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2.5/5 stars
Not nearly as good as the first. Here Elle Woods goes to Washington DC to introduce a bill against using animals for cosmetics testing. She uses her “blonde-ways” to charm members of congress and win votes for the bill. However, it just wasn’t as fun as the first — maybe the jokes had all been used up, or maybe I just was expecting too much. Not bad, but not great.
3/5 stars
I found that I was distracted because I had read the first two books. I kept trying to find the elements of the books in the movie, and most of them were certainly there, but a bit mixed up. A binding thread had been added to the movie that was not present in the books, which was absolutely necesary, and it worked fairly well.
Overall, a great performance by all the actors, great art direction, and a fun, if easily forgetable, distraction for a matinee showing.
I was distracted becasue I had read the first two books. There was a lot taken away from the books, of course, but also a binding thread was added to make the movie more cohesive. It worked, and it was necessary
2/5 stars
Two years after his girlfriend disappeared from his life, Matthew (Josh Hartnett) hears her voice at a restaurant, but can’t catch up to her in time. He is supposed to be on his way to China to close a large deal for the business of his new girlfriend’s brother’s business and he’s ready to propose to this new girlfriend. However, he can’t pass up the chance to find his ex-girlfriend, who he’s still in love with.
I was expecting more from this movie. The trailers made it out to be more sinister or more mysterious or more something than it turned out to be. I found that I was often confused (and not in a good way).
3/5 stars
This was a cute movie — Jennifer Garner plays a 13 year-old who makes a wish to be thirty, flirty, and thriving. A fun distraction for a couple hours.
This is an excellent collection of short stories based on classic fairy tales. I enjoyed virtually all of the stories (with the exception of “The Frog King, or Iron Henry”), most notably:
There are more collections like this from the same editors, and a series of novels based on fairy tales, all of which I’m looking forward to delving into them.
by Terry Pratchett
I was really looking forward to reading this one, especially because I had enjoyed Guards! Guards! so much. However, I had a very hard time getting into The Truth. I don’t know why. Perhaps I just liked Carrot, the main character in Guards! Guards! better than William de Worde. Maybe it was because I was confused every time Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip entered the scene for about half the book. Maybe it just took too long for the talking dog to have his say.
The jury is still out on whether or not I like Pratchett and Diskworld. I have at least one more Ciskworld book on my shelf — maybe that will decide things…
3.5/5 stars
This is another biopic, which seems the genre to be this past year. The film follows the young Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) before he becomes a complete recluse. We see the beginnings of mental instability (schizophrenia?), but at the focus is the innovations and spirit of the young Hughes.
DiCaprio has come over from heart-throb-annoying actor to someone that I can watch and be sucked into the dilusion. There was a time when I shunned any movie he was in (after Titanic) just because he was in it. I might be turning around to seeing almost anything he’s in now. Brad Pitt never made that transition for me.
The film does drag just a bit in the middle, but not for too long. There are a lot of cameos by actors that I know — Edward Herrmann (from Gilmore Girls on the censorship board, Brent Spiner (from Star Trek Next Generation) as an airplane designer, and Jude Law as Errol Flynn. A fun distraction for an afternoon.
And other classic stories by
Philip K. Dick
(With an introduction by James Triptree, Jr.)
I’m not sure what to say about this one. After reading the first five or so stories, I had to set the book aside for a while. I found Dick’s writing to be too impersonal for my tastes. His ideas are provocative, but the characters are generally one dimensional (if that).
However, when I picked the book up after a month, I found the remaining stories to be more enjoyable. I’m pretty sure that this is because I was ready for Dick’s style, rather than being due to the remaining stories being more compelling that the first few that I read.
A few noteworthy stories in the collection:
Clicked through to a new blog, Swapatorium, a collection of oddities found at estate sales, flea markets and thrift shops. Check out the archives — I paged through December, and had a hard time picking my favorite, but finally decided on the Skinless Weiners ads, especially the romantic Valentine’s dish. Go check it out — I know you don’t have anything better to do.
by Susan Wright
Rose Rico was a wild child of a highly-placed government official. However, there was nothing even her mother could do when she is abducted by aliens and sold as a pleasure slave. The practice of using humans as pleasure slaves is well-established, because humans are always “in season”; whereas, many star-faring races have complicated mating cycles that rarely overlap with others of their species on the same ship.
Typically Earth-born slaves have a very short livetime. Ash, a hermaphrodite “creche”-born slave, has always believed that this was due to some kind of flaw in the Earthling’s constitution. However, he finds out differently when Rose concocts a plan to hijack the alien ship transporting them. He sees that Earth-born slaves know what true freedom is, and that they can’t bear to live without it.
Wright weaves this story on many different levels. Based on the cover art and title, I was expecting some cheesy erotic novel, and was pleasantly surprised when I got a well-crafted, textured story. I’ll definately be looking up the second book in this series.
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