The Efficacy of Architecture: Political Contestation and Agency
Book
A significant ideological transition has taken place in the discipline of architecture in the last...
Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other
Ralf Burmeister, Micaela Oberhofer and Esther Tisa Francini
Book
Apart from the notorious brouhaha it caused on the European art scene of the time, the Dada movement...
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Bertolt Brecht and Steve Giles
Book
Brecht's operatic play produced with Hauptmann, Neher and Weill was first staged in 1930. The story...
Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated We Just Clicked in Books
Jul 28, 2021
We follow Izzy who dreams of becoming an influencer as she misguidedly “fake dates” Luke who also dreams of becoming an influencer. Everything is fine until she meets Aidan, a blast from her past who makes her start to question everything. Aidan doesn’t know anything about her fake relationship with Luke and doesn’t use social media, so he can’t find out, right?
I love the whole idea of this book, and I love that it shows that we really shouldn’t believe everything that we see online. It really brings home that the majority of the content we see on social media really is staged and the “perfect lives” that we covet aren’t always as perfect as they seem.
I felt that some of the last part of the book was rushed, and it really left me wanting more, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! I could have read so much more about Izzy, Aidan, Marissa and Becca and their lives. They were all so lovable! I’m looking forward to picking up more of Anna Bell’s books in the future.
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot
Book
On February 21st 2012, five members of an obscure feminist post-punk collective called Pussy Riot...
Politics social issues
Great Operas
Music and Education
App
Welcome to the world of operas! Great opera touches everyone's heart! If you are an opera lover,...
A Dream of Death
9.0
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Book
On a remote Scottish island, American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton wrestles with her own past while...
Fiction Mystery Thriller
Awix (3310 KP) rated Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) in Movies
Mar 15, 2019 (Updated Mar 15, 2019)
Incomplete Struggle (a much better title to my mind) is much more of a fantasy film than the previous chapter in the story, once again playing cleverly with various tropes of Japanese monster stories. The script takes the trouble to include characters from both previous films (it is clearly intended as a grand conclusion to the story) and also explores notions of pre-millennial angst. Once again, the monster battles are superbly staged, but the big ideas explored by the film are also fascinating, even if some elements of the story are left a bit vague. What one person sees as vaulting imagination and ambition, another may see as the script getting a bit out of control; some may also have an issue with the deliberate lack of closure at the very end of the film. Nevertheless, this movie manages to give the Japanese kaiju genre a sense of majesty and gravitas it has seldom achieved anywhere else.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Quantum of Solace (2008) in Movies
Mar 1, 2018 (Updated Mar 2, 2018)
Still a very untypical Bond film, with an austere, bleak mood; likely to feature prominently in pub quizzes as the answer to the questions 'which is the shortest Bond movie?' and 'in which film do Bond and the Bond girl not actually do it?' You can see the influence of the Bourne series in the attempt to turn Bond into a more edgy, self-doubting figure, and the general distrust of security agencies as a whole; but these things are not really the stuff of a good Bond film, and nor is a plot revolving around a plan to topple the government of a country most viewers would struggle to find on a map.
Competently-staged fights and chases, particularly the final set-piece, but most of the jokes fall flat and, well, it's just not really fun enough to really work as a piece of Bond. Commendable attempt though, and not actively painful to watch.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Skyfall (2012) in Movies
Jun 22, 2018
Hence this, which is not as earnest or obviously Bourne-inspired as Quantum of Solace, but still departs from the playbook in a number of key ways. It's a very introspective Bond film, quite glum and dark (though Bardem tries his best to have some fun with his role) - there's no main Bond girl per se (unless you count Judi Dench), and the exotic location for the finale is eschewed in favour of the London underground and foggy Scotland. As a change of pace it is striking, but if every Bond film was like this I think people would soon get sick of it (as the reaction to SPECTRE perhaps proved). Still, much good stuff here, Naomie Harries, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw make good first impressions, and there's some well-staged action. Whatever the influence this film ends up having on the franchise, on its own terms this is a fine film.