This book itself as Fantasy, but it’s certainly not your typical one. Really it’s a sort of reinterpreted epic (and I mean long) historical romance — without much of the modern sense of romance (almost none). But it does have plenty of the traditional, more atmospheric form.
Episode 9, “Baelor.” This is the episode where it all comes together, pretty much summed up by the text I got on first airing from a friend I convinced to watch (he hadn’t read the books — but is now): “OMG! They killed Ned Stark!”
Episode 8, “The Pointy End.” The last third of the season, or even last half, is all about grinding out the consequences of positions and choices made in the first half. Many of these lead to additional hasty decisions that will also have repercussions. Also it is worth noting that this episode is actually penned by George R. R. Martin himself.
Marlowe’s compelling voice pulling you through at breakneck pace. But at the backbone for me was the sinister portrait of pre-war L.A. While visually tame by today’s jaded standards, this is a dark book, with realistic characters. The movie is forced by 40s standards to gloss or smooth over many of these darker elements, but the novel exposes them for what they are.
This post isn’t so much a review of the 4th Pirates installment, but an little digression on its amusing relationship to one of my favorite books. What’s interesting here is that Disney put “suggested by the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers” in the credits and felt it needed to option the novel just to include the two basic elements of Blackbeard and the Fountain. Nothing else. Still, it’s a fun movie, better and more self contained than either Pirates 2 or 3.
The book’s been a classic for 80 years, and with good reason. There are so many reasons why this is the archetypal detective novel. It’s pure pleasure from start to finish.
Directory Darren Aronofsky fuses stylistic traits from his ultra surreal films (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) with the more documentary style The Wrestler into this psychological thriller. While oblique in terms of what’s actually happening, it’s positively crystal clear in comparison to that earlier trio.
I’m sad. It could have been so much better. Oliver’s debut novel, Before I Fall, was fantastic. And I have nothing against dystopian — I am after all a hard core sci-fi reader — and the prose is great in this second novel, but the story and characters just fall flat.
Lessons is a lot like Lawrence Block’s Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. Both cover a bunch of the big areas quickly like plot and structure, and also include the author’s personal perspective on his career (Morrell’s best known for First Blood, on which the first Rambo was based) and the writing business. It does not focus heavily on sentences or editing. There were a number of interesting insights, and some interesting tidbits on the trials and tribulations of going Hollywood.
Episode 7, “You Win or You Die.” In a lot of ways, this episode is the biggest pivot of events in the maelstrom of plot shifts. While Game of Thrones took it’s time setting up the characters in the first four episodes, 5-7 are a whirlwind of motion. Consequences are the theme.
Episode 6, “A Golden Crown.” The blast off that began last week with Episode 5 continues on full burn with Episode 6. The whole episode is pretty much wall to wall tension.
This is one of the best YA books I’ve read in a long while. Part Groundhog Day, part The Source Code, part Judy Blume, part The Lovely Bones — all itself.
Today I reached a milestone and finished the first draft of my second novel, tentatively titled Untimed. Now this doesn’t really mean it’s done, revision is usually more work than the first draft. Still, it’s a book. It has a…
This 1934 novella just breezes on by. The first half (act I) is like watching a train wreck unfold. I greedily devoured the setup. Seedy drifter, sexy unhappy wife, and loser older husband. Plus it’s a crime novel. You know things aren’t going to end up good. The style here is lean and mean. It feels fully modern — timeless even.
Episode 5, “The Wolf and the Lion.” This is where four episodes of character development pay off. This week the writers deliberately narrow the focus of the story into the core conflict, like waters passing through a canyon, to build the pressure into a torrent.
Other than Marvel’s apparent desire to pull a kind of cinematic equivalent of the 1980s “Secret Wars” there really aren’t a lot of reasons why this movie needed making. It’s actually kind of bizarre, and I can’t really imagine that the Thor (as in comic) audience is immense. Although maybe I’m wrong.
Season 3 continues to groove on the rhythm established in season 2. There aren’t any big shake ups in the formula, but by concentrating on the mob action and the relationships, it remains outstanding.
With Episode 4, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” the enormous narrative of Game of Thrones begins to pick up speed. Still, it’s amazing how much time this show needs to spend on characterization, which is a tribute to the enormous depth of such in the source material. Even streamlined, there’s just such a ridiculous number of interesting characters, each with their own pathetic stories.
While the foundation of fun characters is great, fundamentally I think that by toning down the comic elements (it’s still there, just slightly muted), and a concentrating on the mob aspects at slight expense of Tony’s maternal and psychiatric relationships, Season 2 brings this already good show to an entirely new level.
