginative.
Keith (44 KP) rated Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) in Movies
Aug 2, 2017
Science fiction classic
Contains spoilers, click to show
It's actually not a bad film at first I thought the main cast looked a bit weak for such a big project but they do a pretty good job .the story evolves around an alien race wiped out but a few seeking 2 objects which let them recreate there world ,along the way there a love story lots of action and so many interesting species and ideas ...now the film is very much like all your classic science fish coming together think starwars meets avatar with a bit of startre thrown in ,well worth a watch
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated Moonlight (2016) in Movies
Aug 3, 2017
A rare coming of age film about poverty, race and homosexuality
A moving film finally showing homosexuality in the black community. Don't expect the sugar coating of Brokeback Mountain which seems like The Sound of Music in comparison. It shows the layers of extreme difficulty living as a black man, in a poverty stricken area, surrounded by peers who think one way, and attempting to break free from a drug fuelled mother and the dealers around her. It's visually beautiful and the quiet dialogue highlights the protagonist's wonderful acting.
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated What We Lose in Books
Mar 3, 2018
Wonderful variety but something missing
This is an interesting literary debut from Zinzi Clemmons, with many semi-autobiographical elements discussing her heritage.
Thandi, a girl of mixed race, has to endure taking care of her dying mother, all the while battling various social aspects of living as a daughter of a South African and an American parent. Written in different formats, from a text message to hip hop lyrics, Clemmons explores the rich tapestry of her life and layers it with various threads.
While I mostly enjoyed this story, I do feel there is something missing and could have been weaved together a little more clearly.
Thandi, a girl of mixed race, has to endure taking care of her dying mother, all the while battling various social aspects of living as a daughter of a South African and an American parent. Written in different formats, from a text message to hip hop lyrics, Clemmons explores the rich tapestry of her life and layers it with various threads.
While I mostly enjoyed this story, I do feel there is something missing and could have been weaved together a little more clearly.